Project Canterbury

The Catholic Faith and the Religious Situation

A Series of Addresses Given under the auspices of
The Transfiguration Branch of the Churchmen's Alliance
Lent, 1921.

The Churchmen's Alliance, 126 Claremont Avenue, New York
1921.

1. The Lambeth Appeal
The Rt. Rev. Frederick Burgess, D.D., Bishop of Long Island

2. The Theological Position of the Anglo-Catholic Congress
Arthur Whipple Jenks, D.D., General Theological Seminary

3. Anglo-Catholicism To-day
Simon Blinn Blunt, D.D., All Saints Church, Boston, Mass.

4. Characteristic Positions of Modern Protestantism
Lucius Waterman, D.D., Tilton, N.H.

5. The Full Catholic Faith the Need in the Present Unrest
George Craig Stewart, D.D., L.H.D., St. Luke's Church, Evanston, Ill.

6. The Duty of Catholics To-day
Frederick Spies Penfold, D.D., St. Stephen's Church, Providence, R.I.

The addresses herein contained constitute a series given on Monday evenings in the Lenten season of 1921 at the Church of the Transfiguration, New York City. The subjects of the addresses were suggested by the two important events in the religious world during the summer of 1920-The Anglo-Catholic Congress and the Lambeth Conference. Anglo-catholicism and Protestantism are the definite and, practically, mutually exclusive, terms of modern English-speaking Christian groups. The Anglo-Catholic Congress spoke out clearly and without apology on the Church's position as related to all other groups. The Lambeth Conference, differently constituted, but with no legislative powers, meeting unofficially with the Archbishop of Canterbury, as his personal guests, and having by no means a monopoly of theological learning, attempted to mediate between the Church and Protestantism on certain points of difference. The latter listened courteously and has since uttered comments which indicate failure very largely to sympathize with or even to understand the language of Church theologians. The Lambeth Conference already presents the appearance of a waning influence on the positive side. On matters of secondary importance, e. g. the ministry of women, the Lambeth Resolutions have succeeded mainly in sowing seeds of new controversies and unpleasantness. Anglo-Catholicism, be it said in all humility, is the only positive Christian system untrammelled by obligations to the State, uncompromised by the formal errors of personal leaders, and unfettered by unhistorical claims, e. g. the papacy, and by uncatholic terms of communion.

The papers contained in this volume are intended to expand and develop these considerations and to stimulate those who read them to widespread and energetic propagation of the Catholic Faith, full and unadulterated, as no partisan pronouncement, but the need of the world in the unrest, religious, moral, intellectual, and social, of the present day.

The conjunction of S. Mark's Day with the fourth week of Eastertide suggests that the combination of the characteristic petitions of the proper collects expresses the need of the Christian world today.

"Give us grace that, being not like children carried away with every blast of vain doctrine, we may be established in the truth of Thy holy Gospel"; "that so, among the sundry and manifold changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found."

St. Mark's Day, 1921.

Project Canterbury