How to Use canon law in a Sentence

canon law

noun
Definition of canon lawnext
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  • Remember the Sorbonne in the great days of the canon law.
    — John Dos Passos, National Review, 28 Sep. 2020
  • The church’s canon law often worked to protect the guilty priests and frustrate the rights of victims.
    — San Diego Union-Tribune, 13 Aug. 2019
  • This entire season is starting to feel like a typo in the tomes of SEC canon law.
    — Joseph Goodman | Jgoodman@al.com, al, 11 Oct. 2020
  • Laicization, or being reduced to the lay state, is one of the harshest sanctions in the church's canon law.
    — Arkansas Online, 19 Dec. 2022
  • Laicization, or being reduced to the lay state, is one of the harshest sanctions in the church’s canon law.
    — Steve Mollman, Fortune, 18 Dec. 2022
  • Laicization, or being reduced to the lay state, is one of the harshest sanctions in the church's canon law for priests.
    — CBS News, 19 Dec. 2022
  • Laicization, or being reduced to the lay state, is one of the harshest sanctions in the church’s canon law for priests.
    — Nicole Winfield, Anchorage Daily News, 19 Dec. 2022
  • The penal code is based on the Italian criminal code with elements of canon law.
    — Nicole Winfield, San Diego Union-Tribune, 3 Oct. 2019
  • Defrocking a priest is among the most severe punishments in canon law.
    — New York Times, 1 June 2021
  • By the 13th century, the procedures of the court trial were defined and adopted, both in canon law – that is, the church law – and in secular law.
    — Joanne M. Pierce, The Conversation, 19 Oct. 2020
  • To people who don’t worship at the altar of canon law, that might seem like an academic distinction.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 9 Oct. 2019
  • Over the years, popes have made piecemeal modifications to the Vatican's city state's legal code, which dates from an 1889 Italian code no longer in use and also draws from the Catholic Church's in-house canon law.
    — Nicole Winfield, Star Tribune, 16 Feb. 2021
  • In church, or canon law, parishes are separate entities with rights to their properties, but for decades titles to the properties were held by the diocese.
    — Greg Moran, San Diego Union-Tribune, 10 Apr. 2023
  • Talk grew over whether the time had come to enshrine restrictions on the conduct of papal retirees into canon law, and the Vatican scrambled to insist that there was nothing to see here.
    — Jason Horowitz, New York Times, 13 Jan. 2020
  • The case would then be referred to the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith for canon law processes to be undertaken.
    — Steven Martinez, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 10 June 2020
  • No beachside ceremonies or mountaintop nuptials: The code of canon law, straight from the Vatican, says that marriages performed by a priest are meant to be celebrated in the bride or groom’s parish church.
    — Julie Zauzmer, Washington Post, 11 June 2018
  • No beachside ceremonies or mountaintop nuptials: The code of canon law, straight from the Vatican, says that marriages performed by a priest are meant to be celebrated in the bride or groom's parish church.
    — Julie Zauzmer, chicagotribune.com, 16 June 2018
  • According to William Daniel, a professor of canon law at Catholic University, a priest asked by his bishop to resign has the option of submitting a defense.
    — Todd Richmond and David Crary, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 8 June 2021
  • In Los Angeles, the sale of any property for more than $7.5 million would require permission from the Vatican, according to canon law.
    — Alene Tchekmedyian, latimes.com, 12 Mar. 2018
  • No seminarian studying canon law can cite case studies in preparing his thesis about how the Catholic Church has responded to the abuse scandal.
    — Nicole Winfield, Anchorage Daily News, 21 Dec. 2019
  • Exorcism is recognized under the Catholic Church's canon law but can only performed with high-level permission from within the church.
    — Doug Stanglin, USA TODAY, 23 Feb. 2018
  • The bishop holds both a licentiate and a doctorate in canon law from the Gregorian University in Rome.
    — al, 25 Mar. 2020
  • The case is emblematic of the inherent conflicts of interest in the canon law system and the church's refusal to require abuse be reported to impartial police.
    — Nicole Winfield, Star Tribune, 12 Oct. 2020
  • It would be conducted under the solemnity of canon law and held before the papal curia and Roman nobility.
    — National Geographic, 20 Aug. 2019
  • Even in canon law, their authority is over trivialities — like whether priests are allowed to wear white clerical garments or must stick to black.
    — Michael Brendan Dougherty, National Review, 2 July 2021
  • Weeks after that meeting, the pope issued a new canon law, requiring for the first time that church officials report abuse charges to Vatican prosecutors.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 18 Dec. 2019
  • Raica has a doctorate in canon law from Gregorian University in Rome.
    — al, 23 June 2020
  • Francis last year updated the church’s in-house canon law to also punish bishops who cover up for abusers, after the Vatican for decades turned a blind eye to local church leaders who failed to protect their flocks from predators.
    — Washington Post, 29 June 2020
  • If a pope’s condition is too deteriorated, his decision might not be accepted under the one requirement of canon law: that the choice be reached freely.
    — Washington Post, 8 July 2021
  • The changes deal specifically with church penal sanctions; other parts of canon law — the church’s vast set of ecclesiastical rules — remain unchanged.
    — Washington Post, 1 June 2021

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'canon law.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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