“PRIMITIVE MAGIC”

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 283, 20 February 1928, Page 11

“PRIMITIVE MAGIC”

ANGLO-CATHOLIC BELIEF TRANSUBSTANTIATION IDEA ADDRESS BY CANON JAMES “I am far from accepting Dr. E. W. Barnes’s language about the Eucharist as altogether satisfac* tory; but I think his protest as necessary as it is courageous,” said Canon Percival James at St. Mary’s Church, yesterday. “He protests against the movement within the Church of England to introduce ‘the root principle of idolatry—the belief in a Deity localised in material objects through the invocation of a priest’ He declares that he has found that ‘all the serious administrative difficulties of Anglican bishops to-day are due to newly-introduced practices which have no sense or meaning unless some erroneous doctrine akin to Transubstantiation is held.’

“So also Dean Inge declares that a large school of Anglican clergy are ‘teaching doctrines which are indistinguishable from Transubstantiation.* On their side the Roman Catholics agree. Four years ago, 3,000 AngloCatholic clergymen signed a declaration concerning their doctrine of the Eucharist, which a Jesuit theologian pronounced to be in complete accordance with: the Roman doctrine on the subject. “Consider the rubrics (that is, directions), about Reservation, the rock on which the Prayer Book Measure was shipwrecked in the House of Commons,” said Canon James. “Certainly it was stated that the consecrated bread and wine might be reserved to be carried to the sick, ‘and shall be used for no other purpose whatever —there shall be no service or ceremony in connection with the sacrament so reserved,’ but a joint manifesto of three Anglo-Catholic societies declared that they ‘could not accept the rubrics as to Reservation so long as they absolutely prohibit all corporate worship of our Lord in the holy sacrament when reserved/

“In hundreds of English parish churches the consecrated elements are reserved in a ‘tabernacle’ above the holy table for the purpose of adoration. Old and young are taught to make their devotions before the presence of our Lord localised there. The modern Roman Catholic service of benedition is introduced, in which the people are blessed by our Lord present in the reserved elements. He is referred to as the ‘Prisoner of the Tabernacle.’

“The Reserved Sacrament is carried in procession. That is what the Romanising party in the Church of England is determined to make, as its organ the ‘Church Times’ declares, ‘the general rule of the Church of England, certain to be more and more followed as time goes on.* This party was too strong for the English bishoos. Their strict rules were utterly nullified and stultified by a subsequent clause that the consecrated elements might be reserved ‘if need be, in some other place approved by the bishop.’ The effect of this clause was clearly proclamed by the ‘Church Times.’ It will enable the tabernacle to be retained in most of the churches where it is already in use.’ ” “In face of all this there is ample justification for the sentence of Bishop Barnes which has brought upon him the most furibus wrath of his assailants; “ ‘lt is easy to pass from the idea that sacraments were to reveal God. to a belief that through them we can mechanically bring God to men, or cause Him to locate Himself in some object or place. Such a belief belongs to the realm of primitive