The Clergy Discipline Measure 2003 lays down the procedures for bringing complaints against the clergy. These procedures can only be commenced in relation to specified acts or omissions and the article explores the difficulties that arise in relation thereto. It not only considers the case when a complaint is one involving doctrine, ritual or ceremonial, but also the overlap between the laws ecclesiastical; neglect or inefficiency in the performance of the duties of a cleric's office; and conduct unbecoming to the office and work of a clerk in holy orders.

The Civil Partnership Act 2004 is a groundbreaking piece of legislation, giving legal recognition to same-sex relationships and providing equality of treatment in regard to inheritance and other financial matters with that enjoyed by married couples. The legislation was opposed by certain religious communities for a variety of reasons. This article is the text of an address delivered by Lord Falconer of Thoroton to the annual conference of the Ecclesiastical Law Society on 1 April 2006. It provides a personal reflection on the nature of the legislation and the necessity for its enactment, and seeks to demonstrate that the concept of civil partnership does not undermine the nature of marriage. It also discusses the Act in the context of law and social attitudes with particular reference to the Hart/Devlin debate of the 1950s and 1960s.

While it might be said that the present state of repair of the majority of the churches in use in England is better than it has ever been before, the congregations of England, whether they be Anglican, Roman Catholic, Methodist or Baptist, face the day by day challenge of maintaining a substantial section of the nation's built heritage. The 2006 Lyndwood Lecture, delivered at St Paul's Cathedral, London, on 15 November 2006, examines possible avenues for the funding of this work, looking at the models of state aid offered by other European countries. It also considers the tension that exists between the legal imperative to view our churches not only as historic monuments but also as local centres of mission and worship. Moving on from this theme of funding, the lecture then examines the problems faced by all denominations in disposing of buildings no longer required for divine worship. It questions why the Church should continue to pay for the upkeep of buildings it no longer needs, and concludes, in the words of T S Eliot, that the Church must be forever building.

The Clergy Discipline Measure 2003 came into force on 1 January 2006. It provides a new structure for dealing with formal complaints of misconduct against members of the clergy, except in relation to matters involving doctrine, ritual or ceremonial, which continue to be governed by the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction Measure 1963. This paper concentrates on the new disciplinary procedures in respect of priests and deacons, rather than those for bishops and archbishops.

Faced with difficulties of communication between separated churches, the Roman Catholic Church has attempted to provide a framework for sacramental sharing between Christians genuinely prevented from receiving the sacraments in their respective churches and ecclesial communities. This paper first considers the Roman Catholic canonical requirements for sacramental sharing. It then addresses the approach taken in the ecclesiastical jurisdictions in Great Britain and Ireland, and compares it with that of Canada. Finally, suggestions for reform are considered.

In the teaching of the Catholic Church, the institution of marriage derives directly from God, for common good and for the good of spouses and children. Human authorities are called upon not to transform its characteristics and to avoid any attempts to distort them. However, the Church is today confronted with a changing understanding of the notion of ‘gender’ and with new considerations about the meaning of ‘marriage’ on behalf of parts of society and of political institutions. Based on an overview of the recent legislative and political proposals concerning family issues at the European level, this article aims to assess what model of family the Member States of the European Union are developing, and how the traditional concept of marriage could be influenced by this evolution.

This paper aims to offer some remarks on the relationship between Ottoman reforms and Atatürk's revolutionary laws – a relationship that is generally minimised or misperceived. The first part focuses upon the Ottoman system of relations between state and religious denominations. It challenges the theory of the theocratic character of the Ottoman Empire, which constitutes one of the traditional arguments strengthening the case against the importance of the Ottoman secularising reforms. The second part of the paper deals with the Ottoman reforms concerning dress, education and administration of justice. It stresses the secular character of such measures, and maintains that there is no historically grounding to the view that the secularisation of institutions is always accompanied by the secularisation of society. The third part takes into account the two elements that most distinguish Mustafa Kemal's reforms from the Ottoman ones: that is, the ideological nature of the principle of secularism, and the method of preparation and implementation of the revolutionary laws.

