By Teresa Mahoney
It wasn’t until the Code of 1983 when the church officially recognized and encouraged lay people to become canon lawyers. | Photo courtesy of The Associated Press.
ROME: Twenty-six-year old Jenna Cooper sits among nearly 250 priests-to-be gathered for Mass at the church inside in the Pontifical North American College in Vatican City. With her lacy, black veil — a sign of devotion to God — Cooper breaks the pattern of young men bearing crisp white collars sitting pew after pew. It’s one of the few weekly occasions the public is invited to join for service at the college and, on a recent sunny spring day, Cooper came to visit one of the seminarians for Sunday service and brunch.
Cooper’s presence among a mostly male group is one she’s grown accustomed to this year. The Archdiocese of New York and Cardinal Timothy Dolan sent her to Rome last fall to study canon law at another pontifical university, Santa Croce. She is one of two women in a class of about 35. The other woman is a Chilean lawyer and the rest are mostly priests from around the world. While it was Vatican II in the 1960s that opened the doors for women to become canon lawyers, the field still tends to be dominated by men.
Brief History of Canon Law
Canon law is made up of 1,752 ever-adapting codes that serves as an objective regulator for the church and has historically been a subject studied by priests. It wasn’t until the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) that highlighted the important role lay people in the Church that people who weren’t priests had the opportunity to participate in legal matters of the church.
In the 1920s, the first layman became a canon lawyer and in 1969, Clara Henning, became the first female canon lawyer. While more women began entering the field, it wasn’t until the Code of 1983 that allowed lay people to be canon law judges. By 2009, Italy appointed its first woman canon law judge from the diocese of Turin, Italy.
Filling the Gaps
Every diocese in the world has a tribunal that exists as the judicial branch of the church to review ecclesiastic matters including marriage nullity, removal of a pastor and church property issues. And in recent years, New York’s tribunal has been short-staffed by about a third due to budgetary constraints.
Rev. William Elder, who is currently transitioning from his position as judicial vicar (head judge) of New York’s archdiocesan tribunal to a higher position in the appeals court, said, “We’re barely holding on at the moment with the staff we have, so we’re still hoping to train more canon lawyers.” In the meantime, community priests and lay people help in the office.
Elder sought out lay people who could take pressure off priests who have experienced a shortage in vocations in the last few decades and are needed to perform sacramental tasks in parishes. “If you send a priest to study, he can’t be administering the sacraments,” Cooper said. “In other words, sending me was the best use of human resources.” Elder noted, he’s also hoping to send a few more priests to canon law school on behalf of the diocese because some positions in the tribunal, like judicial vicar, can only be filled by priests.
At the time, Cooper led the religious education program for first through eighth graders at Holy Rosary Parish in Greenwood Lake, N.Y. She had always had an interest in canon law since she was a teenager, but because of her close connection with the Rev. Luke Sweeny, director of men’s vocations at the diocese, and the Rev. Bart Daly, the liaison between the Cardinal and consecrated virgins, she was at the top of their list for a recommendation to study in Rome. Cooper was on board right away. “They certainly didn’t have to twist my arm to go to Rome,” she said.
There are 37 schools with canon law programs in the world and only one in the United States, at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Though Washington is a lot closer to home for Cooper, the high cost of tuition in Rome (roughly $5,000) made it financially smarter than Washington (where tuition runs about $35,000 a year).
Cooper is the first woman the Archdiocese of New York has sent to Rome to study canon law. In fact the notion was so new to the diocese that finding suitable housing was a challenge at first. “The judicial vicar was ready to send me, but it was contingent to finding a place to live,” she said. “Since I’m a consecrated virgin and try to live a certain way, roommate selection is important.”
It was finally recommended that Cooper live in a convent for American sisters studying everything from spiritual counseling to theology in Rome called Domus Guadalupe. Even this sort of housing was a relatively new concept as it was only formed in 1998.
