THE HIERARCHICAL RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN THE DEGREES RESULTING FROM THE "HIERARCHIA ORDINIS" AND THE "HIERARCHIA JURISDICTIONIS". CANONICAL-LEGAL STUDY
THE HIERARCHICAL RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN THE DEGREES RESULTING FROM THE "HIERARCHIA ORDINIS" AND THE "HIERARCHIA JURISDICTIONIS". CANONICAL-LEGAL STUDY

Summary/Abstract: The canonists of the Eastern and Western Churches have examined and defined the hierarchical relationship between the degrees resulting from the "hierarchia ordinis" and the "hierarchia jurisdictionis" and the manner of exercising the two ecclesiastical powers, i.e., the sacramental power (potestas ordinis) and the governing power (potestas regiminis) or jurisdictional power, through the prism of the dogmatic and canonical doctrine of their Church. The way this teaching was understood and formulated, however, led to the creation of different ecclesiological and canonical doctrines, which we find affirmed both in the text of the canonical legislation of the two Churches (Eastern and Western) and in the works of their theologians and canonists. For a better understanding of these two ecclesiologies concerning the relationship both between the two powers, sacramental and jurisdictional, and between the two hierarchies, the hierarchy established by virtue of the grace received through the Sacrament of Holy Ordination - known in specialist terminology as the "hierarchia ordinis" - and the hierarchy created on the basis of a juridical act, called the "hierarchia jurisdictionis", I examined and evaluated not only the ecclesiologies of both Churches (Eastern and Western), but also the statements of prestigious theologians and canonists on the content and canonical basis of the two hierarchies, which enabled us to identify both the similarities and the canonical-legal and doctrinal differences of the two Churches on the topic at hand

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