In the life of the Anglican Communion today, an approach which expresses ‘ardour’, a response to the Gospel which tends towards freedom from institutional restraint, is favoured over an approach of ‘order’, which sees the regulation of the life of the church as itself a witness to the ordered will of God. There is both an ‘ardour of the left’, which seeks to loosen the restrictions of canon law to allow a greater ‘inclusiveness’, and an ‘ardour of the right’, which is prepared to override traditional understandings of jurisdiction in the defence of ‘orthodoxy’. The First Epistle to Clement bears witness to an ancient tradition of respect for order in the life of the church. The ‘Windsor Lambeth Process’ in the Anglican Communion – as developed by the Primates' Meeting at Dromantine in 2006, and affirmed at their meeting in 2007 at Dar es Salaam – furthers just such an ordered approach to the life of the Communion, by its requests to the North American Churches through due process, by the development of mechanisms to address questions of alternative episcopal oversight, by the Listening Process to address the moral questions under debate, and by the process to draft and adopt an Anglican Covenant. These initiatives are all intended to strengthen ‘the bonds of affection’, and to secure the future of the Anglican Communion as an international family of Churches.

This article traces the recent development of gender equality law, understood broadly to embrace sex, transsexual and sexual orientation discrimination. Against this background it considers the ‘problem’ of religion from two perspectives. First, religion is seen as representing a problematic obstacle to the pursuit of a modern gender equality programme, and this results in judicial tendencies to criticise religion and constrain its significance. Second, religions and religious bodies themselves have difficulties with the new ethic underlying recent legal changes. The tension between religious ethics and the new law has resulted in a series of exceptions for religious bodies. However, these are rather narrow, and can be viewed as the minimum necessary to satisfy international and European human rights standards. The article then considers the enigma of equality and the question-begging nature of much of the law made in its name. It concludes that modern problems are better seen not as a clash between religious liberty and gender equality, but as a shift in conceptions of equality. At the same time, this shift has been accompanied by a significant juridification of what for a long time have been social spaces virtually immune from secular legal regulation. Ironically, a new establishment is being created which barely tolerates dissenters.

Using methods of analysis suggested by existentialism, existential eschatology and the wisdom tradition, this paper seeks to offer an understanding of what canon law is and why canon law is necessary for the church, in a philosophical and theological sense. The paper concludes that canon law may be seen as an interim agent of the Kingdom. The analysis is grounded in the phenomenological, stoic and platonic schools of thought, formed as ontological questions.

Legislators have normally exercised one of two options when enacting hate crime legislation. They either provide for punishment of ordinary criminal acts to be enhanced when the offence has been committed by reason of prejudice or hatred towards the victim, or they pass an Act which establishes an entirely new substantive offence. The United Kingdom Parliament adopted the first approach under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, initially with regard to racially aggravated crimes and later in respect of religiously aggravated offences. In passing the Race and Religious Hatred Acts 2006, Parliament has taken the second approach and created a new substantive law. This paper considers the specific requirements that will need to be satisfied in order to establish the offence and some issues that arise in relation to proof of intention, relevance of motive and the nature of the language required to constitute hatred, in the light of the concession to freedom of speech contained in the statute.

The enactment of the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 is the most recent legal mechanism developed to protect believers, beliefs and religious feelings in the United Kingdom. Despite the recognition of a certain degree of overlap between the different categories, this article proposes a broad distinction between legal devices which protect believers and those which safeguard beliefs and religious feelings. The common law offence of blasphemy is analysed, taking into consideration the response of both the UK courts and the European Court of Human Rights. The endorsement of the English law of blasphemy by Strasbourg is particularly relevant. Furthermore, this paper focuses on different instruments that, throughout the last few decades, have been articulated to protect the faithful, such as the crimes of religiously aggravated offences and the offence of incitement to religious hatred.