Better Go To Church

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1034, 26 July 1930, Page 8

Better Go To Church

OR RISK COURT SUMMONS DO you know that you are liable to be proceeded against in the courts if you do not attend church on Sunday, asks an English writer? What would you think if on Monday or Tuesday evening, when you arrived home from work, a policeman was on the doorstep to serve you with a summons with a view to punishing you for your neglect of public worship ? Tet such is the law.

An Act ot Parliament passed in 1552, in the reign of Edward VI., which is still in force, never having been repealed, declares that all persons, except those dissenting from the worship of the Church of England and who habitually attend for worship elsewhere, must if they have no lawful or reasonable excuse for absence, attend their parish church on all Sundays and other days set aside as holy days. * This law would press heavily on hundreds of Auckland citizens who, tired out with standing at Eden Park and cheering themselves hoarse, decided to potter about at home for a quiet Sunday instead of going to church. Would the magistrates accept such an explanation? Would the Police Department feel up to the task of making out blue papers for thousands of Auckland people, week after week, in accordance with the decree of a law long since obsolete? Failure without lawful or reasonable excuse to attend the church reu ders anyone liable to be proceeded against in the ecclesiastical courts of England and to be censured for his neglect and admonished as to his future attendance.

In a similar category come the provisions against Sunday trading, except that in this case the offence is dealt with always by the civil courts. There was a case only recently in a northern English town of a greengrocer who was summoned by the local Bench for opening his shop and selling goods on a Sunday. He was fined ten shillings, which sum he solemnly tendered in forty-eight farthings and nine shillings in threepenny pieces and left the police to count the coins. He was entitled to pay in this way, for coppers are legal tender up to one shilling and silver coins up to forty' shillings. It has been said with some truth that the advent of the bicycle, and much more the coming of the motorcar, have caused the neglect of the statutory- obligation to attend church every Sunday on such a large scale that from a practical point of view it has been found well nigh impossible to enforce the statute. At first its en-

forcement became neglected, and then later ignored altogether, and now when one is told that by Act of Parliament he can be punished for not attending church he listens with incredulity. The non-attendance at church is punishable by the ecclesiastical courts, but it may be asked in what cases can proceedings now be taken in the church courts? Well, apart from the punishment of ecclesiastical offences of the clergy, who naturally come under the especial jurisdiction of these courts, they have not very wide powers nowadays. By the common law of England, parishioners can be compelled to repair the body of their parish church and to provide all things essential to the performance of Divine service therein, and the rector can be compelled to repair the chancel. A recent case that aroused mu.h comment and criticism showed that the ecclesiastical courts are no dead letter. A man had purchased some laud to which attached an obligation to carry out such repairs as might from time to time be necessary, and failure would have meant the cost falling upon the poor village parishioners, under the common law rule stated above. And so the ecclesiastical court exercised its very effective method of enforcing its decrees by attachment of the person for contempt of the order it had made just in the same way as civil courts frequently are compelled to do. The interest aroused by the case was really on account of the infre quency with which such cases arise, but it does provide an instance, in a very practical manner, of one of the very few remaining cases in which the •ecclesiastical courts have jurisdiction, incidentally over the layman, in connection with church property in the same way as more naturally perhaps they have over ecclesiastical persons

The Rev. W. E. Lush, of Auckland, who knows a good deal about these quaint old laws, says that to the best of his knowledge the statute in question is still in force. He adds that there is another strange old Elizabethan law which requires church wardens to round up the congregation before church time!