BISHOP BRODIE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXVIV, Issue 70, 28 February 1916, Page 4

BISHOP BRODIE.

CONSECRATION AT CHRISTCHURCH. JPiin Press Association. Christchurch, February 27. Rev. Dr. M. J. Brodie was consecrated Roman Catholic Bishop of Christchurch at the Barbadoes Street Cathedral this morning. The ceremony, which was a long and impressive one, was attended by a crowded, congregation, and there was a notable gathering oi visitors. The consecration prelate was the Most Rev. Bonaventure Ceretto (Titular Archbishop of Corinth and Delegate Apostolic of Australasia), the assisting prelates being Archbishop Redwood (Wellington), and Bishop Verdon (Dunedin). Other prominent ecclesiastics were present. The sermon was preached by Dean Power, of Hawera, on “The Papacy.” He said that the triumph of the Papacy during the fifteen centuries that had passed since the edict of Constantine was graphically summed one pregnant and picturesque phrase by the most remarkable figure in English public life during the 19th century,—the late W. E. Gladstone, who wrote. “Since the first 300 years of the persecution of the Roman Catholic Church it has marched for 1500 years at the head of human civilisation, driven and harnessed to a chariot as horses in a triumphal car. The chief intellectual material forces of the world is in its learning of the world. Its art is the art of the world; its genius the genius of the world; its greatness, glory, grandeur, and modesty are almost all the world can boast of.”

Dean Power referred to the chief difficulties in the progress of the church, including the English divorce laws, which, he said, opened the door lo the most imperious of all passions, and the most degrading. He also mentioned the destruction ot temporal power.