THE PRESBYTERIAN MODERATOR’S RULING

Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 46, 18 November 1926, Page 8

THE PRESBYTERIAN MODERATOR’S RULING

BASED ON IMPERFECT KNOWLEDGE. Sir,—l regret that the Presbyterian Assembly has not seen its way to get placed on its records the rescinding by a commission of a calumnious and unconstitutional condemnation of me in 1921. A commission with full assembly powers gave me first a solemn oral assurance of this rescinding, anti then an assurance in writing in a judicial finding extending to five foolscap pages of manuscript. I personally informed the Moderator that this judgment had been entirely suppressed from assembly, and a report that reported nothing substituted. 1 also informed him that my petition to the assembly on this grave suppression of facts had been blocked by the Wellington Presbytery, and he rules again that the assembly can only considpr the question by a petition through that presbytery! The present Moderator of assembly has won high praise for throwing light on international problems, and there is probably no man in New Zealand more competent to. speak on the enigma of China than Mr. McNeur. Me has, however, no first-hand knowledge of the facts of the case in which he has given his ruling. He assumes that the commission’s report was one that it could shorten or lengthen as it pleased. It was a report of a judgment in a case, and the judgment could not be cut and carved, but it could by wrong doing be entirely suppressed, and it was entirely suppressed, and in that fact is a grave scandal. When this judgment, adverse to a section in the local presbytery, was denounced publicly by a leader of the section. I sent the newspaper reports to the chairman of the commission and he replied as follows: "Napier, 18/3/24: Dear Mr. Wood, Mr. Howes and I have been discussing some of the points raised in your letter, and I have forwarded it to him. I wish him to see the newspaper cuttings but I asked him to return them to you. Mr. Howes will probably write you. All I wish to say is, that we were a judicial commission with assembly powers and our decision is final. It is not a report to the General Assembly at all. But I do not wish yon to make anv use of this letter” . What Mr. Asher means here, is that the finding was a judicial decision to bo received by the assembly, but not a mere report that could be criticised or alrted. It was a final judgment and 1 part, of this final judgment was the reI schilling of an unconstitutional reso- [ lotion of condcnination o fme in absence and without citations. The Moderator’s ruling cuts right across the practice of the Presbyterian Church in another way. ' He assumes that the commission can withhold the record of its proceedings from the assembly, and the papers in the case. But ho is in error. The Book of Order of the Lrish Church enjoins thatjmt only the judicial decision of a commission, but all its records and papers should be transmitted to assembly to be put in charge of the clerk as church property. I understand that the commission not only suppressed its judicial decision, but also withheld from assembly its records and papers. I have asked for access to these papers and have asked in vain.—l am, etcROBERT WOOD. Karori, November 17, 1926.