The parabalani had neither orders nor vows, but were enumerated among the clergy and enjoyed clerical privileges and immunities.

The council agreed to grant Meletian priests 'full clerical privileges' if they were willing to forswear schism and 'acknowledge the authority of the Alexander of Alexandria'.

The archbishop urged that, apart from the principle of clerical privilege, to degrade a man first and to hang him afterwards was to punish him twice for the same offence.

In leading a "backlash" against Vatican II, Pope John Paul II has put clerical privilege ahead of the well-being of his flock.

Almost from the start, the State tried to limit the exploitation of clerical privilege or, rather, use it for secular purposes.

Clerical sources of income came to be seen as exactions, and clerical privileges as abuses.

The primacy of the church and the defence of clerical privileges were viewed by Pecham as the self-evident basis of a sound secular government and a healthy society.

The archbishop fled to Canterbury where he proceeded to deliver sermons and issue pamphlets against the crown's infringement of clerical privileges.

Some clergy believed that by supporting independence they opposed earlier Spanish Bourbon efforts to reduce clerical privileges and to seize church assets to redeem war debts.

But half of them, no doubt, would have laid claim to clerical privilege if he had, and been fished out of trouble by masters or canons.