Vatican Law

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7807501.stm
The timing of this announcement from the Vatican seems somewhat auspicious given my previous post. It seems that the Vatican has thrown off Italian Law and is seeking to pick and choose their own laws from standard Italian Law and as their religion dictates.

This has a number of potentially damaging ramifications. The most worrying perhaps is that the Vatican is, in essence, codifying a series of ideal Catholic Laws. Such a move will potentially cause many Catholics to find themselves in an even more difficult quandary, should Vatican Law differ from the laws of their home states. Of course, many would say that every religious individual living in a secular society has always lived in this position. There would seem to be a difference however between often loosely defined and interpretive religious beliefs and a codified series of laws aimed directly at modern life. The main potential pitfalls centre around family issues such as divorce, abortion, and contraception. It will be interesting in future years to see if the Vatican exerts further pressure on other mainly Catholic nations (Malta is a prime example) to adopt similar laws to those held by the Vatican itself.

This having been said, it is difficult to imagine that the Vatican will act with temporal force that it has in previous centuries. Should they choose to however, it is unclear how the world would respond.