IS SHE CATHOLIC?
The claim put forth by the Episcopal Church—or, to use her full and legal title, The Protestant Episcopal Church of the United Slates of America—of being the Holy Catholic Church—Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic—and the acceptance of her theory by a small portion of the Christian world, makes her and her theory, for a little time, worthy our attention.
She is accustomed to use the formula, “I believe in the Holy Catholic Church.” It is but natural to infer that she considers herself to be at least an integral part of that church. We have examined the question, and thus present our convictions as to her status.
We note, in the first place, that her bishops possess no power. They are bishops but in name. There is not one of them, no matter how eminent he may be, who can say to a clergyman in his diocese: “Here is an important parish vacant; occupy it.” He would be met with the polite remark from some member of the parish, “We are very much obliged to you, bishop, but you have nothing to say about it. Mr. M. is the warden.”
Mr. M., the warden, may be, and in many instances is, a man who cares so little about the church that he has never yet been baptized, much less is he a communicant. He and his brother vestrymen, whether baptized or not, may, if the bishop claims an authority by virtue of his office, meet him at the church door, and tell him he cannot come in unless he will pledge himself to do as they wish; and the bishop may write a note of protest, and leave it behind him for them to tear up, as was done in Chicago with Bishop Whitehouse. Some local regulations have occasionally varied the above, but in the majority of parishes the authority is vested as we have stated.
The bishop’s power of appointing extends to none but feeble missionary stations; and even these put on, at their earliest convenience, the airs of full-grown parishes.
We note an instance where a bishop wrote to a lady in a remote missionary station, and asked regarding some funds which had been placed in her hands by parties interested in the growth of the church in that place. It had been specified that the money was to be used for whatever purpose was deemed most necessary. The bishop requested that the money be paid to the missionary toward his salary. The lady declined on the ground that she did not like the missionary. Another request in courteous language, as was befitting a bishop. He also stated his intention of visiting the place shortly in his official character.
The lady’s reply equalled his own in courteous phraseology; but the money was refused and the bishop informed that he “need not trouble himself about making a visitation, as there was no class to be confirmed; besides, the church had been closed for repairs, and would not be open for some months, at least not until a new minister was settled.”
To the bishop’s positive knowledge, no repairs were needed; but he deemed it wise to stay away, and no further steps were taken.
With the clergy in his diocese the case is not very different.
If a presbyter of any diocese chooses for any reason to go from one parish to another for the purpose of taking up a permanent abode, he can do so with or without consulting his bishop. In fact, the bishop has nothing to do with it. Should the presbyter desire to remove to another diocese, it is requisite that he obtain letters dimissory from the bishop, and the bishop is obliged to give them. So also is the bishop in the diocese to which he goes obliged to receive them, unless they contain grave criminal charges.
There is, in reality, but one thing the bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church can do, and that is make an appointment once in three years to confirm. So insignificant is his power in any other direction that certain persons, ill-natured or otherwise, have fastened upon him, whether deserved or undeserved, the name of “confirming machine.” Certain it is that, were the power of confirming in any degree vested in the “priests” of the church, the office of bishop might easily be dispensed with. He would appear only as the ornamental portion of a few occasional services. For he cannot authoritatively visit any parish, vacant or otherwise, except on a confirmation tour; and should this be too frequent in the estimation of the vestry, the doors of the church could be shut against him on any plea the vestry should choose to advance.
2. He cannot increase the number of his clergy, except as parishes choose.
3. He cannot prevent a man fixing himself in the diocese if a congregation choose to “call” him, no matter how worthy or unworthy the man may be.
4. He cannot call a clergyman into his diocese, though every parish were empty.
5. He cannot officiate in any church without invitation.
6. He has no church of his own, except as he officiates as rector; and unless invited to some place, he is forced, although a bishop, to sit in the congregation as a layman, if he do not stay at home.
And, lastly, he cannot on any account visit a parish unless the vestry of that parish is willing.
We sum up: That so far as the bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America are concerned, they are simply figure-heads, ornaments possessing the minimum of authority—in point of fact, no authority at all.
Their own convention addresses are a virtual confession of the condition of affairs as above laid down. To every one who has ever heard an Episcopal bishop’s address, as delivered before the annual convention of clergymen and laymen, the following sample will not appear as in the least overdrawn:
July 10.—Visited the parish of S. John, Oakdale, and confirmed three.
July 17.—Visited the parish of Longwood, and preached and confirmed one.
July 24.—Visited S. Paul’s, and preached and confirmed two in the forenoon. Preached also in the afternoon.
This is a very large and thriving parish.
July 26.—At Montrose I visited and confirmed one at the evening service.
July 29.—Took a private conveyance to Hillstown, and preached in the evening; confirmed one. The rector of this parish is very energetic.
Aug. 2.—Attended the burial of a dear friend.
