AMERICAN CLERGYMAN

Waikato Times, Volume 106, Issue 17837, 9 October 1929, Page 14

AMERICAN CLERGYMAN

WILL HE BE UNFROCKED? A BISHOP CRITICISED. Action looking to the unfrocking of the Rev. Dr. James Empringham, once an Anti-Saloon League leader and for many years superintendent of the Church Temperance Society, will not be taken until well on in the Fall, says the New York Times. Bishop William T. Manning, who is at Mount Desert, and the Rev. Dr. Charles K. Gilbert, secretary of the Protestant Episcopal Diocese, who is on vacation in Massachusetts, will not return for some weeks. The presence of both is considered necessary before proceedings are instituted. Bishop Manning said that he had received the letter mailed toy Dr. Empringham, in which the clergyman criticised the Bishop and offered to resign from the Church and renounce Holy Orders. “I have nothing further to say • about it whatsoever,” the Bishop said. On the previous evening, apprised of the context of the letter which had been given out toy Dr. Enipringtoam for publication, Bishop Manning had said, “The necessary ecclesiastical action will of course be taken.” The Bishop also indicated that Dr. Empringham’s Reno divorce last June and his remarriage in Mexico made his position as a Protestant Episcopal clergyman wholly untenable. Despile his statement in his letter to the Bishop that lie was coming to New York to confront his "dcfamers.” Dr. Empringham has not yet arrived. Officials at the Health Department had given up speculating upon the possibility of the clergyman’s return and Deputy Attorney General So! Ullman was out of town but his office had heard nothing from Dr. Empringham. The health officials have threatened to prosecute him for operating an X-ray machine without a perm’d in the Health Education Soc : cty clinic, whicli lie conducted, and State authorities are considering prosecution for this alleged practice of medicine without a license.