Changed Times

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 36, 3 September 1903, Page 1

Changed Times

We are happily far from the days when altars were overthrown all over England, when sacred vestments were destroyed or turned to common or base uses, and when the fate of the ' massing priest ' was the torture chamber, a short ride on a tumbril, a brief interview with the common hangman, and the impaling of his quartered remains, as a traitor, upon the Tower. The Church of England has undergone many a change since those fierce old days. Ever since the days of the Oxford movement our High Church friends have been paying the once hated creed the flattery of imitation. They have been quietly assimilating Catholic doctrines and principles. They have been imitating our ritual, erecting ' altars,' adopting vestments, incense, lighted candles, etc., performing a ceremony which they call the ' Mass,' and although avowedly members of a merely national Church, have "even come to boldly lay claim to a share in the title of ' Catholic ' or universal, which, by right and by the fact of common usage, belongs only to that great and divinely founded organisation which has its centre in the See of St. Peter. This new view of the Church is confined to a small but devout and growing body in the Anglican Church. It has no basis in history, and is interesting chiefly by reason of its abandonment of some of the fundamental principles of the Reformation, its vehement objection to the official and once-loved title of ' Protestant,' and the manner in which it has led, and is

still leading, thoughtful Anglicans day by day into the one, true, and undivided Fold of Christ. The sudden change of title adopted by the Anglican Bishop of Dunedin to that of ' Catholic Bishop of Dunedin,' which raised such an expansive smile upon the faces of readers of the ' Otago Daily Times,' represents a, phase of Anglican Protestantism to which the ' Lamp ' (an extremely ♦ High ' Anglican organ) for June made the following reference, to which we cordially direct his )Lordship's attention : ' To call ourself a Catholic and ignore the Pope is like the play of " Hamlet " with the character of Hamlet left out.' And then it goes on to say : ' The opponents of reunion with Rome call it enslavement. Has- the Church of England ever ceased to be enslaved since the Tudor tyrants, father, son, and daughter, first made her so ? Submission to the Vicar of Christ in reality means emancipation from enslavement. God hasten the day when Anglicans will think lovingly of the successor of St. Peter as our Holy Father, and gladly render him filial obedience.'