SACRIFICES BY CLERGY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 81, 7 April 1931, Page 6

SACRIFICES BY CLERGY.

Who is this "Anglican" that is so ignorant ~ of the conditions in his own Church .as to suggest that Auckland clergy should forgo their Easter offerings? He refers to the "fairly substantial stipends" of the clergy in his Church and suggests that their life generally is one of comfort. I suggest that he knows the Church only from the outside, and I should like him to hear some of the comment that his letter must have aroused in Auckland vicarages. It is notorious that Anglican clergymen are scandalously underpaid. They are expected to be_ well and expensively educated, to keep up their reading, to entertain, and to give to charity, and their stipends, compared with these requirements, are pitiably small. To-day they must have difficulty in getting in their money and the calls upon their purses are heavier than usual. I know of one vicar who in a week gave away in charity twice what he was paid. I should say that there is not one Anglican, vicar in the Auckland Diocese who, not having private means, is not chronically hard up. But why confine the discussion to Anglican clergy? - A"1 ministers of God under the Protestant system , are shockingly underpaid. REAL ANGLICAN.