Religion: Anglo-Catholic Congress

The Right Reverend John Gardner Murray, presiding bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church, walked toward the tomb of the late Bishop William Croswell Doane of Albany, N. Y. The feet of a score of other protestant Episcopal bishops pointed toward the same spot; so, too, the feet of visiting Church of England, Greek and Armenian bishops. Bishop Doane’s body lies under the high altar of All Saints’ Cathedral at Albany, in whose chancel the bishops last week attended a high mass.

They were at Albany for the third Anglo-Catholic Congress.* This is the U. S. organization of Episcopalians who wish their church to approximate the older doctrines and rituals which still guide the Roman Catholic Church, but without subordination to the papal system. Their wishes have caused great controversy within their church. But few, even among Episcopalians, understand the matter.†

At Albany, the Reverend Charles Jarvis Harriman, Rector of the Church of St. James the Less at Philadelphia, undertook to explain. Said he: “We believe in these things not because they are Roman, but because they are right. They are more than Roman—they are catholic, and the Episcopal Church is catholic. Not Roman, but catholic.

“Its name is Protestant Episcopal, but Protestant is a word of various meanings. It was used by the ancient Church of England. At the Reformation she was not made new, but made free. To the jibe ‘Where was your church before the Reformation?’ the retort was ‘Where was your face before it was washed?’

“If by Protestant you mean disowning papal obedience; sharing the movement for freedom, education and individual development; public worship in English; the open Bible, we are Protestant. If you mean anti-Catholic, especially in the spirit of the sheet and hood, every man to choose his own church, a complete break with the past, the dilemma between fundamentalism and modernism—if you mean by Protestant what most Protestants seem to mean, we are not Protestant and God. forbid we ever should be.”

*Also called the Catholic Congress of the Episcopal Church. The second annual meeting was held in Milwaukee (TIME, Oct. 25, 1926).

†Said Bishop Murray, concerning his presence at the Congress : “I am going to the Congress as it is one of the organizations of the Church, and I go as Presiding Bishop to say a few words to the assemblage.”