Membership to the Church sui generis according to the Current Church Law

Abstract

From the point of view of the validity of the purely church law it is of crucial importance to define its personal range. One of the basic criterium is membership to the Catholic Church acquired by receiving baptism in the Church of by the formal act of joining a Christian non-Catholic to the full fellowship with the Catholic Church. Such acts of religious character produce also juridic effects in the form of, among other things, being included into a concrete rite and the church sui juris. The principles of that membership are included in the Code of the Canon Law of 1983 and in the Code of the Canons of the Eastern Churches of 1990. The norms in both codification define the principles in which to acquired membership in relation to various categories of persons, e.g. children to age 14. people above 14; children born to Catholic parents and mixed marriages, and also children of non-baptized persons. The principles which are currently binding continue the legislation of the popes in previous centuries.