CHURCH DECREE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22368, 15 September 1934, Page 13

CHURCH DECREE

COURT OVERRULES BISHOP LONDON, September 6. A notable victory was ■won In ‘the courts over the Reichsbishop, Dr Mueller, by one of the dispossessed pastors, says the Berlin correspondent of The Times. The German High Court gave judgment in favour of PUstor Buchholz, of the Tempelhof parish, and denied the legality of Dr Mueller’s decree by which Pastor Buchholz was retired. The court ordered the parish to pay the arrears of his salary, to continue bis full salary, and to allow him to retain his dwelling.

The court added that there was no justification for applying the principle of personal leadership to the Church in an unlimited and unsuitable form, and that the primate was not entitled to alter the constitutions of the State churches. “ A protest must be raised against a decree so crassly infringing the law.”

Dr Mueller, replying to the Danish Christian Council's resolution of sympathy with the German clerical opposition, which, it said, far exceeds the evangelical sphere, declares that the outer world is unable to see the real conditions in Germany or to appreciate the many 'reforms effected.