To the Editor of The Living Church:[1]
ALLOW me through your columns to answer some communications made me concerning the interpretation now being placed in some dioceses on the amendment to the 19th canon.
Yours very faithfully,
C. C. Fond du Lac.
“Bishop’s House,
Fond du Lac, Wis., April 6, 1908.
“My Dear Sir:—
“As an ‘Ambassador’ of the King, Jesus Christ, and a ‘messenger’ from the Kingdom of Heaven, I have no wish to escape any responsibility for the message God may make known through me.
“I believe, and so declare, that as it is now being interpreted in some Eastern dioceses, Canon 19 is contrary to the faith as this Church has received it.
“As a Bishop of the Church, first, I pronounce it to be unconstitutional. The Canons and Ordinal of our Apostolic Church allow for a ministry whose members have been examined and approved of by the Standing Committee of the diocese and ordained according to the form set forth in the Prayer Book by a Bishop. It is unconstitutional to allow the Bishop, by a mere license, to put anyone to preach his own ideas in our pulpits and act as a religious instructor to our people.
“This canon also violates the ‘holding out’ of the Church to candidates for Holy Orders, that she alone is possessed of an Apostolical and so valid ministry; trusting to which ‘holding out,’ so many ministers have been induced to make the sacrifice of their lives by leaving their former sectarian connections, submitting to Episcopal re-ordination, and becoming ministers of the Episcopal Church.
“I am also opposed to the canon as it is being interpreted because it alters our Church’s position about the ministry, and doing so, frees Bishops and clergy from their oath of canonical obedience. The Episcopal Church, if the ‘Open Pulpit’ becomes the allowed interpretation of the canon, is no longer the Church to which they promised it. It has broken its faith to them, and altered fundamentally its character.
“Again, it is a most undesirable canon, for it is no expression of good fellowship to the sectarian minister, but rather is a proffered insult to him. It only regards him as a ‘Christian man,’ i.e., a layman, who is allowed by the Episcopal license to speak in our churches. I do not see how a self-respecting sectarian, who believes that he is a minister of Christ, can accept the insult.
“Moreover, it can bring no spiritual help to our people, save on the belief that our Orders and Sacraments cannot and do not develop any greater helps to the spiritual life; and (when rightly used) a higher degree of sanctity and union with Christ, than the sectarian system, which is destitute of Bishops and priesthood and has only the one sacrament of lay Baptism, and has an imperfect conception of holiness and our partaking in Christ of the divine nature.
“It is objectionable, also, because it testifies to the erroneous idea, that without the Apostolic priesthood and sacraments, sectarianism can develop without the grace of Confirmation, Absolution, the Real Presence of Christ’s Body and Blood in the Eucharist, the same degree of holiness that is to be found in the Catholic Church, the Anglican branch of it, and as is to be seen in their saints.
“Again, the canon has alarmed thousands of our laity, and unsettled many of our clergy, who have thereby lost confidence in our Bishops and so in the Church, and a number of whom have lately felt forced to go to Rome and more are contemplating secession.
“This canon will not help on the union of the Apostolic Churches, but be a fatal hindrance to it; and if it tends to union with the heretical and schismatic Protestant bodies, it will end in dividing our own communion and be practical suicide. Why should it not be recast and Churchmen live in peace and harmony as formerly?
“C. C. Fond du Lac.”
[1] The Living Church, May 9, 1908, p. 57.
Richard Mammana 