NEW PRIESTS AND DEACONS

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27210, 30 November 1953, Page 12

NEW PRIESTS AND DEACONS

ORDINATION SERVICE IN CATHEDRAL Three priests and three deacons were ordained by the Bishop of Christchurch, the Rt. Rev. A. K. Warren, in the Cathedral yesterday morning.

The candidates, who were presented to Bishop Warren by the Dean of Christchurch, the Very Rev. Martin Sullivan, to be ordained priests were: the Rev. R. A. Lowe, assistant-curate at St. John’s, Highfleld; the Rev. J. J. Merton, assistant-curate at St. James's, Lower Riccarton, and the Rev. B. WDon, assistant-curate at St. Barnabas’, Fendalton. The following were made deacons, the parishes in which they will serve as assistant-curates being given in parenthesis:—the Rev. M. D. S. Cocks (St Mary’s, Merivale), the Rev. A. E. Rolleston (St. Matthew’s, St. Albans), and the Rev. J. S. Vincent (St. Peter’s, Upper Riccarton). The sermon was preached by the Rev. C. L. Dobbs, vicar of St. Matthew's, St. Albans, and the Litany was said by the Rev. Canon W. A. Orange, the Precentor of the Cathedral. At the service in the Cathedral last evening all of the men who were ordained in the morning were present, and two of them—the Revs; A. E. Rolleston and J. S. Vincent—read the lessons. In his sermon Bishop Warren said that ordination was the result of a three-fold call—the inward call to the man himself, the. call which the bishop Issued on behalf of the church as a whole, and the call of the parish, the part of the church in which the man would serve. Bishop Warren said that these men would need to be aware of the peculiar Ethos of New Zealand, with all its characteristics, and their task was to call people as individuals to see the vision of God. They would need a spirit of adventure and courage to perform their tasks. Every parish in which they would be serving had great problems confronting it, and many of them were engaged in intensive building to meet the demands of rising population. The church must not fail to meet this new situation. Bishop Warren appealed to the laity to give these young men every encouragement and support. As Bishop he expressed pride in the quality of the men he had ordained that day and in the past, and said that it gave him great confidence for the future. During his address Bishop Warren paid a warm tribute to Canon Orange, who conducted the retreat at Bishopscourt, where the men who were ordained had been in residence since Thursday.