The Henson Journals

[162]

Monday, February 11th, 1924.

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The post brings me a journal from U.S.A. – "American Church Monthly" – which certainly is filled with very surprising matter. It comes from Foakes Jackson, & contains an article on "The present situation" from his pen, which is nowise remarkable. This journal exists, according to its own advertisement, "to set forth the cause of the true Catholic religion in the Anglican Communion, and particularly in the American Episcopal Church". It is not without importance that the legal & accustomed description of that branch of the Anglican Communion is changed by the substitution of "American" for "Protestant". One Article "The Tabernacle" by D. Barry, Rector of the Church of St Mary the Virgin, New York City, is sufficiently startling. If charity did not compel the assumption that the author is sincere, it would be impossible to avoid describing him as profane. The water in the Tabernacle is simply identified with the 2nd Person of the Trinity: "There in the silence Incarnate God ceaselessly watches and offers Himself to the devotions of the faithful". "God has offered Himself in Bethlehem and on Calvary: and He offers Himself on the Altar & in the Tabernacle". "To those whose belief is not in some symbolical Presence but in the Presence of the Sacred Heart of Jesus beating behind the veil of the Host this privilege of kneeling here is inestimable". "In the midst of the altar lights the monstrance stands enshrining the Presence – the Presence of Incarnate God". There is more than rhetoric in all this: there is that gross error which our fathers called "idolatry".

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