BISHOPS AND CLERGY

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 49, 26 August 1922, Page 12

BISHOPS AND CLERGY

MAINTAINING A LOFTY EMIN, ", ENCE., ' -"■ . X is a habit of the most) advanced Churchmen of our time, and rather a bewildering habit, to efunciate princij pies which seem' to carry us back at a, I bound to the old reactionary days of the Church, says the " Manchester Guardian." It would be easy; for instance, to fill this column with the names of bishops of the bad old days who would have underlined with enthusiasm Dr. Hensley Henson's declaration that it is not good that the parochial clergy I should see too much of their bishop, [though there is certainly nothing in common between Dr. Henson and the bishops who would have found it hard work to explore their cathedral towns, to say nothing of their diocese. In the eighteenth century, as well as both earlier and later, ' there were, many bishops who took .good care that the clergy did not.see much of them. When Bumefc made a complete tour of the great diocese of Salisbury his achievement was thought marvellous, though Burnet had so little personnel dignity that he would never have troubled his head with the old saw about familiarity breeding contempt. But is it the fact nowadays that bishops are inclined to make themselves " cheap," and that the multiplication of dioceses would only complete that process? We all know the story of the parish clerk who explained to a suffragan that he never- raised the flag on the parish church more than half-iuasfc high for s"them sufferin' bishops," and it is easy to see - that a bishop may find it difficult to maintain his lofty eminence if he is always visiting his parochial clergy. The bishop in his dressing-gown on his way to the rectory bathroom, the bishop overturning a cup of tea, the bishop straggling with a recalcitrant chicken leg (here one recalls Temple's famous moan) doffs a little of austere dignity. The rare coming of a bishop must be a. great event; a oishop never long absent may be no more august than a commercial traveller.