It is correct that it is a compilation of sorts but its not true that they didn’t change anything in 1917. If you read through one of the commentaries on the 1917 Code, you’ll find it full of references to laws and penalities which were changed, updated and rewritten.
That’s very true. The assignment of the commission to codify the canons was not “just find all of them and put them in order.” Rather, they had various norms governing their work, and were free to modify things when they felt the need (not to mention that the previous canons,
not being a unified code, might at times contradict one another; hence Gratian’s work). As we might expect, some things that got changed, or so I am told, did not seem to various observers to have been in need of change.
That said, however, the two code commissions were indeed undertaking fundamentally different projects. The 1917 commission was told “tidy things up and change things that might need changing.” The 1983 comission was told, “we’re looking for a new way to run the universal church. Give us a new code that will correspond to the new ways of thinking expressed by the council.” It wasn’t that things might need updating, it was that we were embarking on a new course re: ecclesiology, ecumenism, etc.
Now, I don’t want to harp on the novelty like some grumpy old crank, or to let my characterizations lend the impression that no one had any desire of continuity, as if everyone involved (including John Paul II) were disciples of the Bologna school. Still, no matter how great the desire to accomplish the change in continuity with the tradition of the Church, the 1983 code was still the result of legislator and advisors saying “we have a new vision for proceeding, let’s get some laws that will give it structure.”
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