Arbitration in the Code of Canon Law

Arbitration is the submission of a dispute to an unbiased third person designated by the parties to the controversy, who agree in advance to comply with the award – a decision to be issued after a hearing at which both parties have an opportunity to be heard. Religious communities in the U.S, like their counterparts in commercial and family law have as well, embraced arbitration as a means of settling disputes among their adherents. For the most part, this has been the case in the Catholic Church despite the Catholic Code of Canon Law’s provisos for the wide use of arbitration in dispute resolution amongst her members. This paper is a call for action in that regard and an attempt at the correction of wrong notions of arbitral practices within the ecclesial body. In this regard, it is posited that the Catholic marriage tribunal for instance is neither a marital arbitration tribunal nor “Catholic divorce.”  The paper argues in conclusion that the lack or underuse of the arbitral system in the Catholic Church is a great omission and a missed opportunity – a missed opportunity of having Catholics settle disputes according to Catholic Christian principles as against the use of the emotionally and financially expensive civil litigation method.