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| The Revd Simon Doogan |
What is Canon Law?
The first in a series of three articles on Canon Law. In this article, the Revd Simon Doogan gives some personal insights into the meaning and application of Canon Law.
My first serious encounter with Canon Law was as a student enrolled on the Masters degree course of the same name at Cardiff University. Since graduation in 2001, my files of notes and the various expensive books I had to buy have firmly established ‘squatters’ rights’ in my study. Their presence is reassuring and threatening in equal measure. It’s good to know where they are if I need them, and yet they exude something unsettling, faintly dangerous even: you have the feeling you might be in trouble if they fell into enemy hands.
TENSION AND PERCEPTION
At one level, this tension goes to the heart of Canon Law, especially for the via media Anglican. On the one hand, it’s a safety net: we bless it for the emergencies of Church life, to restrain excess or, God forbid, remedy disaster. On the other hand, it’s a strait-jacket: we curse it for its capacity to get in the way, curb our enthusiasm and even sometimes spoil our fun.
Mind you, perception is everything. In one of my slightly older books, the distinguished Roman Catholic canonist, René Metz, insists that Canon Law is, above all, a guarantee of liberty. He dismisses any suggestion that it’s an instrument of subjection as uninformed caricature. I’m guessing Prof. Metz was writing after a particularly jolly summer holiday.
CHURCH MEMBERSHIP
But let’s go back to our central question and, more crucially, to the one who might be asking it. So far as the in-house readership of the Gazette is concerned, Canon Law is the collection of rules and formularies which governs the faith, morals and discipline of Christians who profess membership of the Church of Ireland. A problem instantly arises, however: what constitutes membership of the Church of Ireland? As basic as it sounds, Church membership is one of the most elusive canonical concepts and I bow to the courage of anyone who might feel brave enough to tackle it!
AUTONOMOUS AND SELF-GOVERNING
Moving swiftly on, these rules and formularies have three chief sources: first, the Book of Common Prayer; second, the Church of Ireland Constitution; and third, whatever local regulations are set down by our twelve constituent dioceses. Although a member of the Anglican Communion, the Church of Ireland is entirely autonomous and self-governing. It is important to be clear that the Anglican Communion as such "has neither a central legislative body competent to legislate for all member Churches nor, consequently, a body of globally binding law." (Prof. Norman Doe, Canon Law in the Anglican Communion, 1997, vi).
ROMAN CATHOLIC MODEL
While it may or may not be possible to speak of ‘Anglican Canon Law’ as a set of legal principles shared by all Anglican Churches, matters are rather more neatly and conveniently bound in the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, a practising Roman Catholic would be extremely unlikely to ask the question: ‘What is Canon Law?’ They will almost certainly know of the existence of a volume called The Code of Canon Law 1983 which sets out ‘universal law’ applicable to the Latin Church throughout the world. They may not be familiar with all 1,752 of its separate precepts, but they will probably be well aware of the influence those precepts bring to bear on the life of their Church and its members - especially if they have suffered the tragedy of a broken marriage.
My own purely amateur journey into Canon Law led to the forging of a fast new friendship with two Roman Catholic clergy who share oversight of the Armagh Regional Marriage Tribunal. Trained in Canon Law in Rome, these learned gentlemen recline in the title of ‘Judicial Vicar’. On paper, their work-a-day function is to annul marriages. In reality, they are at the very coalface of pastoral ministry, laboriously unpacking the pain and heartbreak of relationships which have gone wrong within a confessedly spiritual frame of reference.
CHURCH COURT IN ACTION
Perhaps this points up another important insight. Boil it down and all Canon Law does is commit formally to writing the solution which finally settled a domestic Church dispute. It glosses over the details of the acrimony itself, details which may not only be quite tawdry, but which may also have been picked over for years, if not centuries. What’s more, Canon Law belies nothing of the interests and emotions of the real people caught up in the original conflict. One example should suffice. After my curacy in Belfast, I worked for three years as a bishop’s chaplain in the Church of England and once during that time I had the dubious privilege of witnessing a Church court in action.
The scene is one I hope never to see again. As I believe is traditional, the case was heard in the nave of the parish church in which the contention had arisen. The chairs had been cleared away and the two opposing parties were seated in classic adversarial courtroom formation, across the floor of the church from one another. Lawyers in wigs and gowns exchanged arguments and, whilst everyone was perfectly civil and, on the face of it, Christian to one another, you could have cut the atmosphere with a knife.
