World Church - In Brief
Diocesan Press Service. April 25, 1969 [76-17]
Ecumenically Speaking
The Rt. Rev. Graham Leonard, Suffragan Bishop of Willesden and a prominent Anglo-Catholic, has informed the Archbishop of Canterbury that if present plans for Anglican-Methodist union are approved he will dissociate himself from the union plan.
The Rev. Harriet Christie made history as the first woman to participate in a service at St. Michael's Roman Catholic Cathedral, Toronto. Miss Christie, a minister and principal of the United Church of Canada's Covenant College, read the lesson during a Good Friday gathering. Also participating was the Rt. Rev. George B. Snell, Anglican Bishop of Toronto.
Dr. M. L. Wilson, chairman of the National Committee of Black Churchmen, has succeeded Dr. Norman Vincent Peale as president of the Council of Churches of the City of New York. Dr. Wilson is pastor of the Covenant Baptist Church which is affiliated with the American and National Baptist Conventions.
Pope Paul VI has decreed an end to much of the ornate in the dress of Cardinals. The most notable single change will be the elimination of the "red hat." The color black will be substituted. Also eliminated will be the cardinals' red shoes with silver buckles.
The fourteen-member committee appointed to study the possibility of membership of the U.S. Roman Catholic Church in the National Council of Churches met for the first time recently in New York City. The Committee anticipates two or three years will be necessary to accomplish its task which was described as a study of questions, not the presentation of a plan for membership.
Miss Lillian Block, managing editor of Religious News Service since 1957, has been named a vice-president of the National Conference of Christians and Jews in "recognition of vital contributions to intercredal understanding."
Overseas
The first woman minister of the Church of Scotland (Presbyterian) was ordained recently by the Presbytery of Aberdeen and will take up a post in a new parish now lacking a church. She is Miss Catherine McConnachie, 66, who recently retired as a deaconess after 37 years' service.
The chancery office of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Lima, Peru, has confirmed the marriage of Mario Renato Cornejo Radavero, former auxiliary bishop. He married Marta Fernandez Trevino, a former policewoman.
The Rev. Richards W. Beekman has taken up a permanent missionary assignment in Porto, Portugal.
The Rt. Rev. Ian Shevill, Anglican Bishop of North Queensland, recently defended his occasional practice of visiting bars and said that he only regretted that the last time he visited one he had lemonade. "Bishops can be as thirsty as anybody," the prelate said. He noted, however, that he had had lemonade rather than beer because of Lent.
The Church of England Synod meeting in Hamilton, Bermuda, has rejected the Archbishop of Canterbury's choice for the post of Bishop of Bermuda. Additional nominations will now have to be made to the Synod.
More "shots in the battle for life" were predicted by John Cardinal Heenan of Westminster following defeat in the House of Lords of a bill to legalize euthanasia or "mercy killing. " The bill was defeated by the small majority of 21.
The Rev. Robert J. Carlson, formerly a missionary in the Rupununi, Guyana, is now in Cuernavaca, Mexico, on language study before going to a new assignment in Guatemala.
The Rev. Arthur Sexby of St. Paul's Church, Johannesburg, South Africa, refused to begin services until all women wearing skirts above the knees left the premises. His pronouncement caused a minor exodus among the congregation, including about half its teen-age members.
At Home
A statue of Father Damien of Molokai, famed apostle to the lepers, will be presented by the State of Hawaii to the National Statuary Collection Hall located in the Capitol Building.
Protesting the "second class status of women in the Church" six women took off their Easter bonnets and placed them on the Communion rail during services at St. John de Nepomus Church, Milwaukee, Wis. The group, along with nine others who had arrived bareheaded, were from the local chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW).
Sister Anita Marie, OSA, died in April at St. Anne's Convent, Arlington Heights, Mass. She had served from 1909 to 1955 as a missionary in China and in the Philippines.
Mrs. Theodore O. Wedel will retire as Associate General Secretary for Christian Unity of the National Council of Churches. She and her husband, the Rev. Canon Theodore Wedel, former Warden of the College of Preachers, will take up residence in Washington, D. C.
The Rev. Dr. John Howard Melish, who lost his post as rector of a Brooklyn Heights Church in 1949 because of his defense of his son who was charged with Communist leanings, died in New York at the age of 94.
Seventeen Dioceses of the Episcopal Church are participating in fully-developed joint strategy and action agencies on a city-wide or larger scale. Sixteen others are planning such agencies.
The General Convention Special Program recently received a check for $100 from a Portland, Ore., woman looking for a suitable memorial for her mother. After studying materials on the GCSP, the woman wrote that "I only wish I could send a check more commensurate with my feeling for my mother and for the fine work you are doing. (In other words the check ought to be for about a million dollars.)"
Roman Catholic grade schools, over the next six years, will be forced to refuse admission to almost 2 million children unless massive public support becomes available, according to Msgr. James C. Donoghue, director of the Division of Elementary and Secondary Education of the United States (Roman) Catholic Conference.