Religion: A Synod

A synod of the Provinces of New York and New Jersey Protestant Episcopal Church, met at Atlantic City. The following transpired: ¶ The Rev. Paul Matthews, Bishop of New Jersey, berated Bishop Lawrence of Massachusetts (TIME, Jan. 14) for disloyalty to the Church, adding: “If the Episcopal Church admits the right of individual priests and Bishops to interpret Holy Scripture otherwise than the Church has received the faith . . . then it may as well re-sign itself to another St. Bartholomew’s Day of Slaughter*; . . . Modernists are image breakers who have exhumed an ancient heresy . . . The spiritual barometer indicates lots of wind . . . We are facing an irresponsible conflict . . . This is not an open or unsettled question. The Church has recorded the faith and kept that faith so recorded from the beginning.” ¶Charles H. Brent, rugged Bishop of Western New York, sometime of the Philippines and the U. S. Army, led the synod to approve participation of the Church in politics; roundly upbraided Senator Moses of New Hampshire for his anti-Bok-plan attitude. ¶ Mrs. F. W. Pease said that Christian women should take unmarried mothers and their children into their homes and pews, that rectors sometimes did not have time to reclaim these girls. ¶Bishop Brent said every clergyman had time to help the unmarried mother. ¶ Canon Gabriel Farrel lamented the bold manners of unchaperoneu girls. ¶ Bishop Brent proposed that his own salary be cut if necessary, so that the Province could raise its quota for missionary work: “A diocese cannot afford to pay a large salary to its Bishop and then fail to meet its missionary quota.” This was the synod’s great moment.

*The historic massacre of the Huguenots (a name given from about the middle of the 16th Century to the Protestants of France), so called because it began in Paris on St. Batholomew’s Day, Aug. 24, 1572. It was planned by Catherine de’ Medici, primarily as revenge upon Admiral Coligny, but later being broadened in scope so as to include the slaughter at one blow of all the Huguenot leaders, thus ruining the Protestant party in France. At length persuading the King that the massacre was a measure of public safety, she succeeded in wringing from him his consent, and on the fateful Sunday at daybreak the massacre began, spreading ultimately throughout France and claiming 50,000 victims. Meyerbeer’s opera, Les Huguenots, is founded on the tragedy.