The history of the ancient concept of sanctuary has been discussed in the pages of this Journal in earlier volumes. In response to Professor Baker's article, Fr Robert Ombres, O.P. wrote to the Journal to inform readers that sanctuary had recently been used in America and Britain. The use of this ‘modern sanctuary’ has been the subject of some lively discussion at a recent London meeting and in Cardiff amongst the Canon Law LLM students. This article seeks to address some of the contemporary issues regarding the modern use of sanctuary in Britain and continental Europe today.

The procuratio was originally the hospitality necessarily provided for an ecclesiastical ordinary and his retinue when engaged in a visitation of the churches and spiritual places of his jurisdiction: ‘per procurationes … intelligitur necessariorum sumptuum exhibitio, que ratione visitationis debetur. …’ By this means the provision of food, drink, and accommodation for the visitor as he perambulated his territory was placed on a formal footing, so that most of the expenses of visitation might be met, and the visitor with his attendants assured of somewhere to spend each night in reasonable comfort.

‘Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.’

‘The rigidity imposed on the BCP through being enforced by Act of Parliament is against the nature of worship and the practice of Church law. This rigidity contributed a good deal to the separation of Independents from the Church of England in the seventeenth century and of the Methodists in the eighteenth. Again, towards the end of the nineteenth century, when enforcement to a great extent broke down, a situation arose in which many of the directions of the Prayer Book were disregarded without permission or protest from authority.”

An extremely important article appeared in the Winter 1995 issue of Ecclesiastical Law Journal entitled ‘An Evidential Privilege for Priest-Penitent Communications’ by Professor D. W. Elliott, outlining the problems of imputing to sacramental confessions the status of privileged communications.

‘In Scotland the Church is fortunately in a position of practical independence of the State. Whatever difficulties and hindrances affect the Church in Scotland, and they are many, are more than balanced by the non-interference of the temporal power.’ So wrote Canon Lempriére in 1903, and so it remains. As a result it has adapted to changing circumstances more easily than a body established by law.

In his discussion of the nature of law St Thomas Aquinas cites St Augustine's principle that an unjust law ceases by that very fact to be a truly binding one, and this remark provides us with a useful springboard for a discussion of how different institutions have dealt with the occurrence of such a problem within their own systems. There are two principal factispecies envisaged when we deal with such a scenario within the Christian community; when a law has been interpreted erroneously by its officers and when the law is applied by the administration with a rigidity that exceeds the intention of the legislator. In these circumstances, it is arguable that we are dealing not with true law as such but with the corruption of law, non lex seil corruptio legis. The expression corruptio legis is here understood not in a subjective but in an objective sense, i.e. it is not to be understood to refer to the administration or the officials that apply the law but to the legal norm itself. The issues raised by the principle, non lex sed corruptio legis, are not simply ethical but also legal, and the important resolution in Augustine and Aquinas offers a useful window into one of the central problems of comparative administrative law.

The past year or so has seen a number of incidents where a public service has been disrupted by a group of people seeking to make a point through the attendant publicity. An example occurred in February 1995 when the gay rights group ‘Outrage’ disrupted the enthronement of the Bishop of Guildford. Such an incident inevitably gives rise to questions of law, and this article intends to survey very briefly the law which is particularly applicable in cases where there are disturbances in places of worship. Of course, both the general law concerning public order and the common law relating to breach of the peace also apply as much within churches as without. However, much is written about them elsewhere.

In his obituary to the late Chancellor Garth Moore, Chancellor Quentin Edwards QC recalled one of Garth's constant sayings: ‘It may be possible to be a theologian without being a canonist; but it is impossible to be a canonist without being a theologian’. The recent Lyndwood Lecture marking, as it did, the first joint venture between this Society and the Canon Law Society of Great Britain and Ireland, brought into sharp focus some of the differences between Anglican and Roman Catholic canonists. The laws of the latter reveal a more visible and systematic theology whereas those of the Church of England are unashamedly positivist both in form and ostensible origin. This paper seeks to consider the role of the Gospel in the contemporary governance of the Church of England and to isolate—but not resolve— certain of the ‘practical parish problems’ which will fall to be addressed at the forthcoming residential conference.

A few months ago there was a national conference for all the archdeacons of the Church of England. We number just over a hundred and of these eighty were present. On the following weekend The Church Times had a cartoon on its front page showing two anxious clergy, one saying to the other, ‘What bothers me is what the other twenty-two were doing!’ Such is the reputation of archdeacons, who bear something of the character of that God whom the small boy once famously described as the Person who goes around seeing what you are up to and then telling you to stop.

In his interesting article on order and disorder in church, Paul Barber cited Abrahams and Ors v. Cavey. The case is also cited by others writing on related matters. It has both social and legal aspects which it was not germane to Barber's purpose to develop, and this note is intended to remind readers of an event which may have attracted their attention and interest at the time.