Welsh Journals

The Anti-Roman Gesture at St. Davids. By Rev. A. W. Wade-Evans, Perpetual Curate of France Lynch, Glos. AT St. Davids on July 14th, 1925, there was a service in the Cathedral Church in com- memoration of the Sixteenth Centenary of that great Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325), which gave us the first draft of the Nicene Creed. The four pre-disestablishment bishops of Wales, that is, all those of Downing-street appointment, who had sat in the House of Lords, were present, Dr. Edwards (St. Asaph), Dr. Owen (St. Davids), Dr. Hughes (Llandaff), and Dr. Williams (Bangor). These, it is pleas- ant to reflect, are the last of their kind, I mean their kind of appointment, to occupy the said episcopal chairs. Not one of the Welsh bishops of Welsh appointment was there, which may be an omen. There were visitors, very distinguished, from the East, members of the Eastern Orthodox Church, including the Patriarch of Alexandria and the Patriarch of Jerusalem, with several other Eastern Orthodox Bishops and their attendants. There were also representatives of Welsh Protestant Nonconformity (the Calvinistic Metho- dists, the Wesleyans, the Congregationalists, and the Baptists), with a special invitation to the Rev David Davies of Penarth, Baptist minister, author of Vavasor Powell," etc. All these, we are told, were in academic dress." You may ask why was the Rev. David Davies of Penarth specially invited? Author of "Vavasor Powell." I have no information. He is described as representing the Welsh Baptist Union," excuse rather than reason, seeing that the Chair- man of that Union was there. Know, then, that the Rev. David Davies has written a book. Not that writing a book, especially a book on Vavasor Powell," would have been enough to procure an invitation to the Valley of Dewi Sant. I have written a book, even on Dewi Sant, but no invitation came my way. The Rev. David Davies has written a special kind of book, much nearer to the dull Erastian fancy of our pre-disestablishment bishops than any treatise on Dewi Sant, who, poor fellow, has been dead a very long time. The Rev. David Davies has written a special kind of book, extra-special, entitled "The Ancient Celtic Church and the See of Rome," being a Refutation of the Assertions of Dr. Mostyn, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Cardiff." And what are these Assertions? They are that the Welsh people from the earliest period were Catholic and Roman. The Rev. David Davies, you observe, has become a Champion of the Ancient British Church as against the See of Rome. That the Rev. David Davies does not believe in the Ancient British Church is of no consequence whatever to our pre-disestablishment bishops. That the Rev. David Davies is Antipædobaptist, denying that Christening makes a Christian, is a trifle. Put him in academic dress (what good old Vavasor Powell would have called the habit of a foolish shepherd "), and set him on high in the Catholic (not Roman) Cathedral Church of St. David. And the Rev. David Davies, who so admires Vavasor Powell, actually allows it. That the Rev. David Davies should be up against Rome is the thing. That he should be up against Catholicism doesn't matter. What, after all, is Catholicism? There is Anglo- Catholicism, Free Catholicism. Irvingite Catho- licism, and what-not Catholicism. Nobody under- stands Catholicism. But Rome, ah, nobody can fail to understand Rome. That the Rev. David Davies should be up against Rome, that's the ticket. Catholicism doesn't matter. And yet our pre-disestablishment bishops are loud in maintaining that the Church in Wales is Catholic; and certainly she holds the ancient Catholic sites. Catholic, not Roman," said the Archbishop of Wales, is the Church to which the Oriental dignitaries had come. The Ancient British Church, said he, was a sister of the Church of Gaul, which, too, therefore, I suppose, in his opinion, was "Catholic, not Roman." Anyhow, he declared his belief that the Church of Gaul was founded from Ephesus. Therefore, he argued, the Ancient British Church was Oriental in its origin, not Western." As the Rev. David Davies says in his book (you need not go further than page one), Nor is there a shred of evidence that it came in the first place from Rome." The Archbishop also referred to St. Augustine of Canterbury, Emissary of the Pope of Rome, Head of the "Italian Mission," as some of our refined English termed it. Well, what now of St. Augustine of Canterbury? Listen to the Arch- bishop of Wales in his post-disestablishment mood There might be doubts (said he) as to whether Augustine was the Apostle of England. There was no doubt whatever about the fact that he was not the Apostle of Wales." Only till yesterday Wales was being told, year in and year out, that the four Welsh dioceses were merely a portion of the Province of Canter- bury, and what a wicked, wicked thing it was to sever so sweet a connection (indignation on the face of Dr. Edwards, tears in the eyes of Dr. Owen). Verily, some of our simple, unsophisti- cated Churchfolk must have concluded that Canterbury was the mother of Welsh religion, and not the step-mother. Augustine of Canterbury indeed! There was no doubt, whatever, said the Archbishop, that Augustine of Canterbury was not the Apostle of Wales. The British Church, said he, was British,