Blurb

In this book, Judith Hahn explores the legal order of the Roman Catholic Church to better understand how the Roman Catholic Church communicates as a legal institution. She argues that the language of canon law reveals the political ideology of the church hierarchy, and she takes up the tools of language and law scholarship to examine and challenge that language. Hahn examines the grammar and terminology of canon law, and how canon law language makes use of linguistic tricks and techniques to create its typical sound and discusses the comprehension difficulties that arise out of ambiguities in the law, out of transfer problems between legal and common language, and out of canon law's confusing mix of legal, doctrinal, and moral norms.