CHRISTIANITY AND COMMUNISM ' [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.]
CHRISTIANITY AND COMMUNISM ' [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Captain Powell's violent attack in your last issue on the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches, with its talk of " idols," " images,- and " idolatrous processions " seems an odd throw-back to the militant Protestantism of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when insulting other people's religions was a favourite pastime of our rude forefathers. Is it worth while to quote at us diatribes against ecclesiastical images uttered by Augustine, Lactantius and Ambrose ?
As to the Eucharist being celebrated on Italian war tanks, presumably there was no other place handy at the time. It seems to me about the most harmless use to which I have yet heard of tanks being put ; and anyhow surely proves nothing about the attitude of the Roman Church towards war.
But Captain Powell's oddest comment is on " the Anglo- Catholic intention to bring the English Church once again under Roman obedience." I wonder if he has ever met an Anglo-Catholic, and if he is really not aware of their firm and jealous opposition to the Roman claims. He might take in The Church Times for a while ; he would be considerably enlightened. It is an interesting symptom of our quarrelsome age, if rude religious controversy is coming in again. 'But, speaking as a detached onlooker, I feel that a trifle more of polish would
inake it more edifying.—Yours, &c., ROSE Mi.CAULAY.
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