Reflection on the Study of Canon Law After the Twilight of Ideologies

Abstract

Canon law has always compared itself, as illustrated at the beginning of this paper, with different ideologies and legal worlds: but it is the development of liberal and socialist thought to strongly affect this field of study. Indeed, it is eliminated from the public universities immediately after the unification of Italy until the early years of the twentieth century. After World War II, once a highly ideological, a teaching “secular” of canon law is opposed, a bit controversially, to the one given at the pontifical universities. Today, after the recent sunset of ideologies, what value does the study of canon law? It says the Author, not only plays a strong methodological value; but some of its features – the inaequalitas, the aequitas, its metaphysical foundation, the balance between the public and private – are fervent suggestions for thought of all professors, those of public universities and those of the pontifical universities, called today to a less ideological and more open scientifically debate.