I’ll never forget hearing how much the whole thing cost - a bill picked up by the parish in the first instance, even though the decision went in their favour. Only when the person bringing the case lodged an unsuccessful appeal did costs revert to them. That said, what it cost financially was nothing to what it cost personally to the vicar and spiritually to the life of his parish. It just felt so wrong, a failure from every angle. And all because due permission had not been secured for some minor internal reordering. That, I suppose, is Canon Law at its most dramatic and unedifying extreme.
DIOCESAN REGISTRARS
More routinely, and especially for those of us who serve as diocesan registrars, Canon Law offers an opportunity to connect the demands and obligations of 21st century parochial ministry with the particular ecclesiastical history which gave rise to them. That may mean hearing a new rector or curate making their Declaration for Subscription and, in a throw-back to the days of patronage and absenteeism, declaring that they "do not hold office as an incumbent, rector, vicar, or licensed curate, elsewhere than in Ireland". It may mean securing a parish’s claim to any treasure trove, when the archaeologists at the local university want to explore the subterranean secrets of a particularly intriguing churchyard. It may even mean temporarily licensing one or other of the senior clergy in the diocese as commissary so that the bishop can have his annual pilgrimage to Ibiza. There’s more to the job than you might think!
AUTHORITY
At its most general, a one word answer to the question, ‘What is Canon Law?’, should suffice: authority. Canon Law establishes and confers authority within the parameters of what our Church has received as Divinely-revealed truth. Of course, that raises one or two predictable complications. Who determines and interprets that Divinelyrevealed truth and who decides who determines and interprets it? If the Church is essentially a voluntary association - as it were, a private members’ club - then over whom does Canon Law really extend any authority - and, for that matter, to what external authority might Canon Law itself be subject? Then there’s the issue of sanctions. Without teeth, authority means nothing: how can meaningful rectification and restitution be implemented in a spiritual culture grounded in a doctrine of forgiveness?
LIMITS AND BOUNDARIES
But perhaps magical words like ‘faculty’, ‘rubric’ and ‘Ordinary’ leave you cold. (Who is your Ordinary, by the way, and does he sit comfortably with his modest Constitutional moniker?) It could be these few introductory lines of mine are far too flippant and frothy for you. Let’s up the theological ante for a moment. One canonist with his eye firmly on the bigger redemptive picture defines Canon Law as "applied ecclesiology". So, if ecclesiology is concerned with an understanding of the essence of the Church, then, at the point where that understanding works itself out on the ground sacramentally, some framework of limits and boundaries becomes inevitable. Does that make Canon Law alright then?
LEGISLATOR AND LITIGANT
In his Advent book of 2007, the Bishop of Portsmouth, Kenneth Stevenson, remarked: "There are two threads that run through our common life that challenge much of what Christians stand for. One is the fad of modern governments towards over-legislation; and the other is litigation ... The Church reflects this climate, with people appealing to their rights more easily than they once did, perhaps because the age of deference to authority that is openly abused has gone. What may be lacking on both fronts - the legislator and the litigant - is a doctrine of restraint because ‘I can, therefore I must’ has taken over." (Kenneth W. Stevenson, Watching and Waiting, 2007, 39). Of course, some may feel that as Anglicans we have been guarding a doctrine of restraint so fiercely that certain ecclesiastical essentials have been undermined under our very noses.
DEFINITION
So, Canon Law. Arcane? Arguably. Anachronistic? At first glance, perhaps. Necessary? Regrettably, yes. I say regrettably, because the existence of a body of Canon Law is surely as much a sign of weakness as a sign of strength. Still, the Divine Law to which we are all ultimately subject would insist quickly that it’s when we are weak that we are strong. Either way, perhaps this article would leave you feeling a little more satisfied if you could take away from it a closing word of definition. Try this for size from Prof. Norman Doe, Director of the LLM in Canon Law at Cardiff University: "Whilst its mission may ideally be effected by prayer and by agreement, the Church has chosen to use rules as a means to enable the fulfilment of its mission and as a means to deal with problems arising in the course of so doing." (Prof. Norman Doe, The Legal Framework of the Church of England, 1996, 3)
Canonists in every age have taken pains to remind one another that the Church is primarily a saving institution rather than a legal one. Sometimes, my wife takes pains to remind me that a degree in canon law doesn’t make you a canon lawyer any more than a degree in criminal or civil law makes you a solicitor or a barrister. Fair point. After all, she’s the one with the practising certificate and the right to buy sandwiches at the Law Society.
The Revd Simon Doogan is rector of Ballyholme, Diocese of Down.