Religion: In New Haven

There are people who declare that “Protestant” and “Catholic” are terms used to distinguish alien faiths, and if they breed at all, their child must be a sterile creature, without pride of parentage or hope of progeny. Yet in New Haven last week met a body of venerable prelates who boldly assert that they are not Protestants, although they refuse to recognize that the Pope is anything more than a pompous sort of Bishop; who quietly deny that they are Roman Catholics, although they use in their worship all the ancient magnificence of phrase, splendors of scarlet and black and gold, the aspiring incense, the candles, gongs and musical invocations of the Mother of Christ that are the Church’s heritage from Rome. They are members of the Protestant Episcopal Church, yet they called their meeting “the first Anglo-Catholic Congress to be held in the U. S.” For the benefit of those who were puzzled to know whether they were fish or flesh or good red Roman, the prelates defined their position.

They stated again the claim of High-Church Episcopalians to be “in no way numbered among those Christian bodies which are decended from the Reformation of the 16th Century.” While the Episcopal Church recognizes but two sacraments, the Catholic Episcopalians insist upon seven—the seven-pointed lights in the seven-branched candlestick of Rome. Confession is obligatory. Stoups for Holy Water have recently been installed in Anglo-Catholic parishes in Manhattan. Holy communion is spoken of as “mass”; indeed, a “Solemn High Mass” was the phrase with which an official handbook described the service for which the members of the congress gathered upon the second day of their meeting. It was aptly chosen.

Two thurifers in scarlet cassocks led the priests out of the sacristy of Christ Church and around to the big main door. A shrewd wind was blowing, touched with smoke from many autumn bonfires, and the fragrance of the incense from the swinging censers mingled in the air with the smell of burning leaves, and blew back over the moving column of priests, over the officers of the council, over the richly vested phalanx of Bishops who brought up the rear. The thurifers entered the Church. There was a rustle as the multitude stood up. Then candles were lit, hymn books opened, and to the thunder that darkly strode from the organ pipes, the chanting voices of a choir of monks and the solemn soundless rhythm of the censers swinging on their chains from the wrists of the thurifers, the procession moved up the aisle. First went the priests, severe in white surplices, black cassocks; the officials of the congress in emblazoned capes; a slender crucifer and two boys bearing candles; and then—with a swishing of heavy skirts in the pomp of pontifical elegance, ageless, sombre, and fiercely-burning— the Bishops. Each was vested in a magnificent cope secured with a jewel-crusted clasp and held open, on the right and left, by two deacons of honor. Each Bishop wore a mitre. The celebrant passed in a rich red damask chasuble, followed by a deacon and a subdeacon in dalmatic and tunic. Last of all came the bishop of the diocese, the Right Reverend Chauncey B. Brewster, preceded by cross and candles and by his chaplain bearing the golden pastoral staff, emblem of his tenure. They proceeded between the lines of people up to the high altar, which blazed like a bonfire of lilies.

The service that followed differed in no particular from a Roman High-Mass except that it was sung in English. At the moment when the bread and wine were consecrated, a gong rang and the kneeling congregation intoned “Blessed, praised and adored forevermore be Jesus Christ on his throne of glory.” Every session of the congress began with an “Ave Maria.” The favorite hymn was one ending with the refrain, “Hail, Mary, full of grace.” Rosaries, crucifixes and sacred images were offered for sale to the members. During the three days of sessions a number of eminent churchmen spoke, among them, Father Shirley C. Hughson, of the Order of the Holy Cross: “The Episcopal Church has its roots in the original Apostolic foundation; its ministries and its formularies are to be traced back to Apostolic beginnings. It is essentially a part of the one, true, holy and Apostolic Church. It is not Protestant; it is Catholic, and therefore has no kinship with the Protestant bodies.”

The Right Reverend Benjamin Ivins, 41-year-old Bishop Coadjutor of Milwaukee (“youngest bishop in the U. S.” said: “The work of every form of organization in this land is staggering and faltering. We are rapidly losing the very foundation of our civilization, the home. People are living in holes in the wall; the social graces of the home have become the manners of the restaurant and the public dancing hall.”

Colonel H. Anthony Dyer of Providence roused the congress to a high pitch of religious fervor by speaking of the French custom of reserving the sacrament on the altar and indicating its presence with a red light. Said he: “No matter how beautiful is the building, no matter how eloquent the words of the preacher, a church cannot give us the feeling of reverence without the presence of the red light.”

Chauncey Brewster Tinker (blood relative of Bishop Chauncey B. Brewster), able and popular Yale professor, interpreter of Boswell, read an address by Thomas L. Raymond, Mayor of Newark, N. J., in the latter’s enforced absence. Wrote Mayor Raymond: “The task of the Catholic Church today is to create an age of faith through the medium of an order of celibate preachers.”

The Reverend Dr. E. Clowes Chorley, Historiographer of the Protestant Episcopal Church, meditated on the possibility of the Anglo-Catholics going over to Rome. Wrote he, reporting the congress for the New York Herald Tribune: ” ‘What are the fundamental difficulties in the way of reunion with Rome?’ I asked [a fellow divine]. The answer was: ‘There are but two—the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception and the dogma of the infallibility of the Pope.’ The Catholics of the Episcopal Church are willing to render obedience to the Pope as the chief of bishops; they balk at infallibility and cherish the hope that in some unforeseen fashion the bars may be lowered that they may enter in. ‘Do you think that will ever be?’ I asked. The only answer was a shrug of the shoulders.”