Discordant Concordat

The Rt. Rev. William Thomas Manning, small, dry, astute Episcopal Bishop of New York, has always been a leader in the church unity movement. Bishop Manning has his enemies, but those enemies have hardly ever caught him out on a point of theology or canon law. Last fortnight Dr. Manning threw the great weight of his shrewd experience against the "Proposed Concordat" drawn up last year as a means of eventually uniting the Episcopal and Presbyterian Churches (TIME, Feb. 6).

In a letter to the "dear brethren" of the commission in charge of the Concordat, Bishop Manning urged that this instrument, which is bringing "apprehension and dismay to great numbers of our people and clergy," be dropped entirely. The Bishop urged four objections to it:

1) It would prejudice the possible reunion of Christendom. Anglicans and Episcopalians "hold a providentially-given middle place between the Catholic Churches of the world and the Protestant Churches and thus have a unique opportunity to serve as a mediating influence."

2) The Concordat would tamper with belief in the episcopally ordained priesthood, dear to the Episcopal Church, "as to at least two-thirds of all Christians in this world."

3) The Concordat uses "ambiguous phrases" to patch up fundamental differences--i.e., it proposes a form of "commissioning" of ministers of both faiths, which Presbyterians are given to understand will not involve reordination. "What then will it be?"

4) The Concordat "will sow dissension . . . where now there is peace and harmony . . . between the more Protestant-minded and the more Catholic-minded members of our communion."

Bishop Manning's last point was demonstrably true. Last fortnight the ''Protestant-minded" Churchman suggested that attacks upon the Concordat may be motivated by a wish to wreck "a pact which would make more difficult the Romanization of the Anglican communion." The "Catholic-minded" Living Church has been critical ever since, last summer, it heard that grape juice had been used at communion at a unity conference in Berkeley, Calif.--in the diocese of liberal Bishop Edward Lambe Parsons, chairman of the Concordat commission.

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