Folia Theologica et Canonica, Supplementum (2016)

Hanns Engelhardt, Marriage and Divorce In Anglican Canon Law

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HANNS ENGELHARDT

commonly called Provinces, although we must be careful with this term as the larger of these Provinces, as England, USA, Canada, Australia and others, are again subdivided in internal provinces which must not be confused with the independent Provinces. We might perhaps call them sub-provinces although this term is not used in canons and practice. Of the first mentioned Provinces the 39 Articles of Religion, an important Anglican doctrinal document of great though not unlimited authority, say:

Every particular or national Church hath authority to ordain, change, and

abolish, ceremonies or rites of the Church ordained only by man’s authority

so that all things be done to edifying. (Art. XXXIV)

This principle holds good not only for ceremonies and rites sensu stricto but for canon law in general.1 The legislative power of the Provinces is limited only by things which are not “ordained only by man’s authority”, i.e. by ius divinum, by divine law, whatever may be recognised as such.

The “Principles of Canon Law Common to the Churches of the Anglican Communion” as they have been compiled by a number of Anglican canon law scholars and legal advisers are “common” only in that sense that they can be discerned in the canon law of practically all Provinces. They do not stem from a common source. Founded on the legislative authority of the several Provinces, they do not enjoy authority over these Provinces but may be altered by them unilaterally - provided always that their content is “ordained only by man’s authority”. What consequences such an alteration may have for the unity of the Communion is quite another question to which we will have opportunity to return later. For the moment it is sufficient to say that talking about Anglican canon law means talking about the canon law of the several Anglican Provinces. However, as it is most difficult, if not impossible to ascertain and describe the law of all Provinces I will confine myself to some important ones - like the Church of England, the American Episcopal Church, as it is the oldest independent Province outside the British Isles and its Constitution and Canons have been a model for those of many other younger Provinces, and the Church of Nigeria as an example of a younger Province outside the countries with a predominantly European tradition.

2. Secondly it has to be noted that the Church of England - and that means “of England” in the strict sense, not including the Anglican churches of Scotland, Ireland and Wales - is today the only “established church” in the Anglican Communion. All the other Provinces of the Communion, including the three churches in Great Britain which I mentioned, are separated from the

' Cf. Bicknell, E. J., A Theological Introduction to the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England (3,J ed. rev. by Carpenter, H. J.), London 1955. 300 seqq.