Abstract

The objective of the study is to show that a contrast of ecclesiology and canon law is inappropriate when the Church is identified as an institution. This eliminates the clash of canon law and ecclesiology, showing that as they inter-act in an historical context, they integrate with each other. Ecclesiology reminds the law of the specificity of its intended ambit of application; canon law, by contrast, induces ecclesiology to understand the Church to be acting in an historical context, thus freeing canon law from evasive and anachronistic conceptualizations of the Church as a mystery.