The Bridge Church

In a prophetic mood Episcopal Bishop William T. Manning last week made his farewell address to the annual convention of his New York diocese. He had just reached 1) his 80th birthday, 2) his 25th anniversary as bishop--a post from which he will retire in December (TIME, April 8). Manning, a leader of the Anglo-Catholic party in his Church, stirringly reasserted his own and long-held conviction that the Episcopal Church can "serve as a 'bridge church' and as a reconciling influence between Catholicism and Protestantism."

He prophesied: "The reunion of the Church will come, and today there are many signs of its coming." Contact "between the Anglican churches and the great Catholic Orthodox churches of the East is growing constantly closer.

"In Protestantism there is a great movement back to orthodoxy and away from humanism; and in some of the Protestant churches there is a marked movement toward a higher view of the church and the sacraments."

Roman Catholic aloofness toward the church unity movement, predicted Manning, "may change, as many members of that communion hope and believe it will." Manning himself was as aloof as ever toward the often-proposed merger of the Presbyterian and Episcopal Churches. Said he: "If the Episcopal Church were to abandon or compromise its catholic belief as to the church and the apostolic ministry ... to unite with one among the Protestant churches, this would not be a step toward Christian reunion but a step directly away from it. They who urge such action are not thinking of reunion in world-wide terms. They are thinking only of Protestant union."

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