CHURCH WARS

Hokitika Guardian, 13 April 1928, Page 4

CHURCH WARS

EUCHARISTIC PROCESSION. ANCI.I CAN CONST IT U T lON. SYDNEY, March 23. Sydney has been something of a big; ecclesiastical battle ground the last few weeks. It looked at one stage as though it would lie left to the Methodists to fight their own battle over the coming Eucharistic procession. The other Churches held aloof from it, until the Presbyterians of Sydney came to light with a motion viewing with concern the procession and the elevation of the Host. 'The motion, however, has gone no further than the formal submission stage, so the .Methodists are still without active support, although there is talk of a big deputation to the Government over the matter. While the Methodists’ war was raging. the Anglicans were active on another front with the vexed question of a new Constitution. That little war. which revealed two • spirited school of thought, and in which both the clergy and the laity spilt much ink. through the newspaper cloumns, lias since been carried to Synod. Sydney, as far as can he seen at present, will fall into line, on broad principle, with the ‘2l other dioceses which have already accepted the new Coiistitution, so long as the old safeguards of faith j are safeguarded.

ruder this reform, the Church of England in Austarlia will, of course, still he part and parcel of the Mother Church, it is not a question of “ cutting the painter.” What is being done simply amounts, briefly, to a big constitutional advance, enabling the Anglican Church in the Commonwealth to take its destiny more fully into its own hands. That is wluit it means, although the battle in Synod has been fought out in phraseology which lias been something of a cross-word puzzle to the man in the street who has been sufficiently curious or interested to try to find out what it was all about.