Prayer & Controversy

A month ago, parlor conversation in Great Britain was confined largely to the incredibly bad weather (TIME, Jan. 9). Last week, all over England, people talked religion. Catholicism vs. Anglicanism, high-church vs. low-church, once abstract topics for addled theologians, had overnight become contests of national importance. From king to country squire, every church goer in Great Britain was hotly excited.

The excitement had begun a month ago when the House of Commons refused to authorize a new Anglican prayer book, on the grounds that it was too sympathetic with practices of a Roman Catholic complexion.

A fortnight ago, Pope Pius XI penned an encyclical which made the pan sputter more loudly. Herein he effectively blasted hopes of a reunion between the Roman Catholic and the Anglican Church, as has hitherto been proposed.

Then, last week, Lord Halifax, extreme high-churchman and therefore advocate of Anglican-Roman Catholic Unity, published a report of pro-unity conversations, at the late Cardinal Mercier's home in Malmes, Belgium. Thereby Lord Halifax dropped a red herring into a pretty kettle of fish. In these reports, it was stated that high-church Anglicans would qualifiedly admit the constitutional supremacy of the Bishop of Rome. The English man-in-the-pew, who historically regards the pope as a cross between an eel and an ogre, bellowed with rage.

Climactically, the Anglican Bishops announced last week that they had revised their new prayer book. But when they had announced the slight changes effected, these left the prayer book still quite satisfactory to the high-church bishops, still eminently unsatisfactory to the low-church man-in-the-pew. He was startled, and like his ancestors, almost terrified by the suspicion that the Anglican hierarchy was dominated by distinctly Romish proclivities. His alarm reached the proportions of a panic, when the Archbishop of Canterbury subtly warned him that if the House of Commons did not now accept the prayer book, the Anglican Church might split, that disseparation from the British Government would be inevitable. Why, asked the layman, was the old Archbishop so willing to fight for these "Romish practices": Why, indeed, if not because most of the Bishops around him were "suspiciously Romish" in their beliefs?

In the sizzle of controversy which followed the layman's sudden realization of a religious crisis, there was heard loud and clear the voice of one member of the house of Bishops who was clearly not Romish in his beliefs. This was the Rt. Rev. Ernest William Barnes, modernist Bishop of Birmingham, whose statements about the biblical story of creation caused him recently, when about to preach from a London church, to be heckled or assailed by a brother clergyman. Bold, blunt, intellectual liberal, he stated that the new prayer book, after revision, was still "gravely inadequate," and that the Bishops had refused to accept a proposal "to insert in the prayer book a simple statement of our doctrine on the holy communion," that "the House of Commons must almost of necessity reject the new proposals."

To understand a triangular controversy whose corners are so shadowy, it is wise to bear in mind a few of the more obvious essentials that distinguish one participant from another. There follow seven points on which Roman Catholics, Anglican Catholics, and low-church Anglicans differ in greater or less degree. (Only a minority of high-church Anglicans may be described as Anglo-Catholics. But as an Anglo-Catholic is very like a Catholic, so a high-churchman is very like an Anglo-Catholic.)

Rule of Faith. Catholics believe what they are taught by a living indefectible authority, the only holy Catholic and apostolic church. Anglo-Catholics, claiming that the Church ceased to be one at the time of the Greek Schism (1054 A.D.) receive their faith from the scriptures and the traditional teachings of the church fathers prior to this date, particularly as formulated in the creeds. Low-churchmen place less emphasis upon the teachings of the early fathers of the church, allow a more individual interpretation of the scriptures.

The Pope. Papal infallibility & supremacy is recognized by all Roman Catholics. Anglo-Catholics eager for church unity are ready to allow the Pope a constitutional supremacy, while not affirming his infallibility. Low-churchmen abhor the idea of papal supremacy.

The Eucharist (known to most Protestants as the Lord's Supper, or Communion) is regarded by Roman Catholics as including transubstantiation; i. e., bread and wine actually cease to be bread and wine, becoming instead the body and blood of Christ. This, the substance as distinguished from the accidents (the appearance) of the bread and wine, may be adored. Most Anglo-Catholics reserve the sacrament for "adoration." No low-churchmen do so.

Virgin Mary. By the dogma of the immaculate conception, Roman Catholics regard the Virgin Mary as a unique human person, by virtue of being without original or actual sin. Anglo-Catholics may believe in this dogma but it is not an integral part of their creed; many address prayers to the Virgin. Low-churchmen do not pray to the Virgin; she is reverenced but, by those who enjoy detecting a fine distinction, as the mother of Christ rather than as the mother of God.

Other Saints are invoked by Roman Catholics with the belief that they may aid mankind through their intercession with God. They are so invoked by Anglo-Catholics.

Monastic Orders are an integral part of the Roman Catholic church. Anglo-Catholics have never taken a position against monastic orders, but, with the desertion of insistence upon the celibacy of the clergy, they fell into desuetude. Now, Anglo-Catholics have monastic orders, even in the U. S. Low-churchmen regard them with disfavor.

Purgatory. Roman Catholics believe in Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory. Anglican Catholics believe in Heaven, Hell, and with less insistence, in an intermediate afterlife. Low-churchmen believe in some kind of Hell and some kind of Heaven.

In the U. S., the Protestant Episcopal Church is not established by the Government as is the Anglican Church in England. Otherwise its situation is largely parallel. High-church and low-church divisions obtain; pulpit-occupants are more likely than pew-sitters to swing to high-churchliness. Excitement in the U. S. was therefore stirred, last week, less by prospects of disestablishment in Great Britain than by the papal encyclical and its effects upon church unity.

The most virulent, emphatic, & apposite comment on the encyclical, which reiterated Roman Catholic refusal to make unifying concessions (TIME, Jan. 23), was that contributed by Dr. Robert Norwood, Manhattan non-sectarian clergyman. Famed for the sweeping periods of his rhetoric, for the expansive, oratorical gestures with which he embellishes his sermons, he stated his opinion of the Pope's document at a meeting of the American Waldensian* Aid Society: "The encyclical recently compounded is a childish document springing from an obsolescent ecclesiasticism, a remote legacy of the imperial idea of ruling the Kingdom of Christ by the Imperialism of Caesar. ... I am a Protestant because of the Galilean Carpenter who was the best protestant of all. ... He dealt, not in creed and dogma, but in life and humanity. . . . Love will solve the problem of all the unnecessary debates and bickering hates among the churches. Christ has been crucified many times by ecclesiasticism."

The Right Rev. William Thomas Manning, Bishop of New York, like many a bishop inclined to deal pleasantly with the Roman hierarchy, uttered his dictum on the encyclical and upon church unity at the annual meeting of the Church Women's League for Patriotic Service in the Manhattan home of Mrs. Whitelaw Reid, social bigwig. Said Bishop Manning: "We are living in very interesting times. . . . Great movements are going on all about us. ... I want to say that I hope no one will feel in the least discouraged or doubtful as to the progress of the movement [for union] on account of any pronouncement that may come from anywhere, even though it might seem unfortunate at the moment."

--A pre-reformation sect founded circa 1170 by the followers of Peter Waldo, Lyonese merchant who gave away his wealth to the poor, taught voluntary poverty.