Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

The article is a synthesized legal-historic examination of the administration of the sacrament of Holy Orders in the Early Middle Ages. Given that in the apostolic era and immediately afterwards the territorial limits of the organizational structures of the Church were not clear or defined as we now understand, the power of the bishops was not expressed as power over a physical territory as such, but over the people and things which had been entrusted to them by the consecration they had received and the corresponding pastoral commission. The necessity for an ordered exercise of episcopal power, linked to the specific praxis of government, appears to be the only reason to be found as a basis for the provisions contained in Canon VIII of the First Council of Nicea which stated, among great spiritual activity, the well-known rule «but one bishop of one city», which are analyzed in this study. The cardinal principle of episcopal power always was the apostolic one of discretio potestatis, mitigated by the criterion of the exclusive responsibility of the bishop for the faithful who were entrusted to his pastoral care.

The judge can modify ex officio the object of the case for nullity of the marriage, although it appears to be formally prohibited by can. 1514 and now also by Dignitas connubii art. 136. This position tends to promote the declaration of truth over the validity or nullity of the marriage and avoids formalisms and useless time-wasting. The «moral certainty» is not merely a subjective state of the judge, but also contains a wide objective content: it must be based on the acts of the process, which must have the capacity to justify in their motivation the decision to produce the same certainty in the appeals court. The «moral certainty» is judicial. The judge cannot use a moral certainty «borrowed» from the experts or the interested parties. So that the sentences pro nullitate matrimonii may allow for a new marriage, they must be concordants. Dignitas connubii has incorporated the interpretation of two sentences concordants developed by the Roman Rota: the substantial conformity in which the ground of nullity is a separate sentence from the second.

In the recent years, we have witnessed in the field of canonical science an unexpected attribution of methodological reference to the theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, on the part of authors who have believed that elements not only hermeneutical but also methodological can be extracted from his philosophical-theological reflection. In the present study, two «recent» works are analysed which permit to capture efficiently what does it entail a gullible methodological reference to Disciplines whose connections with the canonical science have not been formalized sufficiently. It concerns above all the reference of the canonists to systematic theology (intellectus fidei -what the diverse theologians think-) prior to the «positive» (auditus fidei —the depositum fidei—) that has normative value for the ecclesial life. A correct methodological approximation remains as the main procedure to avoid useless dangers.

El artículo presenta una biografía del civilista y canonista Amadeo de Fuenmayor quien falleció el 22 de noviembre de 2005 en Pamplona. Fuenmayor dedicó su vida a los estudios académicos en la Universidad de Navarra donde ayudó a desarrollar la comunidad universitaria. Durante sus últimos años, Fuenmayor se dedicó a ayudarles a los que le ayudaron, asistió la Misa todos los días y siguió dando lecciones como profesor y sacerdote.