Canadian Church Holds Synod
RNS. September 1, 1962 [II-8]
KINGSTON, Ont. (RNS) - The Anglican Church of Canada's 21st triennial General Synod in session here in late August placed its final seal of approval on the revised Book of Common Prayer, heard Anglican executive officer Bishop Stephen Bayne, and heard it quoted that the Church's policy on the remarriage of divorced persons makes "ecclesiastical Renos" of other communions.
A report approved by the Synod said that public school education in Canada should be aligned with the "Christian view", since there is "no neutral course in education."
The Primate of All Canada, the Most Rev. Howard H. Clark, Archbishop of Rupert's Land, told the delegates that a disturbingly large portion of the world wears "a blank, uncomprehending look" when the Church speaks. "Businessmen take care to know what their customers are thinking," the Archbishop said. "I wonder why those who are churchmen do not insist that we also should use these means to discover what people outside the Church feel and say?"
Archbishop Harold Sexton of British Columbia had a statement distributed among the delegates saying "We cannot, of course, entertain any sympathy for those persons who lightly regard the obligations of marriage, but as most of us know, there are good and upright people, who, having extricated themselves from an unfortunate and often impossible union, desire to remake their lives with partners of good character and live as decent members of the Church.
"Generally speaking, the clergy are sympathetic toward such cases, and frequently arrange for a second marriage at the hands of a friendly or well-disposed minister of another (church) who is not subject to the inhibitions imposed upon the Anglican clergy."
A debate flared over the report of the Commission on Marriage and Related Matters which said it "hoped" a uniform practice could be established in admitting to the Sacraments divorced persons who have remarried.
Canon J.C. Clough of Winnipeg quoted a bishop, whom he did not identify, as having made the statement about "ecclesiastical Renos."
The final draft of the revision of the 1918 Prayer Book version was approved by two successive Synods.
Bishop Bayne, at the opening service, said that the Anglican Communion is only a particular fragment of that "full communion which must some day hold all Christians together." He described the Anglican Communion as "an accidental historical configuration, which came into existence by God's providence to bear out witness in a divided church. But we should disappear and we are disappearing as those divisions are healed."