Primates Consider Anglican "Common Law"
Episcopal News Service. March 9, 2001 [2001-59]
Jan Nunley
(ENS) Speculation was high before the meeting of Anglican primates at Kanuga Conference Center March 2-9 that the group would take action on a proposal published in January by the Presiding Bishop of the Southern Cone, Maurice Sinclair, and the Archbishop of the West Indies, Drexel Gomez, entitled To Mend the Net. The Gomez-Sinclair proposal called for a drastically increased role for the primates in regulating the doctrinal affairs of member churches of the Anglican Communion, including the potential of suspension of communion against provinces or dioceses.
That would have been without precedent in the Anglican Communion, which has never had a "magisterium" or central teaching authority. While bishops at the once-a-decade Lambeth Conferences regularly call for unity, they also consistently affirm the canonical autonomy of Anglican provinces and dioceses.
But the punditry proved premature. Noting that "our tradition has learned how to handle conflict," Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey asked Gomez and Sinclair to speak to the primates at a "fireside chat" on March 3, and invited comments from Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold of the Episcopal Church and other primates. But no formal action was taken on the proposal.
Instead, on March 6, the primates heard an extensive presentation from canon law professor Norman Doe of Wales on the role of canon law in the Anglican Communion. Doe, director of the Centre for Law and Religion at the Law School of Cardiff University, is a member of the European Consortium for Church-State Research and of the Colloquium of Anglican and Roman Catholic Canon Lawyers.
A matter of enforcement
In his report on "Canon Law and Communion," Doe spoke of the three meanings of "canon law" to Anglicans: as a law code; as a formal collection of several bodies of law--a church's constitution, its code of canons, and other legal instruments; and as an entire system of ecclesiastical regulation, including unwritten custom, pastoral regulations or directions of bishops, and even decisions of church tribunals.
Anglicans "function in the framework of their own church and its particular legal system," Doe explained. But as the Anglican Communion, "a community of self-governing churches in communion with the See of Canterbury, and with each other," Anglicans assemble under the moral authority of "instruments of faith," which are Scripture, tradition and reason; institutional instruments, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Primates' Meeting, the Lambeth Conference, and the Anglican Consultative Council; and "the principle of autonomy: each church is free to govern itself."
"The global order consists of persuasive principles and instruments, not binding on individual churches, the local order binds churches legally," Doe told the primates. "The global order is unenforceable, the juridical order is enforceable...There is no developed marriage between the juridical and moral orders, no concerted translation of the moral order of global communion into the juridical order of local communion in each church.
"In short, the exercise of autonomy, freedom given by the local juridical order, and the unenforceability of the moral order, increase the potential for conflict," he concluded.
Anglican treaty convention?
What's needed, said Doe, is a kind of global Anglican treaty convention to bridge the legal gap between individual Anglican provinces and the Anglican Communion. In fact, Doe pointed out, the legal ties between Anglicans and non-Anglicans--such as the recently instituted full communion agreement between ECUSA and the Evangelical Lutheran Church--"may be stronger than those between Anglican churches."
Yet, though there is no formal binding canon law globally applicable to all churches in the Anglican Communion, there are profound similarities between the laws of particular Anglican churches, Doe added. For instance, Anglicans worldwide are "episcopally led and synodically governed," with a threefold ministry of elected bishops and episcopally ordained priests and deacons. And they share with all catholic Christians certain principles, including the idea that church laws ought to conform to divine law and that "in the exercise of rights the faithful must take into account the common good of the church, the rights of others and their duties towards others."
Doe suggested that the canon law of each church could be more fully developed to enhance communion, using as a model the ecumenical concordats Anglicans have with non-Anglican churches. The primates could draft a "Declaration of Common Anglican Canon Law and Polity," circulated to all individual churches in the Anglican Communion, "for consultation with their central legislatures," which would "set out the programme for canonical revision in each church... Each church would have a body of distinctly Communion Law," Doe said.
Action for next April
At the next primates' gathering in April 2002, a discussion on the role of the primates and their gatherings will be prepared by members of the primates' Standing Committee, with input from Gomez, Doe, Lady Jean Mayhew, a member of the Hurd Commission (see below) and Archbishop Robin Eames of the Church of Ireland. The resources for that discussion will include To Mend the Net; a paper on the relation of the primates to the ACC and Lambeth Conference; another paper surveying the relation of the primates to their provinces; and the Hurd Commission report regarding the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The primates also requested a study from the newly appointed Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission (IATDC) to include "attention to the issue of the co-existence of agreement and disagreement within a Communion of Churches" and "a consideration of the process of coming to a common theological mind and shared proclamation in a culturally diverse communion." To Mend the Net will also be referred to the IATDC as a contribution to the discussion on the exercise of authority in the communion.
A conference of legal advisors of the provinces will also look at "the parameters of an identifiable Anglican common law" and report to the next primates' meeting.