Want to be 'Catholic'

New Zealand Tablet, Volume 40, Issue 40, 1 October 1903, Page 1

Want to be 'Catholic '

The assumption of the title ' Catholic ' by merely national or congregational creeds is one of the many evidences of the new spirit that has been moving over the face of the Protestant Churches since the days of the Oxford Movement. Pious and thoughtful Protestants of every creed are filled with distress and shame at tfee sight of the thousand warring sections into which the Reformed denominations have broken up. Reunion is in the air ; the term ' Protestant ' is repudiated with hot indignation by a large section of Anglicans ; and the hankering after the name, if not the reality, of 4 Catholic ' is one of the pathetic features of the new movement which is gradually bearing our separated brethren nearer to the portals of the one and only Church that is Catholic in fact as it is in name. The ' Lamp,' an

American Protestant Episcopal (Anglican) organ, has the following remarks on the subject in a recent issue :

' It is a happy omen of better times that Protestantism is being discredited and repudiated on every hand by the children of those who emblazoned Protestant on their banners and thanked God that they weie not Catholics. Now the tide is running in the opposite direction. Everybody wants to be called Catholic. The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of Amenta is simply nauseated with the woid Pioteslant. . . The only trouble about discarding the old name is, we are not quite certain whether we ought to call ourselves simply " the Church in the US.," or " The Catholic Church in the U 5.A.," or " The American Chuich," or " The American Catholic Church," or " The American Branch of the Catholic Church in the United States of America," or just to drop the hateful woid Protestant and call ourselves " The Episcopal Church," as most people do already. Nor is it the " Episcopalians " alone who desnc to be read and known of all men as " Catholics." The Methodists have discovered that Wesley edited a Prayer Book and that it contained the Apostles' Creed, and that therefore orthodox; Methodists believe in " The Holy Catholic Cnurch." Nor m this regard are Presbyterians, Baptists, or Congregationalists one whit behind their Methodistic bretlncn Even L nitarians want to sit on the Catholic platform It is also worthy of note that the newest sects and chinches precipitated upon Christendom have no use for the woid Protestant, it is either " Old Catholic," or " Independent Catholic," or " Polish Catholic," oi " Catholic Apostolic " ; and that Chicago monstrosity, the sect of Dr. John Alexander Dowie, is, if you please, " The Christian Catholic Church," the most assertive and monopolistic of them all.'