Military Ordinariate as a Particular Church

Abstract

A military ordinariate as a particular Church was further specified in the SMC Constitution and the statute. Pope John Paul II, as a son of Polish army officer, felt an urge to regulate the situation of military chaplaincy in the universal Church, especially in those countries where religious freedom was non-existent and barracks were closed to chaplains. After the World War II, Catholic Poland found itself in the Soviet zone of atheist influence. The Soviet Union systematically secularised soldiers through its political officers. A military ordinariate fulfils all requirements that the Code of Canon Law specifies with relation to a particular Church, and therefore it enters diocesan canons. A field bishop holding the rank of a general is part of the Conference of Polish Episcopate and performs the duties of a diocesan bishop. Military pastoral work is conducted in an analogical manner to the one in a diocese. A typical feature of a military ordinariate is personal jurisdiction, not territorial, and cumulative way of exercising authority in the case of a field bishop.

It is true that the verb assimilantur stirred a discussion among canonists, yet military ordinariates possess significant features of a particular Church, although they are ecclesiastical districts of a unique character sunt peculiars circumscriptiones ecclesiasticae (SMC I), which does not belittle their legal status.