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New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVIII, Issue 7, 14 August 1912, Page 11

Church v. Civil Courts. The Archbishop of Canterbury has written a long letter in reply to tha Bishop of London, who appealed for an authoritative pronouncement of the Church's attitude toward the recent decision of the House of lairds in the deceased wife’s sister ease. The Lords upheld a decision of the Court of Arehes admonishing Canon Thompson, of Norwich, for repelling from Holy Communion Mr. and Mrs. Bannister, on the ground that they were “open and notorious evil livers, ’ because ■Mrs. Bannister was the sister of her hits band's first wife. “The contention,” writes the Archbishop, “that it rests with Parliament or wit-h the civil courts and not with the Church itself, which has authorities and courts for the purpose, to determine the. conditions of the admission of our members to Holy Communion is untenable, and if it were to bo authoritatively asserted acquiescence in it would be impossible. “It has not, so far as I can see. been authoritatively asserted, though I own that some of the judicial language used in the civil courts seems to go perilously near to such a contention. “As regards the practical question whzch underlies these technical points—the question, namely, whether a man who under the existing law marries his deeeased wife’s sister ought or ought not to be admitted to Holy Communioiv —no universal or sweeping decision has .been, or, I think, can rightly be, laid down. “A few weeks after the passing of the Act I wrote to my ovtn dioeese a long letter, in> which I tried to deal with the whole system which had arisen. In it I pointed out that, greatly as I deplored the Act, it is, in my judgment, iinnossi'de to retrard a man as becoming ipeo facto 'an open and notorious evil liver’ on account solely of contracting that particular marriage after it had as a civil contract been expressly sanctioned by English law. If, as is perfectly possible, he is to be rightly repelled from Communion cither for a time or permanently, such repulsion would have to be on other grounds than the application of the words which I have quoted. "It seems to me that the most important thing to bear in mind at this moment is that nothing has really been done which impairs the Church’s right through her own authorities and tribunals to interpret her own Rubrics and to regtdate 'her own terms of Communion.'’