REVISION OF PRAYER BOOK.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 49, 28 February 1927, Page 12

REVISION OF PRAYER BOOK.

* ■ TO MEET MODERN CONDITIONS VIEWS OF CANON JAMES. At the morning service in St. Mary's Cathedral yesterday, Canon Percival James referred to the proposed changes in the Church of England Prayer Book. He said the last revision was in 16C2, and was followed by a large secession of ministers and their congregations from the Church -of England. Every attempted revision since that time had resulted in threatenings of further secessions. For that reason, Canon James said the National Church could not be condemned for leaving her prayer book virtually unchanged for nearly three centuries. The present revision . was not attempted because the time was opportune, as the differences between the High, Low and Broad j Church parties were wider than ever before. Not one of the three parties was obedient to the rubrics .of the Book of Common Prayer which, indeed could' not' be entirely obeyed, as they implied conditions which had long since ceased to exist.

Canon James said the whole system of public worship needed thorough readjustment to modern conditions. As the Church had failed to reform the Prayer Book, individuals introduced their own unauthorised, and not always felicitious reforms. That, was especially the case in' the "occasional services" used at the great and solemn crises-of human life. Few clergymen, if any, read, the whole preface to the marriage service. It not only advanced the discredited mediaeval view of the superiority of the celibate, to the married life, but also .employed language utterly Offensive to modern ears.

•ioi'iiker contended that the burial service needed enrichment, the baptism service wanted thorough overhauling, the office for the churching of women should . almost be swept away, arid a thanksgiving to be used by both parents substituted. Referring to the office' for the visitation of the sick, Canon James said no part of the Prayer ■ Boqk had been so severely criticised by New Zealand bishops. He claimed that the order for morning and evening prayer urgently required revision. An alternative, even a song service for the twentieth century people, was a great need. It was at the celebration of the Holy Communion, said Canon James, that the parting of the ways came. Judging from the cabled reports, he saw no reason to doubt that most of the proposals of thebishops would receive general approval. Two major charges were proposed. ' Firstly, the ancient Canon was to be restored—the central part of the service from primitive times. Secondly, the bishops proposed to allow the reservation of the Sacrament under careful restrictions and safeguards, for administration to sick persons unable to come to their own churches to receive the Holy Communion. Canon James said the point was whether the body clergy who now reserved the Sacrament for other purposes would abide strictly to the new decision. He did not think there was the. slightest 'hope of such obedience. That body, conscientiously aimed at, and would insist upon a complete reversal of the sacramental doctrine which the Church of England adopted at the Reformation. In conclusion, Canon James said the avowed object of the Anglo-Catholic extremists —they were not a negligible but a rapidly increasing proportion of the High Church clergy —is to assimilate the worship of the Church of England to that of the Church of Rome. If the Church of England were to adopt all the modern doctrines and practices of the Church of Rome, she would have no right to exist apart from the Church of Rome."