"The Canon Law is a vital organ for the Church and fundamental to purify the whole of ecclesiastical knowledge in a practical sense". This was affirmed at the University of Navarra by Professor Rafael Ramis Barceló, Full Professor of History of Law of the University of the Balearic Islands. His words are framed in the lecture that he gave at the School of Canon Law on the occasion of the celebration of his patron saint, San Raimundo de Peñafort.

Entitled 'The Canon Law and the harmonization of ecclesiastical knowledge', Professor Ramis focused his message on three aspects: firstly, on the problems of articulation of ecclesiastical knowledge, then he made reference letter to the magisterium of recent popes and finally explained what is, in his understanding, the place of Canon Law in the training of the institutional cycle of Religious Sciences, common basis for the teaching of this knowledge.

Referring to the necessary harmonization of ecclesiastical knowledge, he pointed out that the West is experiencing an extraordinary intellectual decadence, aggravated by an increasingly marked infantilization and a rise of emotivism, so that the Church must not hide its rich heritage of ideas, and must articulate them in a coherent manner: "Well-ordered ecclesiastical knowledge can provide a valid framework from which the Catholic can then begin to formulate questions".

In this sense, he bets on "the critical and incisive Catholic, nonconformist and uncomfortable" as opposed to the "ignorant one who, due to bad training , is only capable of superficial criticism, with third-hand arguments".

A major commitment of the Church to face the challenges of the future

For Professor Ramis, the Philosophy, the Canon Law and theology are not linked, which gives rise to two serious problems: the ecclesiastical Schools are isolated from each other and the curricula are unbalanced. For this reason, he assures that the most important mission statement that the Church has now to face the challenges of the future "is to renew its own programs of study, so that in the coming decades ecclesiastical knowledge will be understood as a whole".

And he concluded: "It is possible to fulfill the purpose of the Popes and to carry out the true integration of ecclesiastical knowledge. It is not necessary to change so many things, but to unite the Schools and rebalance them, remembering the importance of each one of them and that the dispersion and barriers between programs of study only hinder the spiritual mission statement of the Church".