Glossary for realists

This places a diocese directly under the pope, which has proven a tactful way of firing a bishop....

This highest Church court, which spurns modern rules of evidence, can rule on people's marriages. Its judgements are upheld by the Austrian concordat....

This is Catholic religious law, the Vatican's counterpart to (Jewish) Halakha, Hindu Law and Sharia. Concordats help let this law influence the lives of many who are employed or served by Church social service agencies....

This check on the orthodoxy and the personal life of a theology professor can also be used to weed out women.

Originally they were pacts between two rulers, upheld by threats of excommunication. With the rise of nation states they became treaties between two governments, enforced by international law. Now they lay claim to be “international human rights treaties”, guaranteed by the charters of rights of the EU and the UN. Concordats can adapt to any political climate, from dictatorships to democracies, but their aim for the Church remains the same: to increase its own power. (See also What are concordats? )

This is a state subsidy for clerical salaries. It was meant for the working clergy, and comes from the 18th-century sale of lands held by the "idle" monks....

A corporation under public law provides public services (at taxpayers' expense) yet is not accountable to the voters, like services provided directly by the state. This status is explicitly granted to the Church in the Austrian concordat and assumed in the German one. It prevents separation of church and state.

This is the government both of the Roman Catholic Church and of the State of the Vatican City. This arrangement gives the Church the privileges of a country. For more see here.

Originally invented as a legal fiction to ensure that a group (for example of monks) was held accountable for  its debts, it is now skillfully used by the Church to limit its own liability....

Assigning a territory or a group to a prelature removes it from the normal Church hierarchy and places it directly under the pope. This is done when, for various reasons, the Vatican does not wish to submit it to the jurisdiction or the oversight of a bishop.

In addition to the Latin (or Roman) Rite, the Church has other liturgical traditions which still acknowledge the pope. In Europe the most common of these is the Greek (or Byzantine) Rite among some Slavs. Others are the Armenian, Alexandrian, Antiochian and East Syrian rites. The non-Latin rites are also covered by the concordats, sometimes explicitly.

See Apostolic Signature