Der Wiederaufbau von in der NS-Zeit zerschlagenen Strukturen innerhalb der katholischen Kirche steht im Zentrum dieses Buches. Die Darstellung erfolgt sowohl auf gesamtoesterreichischer Ebene als auch auf der Ebene einzelner Dioezesen. Die Autoren berucksichtigen ebenso die Reorganisation des kirchlichen Lebens in anderen christlichen Kirchen und decken zeitlich die ersten Nachkriegsjahrzehnte in OEsterreich, also die Grundungsphase der Zweiten Republik, ab. Zahlreiche prominente Theologen, Juristen und Historiker haben an diesem Sammelband mitgewirkt und schildern ihre Sicht der Dinge, die den weiteren Weg der Kirchen in der oesterreichischen Gesellschaft gepragt haben.

With the promulgation of the motu proprio Mitis iudex Dominus Iesus for the Latin Church and the motu proprio Mitis et misericors Iesus for the Eastern Catholic Churches, both dated August 15, 2015, Pope Francis addressed the calls during the Third Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops (October 5-19, 2014) for a simplified procedure for the declaration of the nullity of marriages. Pope Francis introduced a briefer process to be conducted by the diocesan bishop and he simplified the current ordinary nullity process. The new procedural norms went into effect on December 8, 2015. New legislation always challenges first and foremost the practitioner: how is the new legislation to be understood and applied? Immediately after the new law was made public, a number of articles on this new legislation were published in The Jurist. The School of Canon Law of The Catholic University of America organized a March 2016 Workshop on the very topic of this important procedural reform. These articles are now brought together in one volume to assist those who work with these norms in the various tribunals dealing with marriage cases. It is hoped that this volume will be of great service to all those who serve the people of God in the ministry of justice, and that these contributions will truly be a help in understanding and applying the new norms.

Alexander III's 1179 Lateran Council, was, for medieval contemporaries, the first of the great papal councils of the central Middle Ages. Gathered to demonstrate the renewed unity of the Latin Church, it brought together hundreds of bishops and other ecclesiastical dignitaries to discuss and debate the laws and problems that faced that church. In this evaluation of the 1179 conciliar decrees, Danica Summerlin demonstrates how these decrees, often characterised as widespread and effective ecclesiastical legislation, emerged from local disputes which were then subjected to a period of sifting and gradual integration into the local and scholarly consciousness, in exactly the same way as other contemporary legal texts. Rather than papal mandates that were automatically observed as a result of their inherent papal authority, therefore, Summerlin reveals how conciliar decrees should be viewed as representative of contemporary discussions between the papacy, their representatives and local bishops, clerics, and scholars.