The Henson Journals
Fri 1 November 1929
Volume 48, Pages 420 to 421
[420]
Friday, November 1st, 1929.
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A white frost & a bright sun. Ella and the Townleys went to Durham to visit the buildings. I wrote a considerable addition to the Presidential Address for tomorrow's Conference.
After lunch Pattinson and I motored to Durham where I presided at the meeting of the Board of Religious Education. We have nearly exhausted our funds, and nearly all the surviving Church schools are becoming schools for children under eleven, & thus really ceasing to have much value as nurseries of young Christians. We returned to Auckland for tea.
Inge has a characteristic leader on the front page of the 'Church of England Newspaper' under the heading, "The Problem of Authority". It is a review of the Modern Churchmen's Conference at Girton. He calls the authors of the Enabling Act "a faction of busy–bodies" and "syndicalists". Yet they included the entire Episcopate with the exception of two Bishops (Durham & Manchester), both Convocations, & majorities in all the Diocesan Conferences.
[421]
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The Bishop of Liverpool has secured a majority of his Synod in condemning 3 incumbents, who refuse to obey the Revised Prayer Book in the matter of the Reserved Sacrament. He has formally put them under some sort of public ban, & they, of course, are already becoming heroes to the Anglo–Catholic extremists!
The trinity of excommunicates made a protest in which they describe the synodical action as 'as an attempt to create an extra–legal and probably illegal tribunal', speak of the "un–English penalty of organised boycott by brother clergy", and reserve their right to move the High Court of Justice for a prohibition."
'The Bishop stated that under no circumstances wd he resort to legal proceedings'. The Manchester Guardian says that 'it is now suspected that the clergy generally will disassociate themselves from the 3 vicars'. All this seems to me unfortunate, untimely, unreasonable, and unwise. The notion that a church can be governed without coercive law is to my thinking absolutely fatuous, but it appeals mightily to the English Bishops.