PARISH IN UPROAR

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 129, 4 June 1927, Page 5

PARISH IN UPROAR

A NEW VICAR

CONGREGATIONS WALK OUT

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, 23rd April.

Feeling is running high in the parish of All Saints, Stepney, the trouble being the appointment of the Rev. Francis Bacon, an Anglo-Catholic, to the

position of vicar.

A member of the congregation, explaining the position, said that at one time Die vicar had been an '•'archbishop" in the Old Catholic Church and a priest. It was extraordinary that the Bishop of Stepney, acting for the Bishop of London, should have appointed a man of Mr. Bacon's record to look after a parish which had been Tractarian in policy for the last thirty years. As soon as the vicar arrived he inserted two advertisements in the "Church Times," explaining his wish to found a new Anglo-Catholic centre and appealing fdr outside help. This action was taken without consulting the Church Council or the parishioners, for whom he had since declared he did not care "a packet of pins," advising them, if they did not like his services, to go elsewhere. Since his advertisement he had been presented with two sets of Mass vestments from the Con-fr.-.ternity of the Blessed Sacrament.

.■Sesentment in the parish is running hij;h. Congregations at the Eatser servites walked out to demonstrate their disapproval, and this week the vicar was challenged to attend a meeting in a schoolroom adjoining the church to justify the alleged innovations he has made in the services.

MEETING BEYOND CONTROL.

He did not -attend, nor was he to be found at the vicarage, where' some parishioners endeavoured to seek him out after they had passed a strongly antagonistic resolution. A contingent of Auglo-Catholics from outside the parish behaved like Communists at an election meeting, and tried to prevent the speeches from being heard. At times the meeting degenerated into a Hyde Park dispute, and passed completely beyond the control of the Bev-.K. A. Cumine, the chairman. Men shook their fists at each other, women matched their voices in howling each other down, ' there were irrelevant shoutings, and members of the audience occasionally advanced to the chairman's table, and thumped it to emphasise impromptu addresses. Two policemen, finally, were called in, but as there had been nothing more violent than verbal assaults and broils, they' retired after giving a little good advice.

A hymn was sung as the meeting dispersed, which the Anglo-Catholic section attempted to drown in derisive cheers.

The chairman advised all worshippers in the parish not to desert, but persistently to fill that church. The aim of the Anglo-Catholics, who turned the House of God into a joss-house, ■was first to empty a place of worship so that their supporters could come iv motor-cars from other parts of Loudon to make use of'the church after the Christians had left.

"If you learn to worship graven images," lie said, "the Church of England will become the scorn of the Protestant world. If the new Prayer Book is accepted by the National Assembly and the House of Commons, the Church of England'is lost."

S5, Fleet street.