PECULIAR PARSONS

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIII, Issue 82, 18 March 1933, Page 8

PECULIAR PARSONS

FOUR CENTURIES AGO. THE POWER OF MAMMON. When an ecclesiastical visitation was paid to Gloucester in the 16th century, out of 111 parsons it was ascertained that 71 could not read, 10 could not recite the Lord’s Prayer and 27 did not know who was the author of the prayer. In the course of an address in Melbourne recently on the medieval Church the Rev. T. M. Robinson, who is chaplain of Trinity College, cited the example quoted as showing, inter alia, what difficulties the Church in those days had to face. Then the medieval Church had to shoulder the burden of the “sporting parson,” and the lecturer referred to one such cleric who was so keen on football that he made a practice of saying all his day’s prayers at an early hour so that ho might spend the remainder in the uninterrupted pursuit of his favourite recreation. Then there were the parsons who dressed after the fashion of laymen “so that they might b« mistaken for country gentlemen.” It was secularity manifested in a great variety of ways which indicated to the people that even in those days ‘ ‘ God was being elbowed out by Mammon.”