This minor hiccup delayed the diocese’s final decision to send Cooper to Rome, leaving her only a month to take a few crash courses in Italian. But by August, she was off to Rome on a three-year mission to earn her J.C.L—licentiate degree in canon law.
Early Devotion to the Church
Cooper has canon law to thank for the discovery of her life’s devotion to the church. “Canon law actually introduced me to consecrated virginity,” she said, “When I was 19, I was thinking about becoming a nun to devote my life to God and so Father Luke Sweeney Xeroxed a copy of the different rules of religious orders in canon law.” She found consecrated virginity under Canon 604:
§1. Similar to these forms of consecrated life is the order of virgins, who, committed to the holy plan of following Christ more closely, are consecrated to God by the diocesan bishop according to the approved liturgical rite, are betrothed mystically to Christ, the Son of God, and are dedicated to the service of the Church.
By 23, Cooper was initiated as consecrated virgin, meaning she takes makes many of the same promises as a nun (she wears a wedding ring as a bride of Christ), but must maintain her own upkeep. Her work is centered on the diocese, directly under the bishop, rather than a religious community with a distinct founder. Though this option of religious life dates back to the Middle Ages, making it older than sisterhood, many young women don’t know about it.
Cooper is one of about 215 consecrated virgins in the United States and 3,000 worldwide, according to the United States Association of Consecrated Virgins. “I’m freer to interact with the rest of the world. I can go home any time. Some nuns go home every three years,” she said.
Now, Cooper walks past a statue of St. Agnes, a consecrated virgin, who was martyred in Piazza Novona, a bustling square booming with artists, cafes and restaurants, every day on her way to school.
Canon Law Abroad
“It’s not like Harvard Law with 20 spots and 200 applicants. Most people are recommended and just send in their transcripts and a one page application. It’s not really competitive to get in, but its demanding to stay in,” Cooper said. Most students come in with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy or theology and a master’s in theology.
Silvana Usandivaras, who’s been a canon law judge for 10 years at the tribunal at the Archdiocese of New York and previously practiced civil law in both Argentina and New York, said canon law is accessed differently outside the U.S. “You could open a phone book and call a canon law firm in Argentina,” she said, “You would just go to an office and pay there, but in the U.S. you call the tribunal. There’s more career versatility abroad.”
Living in Italy
Katie Godfrey, 25, is two years ahead of Cooper in the program and came from Indiana to study at Santa Croce at her own expense. Since arriving to Italy, she said her spirituality has been “softened” and her perception of canon law has changed. “Coming to Rome, I was very much approaching canon law as a science, but it’s really an art form and a philosophy rather than a trade like civil law,” Godfrey said, “It’s a creative attempt to serve the human person and that’s a bit more enticing.” While Godfrey is a practicing Catholic, she doesn’t plan on entering a religious vocation like Cooper and many of her classmates — she is engaged to a man she met in Rome.
Though Godfrey’s class has a record-high of seven women in her class of about 30, she said she finds it encouraging to learn in an environment with so many level-headed holy men. “Have priests as classmates creates a, not a masculine culture, but a more paternal culture,” she said.
Both Cooper and Godfrey have become almost fully proficient in Italian and Latin since arriving to Rome. All their classes are in Italian and many of the texts are in Latin, the official language of the church. “To survive, you have to communicate. It’s not only a judicial culture, but a convergence of all cultures and the church,” Godfrey said, “To find at the end of the day you know five languages is really wild. It’s an adventure from every angle.”
“Since I found out so late I was going to study here, I didn’t have a lot of time to learn Italian,” Cooper said, “The classes themselves aren’t easy, but taking them in Italian makes them exhausting.
Canon law students at Santa Croce have earned the reputation of enduring the most rigorous courses. However, between it all, Cooper finds time to pray seven times a day as part of her commitment to her consecration. “The program would be harder if I wasn’t praying. You need all the help you can get,” she said laughing, “It’s very humbling to be here.”
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