Diocesan News
Sermon by Rt Revd Paul Colton at the Annual Law Service, St Michan's Church, Dublin
Annual Law Service
Commencement of Michaelmas Term
Saint Michan?s Church, Dublin
Sermon by the Church of Ireland Bishop of Cork
The Right Reverend Paul Colton
Duke William of Normandy chose his own 19 year old half brother, Odo, as Bishop of Bayeux, in 1049. Odo is shown in the famous Bayeux Tapestry at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Unlike the others around him he?s not wielding a sword. Instead he has a mace. Under the Canon Law, bishops in battle were not allowed to spill blood with a sword ? they were, it seems, allowed to club them to smithereens with a mace! What the qualitative difference in outcomes was for the deceased, I do not know!
Odo was rewarded by being made Earl of Kent, but twenty years later he and his brother - William the Conqueror - had fallen out. Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, supplied justification for a trial. Odo was tried, not as bishop, but as an earl, in order to overcome clerical scruples about the procedure.
It is an era we look back on through the prism of legal history, and it appears paradoxical ? quaint even. At an Annual Law Service in a Church it is, however, worth remarking on the canon law strand in the DNA helix of the genetic make-up of our legal system.
The Corpus Iuris Canonici laid down criminal procedure, and there are titles in the fifth book dealing with infanticide, homicide, tournaments, duels, rape, arson, theft, and counterfeiting. On the civil side there were rules about conflict of laws, judicial oaths, delays in litigation, appeals, the distinction between proprietary and possessory actions, restitution, orders pending trials, interlocutory decrees; and the third book is devoted to titles such as elections, sale of goods, suretyship, gifts, wills, burial and taxation.
By the Sixteenth Century, Peter Rebuffus, was able to sum up the situation with the remark that the canon and civil laws were ?so joined together, that one could scarcely be understood without the other.?
In the Protestant Churches there has always been a certain ambivalence to canon law. Scriptural literalism seemed to endorse such an approach: ??the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.? (John 1.17). Henry VIII?s permanent suspension of the study in English universities of canon law in October 1535 has perhaps also shaped the Protestant mindset: law and faith are frequently caricatured as opposites. In any event, ??the high-flying ecclesiastical lawyers of England?s Protestant Reformation kept up to date by legal studies in Padua,? and subsequently Thomas Cranmer, himself ??presided over the ? drafting of a complete revision of canon law.?
I think mine was one of the last BCL groups at UCC to study Roman Law. It has now been moved to the syllabus archive box alongside Canon Law, notwithstanding the fact, that the LLB degree still admits the graduate ad Gradum Baccalaureatus in utroque Jure tam Civile quam Canonico ? admitted to the whole of the law ? both civil and canon laws.
The renewed interest in academic circles in Canon Law, has not been sterilely isolated. Present vicissitudes within the Anglican Communion concerning sexuality have created a contentious cauldron in which church laws have come to the fore once again and also created the hope that ? an Anglican Ius Commune ? may have the potential to facilitate reconciliation.
That aside, looking at so many things on the contemporary legal practitioner?s plate, the interface between much that is currently relevant, and the overlapping concern of church law, may not at first be, but ought to be obvious, not least to those who are both lawyers and disciples of the Christian way.
Think for example, of the employment status of clergy; the work of the pre-1922 Statute Law Revision unit; constitutional justice and human rights: the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights; the new body of Education law regulating schools; the Civil Registration Act, 2004; a private member?s bill relating to civil partnership; the proposed reform of Charity Law; child protection; burial rights and exhumation; blasphemy, religious broadcasting; planning and heritage legislation which interfaces, for example, with liturgical study; ethical issues such as abortion; confidentiality, the confession and data protection; the emerging proposals of the Government, catalysed by the draft European Constitution, inspired by the wider European household, for a more formalised framework for dialogue with the churches in Ireland ? the intersection between so many modern areas of law with legitimate concerns of the canon law is immense, and not readily perceived at first glance. And all that is before philosophy of religion and ethics meet jurisprudence, (the virtue jurisprudence of Ronald Dworkin, for example).
All this is a scenario far removed from Bishop Odo, clutching his mace, and eschewing the sword!
Nonetheless, it illustrates how within the churches as voluntary associations, the canon law and civil law interface, and dance a dance, that is demanding and preoccupying. For the Christian lawyer it is a familiar arena.
