Trends

Fundamentalist League. Fundamentalist members of the Presbyterian Church for some time have been organizing into a Laymen's League. Original plans were to keep this league a secret one and work under cover. But second thought has decided its originators to make public the aims. The league will keep "its members posted on all matters in defense of the faith" by means of a monthly bulletin. Detailed plans are out by which fundamentalist laymen may be elected as commissioners to the forthcoming session of the Presbyterian General Assembly. D. Webster Wylie is President of the League, with offices at No. 25 Broad St., Manhattan.

Scandinavian Scandal. In 1924 Rev. Mr. Ingerslev, head of the Central Methodist Mission in Scandinavia, charged that Dr. Anton Bast, Methodist Episcopal Bishop of Scandinavia, had fraudulently converted vast church moneys. The Methodist Conference of Denmark excommunicated the complainant. Dr. Bast was locked in jail without bail for four months until five officials of the U. S. Methodist Episcopal Church arrived in Copenhagen and got him released on bail (December, 1924). Last January the Public Prosecutor finally had him indicted on nine counts for the conversion of 635,000 kronen ($165,000). By jury trial last week he was found guilty of fraudulently converting 182,000 kronen ($47,320) of charity funds and sentenced to three months in prison. Other charges were not supported or were withdrawn.

Kingdom of Christ. Last December, Pope Pius XI instituted by encyclical letter to Catholics the Feast of Our Lord Jesus Christ as King to be celebrated the last Sunday in October. Many leaders of creeds other than Catholic applauded the idea. Then the discussion waned until last week, when the National Lutheran Council (representing 2,500,000 U.S. Lutherans in America and meeting in Chicago) unhooded a hawking, soaring criticism:

"We have read with great interest the encyclical letter of Pope Pius XI, given out on Dec. 11, 1925, in which, 'with Apostolic authority,' he instituted the Feast of our Lord Jesus Christ as King. This feast is to be celebrated 'every year and in all the world on the last Sunday of the month of October; that is. the one just preceding the celebration of all the saints. . . .

"May we not commend to the consideration of all Protestants the question whether they will not more certainly honor Christ as their Savior and King by faithfully adhering to the truth of the Gospel and conforming their lives thereto than by joining in the celebration of a mighty festival marked by 'magnificent processions' and outward 'ceremonies'?" By unanimous vote the Council decided to appeal to all other Protestant bodies to abstain from taking part in the new Feast.

In Mexico. Mexico has turned aggressively to the nationalization of its religions, of which Catholicism is vastly predominant. According to the Mexican Constitution of 1917, which has only recently begun to be enforced, no foreign prelate may officiate in his cult in Mexico. Thus George Joseph Caruana, Archbishop of Sebaste and Apostolic Delegate to the Antilles and Mexico,* may not function religiously in the greater part of his diplomatic territory. Nothing, however, can prevent his entering Mexico in private capacity. Yet to avoid stirring up needless trouble he went there incognito some days ago. Last week he revealed his presence as an effort to untangle the national Catholic snarl.

Mercier Gift. Cardinal Mercier of Belgium, who died the end of January (TIME, Feb. 1), cherished a 14th Century picture. It was that of Jan van Ruysbroek (1293-1381), the "Ecstatic Teacher," the mystic. He insisted that "the soul finds God in its own depths," that there are three stages up the "spiritual ladder" of Christian attainment: 1) the active life, 2) the inward life, and 3) the contemplative life. Some read in his mystic dissertations fore-trails of the Reformation. Cardinal Mercier, a teacher himself, begged in his will that Pope Pius XI accept this portrait. Last week it was despatched to the Vatican. Cardinal Mercier's successor as Archbishop of Malines was last week appointed. He is Mgr. Ernest van Roey, onetime Vicar General of that see.

Divorce. Religious affiliation tends to stabilize marriage, as one could verify again last week from a study of the question which the Lutheran, weekly magazine of the United Lutheran Church, has just made. The magazine questioned 2,500 Lutheran pastors. Of these, 527 made answer that of 68,559 marriages performed 1,073 resulted in divorces--1 in 60. In the U. S. in 1924 there were 1,178,206 marriages, 170,867 divorces--1 in 6.

* He is a U. S. citizen; once worked in the parish of Our Lady of Mercy, Brooklyn, N. Y. ; was secretary to Cardinal Dougherty of Philadelphia; a missionary to the Philippines; a U. S. Army chaplain; Vatican representative in Siberia; Bishop ol Porto Rico.