This "Open Access" book investigates the legal reality of the church through a sociological lens and from the perspective of canon law studies, the discipline w

Natural law has long been considered the traditional source of Roman Catholic canon law. However, new scholarship is critical of this approach as it portrays th

"This study explores the language of canon law, the legal order of the Roman Catholic Church. It seeks to bring the language of canon law into the law and langu

This book offers an analysis of the sociological, historical, and cultural factors that lie behind mandatory clerical celibacy in the Roman Catholic Church and

There may not be a concept so central to sociology, yet so vaguely defined in its contemporary usages, than institution. In Revisiting Institutionalism in Socio