Religion: Manning’s Priesthood

A score of eminent non-Episcopal clergymen sat with upturned faces in the front row of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Manhattan, last fortnight while Presiding Bishop James De Wolf Perry, local Bishop William Thomas Manning and others consecrated Charles Kendall Gilbert, 52, Suffragan Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of New York. When non-Episcopalians are invited to such a ceremony they are often invited to sit within the chancel. But in view of Bishop Manning’s rigorous theocracy, their exclusion in this instance was not offensive. They listened attentively to Bishop Manning’s ceremonious discourse, which last week was to excite vigorous denunciation.

Said Bishop Manning in part and with the authority of the Book of Common-Prayer and of the Bible (John 20:19, Matthew 28:18) and of the Lambeth Conference last summer: “In common with all the ancient Catholic communions, which include today three-fourths of all Christendom, the Episcopal Church believes that when our Lord founded His church in this world He Himself appointed a ministry, and that this ministry has come down to the present time through the succession of the bishops. . . .

”The conception of the ministry held by the Protestant Churches is in important respects different from that held by the Episcopal Church. The Episcopal Church holds the Catholic doctrine of the priesthood. No one who reads and understands her Prayer Book can be in doubt as to this. It is this which constitutes the difference between the ministry of the Episcopal Church and that of the Protestant Churches, not that one is a real ministry and the other is not, the Episcopal Church holds no such view, but that one is a ministerial priesthood and the other does not so regard itself and definitely rejects the doctrine of the priesthood. This explains the fact that a priest of the Roman Catholic Church or the Holy Orthodox Eastern Church or of any Catholic communion who comes into the ministry of the Anglican communion is not re-ordained, whereas a minister of any Protestant communion, however great his attainments or holy his life, and however greatly and justly he may be honored and beloved among us, if he enters the ministry of the Anglican communion, must be ordained to the priesthood through the laying on of hands by a bishop.

“The unbroken order of the episcopate coming down to us from apostolic times is the visible, living witness of God’s coming into this world in the Incarnation, for the episcopate is the successor ‘of the Apostolate and the Apostolate was the direct representative of the Risen and Ascended Christ. . . .”

Several days were necessary for this high view to spread. Then, last week, the brickbats began twirling.

Editorialized The Churchman, liberal Episcopal weekly: “[According to Bishop Manning] we, the Roman Catholics, and the Greeks, are the only Christians of whom Christ fully approves.”

The Protestant Episcopal Church League, unanimously through its executive committee and advisory council, ordered its Secretary Dr. Alexander Griswold Cummins* of Poughkeepsie, N. Y., to denounce: “… Amazing lack of scholarship. . . . The simple fact is, that in defiance of every scrap of historical evidence, about which, in reality, there is not the slightest ambiguity, he [Bishop Manning] faithfully follows a tradition which took its origin not from Jesus or His apostles, but from Greek thinkers of the second and following centuries.

“It is not a matter of doubt that the early Church was neither Baptist, Presbyterian, Congregational nor Episcopalian; it was a free brotherhood of the spirit, where its members were all of one heart and mind.

“Obviously, some simple organization soon became necessary in view of the growing number of converts. This assumed different forms in different centres, as for instance, Presbyterian [elders] at Rome, Episcopalian [overseers, supervisors] in some parts of Asia and Congregational in other localities. It is also a matter of history that as the centuries rolled on the Episcopalian form of government ultimately superseded all others until the Reformation.

“A building can be no stronger than its foundations. There is no evidence to show that Jesus instituted the Episcopal form of government or any particular form of government. . . .”

The Clergy Club of New York & Neighborhood, an organization of miscellaneous Protestant doctrinaires, assembled to protest. Dr. Walter Laidlaw, Presbyterian, the Club’s founder, spoke harshly: “Bishop Manning . . . [has] taken the wrong club out of his bag for an approach to the consecration of a co-operative bishop suffragan, or played an ineffective drive in his deliverance on the polity and program of the church needed for our day.”

Dr. Henry Sloane Coffin, Presbyterian president of Union Theological Seminary, had been invited with other eminent Protestants to preach in the Church of the Ascension, one of Bishop Manning’s charges. Last year Bishop Manning sternly forbade Dr. Coffin’s performance of a communion service in another Manhattan Episcopal church, as ecclesiastically illegal. Dr. Coffin replied by inviting the Episcopalians to his own communion service at Union Theological. Last week he answered Bishop Manning by rescinding his assent to preach in the Church of the Ascension. His comment: “In view of Bishop Manning’s sermon and the subsequent discussion, it seemed wise to withdraw, as I did not wish to be the means of promoting further controversy.”

However, Bishop Manning was not without defenders. Said Ernest Vincent Shayler, P. E. Bishop of Nebraska, England-born (like Bishop Manning): “If some New York papers would quit Bishop-baiting, if some Episcopal clergy would quit ecclesiastical rowdyism and some Protestant ministers cease strife-making, you would have a better atmosphere in New York.”

*His wife under the pseudonym of Houghton Phelps recently denounced inconsistent Episcopalianism in The Catholic World, Roman Catholic periodical.