A CHURCH PROBLEM

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 148, 23 June 1923, Page 8

A CHURCH PROBLEM

ANGLICAN NEXUS

AUSTRALIAN PEOPOSAL TO

SEVER.

(tROII OCR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

SYDNEY, 14th June.

The various State Synods in Australia just now are debating, or about to debate, tho proposal adopted by the Gen- ! eral Synod of Australia at its last sessions to sever the legal nexus with the mother Church in England. At the General Synod the voting was as follows :— In favour. Against. House of Bishops 30 — Clerical representath^s ... 55 19 Lay representatives 48 '13

The matter was remitted to the various State Synods, which will report their decisions to the General Synod.

In Victoria the matter has been under consideration by a strong committee appointed by the last State Synod, and this has now drawn up a report which' will bs submitted to a special meeting of the Synod at the end of this month. The committee expresses the opinion, on the" question of autonomy, that no steps should be taken on behalf of the Church in Victoria that would destroy or weaken the relationship which at present exists between the Church in Australia and the Church in England. The committee, however, would welcome a proposal to constitute a representative board of arbitration, to which questions of faith, doctrines, and older might be referred for final decision, especially such questions as might affect the unity of the Anglican Communion. Tho committee suggests that the consultative committee of the Lambeth Conference, on which Australia is represented, might be willing to act.

This would seom to. foreshadow the rejection of the proposed breaking of the nexus, though the final attitude of the State depends on the vote in the Synod itself. The attitude regarding some consultative body through which Australian opinion could be freely expressed was taken up by most of the opponents to the "cut the painter" party at Brisbane during the past week, when the matter was discussed in greater detail than anywhere else hitherto. Finally, the Brisbane Synod definitely rejected the General Synod's proposal on the following vote:—

In favour. Against. Bishop ..: 1 — Clerical representatives ... 52 40 Lay representatives ...... 36 91

In opening the long discussion on the subject at Brisbane, Archbishop Sharp said he was convinced that, whether or not autonomy was procured by the Church in Australia, they would abide in full and unfettered communion with the Church in England. He repudiated utterly the motion that those who sought autonomy wished to break the communion ' with the Mother Church. The other churches which had obtained selfgovernment had not in the slightest degree broken thoir communion with their mother churches.

Canon de Witt Batty, the mover of the motion to adopt the General Synod's proposal, declared that according to eight gentlemen who had signed a statement of views opposed to his own, had accused him of standing up to incite the Synod to " cut the painter " with the Mother Country, and to adopt a' curse analgous to revolt. He 'had been stigmatised as a kind of ecclesiastical Lenin. If he erred, he did so in good. company, in view of the General Synod's decision on the matter The proposed change was demanded in the. interests of order and unity. The present constitution tied them to documents as to the meaning of which there had been endless dispute in England, and he thought that the time had come when the Church here should lie able to cease thinking about what the Church did or did not mean to do in England in the seventeenth century, and set itself free to think of the more important question of what it proposed to do in Australia to-day. lv.leading the case against the motion, Archdeacon Osborne (Toowoombo) said he strongly objected to a new church breaking from the parent body which went back to the time when St. Augustine settled at Canterbury; and having the right to revise the Prayer Book as it thought fit. He had no objection to Canon Batty and his supporters building up a new Church and getting a new Prayer Book or a new name. But he objected to them being allowed to rob the Church of Englanders of their old nest and turning them out into the cold. He reminded them of the warning issued by Archbishop Donaldson (formerly of Brisbane, and now Bishop of Salisbury, England), one of the most distinguished ehurcnmen in the Empire, that autoonly should- come only with the unanimous wish of the people of Australia. He (Archdeacon Osborne) believed that the time would come when the panAnglican Conference would be turned into a great pan-Anglican Synod. If they wanted alterations in the Prayer Book, they could be settled there. ~"

Canon Garland, in vigorously opposing the motion, declared that the supporters of the motion had in view the coming of an Australian Republic.