Canadian Churchman

The Church of England’s refusal to allow visiting women priests to officiate threatens to throw that church into ecclesiastical anarchy. It also raises the question of whether a church which so condones discrimination on the grounds of sex has the right any longer to be regarded as head of the Anglican Communion.

“This occasion is particularly happy for some, and particularly sad for others,” Bishop John Bothwell of Niagara told the people who filled Grace Church here to witness the ordination of two of the first women priests in Canada.

With second reading of the Canon on Marriage and Related Matters (Canon XXVIIB) passed overwhelmingly at General Synod in late August, the Anglican Church of Canada became the second member of the world-wide communion to approve the remarriage of divorced persons.

In his latest book published but a few months before his death, “The Warrior, the Woman and the Christ,” Studdert Kennedy related that one day as he was conduction a soldiers’ service behind the lines, a perky little private asked him if he was going back to take mothers’ meetings after the war. Amidst a roar of approving laughter, Mr. Kennedy replied, “Look here young fellow my lad, you seem to think that you are more important than your mother. You come off it. I’d rather talk to your mother than to you any day of the week, Sunday included.”

More than once or twice of late, the Canadian Churchman has noted – for the consideration of its readers, now in every part of Canada as well as the United States and Great Britain – the remarkable character and career of Robert Machray, long known, loved and valued in the North-west as “Bishop of Rupert’s Land,” now, happily, to be still better known as “His Grace, the Most Reverend the Primate of Canada, Metropolitan and Archbishop of Rupert’s Land.”

From Our Special Correspondent

On Monday evening the Synod was formally opened by choral evensong in the cathedral. The Ven. Archdeacon Bedford-Jones acted as precentor the Very Rev. the Dean and the Rev. Canon Bleasdell reading the lessons. The sermon was preached by the Rev. G T. Lowe, of Carleton Place, from the text “The Body is one and hath many members.” (1 Cor. Xii. 12.)