SAN FRANCISCO (CA)
Catholic San Francisco
March 11, 2019
By Nicholas Wolfram Smith
Changing canon law to allow lay people “authentic and honest participation” could encourage renewal in a wounded church, an expert in church law said in a talk to the Catholic student group at UC Berkeley’s law school.
Jennifer Haselberger has a Ph.D. in philosophy and a licentiate in canon law and served as chancellor at the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis before resigning in protest in 2013 over concerns about how the archdiocese handled clergy abuse cases. In her Feb. 26 lecture at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall, Haselberger, one of many commentators across the ideological spectrum to emerge in a growing public debate over the roots of the clergy abuse crisis, discussed institutional factors and how they church can respond.
Haselberger said canon law restricts the power to exercise church governance to those who have received sacred orders. But she argued that the practice of the church makes that a “legal fiction.”
In single-judge annulment decisions, for example, the judge must be a cleric. Haselberger said small dioceses often lack a full-time priest for this work and instead use a lay person to author annulment decisions. By adding a digital signature, their work becomes valid in the eyes of the law.
Haselberger said a similar process can happen in parish finance, where the pastor has sole control but can often delegate all significant decisions to an administrator.
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