As you come to Church today to dedicate yourselves and your professional work to God, and to seek God?s blessing, you heard read for you, not only our Lord?s familiar summary of the Christian law ? Love God and love your neighbour! ? but also an account of, what was, as it were, a ?Law Service? from the Fifth Century B.C., in the book of Nehemiah.
It too was a liturgical occasion. The people gathered in front of the Water Gate on a holy day (the first of the seventh month) ? a new year?s festival ? like this day for you, the start of a new year ? and they called on the Secretary ? Ezra ? to read out the Law. In order to be heard he stood up on a wooden structure. Such was the reverence for the law, that when he started reading the people stood up. On his right were six and on his left were seven ? thirteen in all ? important people, leaders in the community, who had responsibility for interpreting the law. The word used in the original has as its root ? breaking it up. They broke up (not in a destructive sense, but in a creative way), interpreted, translated the law, in such a way that they people could understand it and make sense of it. It was meant to be a happy occasion, but as the people heard the law they started to cry; the reading of the law had the wrong effect on them. The thirteen interpreters had to clarify things for them, and renewed in their understanding of the law they were sent off to celebrate ? to eat of the best and to drink of the sweetest.
The key thing I want to draw from that liturgical occasion then to this one today is the idea of the law being broken up and explained so that the people made sense of it. To use a more contemporary word as my watchword: accessibility: access to justice ? more than that ? equal access to justice.
Access to the laws themselves: There will always be areas of human activity that require complex regulation with the consequent specialist interpretation and implementation. However, there are other areas, principally implemented by ordinary people ? many who are volunteers ? who need to be able to access and understand those laws, if key activities in our society are to thrive. I give two examples: education and charitable work. Those of us who are patrons of schools in Ireland and are dependent on volunteers for the management of those schools, have immense and growing concerns that the new, and increasingly vast area of education law, is not sufficiently straightforward for the average volunteer on which most local communities depend for its implementation. Volunteers, at great personal sacrifice, are being terrified into inertia, to the detriment of the education of our young people. Already, I believe that body of legislation needs to be re-examined.
Similarly, the long overdue reform of charity law is, we are told, on the way early next year. This is a sector which undoubtedly needs regulation, but as a former Chief Justice, wisely warned, great care is ??needed in drafting of legislation so as to ensure that it does not unduly hinder the work of the dedicated and unselfish people who help to raise funds for organisations benefiting many people.?
Perhaps most fundamental of all is the question of access for the people to the legal process itself. As you all know, civil legal aid, heftily means tested, is not free legal aid. My perception arising from pastoral work in situations of very real concern to people is that, many people ? owners of modest homes ? with middle of the road income levels ? acquiesce in what they perceive to be an injustice perpetrated against them, rather than risk the costs involved in seeking access to justice. There may be some instances where the areas specifically excluded under the 1995 Civil Legal Aid Act give rise to such injustice, as may the operation of the scheme itself.
All this is very much the concern of Access to Justice, the report issued last July by the Free Legal Advice Centres, and its recommendations represent a very real challenge to you society, our system and to all who, arising from their religious allegiance, follow a way which champions justice, the dignity of the person created in the image of God, the duty to neighbour and the Gospel principles of incarnation and redemption. As the report concludes: equal access to justice is surely a fundamental human right. The State and all of its organs should incorporate the recognition of this right into all aspects of its law, policy and practice. Those who have rights must have a meaningful and effective method of enforcing them.
We meet today, therefore, within a stone?s throw, of the Four Courts, your place of work, symbol of the administration of justice in our land. It?s neither the Water Gate of Nehemiah?s Day nor the wooden platform on which Ezra stood before the people to read the law to them. The names of the interpreters of the law may not be Mattithiah, Shema, Anaiah, Uriah, Hilkiah, and Maaseiah, Pedaiah, Mishael, Malchijah, Hashum, Hash-baddanah, Zechariah, and Meshullam. But there is still the fundamental challenge ? to read the law; to interpret the law; to implement the law ? so that the people understand and have access to justice.
That in turn should be of concern to lawyers who are Christians and who strive to fashion their lives around the summary of the law as given to us by Jesus Christ: Love God and love your neighbour.