BISHOP’S DECISION

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 200, 14 July 1936, Page 7

BISHOP’S DECISION

MAN EXCOMMUNICATED. “GRAVE WRONG” DONE. A WRITER’S CALLOUSNESS. (United Press Association —By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.) Received July 14, 9.50 a.m. LONDON. July 13. As the result of a jury’s rider censuring a film writer, James Bunting, tor callousness in not helping his parents, Rev. Henry Bunting and Airs Bunting, in their desperate financial •straits, culminating in their suicide together, tho Bishop of Chichester has excommunicated him.

The Bishop, in a letter to Bunting, said: The rider appears fully justified. In view of the grave wrong you have done to vour neighbours and the Church, which demands great repentance, 1 forbid you to take Holy Communion.

Bunting states: This excommunication is the first imposed by the Church of England for more than a century. I have been treated worse than a murderer. It is true that my parents gave me between £3OOO and £4OOO, but my father left a letter to the Coroner stating that he did not blame me, as I was making good in my career and was starting to help him. I had given my parents £GOO in the last few moil the. 1 am taking counsel’s opinion and 1 am going to Court, if necessary. L have received more than 200 letters of sympathy.

BISHOP BARNES'S COMAIENT. DEC.IS IVE PISSOCTATJON. ■ Received July 14, 11.35 a.m. LONDON, July 13. “I wish to dissociate myself decisively from the Bishop of Chicestcr’s action,” declares Bishop Barnes. “It :s taken under tho rule dealing with an openly notorious evil liver, or one who has wronged his neighbours which is happily obsolete, although some Bishops wished to revive it in connection with divorced persons. 1 consider disciplinary excommunication wrong; moreover, I would not condemn a man on the rider of a Coroner’s jury, which is not set up to inquire into a man s conduct. Even if a man he worthy of censure why should a Bishop prevent him from obtaining moral strength from the Sacraments?. It is sometimes implied that others might lie scandalised hv seeing a man whose conduct was not good receiving Communion, hut such ""Pharisaism is shocking and unchristian.”