A CHURCH PROBLEM.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18898, 26 June 1923, Page 10

A CHURCH PROBLEM.

ANGLICAN NEXUS. AUSTRALIAN PROPOSAL TO SEVER. (Fkom Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, June 15. The various Stale Synods in Australia just now are debating, or about to debate, the proposal adopted by the General 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 follow's: In favour. Against. House of Bishops 20 Clerical representatives ... 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 Stale Synod, and this has now r drawn up a report which wall be 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 question of faith, doctrines, and order might be referred for final decision—especially such questions as might affect the unity of the Anglican communion. The committee suggests that the Consultative committee of the Lambeth Conference, on which Australia is represented, might be willing to act. This would seem to foreshadow the rejection of the proposed breaking of the nexus, though the final attitude of the State depends on the vote of the Synod itself, lire attitude regarding some consultative body through which Australian opinion could be freely oxpresesd, was taken up by most of the opponents to the “out 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 I , *T Clerical representatives ... 52 40 Lay representatives ... ... 35 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. Ho repudiated utterly the notion that those who sought autonomy wished to break the communion with the Mother Church. The other churches which had obtained self-government had not in the slightest degree broken their 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 course analogous to revolt. Ho 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 ns 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 he 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.

In leading the case against the motion Archdeacon Osborne (Toowoomba) 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 1 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 now name. But he objected to them being allowed to rob the Church of England 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 Bisbon of Salisbury. England), one of the most distinguished churchmen, in the Empire, that autonomy should come only with the unanimous wish of the people of Australia. He (Archdeacon Osborne) believed that the lime would come when the pan-Anglican 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.