This autumn session of Parliament, when the Alternative Prayer Book of the Established Church is to be brought before the House of Commons, will provide a real crisis in the history of the Church of England: and in that crisis even the Roman Catholics must be not spectators only, but actors. When the Deposited Prayer Book comes before the Legislature of the nation, everyone who has a parliamentary vote has a moral duty, which he cannot shirk through sloth or fear.

At first sight it would seem that Roman Catholic voters and members of Parliament, inasmuch as they have no part or lot with the Church of England may easily satisfy their conscience by what is called ‘abstention.’ Indeed, on all sides we have members of the Church of England urging the incongruity of Methodists, Wesleyans, Baptists, Congregationalists, Quakers, Buddhists, Brahmins, Moslems, Atheists using their constitutional powers to vote on a domestic religious issue of a religious body claiming to be an integral part of the Christian Church. Yet something more than incongruity might be created by abstention. Just as nothing is more dogmatic than denial, so, too, nothing can be more effective than abstention. Every abstention is at least one decisive vote for the majority! To abstain from voting may merely salve and deceive the conscience of men who feel their conscience cannot allow them the positive act of voting.

In speaking of conscience-salving we have touched the heart of what we feel should be put not only before the readers of Blackfriars, but even before the electorate of England.