Outcast Anglican

If every year for seven years A hundred thousand men Gave sixty pence and sixty prayers We'd have our churches then!

From Chichester the Bishop calls To Sussex by the sea For folk to build the Church's walls, In love and loyalty!

--George Chichester

Happy and hopeful was Rt. Rev. George Kennedy Allen Bell, personable Lord Bishop of ancient Chichester, England, four years ago, when he composed the foregoing verses to raise money in his Anglican diocese. Unhappy and hard-pressed was the same noble Lord Spiritual last week when he learned that one of his clergy, a 70-year-old-curate from Camelsdale, near Haslemere, named Rev. William Henry Boyne Bunting, had turned on the gas, died in his barren bedroom along with his wife Hilda, 56. Curate Bunting left a note declaring that his son James was in possession of most of the family money, between $15,000 and $20,000. A coroner's jury, formally pronouncing the Buntings suicides, observed that their son had acted "in a very callous manner" in not assisting his parents in their difficulties.

His Lordship of Chichester had first to decide whether the Buntings were responsible for their suicide, which in turn would decide their right to Christian burial. Next he had to deal with the deplorable scandal of an Anglican curate's son breaking the Fifth Commandment, Honor thy father and thy mother. Last week he publicly adjured James Bunting to repent of his sins, informed him that until further notice he may not partake of Holy Communion in any church in the diocese of Chichester.

The Bishop wisely avoided mentioning excommunication, since the Church of England has not made use of that process in a century. But the Press did not hesitate to use that awful word, and although James Bunting was free to enjoy the sacraments outside Chichester, that young man professed to believe he was just as much excommunicated as if the Church had consigned him to Satan with a Fiat, fiat, fiat!* From a seaside resort Bunting, who said he had been a scenario writer in Hollywood, announced he was retaining counsel, would try to prove the Bishop wrong. Admitting he had his parents' money, he said: "In the past it may be I was a naughty boy, but there are lots of sons who have been naughty boys."

* In the Roman Catholic Church the penalty of excommunication may be inflicted, according to jurisdiction, by nearly every prelate from Pope down to vicar general. A dread excommunication formula--which Anglicans once used --ends: "We deprive him . . . of the Communion of the Body and Blood of Our Lord. We separate him from the society of all Christians. . . . We declare him excommunicated and anathematized. . . . We deliver him to Satan to mortify his body, that his soul may be saved on the Day of Judgment. . . . Fiat, fiat, fiat!" ("Let it be done, let it be done, let it be done!")

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