CHURCH DISUNITY.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 233, 2 October 1928, Page 7

CHURCH DISUNITY.

BISHOPS DIVIDED.

Feeling Evinced For Spiritual

Independence.

STATE'S ENCROACHMENT.

(United Service.)

LONDON, October 1

The "Daily Mail" says it understands that prominent ecclesiastics, in their speeches at the forthcoming Church Congress, will urge the bishops to exert their authority. Many of the bishops maintain that the State has encroached on the functions of the Church and that the Church must seek spiritual independence. The Bishop of Bradford, Dr. A. WPerowne, preaching on tke eve of the congress, appealed for Christian unity. He said the first barrier that must be broken down was the theory of apostolic succession. Another was the teaching by the clergy that it was a sin to communicate otherwise than by fasting, which was directly opposed to scripture. ' The Bishop of Norwich, Dr. Bertram Pollock, dissociates himself from the statement regarding the Prayer Book issued by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, "setting forth the principles which the bishops generally are prepared to follow in the administrative action necessitated by the acknowledged inadequacy of the existing law, and by the varieties of usage which already prevail." The "Daily Chronicle" says there is no doubt that the House of Commons has confronted the bishops with a most difficult problem. As matters stand the bishops are not sufficiently united to suppress the multitude of illegal practices. The essence of their new policy is that they must be so united if they are to suppress practices which are inconsistent with the old and the revised Prayer Books. The paper says the bishops' decision means that the Church will act as if tli" revised book had been accepted, not rejected, by Parliament and will rely on the loyalty of churchmen to give moral authority to the code which the House of Commons refused to legalise. But, though these matters cannot possibly be settled in the law courts, the whole question of establishment may have to be faced.

CHURCH SCANDALS.

PERSONAL PREJUDICES. (Australian Press Assn.—United Sesylce.) (Received 1.30 p.m.) LONDON, October 1. Lord Halifax, addressing the English Church Union at Cheltenham said: "It is a scandal that the Bishop of Birmingham should be accepted as a member of the Anglican Episcopate and it is hardly less a scandal that Dr. Major should be head of the Theological College for the training of candidates for Holy Orders."

"GLORIOUS YEAR."

JOYNSON-HICKS PLEASED. (United Service.) (Received I.SO p.m.) LONDON, October 1. Sir William Jovnson-Hicks, in a message to a meeting of the National Church League at Cheltenham wrote that it had been a great and glorious year which had witnessed the definite uprising of the nation against the tampering with the fundamental Protestant principles of the Church of England. He did not believe that their opponents would carry out the threat to get the Church disestablished because it would involve the degeneration of the National Church into a party sect.