The subject of our second essay provides an interesting contrast with Bishop Bateman: equally learned in the law, he chose the humble life of a parish priest rather than the authority of judicial or episcopal office or the bustle of Avignon. Despite the distinction of his writing, none of his larger works have ever been printed in full, and he was widely forgotten in the age of the printing press. His position as a major canonist is largely the consequence of a modern rediscovery by Fr Boyle, O.P., on whose work this essay is based.

It is now generally recognised that as a matter of history the canon law was applied, subject to variations by local custom, in pre-Reformation England just as much as throughout the rest of Western Christendom. Indeed such local variations were permitted by the canon law itself. As Professor Brooke concluded in The English Church and The Papacy From The Conquest To The Reign of King John:

“The English Church recognised the same law as the rest of the Church; it possessed and used the same collections of Church law that were employed in the rest of the Church. There is no shred of evidence to show that the English Church in the eleventh and twelfth centuries was governed by laws selected by itself.”

The same was also true until the Reformation.

In 1977 the House of Lords in R v Lemon unanimously asserted that the offence of blasphemy had survived a long period of desuetude, and remained very much alive and capable of being used. This surprised many. There had been no prosecution for the offence for sixty-five years. Lord Goddard had once declared it ‘obsolescent’, Lord Denning had described it as a ‘dead letter’, and in 1959 the Society for the Abolition of the Blasphemy Laws had abolished itself. Despite this, and despite disagreement among their Lordships as to the intention or mens rea of the offence, they had no doubt that it still existed as a criminal offence. Indeed, Lord Scarman expressly disassociated himself from the view that the offence ‘serves no useful purpose in modern law’.

‘It is not at all easy (humanly speaking) to wind up an Englishman to a dogmatic level’.

This quotation is, of course, from Newman's Apologia, where many memorable things are said. Yet, even in England, it seems inescapable to treat of faith and doctrine if we are to consider Roman Catholic canon law. As Christian believers, consequently holding certain doctrines about Christ and his Church, we have a theology of canon law and a theology in canon law. We explore the theology of canon law whenever we consider why there is canon law at all in a Church founded on the unique saving grace of Jesus Christ, and we explore the theology in canon law whenever we consider how faith and doctrine show themselves in the making and application of canon law.