Full Communion with the Catholic Church and the Validity of Taking on the Munus of Sponsor

Tomasz Jakubiak

doi:10.18290/rnp21311-9

Tomasz Jakubiak Catholic Academy in Warsaw, Collegium Joanneum, Poland https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4781-686X

DOI: https://doi.org/10.18290/rnp21311-9

Keywords: baptism, sponsor, full communion with the Church, validity of taking on the office of sponsor, sacraments of initiation

Abstract

One of the conditions to be satisfied by a candidate to the office of sponsor in order to be admitted to perform this task is being fully in the communion of the Catholic Church. This requirement is stipulated in c. 874 §1 n. 3 CIC as follows: “To be permitted to take on the function of sponsor a person must be a Catholic who has been confirmed and has already received the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist and who leads a life of faith in keeping with the function to be taken on”.

As the legislator has not provided either the entire norm stipulated in c. 874 §1 CIC or any of its individual elements with an invalidating or disqualifying clause, the question is what consequences are entailed for the validity of taking on the function of sponsor by failure to comply with the criteria laid down in c. 874 §1 n. 3 CIC. As this issue has not been directly discussed in the literature, in this article the author endeavours to address this concern.

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