DANIEL CROWLEY,
Sir, - At the end of a radio programme last Wednesday in which a number of clerics had been interviewed, I heard a reference to "all that nonsense about Canon law being superior to civil law", followed by a hasty assurance that there was no foundation whatever for that suggestion.
I wonder how that rumour got around. Maybe someone picked it up from the following: "Religious who belong to a canonically approved institute may not be tried except before ecclesiastical judges, whether the lawsuit be criminal or civil." And: "In many countries the Church has partially or fully ceded this right in concordats".
These are direct quotes from a book on canon law by Louis Fanfani, a doctor of canon law, with full imprimatur, and a preface by Very Rev Paul Philippe, Secretary of the Sacred Congregation of Religious.
It would be of some public interest, I would expect, to know if such concordats exist between the two sovereign states of the Republic of Ireland and the Vatican.
With two inquiries about to begin, one Church and one State, both headed by eminent lawyers, perhaps the question of jurisdiction will be the first thing to be cleared up. It is the first thing that I would expect lawyers to do. -
Yours, etc.,
DANIEL CROWLEY, Artane, Dublin 5.
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Sir, - Why did the cardinal and bishops buy the worst possible advice (upon which they now blame their woes) rather than take the best possible advice, already given them free by Christ? - Yours, etc.,
NEAL E. SHERMAN, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin.