RIGHT OF COMMUNION.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 775, 26 March 1910, Page 9

RIGHT OF COMMUNION.

LETTER BY THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. Letters have passed between the Rev. Dr. Inge, Lady Margaret, Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, and the Archbishop of Canterbury in reference to the ■ situation created in tho Church of England by tho recent judgments- of, the Master of tho Rolls and Lord Justice Moulton in the Deceased Wifo's Sister case. Dr. Inge, in asking the Archbishop to give him information as to tho real effect and significance of this judgment, wrote that both their lordships, "especially the last-named, seem to base their decision on a principle which must" bo intolerable to all Churchmen except a few extremo Erastians, viz., that tho Church lias no right to exercise the discipline of exclusion in consequence of any action the law has sanctioned." In. his reply, the Archbishop states that hb does not think that a legal decision has been, pronounced which carries tho, implication tbat it rests with the State, as such, to determine the terms of admission to Holy Communion iii 'thp Church of England. "Tho Court of Arches," - he 'says, I "has given a. quite ambiguous judgment upon tlio.only, question, raised before it.; tho question, namely, whether a man who has married ..• his ; deceased wife's sister can, on that sole account, be .lawfully repelled from Holy Communion by a parish priest of his own authority. The question was restricted to tho validity or invalidity of the incumbent's act of repulsion carried out on his individual responsibility. The Dean of tho Arches ruled that to contract a legally valid marriage with a deceased wifo's sister docs not, of itself, bring the parties into tho category of 'open and notorious livers' within the meaning of tho Rubric; and further, that a particular proviso in tho recent Act of Parliament, does not, when properly construed, bear the construction for which the incumbent contended. This, and'this only, is tho finding of tho Church Court. "An appeal lies from tho Court of Arches to the Judicial Committee- of tho Privy Council. If the incumbent that JJ)e_Couirt of Arpb.e4.llad.

misconstrued the proviso in the recent statute- he acted with propriety in applying to tho King's Bench for a 'prohibition.' But, following what I cannot help thinking was .unfortunate advice, he not only did this, but also invited the King's Bench and its Court of Appeal to deal with the whole question of the interpretation and scopo of tho Rubric in the offico of Holy Communion. To do this is to endeavour to inako the secular court, to all intents and purposes, a Tribunal of Appeal from the Ecclesiastical Court.

"It is publicly stated that the case is to he carried on further appeal to the House of Lords, and, if this be so, a final and. authoritative judgment will bo obtained as to the interpretation of the proviso of the recent Act. .To this no exception can be taken. What has occurred is simply that, tho pro■viso in the Act of Parliament has been authoritatively construed saibject to a possible appeal to the House of Lords. For the rest the case, as it seems, to me, remains whore is'stood when the judgment of tho Court of Arches had been given." ■- . Commenting \on the above letter, the "Church Times" says: "Dr. Inge's letter only' expressed what is generally understood as the contention of the Court of Appeal in the Banister, v. Thompson case —namely, that it rests] with tho Stato to vary at will the terms of Communion within the' Church. This was the view taken at once by the Bishop of "Birmingham, and* wo . are bound to say that, no other meaning occurred to us. His Grace the Primate endeavours to .reassure Dr. Inge by saying that this was a mere obiter dictum; and that tho judgment itself was confined to the interpretation of the Statute, with especial reference to tho proviso. It is, his Grace wrote, for his Majesty's judges to say what a Statute means. If it so happens that other matters appeared. to have come before the Court, .that was.., because Canon Thompson's legal advisers had directed him' unwisely—a charge which they have indignantly repelled in a letter addressed to tbo press! The Archbishop, we arc thankful to sep, would . he' shocked if / the interpretation.. we have all put upon the decision' could bo proved, .but he is not of that opinion. Wo confess that wo cannot regard as satisfactory or'reassuring his Grace's lawyer-like argument, the cleverness of-which,, however, we admire whikv'we distrust it."