text: Is it not curious, Bear, that I ask for a citation and what we get instead is an attempted tongue-lashing and reference to “a good number of Canon Lawyers?”  I gave you a citation Bear, a specific canon.  Where is your citation?
  
  And of course, it is Jesus Christ Who saves us.  But then again, that is why He established His Church, why He gave her governance through St. Peter and his successors, why He entrusts the sacraments to her.  Part of the reason that she governs herself with ecclesiastical law is precisely to protect the pastoral care she gives.  It prevents clerics and others working in Christ’s name through the Church from becoming free-agents, doing things that are contrary both their salvation and the salvation of those receiving pastoral care or sacraments.  To that St. John Paul noted that the 1983 code was intended to be an “… efficacious means in order that the Church may … carry out its office of salvation in this world” (Sacræ Disciplinæ Leges, ¶ 26)