THE ANGLICAN CHURCH.

Auckland Star, Volume LI, Issue 292, 7 December 1920, Page 9

THE ANGLICAN CHURCH.

(To the Editor.) Sir. — The criticism of the Bishop of Dunedin, quoted by "Anglican"' in your columns, taking it in a wider sense, has more in it of truth than one likes to admit. For it is but fact that our church —the Anglican—is of all denominations prone to Homeward tendencies. Of course, we have bishops and clergy who would not lend themselves to such tendencies, but what do we find only too frequently? It is not very long since some of the oldest attending members of a local church and its vestry resigned on further ritualistic innovations being insisted upon. Priestly dictum in another resulted in the choir vacating their seats en masse. Just local examples, but in England things are far worse. What can we say in excuse of a London vicar, who, after "preparing" his choristers suitably, one fine Sunday afternoon, marched them off, some three dozen, arrayed in cassocks, from their own church to a neighbouring Roman Catholic edifice, there to attend mass? Does "Anglican" know that over six thousand of our clergy "went over" to Rome last year? Also that the confessional is openly advocated and attended in other London churches? To my mind there is in all this much more than a mere suggestion that in some quarters we seem in league with Rome, and it is of no uee our closing our eyeß to the facts. Really one might suppose we had in many cases R.C. priests among our clergy, so bent are they at any cost on levelling all protest at their deliberate tendency toward that denomination. Only this week, while passing a city i hurch here (Anglican) I saw two nuns s-tepping from the front entrance. T railed my wife's atttention to it, and she corrected my mistake, saying they were

••sisters." Just so—and although close, I could detect no difference in the garb. 1 suppose we shall have convents for them next.—l am, etc., ANOTHER ANGLICAN.