Religion: Unbudgeable Bishops

Dr. William Thomas Manning, 77 and Episcopal Bishop of New York since 1921, set his stern, septuagenarian face, and flatly refused to get off his episcopal throne. Heartened, Buffalo’s Bishop Cam eron Josiah Davis, a comparative young ster of 70, said he would not budge either. The trouble started last October, when the Episcopal Church’s Triennial General Convention (TIME, Oct. 18, 1943) ruled that bishops must retire at the age of 72. The convention also resolved that this rule was “binding upon the present members of the House [of Bishops].”

The two prelates objected, in letters to Presiding Bishop Henry St. George Tucker, 69. They also sent copies to the Church’s 150-odd bishops (average age of active bishops: 60). Bishop Manning claimed that the retirement rule did not apply to him — he was 77 when it passed. And he had other reasons for refusing to retire. He could understand compulsory retirement, he said, in an organization like the Army & Navy, where there is no question of the “deep sacredness and spiritual reality” that exists between a bishop and his diocese. “But is this a fitting procedure,” he asked, “in the case of bishops of the Church? . . . Surely the bishop’s relation with his diocese should not be terminated by an authority outside the diocese, acting, quite possibly, against the judgment and desire of the diocese.”

Bishop Davis hinted at another danger implicit in the retirement rule. “We have here,” said he, “an expression of the present tendency, so apparent in civil life, to centralize authority beyond the point originally contemplated by the ‘Founders’ and beyond the limits of a democratic system.” Bishop Davis promised that he would fight compulsory retirement even before he turned 72.

Besides Bishop Manning, there are two other active diocesan bishops of retirement age: Bishop James DeWolf Perry of Rhode Island (72), Bishop John Chanler White of Springfield, Ill. (76). By last week Bishop White had also swung into action. “It is an ‘ex post facto’ law,” he cried. “They cannot pass a law compelling me to retire. Neither Bishop Manning, Bishop Perry nor I contemplate retiring.” Neither could the ruling be repealed — at least for five years. But a repeal can be started at the next General Convention, which will meet in 1946 in San Francisco.