1/ Heresy and English Canon Law – The first of two threads. #churchlaw #canonlaw

Unsurprisingly, this thread was prompted by a Twitterstorm over the last day or so. I will turn to the specifics of that, very briefly, at the end of the second thread. 2/ But I don’t want to focus on specifics and won’t be engaging with the substance of what was said in that debate.

This first thread is about the nuts and bolts of how a heresy case would work in the CofE.

Behold: The Twitter thread none of you have been waiting for. The ten top Consistory Court* cases of the decade.

(*For non-church-geeks, the Diocesan Courts of the Church of England, apart from the Diocese of Canterbury, just because.) Some ground rules: This is a highly personal list, including some selfish inclusions due to my own involvement in a case. Chronological, rather than ranking, order. And I'll doubtless have forgotten a really good one. Ready? Here we go!

OK, I'll try and keep answers to questions on #marriageregistration in this thread, and pray that both my spelling and numbering are better than yesterday! I'm sure @Faculty_Office will correct me if I'm wrong on anything... @Faculty_Office 1.) Does this mean that quarterly returns are a thing of the past? (@petercallway). Well yes that's the idea. BUT - I think that relies on the new online system for creating marriage documents being up and running. It now seems that this will follow at a later date.

In an attempt to deal with the questions of @venchrisallsopp and others.

1) The big policy decision was to go from c20,000 separate marriage registers to 1 big electronic one.
2) that decision was Government's, made by Act of Parliament.
1/n 3) I'm not sure what consultation Gvmt did on this - I don't recall having seen anything prior to passage of Act.

4) Faculty Office have clearly not been in a position to say anything until very recently - even now, the Regulations have not been written by Government.
2/n