Read on Twitter
OK, by popular demand (5 likes and counting) I'll return in a couple of weeks with a "top 10 Consistory Court cases of the Decade" thread. But here's a little bit about my favourite case of all time to whet your appetite in the meantime. Re St Mary Barnes (1982)...
On the face of it, an utterly mundane question.
If you're extending a church and you dig up some human remains in doing so, can you rebury them elsewhere in the Churchyard if that Churchyard is legally closed for burials?
Yes, yes you can. But...
If you're extending a church and you dig up some human remains in doing so, can you rebury them elsewhere in the Churchyard if that Churchyard is legally closed for burials?
Yes, yes you can. But...
...this was a Diocese where the Bishop had had a fairly catastrophic falling out with his Chancellor (the judge of his Court). To safeguard the independence of the Court, a Chancellorship is a freehold office. A Bishop can't get rid of him/her once appointed.
Bishop Stockwood's simultaneously old-school (well, medieval!) and novel approach to this was to exercise the Bishop's historic right to preside over his own Court on a number of occasions.
(The law has since been changed to prevent this from happening...)
(The law has since been changed to prevent this from happening...)
One such case is where the Bishop permitted the extension of the parish church of St Mary Barnes, shortly before his retirement. After that retirement, it became clear the Bishop had failed to consider what would happen to the bodies disturbed by the works.
With no Bishop Stockwood to apply to (retired) the application for a new Faculty (for permission to disturb &.rebury remains) had to go before the Chancellor...
...who took the opportunity to write all the incredibly rude things he had clearly long wanted to about the Bishop.
...who took the opportunity to write all the incredibly rude things he had clearly long wanted to about the Bishop.
The remainder of this thread will largely consist of some of the most choice excerpts. Sadly I can't find the full judgment online (other than behind various legal paywalls). But anyway, read on...
"What advice, if any, was obtained before lodging that petition I do not know. But the petition, though addressed to the chancellor, rashly purported to crave the bishop's judgment."
"...That is a request which in many dioceses would have been of no effect; but unfortunately, in the Diocese of Southwark, by reason of an antiquated and regrettable provision in the chancellor's patent, it is of some, though uncertain, effect."
"[the] petitioners were foolish enough, for reasons best known to themselves, to crave the then bishop's judgment, and the then bishop, Bishop Mervyn Stockwood (now no longer Bishop of Southwark), with very considerable folly, purported to deal with the case himself."
"to do so involved a breach of the constitutional principle of the separation of the functions of the legislature, the executive and the judiciary, and a return to the absolutism of the Middle Ages condemned in this country since at least the middle of the seventeenth century..."
"...He was, moreover, even if legally seised of the matter, simply not capable of the task of dealing with it as the sequel clearly shows..."
"...Judges in the Consistory Court are quite used to receiving inadequate petitions and know how to deal with them so that justice is done and a practical result achieved; not so Bishop Stockwood."
"Clearly some such faculty is necessary if the scheme, already begun, at no doubt considerable expense, is to be implemented... if I refuse the faculty now prayed, that scheme never will be implemented and Bishop Stockwood's ill-considered judgment will be effectively nullified."
And on costs:
"Since these proceedings would have been unnecessary but for the inadequacies of the former proceedings, for a large part of which Bp Stockwood must shoulder responsibility, the petitioners may care to consider whether to apply to him personally for contribution..."
"Since these proceedings would have been unnecessary but for the inadequacies of the former proceedings, for a large part of which Bp Stockwood must shoulder responsibility, the petitioners may care to consider whether to apply to him personally for contribution..."
I should note the sad footnote to all this, which is what has since come to light about [The Reverend] Chancellor Garth Moore. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/15/i-told-so-many-bishops-survivor-tells-of-system-that-protected-priest
I don't have a Soundcloud to peddle, but how about a donation to https://www.thesurvivorstrust.org/donate/donate-to-us/10/credit-card?
I don't have a Soundcloud to peddle, but how about a donation to https://www.thesurvivorstrust.org/donate/donate-to-us/10/credit-card?
