Anglican Catholics

In the five boroughs of New York City there are about 1,275,000 souls who frequently say five times the Pater Noster (ending the prayer at "... but deliver us from evil. Amen"), repeat five times the Ave Maria for the intention of their Holy Father the Pope, the Bishop of Rome, the visible head of the Church. These 1,275,000 souls are Roman Catholics who believe that the Pope is infallible when he teaches a doctrine of faith or morals. Last week in Manhattan were gathered some 1,500 Catholic souls who pray no prayers for the Pope.

These 1,500 souls are Anglican Catholics who, strictly speaking, are members of the Protestant Episcopal Church of America. Romanist and Anglican have much in common so far as the superficialities of rubrics and rite are concerned.

The lay Romanists who are aware of the Anglican body have little animosity for the Anglicans. The most popular belief among Romanists is that the Anglicans are Romanists "in spirit" who hesitate to join the Roman church lest they lose caste.

The numerically strongest Romanist settlement in the U. S. therefore had no resentment for the Anglicans who met in their fourth annual Congress. The ponderous body felt--if it felt at all--only tolerant amusement for an organization which Romanists believe is an elegant imitation of their own church. The Anglicans in their turn would have felt reciprocal amusement had they known of the Romanists' attitude, for the Anglicans are thoroughly accustomed to being a minority bloc in a Church which becomes increasingly evangelistic instead of "Catholic."

The Congress was in session four days. Only at one point did there seem to be a bit of false-chording. The Right Rev. Sheldon Munson Griswold, Suffragan Bishop of the Chicago diocese, and Bishop (New York) William Thomas Manning politely disagreed on the desirability of an Anglican-ward tendency in the Protestant Episcopal Church. Said Bishop Manning:

"All through the length and breadth of the Church today there is a longing, expressing itself in many ways, for a deeper, more personal experience of religion . . . which is expressing itself in the present movement for evangelism. . . . You do not want ... a mere return to medieval modes of thought, or to medieval ways."

Otherwise there was placidity and there was pomp. At the opening Mass Bishop Manning wore for the first time his new presentation cope of white and gold damask, upon whose orphrey are worked six shields: St. William's, St. Thomas's (patron saints of Bishop Manning), the Arms of the Aberdeen See, the Arms of Canterbury's Primal See, the shields of the diocese of New York and of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. To match the cope was the begemmed mitre.