The Society for the Law of the Eastern Churches is an international scholarly society founded in 1971, sponsoring a conference in alternate years on a topic of interest to both Orthodox and Catholic canonists. Papers from the conferences are usually published in the Society's yearbook, Kanon. This year 58 canonists from two dozen countries met at the Archdiocesan Educational Centre in Thessaloniki, Greece, to study issues surrounding oikonomia, dispensation and aequitas in the life of the Church.

Oikonomia (dispensation, governance, stewardship) is a controversial concept in Eastern canon law; it is often presented together with its antonym akribeia (accuracy, precision, strictness). The concept of oikonomia has a background in Greek social philosophy (eg in Aristotle's Politics) but it is also a theological concept used to denote God's governance of creation and stewardship in the Church. Of current interest is the application in the Eastern tradition of oikonomia to marriages, but it is also used to permit exceptions to penal law (as noted in two papers at this conference) and to allow clerics who are widowed or divorced to remarry (as studied in two other papers).

After an initial welcome and address by Bishop Chrysostomos Savvatos, Metropolitan of Messinia and Professor of Theology at the University of Athens (‘Divine oikonomia for the salvation of mankind in Holy Scripture and the Fathers of the Church’), the papers typically alternated between Orthodox and Catholic (both Eastern and Latin) presentations.

In the West, equity in canon law is grounded in the goal of salus animarum (‘the salvation of souls’), and two papers by Professors Patrick Valdrini (Professor of Canon Law at the Lateran University in Rome) and Astrid Kaptijn (from the University of Freiburg in Switzerland) studied this in both the Latin Code of Canon Law and the Eastern Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches (CCEO). Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, the President of the Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts, was also present for part of the conference and presented a paper on the canonical institution of dispensation and its relationship both to salus animarum and to the dignity of the human person. A series of papers on the last two days dealt with the concepts of oikonomia and akribeia in the legal and theological works of such luminaries as Basil of Caesarea, Theodore Balsamon (two papers), Lactantius and Nikodemos the Hagiorite.

Of special interest at this conference was a presentation on ‘Economy and dispensation in the law of the Church of England’ by the Revd Dr Will Adam; this is the first time that an Anglican perspective has been added to the discussions at the Society's conferences. While the paper read was principally historical, the ensuing conversation was concerned with more general questions about the Church of England and Anglicanism.

Professor Péter Szabó, from the Canon Law Institute of Pázmány Péter Catholic University in Budapest, presented ‘The question of “oikonomia” from a Catholic point of view: reasons and dilemmas from its absence in the CCEO’. Apparently, in an early draft of what became the Eastern Code, there was a canon which both defined oikonomia and gave principles for its exercise by Eastern Catholic bishops. In the discussion after the paper, Bishop Dimitri Salachas, who was part of the committee drafting this section of the Eastern Code, gave a fascinating overview of the revision process and the reasons why this proposed legislation was dropped from the final version of the Code. Chief among the reasons was the fear admitted by many canonists and hierarchs that the inclusion of this canon and explicit recognition of oikonomia would inevitably lead to the sanctioning of divorce, as in the Orthodox Churches.

Overshadowing many of the discussions at this conference, at least for the Catholic members, was the promulgation by Pope Francis, on the day before the conference opened, of the two motu proprios on the reform of the canonical process in cases for the declaration of nullity of marriage (one for the Latin Code, one for the Eastern Code). The fact that Cardinal Coccopalmerio and two other members of the special commission were present at this conference provided a unique opportunity to gain insights into these documents. The motu proprio revising the canonical process in the Eastern Code specifically refers to the subject matter of the conference when it states that