CHURCH WARS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20379, 10 April 1928, Page 12

CHURCH WARS.

EUCHARISTIC PROCESSION. ANGLICAN CONSTITUTION. (Feom Oua Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, March 23. Sydney has been something of a big ecclesiastical battle ground the last few weeks. It looked at one stage as though it would be left to the Methodists to fight their own battle over the coming Eucharistic procession. The other churches held aloof from it, until the Presbyterians of Sydney came to light with a motion viewing with concern the procession and the elevation of the Host. The motion, -however has gone no farther than the formal submission stage, so the Methodists are still without active support, althougn there is talk of a big deputation to the Government over the mattter. While the Methodists war was ra o' n St the Anglicans were active on another front with the vexed question of a new constitution. That little war, which revealed two spirited schools of thought, and in which the clergy and the laity spilt much ink, through the newspaper columns, has since been carried to synod. Svdney, as far as can be seen at present, wilt fall into line, on broad principle, with the 21 other dioceses which have already accepted the new constitution, so Jong as the old standards of faith are safeguarded. Under this reform the Church of England in Australia will, of course, still be part and parcel of the mother church. It is not a question of “ cutting the painter.” What -is being done simply amounts, briefly, to a big constitutional advance, enabling the Anglican Churchy in the Commonwealth to take its destiny more fully into its own hands. This is •what it means, although the battle in synod has been fought out in phraseologv ■which has been something of a cross-word pnzzle to the man in the street who has been sufficiently curious or interested to try to find out what it was all about.