Aug. 7.—Attended the consecration of S. Mark’s Church in Hyde Park. It is hoped that the difficulties in this parish are settled. The Rev. John Waters has resigned and gone to Omaha. Mr. William Steuben is the senior warden. May the Lord prosper him and his estimable lady!
[To continue the list would cause a tear, and we do not wish to weep.]
The address each year of a Protestant Episcopal bishop is thoroughly exemplified in the foregoing specimen. It is the same endless list of enteuthen exelauneis, varied only by the number of parasangas. To the lazy grammar-boy it is a most fascinating chapter of ancient history when he reaches the enteuthen section in the Anabasis. There is an immense list of them, and the lesson for that day is easy. When the first phrase is mastered, he knows all the rest, except the occasional figures.
We once saw a reporter for a prominent Daily making a short-hand report of an address before an illustrious diocesan gathering. Having had some experience in the matter, he came to the meeting with his tablets prepared. They were as follows:
| Visited at | AND CONFIRMED. |
| _______________ | _____ _________ |
| _______________ | _____ _________ |
| _______________ | _____ _________ |
Three-quarters of the address was thus prepared beforehand, it only being necessary to leave the lines sufficiently far apart to permit the insertion of occasional notes.
By his extra care he was enabled to present the most complete report of any paper in the city.
The specimen we have given is a fair average. In future generations, when a classical student is given a bishop’s address to read, his labor for that day will be easy.
Almost any bishop’s address will substantiate the statements we have made. We refer to them freely, without wasting time in selection.
We begin a new paragraph: The system of the Protestant Episcopal Church is eminently congregational.
If a parish chooses to “call” a given man, he is “called.”
Should the bishop “interfere” and recommend him, the recommendation, without an exception that has ever come to our knowledge, militates against the proposed “call.”
Should a parish desire to get rid of a pastor, it does so with or without the consent of the bishop, as happens, in the estimation of the wardens, to be most convenient. The officers may consult the bishop, and, if he agree with them, well and good. The words of the diocesan are quoted from Dan to Beersheba, and the pastor is made to feel the lack of sympathy—“Even his bishop is against him,” is whispered by young and old.
If the bishop does not agree with them, they do not consult him again. They proceed to accomplish what they desire as if he had no existence, and—they always succeed.
There is a farcical canon of the Protestant Episcopal Church which says, if a parish dismiss its rector without concurrence, it shall not be admitted into convention until it has apologized.
It is a very easy thing for the wardens and vestrymen to address the convention, after they have accomplished their ends, with “Your honorable body thinks we have done wrong, and—we are sorry for it,” or something else equally ambiguous and absurd. The officers of the parish and the laymen of the congregation have done what they wished, and are content. As the convention is composed principally of laymen, the sympathy is naturally with the laymen’s side of the question. The rector is hurriedly passed over, his clerical brethren looking helplessly on.
To get a new parish the dismissed rector must “candidate”—a feature of clerical life most revolting to any man with a spark of manhood in him.
We note, in the next place, an utter want of unity in the Protestant Episcopal Church.
There are High-Church and Low-Church bookstores, where the publications of the one are discarded by the other. There are High-Church and Low-Church seminaries, where a man, to graduate from the one, will be looked upon inimically, at least with suspicion, by the other. There is a High-Church “Society for the Increase of the Ministry,” where the principal thing accomplished is the maintenance of the secretary of the said society in a large brick house in a fashionable city, while he claims to support a few students on two meals a day; and a Low-Church Evangelical Society, where they require the beneficiary to subscribe to certain articles of Low-Churchism before they will receive him.
The one society is thoroughly hostile to the other, and, in point of fact, the latter was created in opposition to the former.
There is but one thing in common between the two, and that is cold-shoulderism.
There are High-Church and Low-Church newspapers, in which the epithets used by the one toward the other do not indicate even respect.
Some of the “church’s” ministers would no more enter a “denominational” place of worship than they would put their hand in the fire. Others will fraternize with everything and everybody, and when Sunday comes will close their eyes—sometimes they roll them upward—and pray publicly: “From heresy and schism good Lord deliver us.”
It may be necessary that there should be wranglings and bickerings within her fold, in order to constitute her the church militant; but we cannot forgive hypocrisy.
With some of her ministers the grand object of existence seems to be to prove “Popery” an emanation from hell. With others the effort is equally great to prove the Episcopal Church as a “co-ordinate” branch with the Roman Church, and entitled to the same consideration as is paid by the devotees of Rome to its hierarchy. In both instances—viz., High Church and Low Church—history records failure.
We notice next the relation which the Protestant Episcopal Church holds to the Church of England.
