The Trouble at St. Andrew's

For years, incense hung heavy in the air of St. Andrew's Mission Church in the little English township of Carshalton, Surrey. Candles cast a golden glow in the churchly dark, and High Mass was celebrated without a flaw in the ritual of the Roman Catholic Church. There was one slight flaw, however. St. Andrew's belongs to the Church of England.

The Rev. Rice Alforth Evelyn Harris, 72, has been quietly going his own Roman way at St. Andrew's for 33 years. But this spring he found himself with a new bishop and a peck of trouble. Southwark's Bishop Mervyn Stockwood (who caused a ripple of censure himself when he arrived in Southwark wearing a bow tie) heard of the popish goings-on at St. Andrew's and called Anglican Harris on the carpet. Yes, said the priest, he celebrated the Roman Mass instead of Anglican Communion (and included a prayer for the Pope as "Head of the Church"). Yes, he had celebrated the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary--not recognized by the Church of England. In fact, said Harris, he deplored the Reformation and felt no loyalty to the post-Reformation church. Then he resigned.

Next day Harris tried to retract his resignation, but the bishop would hear no more of it. Going down to Surrey last week, he locked the doors of St. Andrew's and called a meeting of 120 parish leaders in the parish mother church, All Saints. When everyone was assembled, the bishop barred the doors to Harris sympathizers, gave his audience an angry lecture. For 20 minutes he thundered of "lawlessness and disloyalty" and "doctrines that undermined the position of the Church of England," to the accompaniment of noisy rattlings on the doors.

Later at a press conference, the bishop explained that it was not Harris' "near-Catholic trimmings and trappings" he objected to, but his departure from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. "In the Church of England there is a considerable degree of liberty allowed to the clergy in interpretation of doctrine and in ceremonial practice. We are both a Catholic and a Reformed Church. That means to say that the Church of England is the official and authorized expression of the one Catholic Church in this country. But at the same time, it has been cleansed of the abuses and corrupt doctrines of the Middle Ages." Asked if many parishioners had been converted to Roman Catholicism as a result of the ousted priest's activities, Dr. Stockwood snorted, "Perverted, not converted."

The letters columns of Britain's newspapers erupted in praise and censure of the bishop. Romanesque Anglican Harris packed off to a small hotel in Devon, "desolate" at his dismissal. He could not and would not become a Roman Catholic, he said. But he still had a puckish message for "certain" people in the Church of England: "Up the Pope!"

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