CHURCH FEDERATION

Southland Times, Issue 20044, 4 December 1926, Page 11

CHURCH FEDERATION

THE ANGLICANS OF AUSTRALIA. IMPRESSIONS OF THE SYDNEY CONVENTION. There opened on October 12, in the chapter house, St. Andrew’s Cathedral, Sydney, a convention of representatives of every diocese of the Church of England in the Commonwealth to consider and prepare for the General Synod, which immediately followed, a Bill which should provide an agreed basis on which every diocese might unite to gain from Parliament the power for the entire Anglican communion to speak with one voice, states the Melbourne Argus. At present many dioceses, as in Victoria, are bound by an Act of Parliament passed when the mother diocese came into being. Others, as in Western Australia, are bound by “consensual compact,” which freed them, as the Archbishop of Perth (Dr. Riley) termed it, from “the dead hand of the law” at their foundation. To unite this heterogeneity, and form a homogeneity was, briefly, the purpose of the convention, not, as popularly misunderstood, “to sever the legal nexus” with the Church in England. As a point of law, that was severed at the foundation of each diocese.

j The outstanding figure of the convention, i in more ways than >one, will be granted to have been the Bishop of Bathurst (Dr. Ix>ng), formerly of Melbourne. Arrayed in a purple cassock, with pectoral cross, his tall figure was ns remarkable as his com- ' manding leadership. He had charge of the Bill, and he needed all his powers to maintain the calm and reasoned, temperale and tactful spirit required of him through a sessiou lasting for days, filled wtih meticulous criticism of the draft Bill, and pertinaceous clinging by able lawyers to points of “order” and of law. That he triumphjed is unquestionable. ■That he was occasionally “frayed” is understandable, for both he and Professor Peden, his legid adviser, were compelled to labpur many hours out of session, as well as to be at all time in sefwion at the service of the whole convention. However, Bishop Long has the knack of quick recovery, and if he did txjcasionany object to merciless demands he never failed to recover himself, and he i received warm commendation for his leader--1 sliip and his grasp of knotty problems, as well as for his fine speeches, replete I with erudition, on the chapters of the constitution.

| The phrase-maker of the convention—- ■ there always is one—was Archbishop Riley, of Perth. His venerable figure, dad in the scarlet robe of a doctor of divinity, i commanded reverence, and his witty sallies • ;ind apt expressions provided a welcome counter-foil to the strained character of long sessions. He, a Lancashire man, was conI gratulated on attaining, during the session, his 32nd anniversary of consecration. Another Archbishop, hailing from the same county, was the Primate (Dr. Wright), and | another, and yet another, Archbishops I of Melbourne, and Sharp, of Brisbane, to I whom, in a h amorous way, the Dean of ' Sydney, added himself, as, also from Lancashire. These expressed the felicitations of all present- It was Archbishop Riley who pertinently put the question, in rhetorical vein, “What has the convention to fear jin this bill?” The reply is that, first, it i was feared that the bill would not pass in a I form which would commend its acceptance ! in such widely separated and distinctively ' diverse dioceses as, say, Sydney and North • Queensland. For, until the bill is accepted j by 18 out of 25 dioceses of the Church of ; England in Australia, nothing can be done j toward the Church’s federation. Behind this apprehension lio other causes of doubt. Do the provisions of the bill sufficiently safeguard the continuity of the doctrinal foundation of the Church, for the Church of England is an historic institution? Then also, there is laudable anxiety that the new legal instrument should not hinder the Church in Australia from freely adapting herself to democrate conditions, so that she j may really form part of the national life, ' and not be suspected as an imported exotic ■ from a distant shore.

Beside the clergy were- leading laymen. Sir Littleton Groom, who at times relieved the chairman of committee, the Bishop of Newcastle (Dr. Stephen). Mr. Justice Harvey, Mr. F. C. Purbrick, registrar of Wangaratta, and seconder of the motion introducing the bill, Mr. Herbert Turner, of Melbourne, and chancellor of the Gippsland diocese, and Mr. E. C. Rigby, also of the southern capital, were among the lawyers. But in the forefront, and ever throwing a searchlight of keenest criticism, were Mr. W. J. G. Mann, K.C., Mr. Minton Taylor, and Mr. D’Arcy Irvine, three Sydney lawyers, to whom, as to the Parliamentary opposition, good government owes much. With nearly as many clauses—96—as the Federal Constitution, this ecclesiastical legislation approaches it in length and in national importance, while, as a legal authority remarked, it exceeds it in abstract and difficult content. That a convention gathered from the whole of the Commonwealth could be brought into agreement speaks as highly for the’ temper of the assembly as for the ability displayed by the protagonists. After acceptance by the dioceses, Parliament has to enable the new Constitution to be legalised. Presumably that will be easily effected, and then will the Commonwealth have incorporated in its being, as a component part, another national Church, of historic association, of proved capacity to influence a nation at its source, of strength of idealistic presentation, and of a comprehensiveness which has become proverbial. What was done in the convention is of importance to every citizen, for, thereby, all that the Church of England stands for will be closely and fondly woven into the ways and woof of the community.