As we all know, the Church of England is governed according to a system of law or internal rules, known as canons.  Some provisions in this legal system tie it closely to the secular legal structure of English law.  When we speak about the relationship between church law and secular law, we are in a complex area of legal territory which is summed up by the use of the word established.  This single word points us to the way that church rules get interwoven with the secular laws of our nation.  Because establishment only applies to England, the other British nations of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales have their own canons to regulate their affairs.  Few clergy have had to involve themselves with understanding church law as most of the time they are encouraged to hand over any church legal problems to the experts in this area of church life.  I once had to stand by while my local council battled the question over whether a class 6 highway, running through my churchyard, was the responsibility of the church or the local authority.   The then Chancellor of the Gloucester Diocese, Garth Moore, declared himself minded to hold a Consistory Court on the matter, since the existing rules did not provide a clear precedent for this situation.  The Court, with its massively attendant expense, did not in fact take place, since the Chanceller died before the Court could be assembled to judge the matter. 

This one event during my time in Gloucestershire was perhaps the only time when church law was brought to my attention.  Those in charge of churches and parishes now spend far more time being made aware of legal regulations that govern the running of ordinary church life.  Since the beginning of the ‘safeguarding era’, everyone with administrative responsibilities has had to spend a great deal of time ensuring that all the legal form filling is correctly completed.  Clergy now also work with the ever-present concern that one of the parishioners may file a CDM complaint, something that may require an immediate suspension.   The anxiety that someone may bring up an accusation from the past, even from the distant past, means that some clergy insure themselves against such an eventuality even though they are now retired.  In 2024, church law is no longer to do just with arcane rules and issues to do with archaic property rights.  Today it reaches far more obviously and intrusively into the Sunday-by-Sunday rhythm of ordinary church life and, not infrequently, causes distress and actual harm.

My generalising comments about church law do not stem from a place of familiarity with the topic, but rather from a place that most of us occupy, that of bafflement and occasional deep frustration.  Church law penetrates ordinary parish life far more than in the past so that it can interrupt ordinary events in an unhelpful way.  When an ordinary parish has to negotiate its way through a legal minefield, the fall-out is seldom experienced as benign.  Those who have encountered church lawyers, employed at vast expense to defend the church institution, sometimes use words like ‘brutal’, ‘dishonest’ or ‘unscrupulous’ to describe their way of working. There was nothing gentle or compassionate observable in the conduct of the Christ Church Percy case on the part of the well funded College legal team. The recent appearance of a rapidly expanding safeguarding ‘industry’ has nowhere revealed a culture of compassionate attention to the needs of survivors by the specialist legal teams. Julie McFarlane’s account on Radio 4 of her ordeal at the hands of the lawyers employed by the Church to defend her clerical abuser is salutary. Gilo also speaks about the way that well-paid church lawyers use ‘aggressive and bullying questioning to try to avoid paying (in abuse cases) more than nominal amounts in compensation’. At the opposite end of the ‘industry’ we find legal work being attempted by groups without the benefit of anyone present who has training or skill in legal matters. Much of the work of Safeguarding officers in the Dioceses will involve legal questions but few of these employees have legal training.  Forensic skills, needed to establish the truth or falsehood of an accusation, are unlikely to be in evidence within a church-based core group.  Thus, we still hear the claim, as in the ‘Kenneth’ case, that the ‘child must be believed’ without even the most rudimentary examination of relevant evidence.  In Kenneth’s case, the miscarriage of justice has now lasted over four years, and no challenge to the original assessment is possible because there are no mechanisms available to question the arbitrary judgement of an untrained core group and a DSA.  Sometimes, also, the lawyers who serve the church by holding church courts get things badly wrong.  It is now generally accepted that the enormously expensive Consistory Court against Brandon Jackson at Lincoln was wrong in its conclusions.  A similar criticism could be levelled against those senior church lawyers who repeatedly advised bishops that they could not apologise to abuse victims without incurring potential financial liability.  A legal rule was firmly re-established as recently as 2006 in the so-called Compensation Act.  This stated clearly that apologies did not affect any legal decision connected with compensation claims.

The legal shenanigans in Aberdeen and the Scottish Episcopal Church currently display another church situation where legal processes and decisions are causing enormous damage to church life.  I have no comment to make on the guilt or otherwise of Bishop Anne Dyer.  What I find appalling is that we have an extremely expensive legal structure which is unable to deliver the justice that is required for both complainant and accused.  The Procurator expressed his opinion that although there was ‘realistic prospect of conviction’, the process of giving evidence by the complainant was ‘a source of anxiety’.  Thus, proceeding with the case was not in the public interest.  My own reaction to this manifest failure in the church’s further inability to operate a functional operation of justice is a combination of frustration and disappointment.  What should we conclude from this failure to declare neither innocence nor guilt in Scotland?  Is this far smaller church also unable to operate within a functional justice system so that matters of great importance to the ordinary congregations of Aberdeen can be resolved?   In any institution a failure of justice, or even the ability to determine facts about the behaviour of its senior leader, will act as a fatal blow to the working of morale and trust in the ranks. It is hard to see where the story will go from here.  One expects that Bishop Dyer will work out her remaining years in the diocese until retirement, but without any of the fire that should belong to her ministry.  Too much information about alleged bullying has leaked into the public domain for her to be able to carry on as if nothing had happened.

There is one section in the story as recorded by the Church Times on the 11th October which I find revealing but also rather depressing at the same time.   As part of a statement from the Diocese with the announcement of the halting of the proceedings against her, Bishop Dyer added the comment that she was ‘extremely pleased that this unfortunate episode has been brought to a successful conclusion.’  I found myself slightly choking over these words as there is no evidence that the halting of proceedings has resolved anything, least of all creating a ‘successful conclusion’.  There is also a remarkable absence of regret at the serious damage that has been caused by the case to individuals, the diocese and the whole Scottish Episcopal Church.  The Bishop’s comments can, no doubt, be attributed to a publicity officer or crisis manager.  While we have been spared the Church of England language of ‘lessons have been learned’ in this statement, we are still given words that betray an appalling lack of insight or regret for an incredibly damaging episode in the life of this small Christian denomination.    The allegations of ‘bullying and the abuse of a position of trust and responsibility’ would suggest that a time for reflection and self-examination, not to mention humility, was required from the Bishop.  Humble acknowledgement of any failure on her part is completely absent from this statement.  An opportunity for using the two-year suspension for moving towards a new servant style of leadership also does not appear to have been explored in a way that might have made the picking up the task of leadership a little easier.

Over the past twenty years or so the Church (in England and Scotland) has found itself more enmeshed with the tentacles of legal conflict due to safeguarding concerns and the binary choices that the LLF is thrusting upon us.  The irreconcilable differences being laid bare by our failures to agree on same-sex issues may push the Church to having to resolve its tensions by using the law rather than the tools of reconciliation and love.  From what we have seen in Scotland and England, the law has not proved to be a good tool for resolving tensions and divisions.   We need to be able to establish reconciliation without being forced to avail ourselves of the inflexible tools of a legal system.  Until recently that was the case.   Any further descent by the Church into a world of litigation must be regarded as a step back away from the teaching and spirit of Christ.