THE CECUMENICAL (?) COUNCIL.

Thames Guardian and Mining Record, Volume I, Issue 15, 24 October 1871, Page 3

THE CECUMENICAL (?) COUNCIL.

To the Editor of the TnAMES Guardian. Sir, —Will you kindly allow me through your paper to enquiie whether it is correct to call the late council at Rome “ (Ecumenical ?” The Council was certainly a large and important gathering of bishops of that branch of the Church which acknowledges allegiance to the Bishop of Rome ; but as the ancient and extensive Eastern Church —the Scandinavian Church, the United Church of England and Ireland, and the American Church were not represented, the Council was no more a (Ecumenical Council than was the meeting of the Bishops of the American and English Churches at Lambeth a few years ago. Surely the absence of the Eastern, Scandinavian and Anglican branches of the Church, deprived the Council of its (Ecumenicity. Or look at the subject in another light. The bishops who assembled at Rome to form the Council iu question were the representatives of 109,050,000 Christians ; the bishops who were not there are the representives of 85,770,000 Christians; and if nearly eighty-six millions of Christians who acknowledge the Episcopal form of Church government was unrepresented, how can the Council be entitled to be called a General Council ? And I have said nothing of that portion of Christendom which is not Episcopal, but which Bishop Croke himself admits belongs to and forms part of the “ Catholic Church,” and which therefore should be duly represented at any Council claiming to itself the title (Ecumenical.—l am, &c., A Catholic.