The Churchwardens Measure is concerned with the number of churchwardens in a parish, the qualifications to be a churchwarden, how they are appointed, and how they may cease to hold office. Nowhere does the Measure state anything about what a churchwarden actually does. For this you must look elsewhere. Two useful guides are A Handbook for Churchwardens and Parochial Church Councillors by Kenneth Macmorran and Timothy Briden (Mowbray, 2000), and Practical Church Management by James Behrens (Gracewing, 1998).

This paper pursues a canonical definition of membership of the Church of Ireland. Both civil and Church laws presuppose that membership is defined; clergy rely on definitions, both formal and informal. In Ireland, freedom of religion is guaranteed and the courts are reluctant to interfere in the internal affairs of religious entities. Churches are voluntary associations, and church members are bound, inter se, by the church's internal laws as a matter of contract; this is given statutory expression in the Irish Church Act 1869. While the law of the Church of Ireland presents no unified definition of membership, the concept is utilised: strata of membership are manifest in a multiplicity of terminologies and roles. In the dynamics discerned in Church laws (not least the Preamble and Declaration and the Constitution of the Church of Ireland) a nascent definition of membership is detected. Comparison with the Anglican Communion and the ecumenical arena exposes weaknesses in the laws of the Church of Ireland. History indicates that membership was recognised and relied on in an establishment context, but not defined. In this paper, an anatomy of a canonical definition of membership that transcends such self-defining models is posited, based on the proposition that membership is more than what people say they are.

This article aims to provide an introductory historical sketch of the origins of the Church of England as a background for canon law in the present-day Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church. Written by a specialist for non-specialists, it summarises the widely held view among ecclesiastical historians that if the Church of England could ever be said to have had a ‘normative’ period, it is not to be found in its formative years in the middle decades of the sixteenth century, and that, in particular, the origins of the Church of England and of what we now call ‘Anglicanism’ are not the same thing.

I want to suggest that, for possibly the first time since the Second World War, we have a genuine opportunity for the Church of England to reform its mission and pastoral coverage, and its institutions, for good and for the furtherance of the Kingdom of God. Our changing culture is the main context for this reform, but it is being made possible by two external drivers—the financial meltdown which is currently taking place at national and diocesan level, and the decline in clergy numbers which has forced the Church at last to embrace the new patterns of ministerial priesthood and lay leadership proposed by John Tiller in 1983. It is clear to me that the Church of England as an institution only embraces change when it is forced to do so. It would be perfectly possible to ignore our changing cultural situation and to die quietly in a corner, were it not for our lack of money and priests. I am upbeat about this, because I do not believe that the forces of reaction and darkness will prevail this time. But I am worried that the framework of ecclesiastical law will delay and attempt to prevent the changes that are needed—and to this concern I will return.

A recent biography of Enoch Powell quotes him as using an interesting metaphor to illustrate the way in which the House of Commons can control the Treasury:

Many churches contain an old chest with three locks. The keys to those locks were held by the parson and the two churchwardens, and they were all different. Only, therefore, by the co-operation of all three could anything be extracted from the parish chest.

Computers are in use throughout society—collecting, storing, processing and distributing information. Much of that information is about people… ‘personal data’—and is subject to the Data Protection Act 1984.

The European Court of Human Rights has adopted a narrow and restrictive approach to the protection of religious freedoms which is inconsistent with some of its own judgments about the importance of religious freedoms. This narrow and restrictive approach has necessarily influenced the approach of the Courts in England and Wales, and the approach is not supportable on any principled grounds. This article examines what has gone wrong, and makes some suggestions for the future.

