Majority, the state of a person or thing greater, or superior, in relation to another person or thing. In canon law the expression has three principal acceptations:
In a certain sense, even church buildings have a hierarchical precedence, the first of churches being St. John Lateran's, the pope's cathedral, "mother and head of all the churches of Rome and of the world"; next come the "major" basilicas, then the primatial churches, the metropolitan, cathedral, collegiate etc. (cf. Decretal, I, tit. xxxiii, "De majoritate et obedientia").