REFORM NEEDED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 158, 6 July 1937, Page 10

REFORM NEEDED.

CLERGY'S SALARIES.

POOL SCHEME FAVOURED.

STIPEND ANOMAUES. (By Telegraph—Special to "Star.") NEW PLYMOUTH, this day. "I hope the day will come when all our stipends will be pooled, and that we shall be paid according to our age, experience, size of families, etc.," said Bishop Cherrington in his charge to the annual Waikato Diocesan Synod. The Bishop said Standing Committee had done its best to pay a living wage to those clergy who had not been receiving it. The standard aimed at was £200 for every parish where a clergyman was in sole charge. It would be a long time before those parishes reached the statutory figure of £300 and a house, but he hoped they were feeling their wey towards that end. He had nothing but praise and gratitude to those clergy who had been good enough to work for so little. "Apart from official duties—maintaining an episcopal house twice too large for him, giving hospitality to all and sundry, including ordinands, people wanting interviews, etc. —there is no reason why a bishop's stipend should differ from a vicar's or curate's for that matter, if he is single," said the Bishop. "Perhaps some financial genius of Synod may work this out for us and make suggestions as to how it could be done. The Bishop referred to the travelling expenses of clergy, and pointed out that in the parishes where the stipends were lowest the travelling expenses were the highest, as the parishes were so scattered. "If we did what we could afford most of us would confine ourselves to the humble bicycle, while the bishop should certainly aspire no higher than a motor cycle," he concluded.