There is a point where justice ceases to protect and becomes instead a weapon of oppression. As noted by Silere non possum, this is not the lament of an outsider but an experience increasingly felt inside the Church, where canon law—once a guarantee of transparency and impartiality—risks collapsing into arbitrariness.
A dinner table near the Leonine Walls sets the stage: a Dominican, an old bishop, a young cardinal. Their words are heavy. “We spent years studying law, and for what?” asks the bishop. “Today it serves no purpose. Perhaps only a canonist Pope could stop this decline. We are paying for having appointed bishops with no juridical competence.”
The accusations are stark. Trials without evidence, decrees without due process, punishments dealt to fragile and obedient priests while others—loud, divisive, even convicted—remain untouched. Why such disparity? Because bishops are often strong with the weak, weak with the strong.
The case of Fr. Paolo Farinella in Genoa is emblematic. For years his public attacks, now even against Pope Leo XIV, have gone unanswered by Archbishop Marco Tasca. Yet the same Tasca did not hesitate to discipline priests who dared celebrate Mass in Latin. The message is clear: loyalty is punished, rebellion rewarded.
Canon law is thus emptied of its meaning. St. John Paul II had warned: law is not bureaucracy but pastoral necessity, intrinsic to the Church’s mission. Yet what we witness is the opposite: a law bent to personal convenience, turned into a political tool.
As the bishop confided at dinner: even Dicasteries are not immune. Entrenched friendships and corruption blunt every attempt at justice. The faithful see it, and they lose trust. If the Church cannot be just with her own, how can she demand justice from the world?
The reform needed is not another decree but courage: the courage to correct, to defend the humble, to respect the law rather than bend it. Without justice, the Church forfeits credibility. Without justice, the Gospel itself is betrayed. And so the question remains, bitter and urgent: can we still trust canonical justice?
