"Vagary"

In Memphis last week Rt. Rev. James Matthew Maxon, Episcopal bishop of Tennessee, sat up in the sickbed where he had lain for 18 days ailing of influenza, and for the first time learned some-thing that all the rest of his diocese knew. Very Rev. Israel Harding Noe, dean of St. Mary's Cathedral in Memphis, was entering the third week of a fast which he hoped would prove that "the soul is above the need of material life" (TIME, Jan. 24).

From his sickbed, Bishop Maxon at once wrote a letter to his dean, informing him that "it is convincingly evident to me that you be removed as dean of St. Mary's Cathedral. This removal will take place at once. ... I do not think that you are at present your normal self, and I wish to give you an opportunity to return to your normal self when you will be able to exercise the abilities and spirituality which you so abundantly possess in the spread of Christ's kingdom. . . ."

To reporters Bishop Maxon said: "When the dean gives up his vagary, there will be a place for him in the diocese. . . . I cannot, I will not permit the teaching, the preaching or the practicing of such a vagary in my diocese. It is contrary to all that the church teaches."

Shocked, Dean Noe said nothing as he accepted the bishop's verdict. The dean had been unable to go to a diocesan convention in Knoxville because, at the last minute, Mrs. Noe took ill, collapsed. Because of that convention, no weekday services were held in the Cathedral, and for the first time ousted Dean Noe went for a week without the communion bread & wine which had previously solaced, and partially nourished, him. Some 30 members of the parish were reported anxious to join him in his fast, but he attempted to discourage them. At week's end the gaunt, feverish-eyed dean gave the 15-minute religious talk he has been accustomed to deliver on the radio, but so sickly did he look that the Memphis station installed a microphone in the deanery, persuaded him to remain there to broadcast in his quavering voice.

On Sunday, Dean Noe sat in a pew in the Cathedral whose pulpit he had occupied for 17 years, while a sermon criticizing such "vagaries" as his 22-day fast was preached by Rev. Royden Keith Yerkes of the University of the South (Sewanee, Tenn.). That night the Dean collapsed, was taken to a hospital where Memphis specialists, who had been waiting a week for such an emergency, attempted to save his life with forced feeding.

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