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145 Law & Just. - Christian L. Rev. 21 (2000)
The New Clergy Discipline Measure of the Church of England

handle is hein.journals/ljusclr145 and id is 23 raw text is: THE NEW CLERGY DISCIPLINE MEASURE OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND DR. G.R. EVANS The Church of England General Synod of November 2000 gave final approval to the Draft Clergy Discipline Measure which, if Parliament approves it, will replace the Measure of 1963.1 The Measure began as a follow-up to the Report Under Authority, which was produced by a working party chaired by Alan Hawker then Canon of Chichester, now Archdeacon of Malmesbury. The recommendations of that Report were then progressively altered, at some points quite radically so. The old legislation has been used very little in cases of clergy discipline. There are a mere half a dozen examples where a case has gone to the Consistory Court. One reason for that has been the comparative ease with which a bishop could remove the licence of a priest-in-charge. Only in the case of beneficed clergy who refused to resign has the Consistory Court been 'needed', and one cleric at least has alleged that the threat of 'being taken to court' in this way was used by his bishop as an incentive to get him to sign a letter of resignation. An excellent innovation in the new Measure is the requirement (in s.8(2)) that priests who do not have benefices but merely licences from the bishop cannot have their licences taken away without due process, as could only too easily happen in the past. The concept of a 'cooling- off' period is also introduced in the new legislation, the Draft Clergy Discipline Measure, 2000, s.16-1(2), though in another connection. The debate of November 2000 came before a new General Synod, whose members, as Archdeacon Hawker recognised, were being asked to vote on a major piece of legislation, without involvement at an earlier stage. It is, moreover, technically quite complex material in terms of provisions for the fair trial of clergy accused of a disciplinary offence. In the debate of November 2000 two contradictory areas of concern about the new Measure emerged. Some speakers were strong on the need for means of calling 'an erring priest' to account; others were more concerned to avoid unfairness in the new legislation, even if that might mean that a guilty priest might escape condemnation on a technicality. Throughout the process of framing this new legislation these two overriding concerns have tended to tug in opposition to one another. On the one hand a diffuse and diffused outrage at episodes of alleged high- 1. For a useful recent background article, see Peter Boulton, 'Twentieth-century revision of canon law in the Church of England', Ecclesiastical Law Journal, 5 (2000), 353-68.

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