Canon Law Reader Released: CEN 8.01.08 p 6.

A compendium of canon law principles compiled by the registrar of the Province of Canterbury, Canon John Rees and seven other lawyers has been distributed to bishops attending the 14th Lambeth Conference.

Entitled “The Principles of Canon Law Common to the Churches of the Anglican Communion,” the 111 page booklet seeks to “stimulate reflection on what it is to be a Communion of ordered churches seeking to live out the Anglican tradition in a world of intensely rapid communication,” Canon Rees said.

Commissioned by the primates six years ago as a project of the Anglican Communion Legal Advisors Network, the book claims to enunciate Anglicanism’s common legal principles. However the booklet appears to have entered the minefield of inter-Anglican politics by assuming that all Anglicans propound a common understanding of fellowship—and will likely be resisted by the liberal and Gafcon wings of the Communion.

Canon Rees noted the booklet was not “any sort of quick fix,” it was “not the Covenant,”" and was not “a code of canon law,” but might serve as a “”fifth instrument of unity” for the Anglican Communion.

These “are principles which we have deduced” Canon Rees said. The book was not “prescriptive” and could not be used in court as a guide to controlling legal principles. “It’s not the last word.”

Divided into eight sections on: Church Order, the Anglican Communion, Ecclesiastical Government, Ministry, Doctrine and Liturgy, Ecclesiastical Rites, Church Property and Ecumenical Relations—the Anglo-Catholic presuppositions of the book will likely be met with resistance in some quarters.

Under the heading of church property, Principle 80 states that property is held in trust by local church leaders as stewards for the national church—a point currently under litigation in the United States. David Booth Beers, chancellor to US Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori of the United States is credited as one of the authors of the code.

Principle 13 attacks the interventions of the Gafcon primates by stating that “no church, or any authority of person within it, shall intervene in the internal affairs of another church without the consent of that other church given in such a manner as may be prescribed by its own law,”

The right of the churches to pursue liturgical and doctrinal experiments is enshrined in Principle 12,, which states that “each autonomous province has the greatest possible liberty to order its life and affairs, appropriate to its people in their geographical, cultural and historical context, compatible with its belonging to and interdependence with the church universal.”

During the press conference following the booklet’s launch, Canon Rees was questioned as to whether Principle 52 might be considered offensive to those bishops and churches that have broken fellowship with the Episcopal Church, or who had not attended the Lambeth Conference, or to the three primates and other bishops who declined to receive the sacraments during the opening Conference eucharist?.

Principle 52 states that “ministers are called to work together and remain in fellowship so that visible communion is maintained even if theological or other disagreements occur.”

Canon Rees said fellowship did not mean Eucharistic fellowship, but conceded the booklet did not define the term. Asked what this meant, he responded it was “obvious,” but declined to elaborate.