This paper traces the developments in the Catholic law on mixed marriages beginning with an outline of the canonical provisions that were in force prior to the Second Vatican Council. The impact of the Council teaching on ecumenism and religious freedom became apparent with the promulgation of Matrimonii sacramentum (1966), Crescens matrimoniorum (1967) and Matrimonia mixta (1970). These documents put the legislation on mixed marriages on a new footing and provided the basis for the legislation of the 1983 Code of Canon Law. Bishop McAreavey analyses various ecumenical dialogues on mixed marriages: ARCIC, the dialogue between the Lutheran World Federation, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and the Catholic Church, and ongoing dialogues between the Methodist Church and the Orthodox Church (primarily in the United States) and the Catholic Church. He notes in particular what those discussions have to say on the issue of ‘the promises’ and canonical form and comments on the provisions of the 1983 Code of Canon Law on mixed marriages. He considers the basis of the commitment required of the Catholic party ‘to remove dangers of defecting from the faith’ and the commitment ‘to do all in his or her power in order that all the children be baptised and brought up in the Catholic faith’. He accepts the view of Fr Navarrete that whereas the former obligation is of divine law the latter obligation goes no further than ‘to do his or her best’ (pro viribus in the Latin phrase). In the final section, he reflects on the pastoral impact of developments in the canon law regarding mixed marriages, noting the statements of the World Gatherings of Interchurch Families in Geneva (1998) and in Rome (2003).

The paper surveys the English Reformation in the wider European context to demonstrate that the concept of ‘Anglicanism’ is hardly appropriate for the post-Reformation English Church in the sixteenth century: it was emphatically Protestant, linked to Reformed rather than Lutheran Protestantism. Henry VIII created a hybrid of a Church after breaking with Rome, but that was not unique in northern Europe. There were widespread attempts to find a ‘middle way’, the model being Cologne under Archbishop Hermann von Wied. Wied's efforts failed, but left admirers like Albert Hardenberg and Jan Laski, and their Reformations gradually moved towards those of central Europe—the first Reformed theologians. Edward VTs Reformation aligned itself with this new grouping, and produced prototypes of liturgy and theological formulary which endure to the present day—with the exception of a proposed reform of canon law, with its provisions for divorce. Elizabeth Ts 1559 religious settlement fossilised Edward's Church from autumn 1552. It made no concessions to Catholics, despite later A nglo- Catholic myth-making: minor adjustments were probably aimed at Lutherans. There is nevertheless a ‘Nicodemite’ association among the leading figures who steered the Settlement through its opening years. Important and unlikely survivals were cathedrals, uniquely preserved in a Protestant context and a source of future ideological Catholic ‘subversion’. Nevertheless the theological tone of the Elizabethan Church was a broadly-based Reformed Protestantism, aligned to Zürich rather than to Geneva. Early seventeenth-century Arminianism or Laudianism represented a new direction, and the Puritanism of New England may better represent the English Reformation than the ‘Anglican’ synthesis which came to fruition in the English Church after Charles II's restoration in 1660. In any case, Anglicanism continues to represent in uneasy but useful tension the two poles of theology contending for mastery in the century after Elizabeth Is coming to power.

It is by no means uncommon in the present day for proposals to be put forward for the re-ordering of a church in order to enable part of the building to be used for what might be described as secular purposes. In some instances this might mean the nave having all fixed furniture removed so that it could be used as a hall, or as part of the church when required. Sometimes rooms are created in part of the building, perhaps in the tower or close to the entrance. Sometimes a great deal of space can be found in a crypt.

In May 1932 the House of Lords delivered its judgement in the case about the presumed snail in the ginger beer bottle with which even non-lawyers are familiar, Donoghue v Stevenson. One of the five judges, Lord Atkin, formulated what has become known as the neighbour test in this way:

In any discussion of church-state relations in the United Kingdom, it should be remembered that there are four national Churches: the Church of England, the (Reformed) Church of Scotland, the Church in Wales (disestablished in 1920 as a result of the Welsh Church Act 1914) and the Church of Ireland (disestablished by the Irish Church Act 1869). The result is that two Churches are established by law (the Church of England and the Church of Scotland) and enjoy a particular constitutional relationship with the state, while the other Churches and faith-communities (the Roman Catholics, the Free Churches, the Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and others) have particular rights and privileges in particular circumstances.

The Church of Nigeria's canon law revision of 14 September 2005 redefined the terms of inter-provincial Anglican unity from a focus on communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury to communion based explicitly upon the authority of scripture and historic doctrinal statements. This paper will examine the revision as an ecclesiastical reform connected to, yet independent from, the current controversy over human sexuality. Pertinent issues of episcope and ecclesial communion as they are affected by the canon law change will then be examined. Finally, the ecumenical implications of the revision will be discussed, with particular reference to the Anglican–Roman Catholic dialogue and the ‘continuing’ churches of North America.