The English Church evidently regards the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America as a weaker sister, and not to be admitted to doubtful disputations. She is courteous toward her, and accepts her present of a gold alms-basin from an unrobed representative with a certain amount of ceremony. She invites her bishops to the Lambeth Conference, and they pay their own fare across the Atlantic; but they confer about nothing. It is true the Protestant Episcopal Church approved the action of the English Church in condemning Colenso; but this was a safe thing for the English Church to present. It would have been hardly complimentary to have their guests go home without doing something, especially as they were not to be invited into Westminster Abbey, and were to have nothing to do with the coming Bible revision.
The bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America were invited to the English conference very much as country cousins are invited to tea, and that was all.
By way of asserting her right to a recognition as an equal with the Church of England, she—the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America—has established, or rather individuals have established and the act has received the sanction of the General Convention, certain rival congregations in a few foreign cities where the English service was already established. If she be of the same Catholic mould as the Church of England, why does she thus in a foreign city attempt to maintain an opposition service? The variations in the Prayer-Book are no answer to the question. If the English Church be Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic, and the Protestant Episcopal Church be Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic, the two are therefore one; for they both claim that there is but one Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic church.
She is in this case unmistakably uncatholic, or else the English Church is. In either case she falls to the ground.
Our attention is directed again to the many laws enacted against her bishops as compared with the laws enacted against the other members of the church. If Mosheim were to be restored to the flesh, and were to write the history of the Episcopal Church, and used as an authority the Digest of Canons, as he has been accustomed in his Ecclesiastical History to use ecclesiastical documents generally, he would style the bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church a set of criminals of the deepest dye, and the priests and deacons not much better. The laity would be regarded as all that could be desired in lofty integrity and spotless morality. For why? A glance at their vade-mecum of law—the Digest of Canons—shows an immense bulk of its space to be devoted “to the trial of a bishop.” The laity go scot-free.
We question the propriety, as well as the Catholicity, of covering the higher clergy with laws till they are helpless, while the laity revel in a freedom that amounts, when they choose, to mob-license; but it is done, and the Episcopal Church is degraded to a level lower than any of the denominations around her.
With other bodies who call themselves Christian there is a certain amount of consistency. Their rulers are from among their own members. With the church under consideration, her rulers, in many cases, are any unbaptized heathen who may choose to work themselves into a temporary favor with the pew-holders. It is not necessary that they should even have ever attended church. We note an instance where the chief man of a small parish was a druggist, and kept in the rear of his drug-store a low drinking-room; and this man was elected treasurer year after year by a handful of interested parties, and, when elected, he managed all the finances of the parish according to his own notions of propriety. It was his habit to go to the church near the close of the sermon, and go away immediately after the collection.
We note another instance where a warden visited the rector of his parish, and threatened, with a polite oath, to give him something hotter than a section of the day of judgment if he did not ask his (the warden’s) advice a little more on parish matters. The parish grew so warm that at the end of three weeks the rector was candidating for another.
We note another instance where a warden was so overjoyed at having settled a rector according to his own liking that, on the arrival of the new incumbent, he not only did not go to hear him preach, but stayed at home with certain friends, and enjoyed, to use his own expression, a “dooced big drunk.” Out of consideration for the feelings of his family we use the word “dooced” instead of his stronger expression.
The rector of this happily-ruled parish was imprudent enough to incur the displeasure of his warden after a few months of arduous labor. He received a note while sitting at the bedside of his sick wife, saying that after the following Sunday his services would be dispensed with; that if he attempted to stay, the church would be closed for repairs.
We are well acquainted with a parish where a congregation wished to displace both the senior and junior wardens. These two gentlemen had been shrewd enough to foresee the event. They succeeded, by calculating management, in having vested in themselves the right of selling pews. When Easter Monday came, they sold for a dollar a pew to loafers on the streets, and swarmed the election with men who never had entered the place before. The laws of the parish were such that there was no redress. As a matter of course, the rector was soon candidating.
During the earliest portion of the official life of one of the oldest and most eminent bishops, he was called on to officiate at the institution of a Low-Church rector. At the morning service the bishop took occasion to congratulate the congregation on the assumed fact that they had now “an altar, a priest, and a sacrifice,” and went on to enlarge on that idea. In the evening of the same day the instituted minister, in addressing the congregation, said: “My brethren, so help me God! if the doctrines you heard this morning are the doctrines of the Protestant Episcopal Church, then I am no Protestant Episcopalian; but they are not such”—and essayed substantiating the assertion. All that came of the affair was the publication, on the part of each, of their respective discourses. On the supposition of the bishop’s having any foundation for his ecclesiastical character and for the doctrines he taught, would that have been the end of the matter?
Can it be that the Episcopal Church is Catholic? Is it possible that she is part of the grand structure portrayed by prophets and sung in the matchless words of inspiration as that against which the gates of hell shall not prevail? Rather, we are forced to class her as a “sister” among the very “heretics” from whom in her litany she prays, “Good Lord deliver us.”