ecclesiastical

Only ecclesiastical authorities sanction marriage, and do so with additional patriarchal commitments.

Across the decades, there were many cases of ecclesiastical civil disobedience — clergy doing ordinations and marriages that defied church bans, some of whom were tried for heresy or other infractions.

He’d learned the names of people at the church, used ecclesiastical vocabulary and knew where to find the loot, he said.

Chesterton would later call “a nation with the soul of a church,” one that relies on citizens’ deep spiritual faith without imposing any particular ecclesiastical doctrine.

The church’s first criticism of the government’s security strategy arose in 2022, when the murder of two Jesuits priests in the north of the country shook the public opinion and the ecclesiastical hierarchy.