What can clergy in majority-Muslim areas do to better integrate with their neighbours? Grow beards, according to the Bishop of London, Richard Chartres (left), in the Church Times. The Catholic Church has a complicated history with facial hair. Canon law dating from the fourth Council of Carthage, in the fourth century, banned priests from growing long beards; an edict that survived into the Middle Ages. Nothing in modern canon law prohibits beards, but there are few hirsute clerics among the h