DIOCESE OF MELANESIA.

Otago Witness, Issue 3867, 24 April 1928, Page 24

DIOCESE OF MELANESIA.

STATUS OF THE MISSION. STATEMENT BY ARCHBISHOP AVERILL. WELLINGTON, April 19. The question of the status'of the Missionary Diocese of Melanesia in relation to the Province of New Zealand and as to whether the diocese should be divided as between the Australian Church and the New Zealand Church was discussed by the president of General Synod (Archbishop Averill) in his opening address to Synod this afternoon. “ There are questions of vital importance awaiting ventilation, and, if possible, decision by this Synod,” he said. There has been growing up during the past few years a certain uneasiness, sometimes almost amounting to friction, in connection with the status of the Melanesian Mission and its relationship to the province, which is calculated to weaken the close bond of sympathy between the province and her missionary daughter, and to affect the financial support which people in England and in New Zealand has been given s > willingly by church since the inception of the mission. It is in the best interests of the mission, as well as of the province, that any grievances should be ventilated and a new im |»etus given to the work of the mission."

Referring to the question of the relationship of the Missionary Diocese of Melanesia to the province, the Primate said that the report of the commission set up last December to • inquire generally into the meaning and effect of the constitution in regard to the matter would be laid before the General Synod in the course of its sittings. He urged that -the mission return as far as possible to the status which it originally held in the minds of Bishops Selwyn and Patteson so that it might retain the unique position which it Ead occupied in the hearts of the church people of New Zealand. “ I think,” he said, “ it has drifted somewhat from its true and favoured position with consequent loss to New Zealand and the mission.”

The President read lengthy quotations bearing on the status of the mission, and led up to the deductions:—(l) That tip Melanesian Mission was accepted as the joint responsibility of the Church in Australia and New Zealand; (2) that s.rictly speaking there was no defined boundaries to the m’ssion, but that the bishop had a roving commission oyer the Western and Southern Pacific; and (3) that the mission or missionary diocese was duly associated with the Synod and the Church in this province. “ Both for political and ecclesiastical reasons,” saidathe primate, “ it is highly desirable that the Australian Church should take over full responsibility for the Northern Territory, and that it should be dissociated from the sphere of

the present Melanesian Mission. The Australian Church, with financial assistance from England, is willing to finance operations in that area, and it is inadvisable that there should be any kind of dual control in connection with the prosecution of the Church’s work there. .If this Synod deems it wise and expedient so to divide the presen. Missionary Diocese of Melanesia, action should be taken at the present session, inasmuch as no division of a missionary diocese or alteration of the boundaries thereof shall be made without the consent of the Synod of such diocese and of the General Synod.”