THE EUCHARISTIC CONGRESS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9188, 10 September 1908, Page 5

THE EUCHARISTIC CONGRESS.

A PROCESSION OBJECTED TO. Received September 9, 8.30 a.m. LONDON, September 8. The Protestant Association has requested the police to forbid a procession of the Blessed Sacrament in the neighbourhood of Westminster Catholic Cathedral, as being illegal and idolatrous. The procession will be the chief ceremonial in connection with the Eucharistic Congress. A guard of honour consisting of 20,000 men is being organised. Received September 9, 11.3 p.m. LONDON, Septemberß. A meeting of the London Council of fifty-one United Protestant Societies, at which Mr C. McArthur, M.P., presided, it was resolved to urge the Government to forbid the procession of the Adoration of the Host, in connection with the Eucharist Conference, through the public thoroughfares. They have telegraphed the petition to King Edward, and sent to four hundred Peers and members of the of Commons a message inviting them to usa their influence to prevent the procession, which they feared might cause a riot, and even bloodshed. Mr McArthur and others, in letters published in the newspapers, describe the profession in public of the Adoration of the Host as an attempt to create a precedent for similar processions in all the great towns of the Empire, thus leading to religious feuds.

The Eucharistic Conference, which is to be held from the 13th to the 19thinst., will be one of the greatest Roman Catholic gatherings in the Mother Country since the Reformat tion. Roman Catholic dignitaries from all parts of the world will be present. The conference will deal with the basic principle underlyingthe Roman Catholic faith, which is the Eucharistic Sacrifice, or Holy Communion. Catholic theologians have in the past directed all their thoughts to the realisation of what Christ meant when He broke bread with His disciples, and all the great doctors of the church have joined in accepting His words in a literal sense. While there can be no deviation from the doctrine of the Real Presence, the conference is expected to have a great educational effect on many points which have exercised the minds of theologians in England for hundreds of years past.