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Stability And Development In Canon Law And The Case Of "Definitive" Teaching, Ladislas M. Örsy

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Stability is an essential quality of any good legal system because a community's laws are an expression of its identity, and there is no identity without permanency. Many times we hear in the United States that we are a country held together by our laws. Although the statement cannot be the full truth, it is obvious that if our laws ever lost their stability, the nation's identity would be imperiled. In a religious community where the source of its identity is in the common memory of a divine revelation, the demand for stability is even stronger. Fidelity to the "Word …