ecclesiastical

Etymology

ecclesiastic + -al

adj

1. Of or pertaining to the church.
   ecclesiastical architecture
   Sodomy had always been an ecclesiastical offense. The Statute of 1533 (25 Henry VIII, c. 6) made it a felony; and Pollock and Maitland consider that this "affords an almost sufficient proof that the temporal courts had not punished it, and that no one had been put to death for it, for a very long time past." 1927, Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6)