Anglican Orders For Men Advocated

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29245, 1 July 1960, Page 2

Anglican Orders For Men Advocated

Anglican monastic orders in New Zealand are advocated by the Ven. Archdeacon W. M. Davies who addressed the annual meeting of the Guild for Help of the Community of the Sacred Name in Christchurch yesterday.

“My own contacts have led me to believe more and more in the religious life, for its own sake and for the very great contribution it makes in the wider life and mission of the church.”

Those in the religious orders added the inspiration and challenge of new dimensions which were being missed throughout our rushed modem life, he said. The dimensions were those of depth and repose. < , People In distress Often found it easier to confide in a religious than in the vicar of their own church and, in turn, the member of Jhe order would know best when to advise the person to see his own vicar. Archdeacon Davies referred to the forthcoming visit uf Father Trevor Huddleston to New Zealand when emphasising that the Anglican members of these Orders' were good mixers—ecclesiastically as well as personally. “Father Huddleston will address the Ecumenical Youth Conference not only on race relations but also on the religious life,” he said. “Are we church people in our parish life too cautious and conservative?” he asked. “I know that I should not have thought it prudent to invite a rei ligious to help me in my English parish in my first few years 'until I was pretty sure I myself had the confidence of my people. But later I did invite a Franciscan lay brother to spend a weekend in the parish and to talk about his work.” Work In Borstals The Franciscan brother had devoted much of his time to work in Borstal institutions where he would live for a month, at a time, sharing in the boys’ duties and teaching them at the same time. In Archdeacon Davies’s parish he later led a parish mission. A well-directed canvass was conducted the next year by a teaching campaign led by Father Michael of the Society of St. Francis.

Archdeacon Davies said that the Society of St. Francis had been doing magnificent pastoral work in Cambridge since 1938.. Archdeacon Davies spoke of his contacts with religious orders in England and on the Continent, which, he said, had been made mainly through the cooperation in his ecumenical work.

In the Society, of the Sacred Mission Kelham there were some 150 ordinandsin residence. Their training began with intensive study in theology and then they went on to study wider human interests and cudture in many fields.

In Switzerland, Archdeacon Davies said he had seen evidence of liturgy in the monastic sense in a Calvinist religious order for women, which was only one instance of many that showed the extension of religious life, not only in the Anglican Church but in other denominations. Presbyterian Church

The Presbyterian Church in Scotland was also experimenting with religious orders, he said. There were the Russian religious in Paris who were the most skilled interpreters of Eastern Orthodoxy to the West. In this order there was extreme poverty and extreme joy in its service. No life-long vows were taken by members of the Oratory of the Good Shepherd at Cambridge. There the ordinands took vows lasting for only five or 10 years at a time and had no central house.

“All these contacts I made before I came to New Zealand,” said Archdeacon Davies, “and I felt then (and feel even more now) that the Church in New Zealand would be tremendously strengthened by more religious orders especially for men. “By the Society of the Sacred Mission I was informed that the only really effective way to start some order for men here would be to send New Zealanders to England for their training apd have them return here to guide a really ‘native’ order of New Zealanders.”