Privilege (canon law)

Privilege in the canon law of the Roman Catholic Church is the legal concept whereby someone is exempt from the ordinary operation of the law over time for some specific purpose.

Papal privileges resembled dispensations, since both involved exceptions to the ordinary operations of the law. But whereas "dispensations exempt[ed] some person or group from legal obligations binding on the rest of the population or class to which they belong," “[p]rivileges bestowed a positive favour not generally enjoyed by most people." "Thus licences to teach or to practise law or medicine, for example," were "legal privileges, since they confer[red] upon recipients the right to perform certain functions for pay, which the rest of the population [was] not [permitted to exercise.]" Privileges differed from dispensations in that dispensations were for one time, while a privilege was lasting. Yet, such licenses might also involve what should properly be termed dispensation, if they waived the canon law requirement that an individual hold a particular qualification to practice law or medicine, as, for example, a degree.

The distinction between privilege and dispensation was not always clearly observed, and the term dispensation rather than privilege was used, even when the nature of the act made it clearly a privilege. Indeed, medieval canonists treated privileges and dispensations as distinct, though related, aspects of the law. Privileges and indults were both special favours. Some writers hold that the former are positive favours, while indults are negative. The pope might confer a degree as a positive privilege in his capacity as a temporal sovereign, or he might do so by way of dispensation from the strict requirements of the canon law. In both cases his authority to do so was found in the canon law. The pope's powers as a temporal sovereign are recognised in the Roman Catholic Code of Canon Law of 1983. In practice matters of education are dealt with though the hierarchy of the Church, rather than through that of Vatican City State, the residual part of the Papal States.

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