100 Years Ago

January 25th, 1907.

(From Our Correspondent.)

SOMETHING like a sensation has been caused in Liverpool by the announcement of the Bishop’s threat to prosecute two incumbents in the diocese. The Daily Post and Mercury, to its credit, has urged that steps should be taken in the direction of mediation. It suggested three possible mediators, . . . and suggested that “mediation” had begun. Nothing is known in the best quarters at the time of writing of the alleged attempt at mediation, and it is singular that any mediator should be necessary between the “Father in God” of a diocese and its priests; but it is welcome news to learn that the Bishop [Dr F. J. Chavasse] is reported as saying that nothing will be left undone to avoid a prosecution. . . It must be remembered that there is a clear distinction between a temporary arrangement as to ceremonial and any compromise in the matter of doctrine. It is the Bishop of Liverpool himself who has forced the issue by declaring in the Diocesan Gazette that “two or three clergymen in the diocese” held doctrines repugnant to that of the Church of England. A very big question is at once opened if one Bishop can lay down authoritatively that practices regulated, to that extent authorised, by other Bishops, are indicative of heretical doctrine.

. . . No solution of the present tensions will be at all fair to Catholic Churchmanship generally, unless it both prevents the scandal of a prosecution and ends the boycott of five years long which has been so preposterous a method of discipline.