ANGLICAN CHURCH CONSTITUTION.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1576, 21 October 1912, Page 5

ANGLICAN CHURCH CONSTITUTION.

». PROPOSED CHANGES: VIEWS OP BISHOP CEOSSLEY. In his address to the Anglican Synod of tho diocese of Auckland on Friday, Bishop Crossley referred to the proposal to alter the fundamental provisions of the Church Constitution. He said: Attached to tho fundamentals are the famous words embodied in Clause No. 6: "The aWe provisions shall be deemed fundamental, and it shall not be within the power of the General Synod to alter, revoke, add to, or diminish any of the same." Now, it will be within the knowledge of tho members of the Synod that the style of the Church is entitled in these fundamental provisions, "This branch of tho United Church of England and Ireland in New Zealand." There is provision made that in the event of a separation of the Church from the State in England and Irejand, the General Synod shall have full power to make such alterations in the articles, services, and ceremonies of tho branch of the United Church of England and Ireland in New Zealand as its altered circumstances may require; or, to make such alterations as it may think fit in the authorised version of the Bible. This was in the year 1857. Now, on the question of fundamental or unalterable provisions, a. very instructive analogy may be drawn from the history of the Ch-urch of Ireland. There we have the case of a fundamental proposition, by implication withdrawn from the region of possible alteration oven by the authority enacting it, which the process of history has shown to be alterable, and by that authority. Tho analogy suggests that legislation, based on right (in our case the right of consensual compact), is alterable through the channels which that consensual compact brought into being. But there is a further consideration drawn from history which is of possible weight in this matter, namely, the question of our liberty following .upon tho separation of the Church from the State in England and Ireland. Now a sectional separation has taken place, the Church of Ireland has been separated from the State, and a further sectional separation is very well ,mthm practical politics, namely, the separation of tho Church in Wales from the Church of England. Now, our fundamentals deal w:ih a '.'.United Churcli of England and Ireland." Ireland has, by legislation, disappeared from the compact. Wales may do so to-morrow, and our unalterable fundamental stands concerned with only a fragment, true, a big one, of that which we originally compacted to bo bound by. How much further is the dissolution of that we compacted to be bound by to go on before we gain our freedom ? A prominent member, of the Government in. England tho other day gavo voice to a sort of vision of Provincial Parliaments. It seems to me possible, nay, even probable, that should England thus be dismembered in a Parliamentary sense, the next and almost inevitable move will be to dismember the provinces of the Church of England. For Royal reasons the province of Canterbury might well be left undisturbed and established. And then wo should be in the curious position of being apparently bound by a single province of the Mother Church. tion I wish to ask is, how far the devolution is to go before we can question whether or not wo are bound to the compact to stand by that which once was the United "Church of England and Ireland, which we have teen now broken in two, which any day wo may see further dismembered, and which it is conceivable may be shattered into four or sax sections, ono of which, if it remain established, can still, by virtue of our consensual compact, keep us bound to it liturgically and otherwise? It seems to me that then tho position would be historically reduce.i to an absurditv. Now the question is whether the break which has already taken place did not also give us back our freedom. The alteration, if I remember rightly, of the titles in our Prayer Books from "United Church of England and Ireland" to "Church of v England," was mado, not on Parliamentary sanction, but by the advice of the Law Offices of the Crown. I wish wo had some ecclesiastical "Hague" to refer the wholo question to. ' • But on tho practical result of the'moro or less current assent to the binding nature of tho fundamental provisions of our New Zealand Church wise men have some reason for congratulation. Have we really been ripo for the possibly mangling, but always difficult and delicato process, of revision of tho Prayer Book? Is the General Synod quite the body to undertake tho task? Have we lihirgiologisbs and ritualists (I use the term in the professional sense) enough amongst us to keep us in tho safe and the old paths? Have wo not patience and faith and vision to see approa'ching, or at least to hope for, a larger "Ecclesia Anglicaua" which, in a confederated sense and body, may yet undertake the task of a New Book of Common Prayer? In the meantime, while there are alterations which would bo of undoubted value, and additions which we sorely need to our Compendium of Devotions, I really don't think we havo been very unhappy under it all. Neither have I discovered amongst tho laity a senso of outraged feelings when tho prescribed order was abbreviated or combined, nor is there always a delicate sensitiveness even amongst the clergy about strict and literal adhesion to tho Tubrics of our Book. It is a sort of sensitiveness: which in some quarters might even bo cultivated. And bo you see tho drift of my mind. I am prepared to argue for our rights, and our liberty, hut it is a liberty which. I do not wisli to bo in too great a hurry to use.