Abstract

Of all the Christian Churches, the Catholic Church is the only one who realized codifications in the modern sense during the 20th Century. It is important to investigate their function in the institutional, theological and juridical system of the Catholicism and their relationship with the civil codifications of the States. This paper presents a critical review of the studies dedicated to this subject, from the Vatican II to the present, opening some new questions about the consequences of the mutual imitation between the Catholic Church and the national States. The codifications of Canon Law represent, from a juridical and political perspective, a meeting point between the Catholic Church and the juridical modernity.