The Catholic World, Vol. 22, October, 1875, to March, 1876: A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and ScienceVarious
Religion
The Catholic World, Vol. 22, October, 1875, to March, 1876: A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and Science
Various
Catholic Church -- Periodicals
We question the propriety, as well as the Catholicity, of covering the
higher clergy with laws till they are helpless, while the laity revel in
a freedom that amounts, when they choose, to mob-license; but it is done,
and the Episcopal Church is degraded to a level lower than any of the
denominations around her.
With other bodies who call themselves Christian there is a certain amount
of consistency. Their rulers are from among their own members. With the
church under consideration, her rulers, in many cases, are any unbaptized
heathen who may choose to work themselves into a temporary favor with the
pew-holders. It is not necessary that they should even have ever attended
church. We note an instance where the chief man of a small parish was a
druggist, and kept in the rear of his drug-store a low drinking-room;
and this man was elected treasurer year after year by a handful of
interested parties, and, when elected, he managed all the finances of the
parish according to his own notions of propriety. It was his habit to go
to the church near the close of the sermon, and go away immediately after
the collection.
We note another instance where a warden visited the rector of his parish,
and threatened, with a polite oath, to give him something hotter than
a section of the day of judgment if he did not ask his (the warden’s)
advice a little more on parish matters. The parish grew so warm that at
the end of three weeks the rector was candidating for another.
We note another instance where a warden was so overjoyed at having
settled a rector according to his own liking that, on the arrival of the
new incumbent, he not only did not go to hear him preach, but stayed at
home with certain friends, and enjoyed, to use his own expression, a
“dooced big drunk.” Out of consideration for the feelings of his family
we use the word “dooced” instead of his stronger expression.
The rector of this happily-ruled parish was imprudent enough to incur
the displeasure of his warden after a few months of arduous labor. He
received a note while sitting at the bedside of his sick wife, saying
that after the following Sunday his services would be dispensed with;
that if he attempted to stay, the church would be closed for repairs.
We are well acquainted with a parish where a congregation wished to
displace both the senior and junior wardens. These two gentlemen had
been shrewd enough to foresee the event. They succeeded, by calculating
management, in having vested in themselves the right of selling pews.
When Easter Monday came, they sold for a dollar a pew to loafers on the
streets, and swarmed the election with men who never had entered the
place before. The laws of the parish were such that there was no redress.
As a matter of course, the rector was soon candidating.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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