The Church Congress opened at Bradford on Tuesday . The Archbishop
of York, preaching in the parish church after observing that diversity of opinion was in itself a neces- sary prelude to the discovery of truth, and only became hindrance and a reproach in the Church in its unseemly manifestations, said that what they really had to dread was "the accentuation of these differences by the formation of rival societies and the tendency to create a position of antagonism where there ought only to be one of friendly dis cussion." In illustration of such unseemly manifestations he pointed to the recent newspaper controversy, which had only confirmed him in his conviction that public discussion wai not always a necessity, though it testified to the " deep-seated antipathy to Romanism which was happily characteristic of the great majority of the people of England." As to the
facts of th. case, which had been grossly exaggerated and misrepresented, inquiry had shown that the number of clergy who in their services made use of methods characteristically Roman or alien from the comprehensive character of the Church of England was very small. He further declared that there was not a single Bishop in England who had not been doing all he could to get rid of Roman Catholic books of devotion and forms of service. At the same time, he held it was unjust and un-Christian to denounce the offenders as traitors and Jesuits in disguise. It was vain to hope that they could bring the services of the Church to an exact level of uniformity, and be condemned as unwise and undesirable the movement to obtain from Parliament a special statute to regulate excesses in ritual and impose penalties upon those concerned in their introduction. The Archbishop concluded a militant harangue by saying that the clergy "resented the irrelevant interference of ignorant demagogues, and being made the victims of an agitation promoted by disappointed politicians in search of some popular cry for a General Election." It must be a long time since an Archbishop has delivered so pointed an attack on a leader of Opposition from the pulpit.
Previous page
