CLERGY IN ENGLAND.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIX, Issue 104, 2 April 1929, Page 8

CLERGY IN ENGLAND.

PATRONAGE QUESTION,

When the Patronage Measure was considered on the revision stage by the Church Assembly in England, Rev. C. E. Douglas, who had 65 amendments on the paper, was accused by a lay member of trying to defeat the measure by obstructionist tactics. - Mr Douglas retorted that his amendments were intended to enlarge the scope of the measure, and to make the Patronage Board a thoroughly efficient body. One was directed to what he called the “wrangles” which are carried on behind the scenes in the exchange of livings. He proposed the insertion of a new clause requiring that, subject to the consent of the bishop, the patron’s right to presentation should be limited to clerks whose ministerial experience included five years’ work in the diocese as priests holding a benefice therein or a license under seal from the bishop. There were livings, he said, which were continually being bandied about as a bit of property from man to man. Rev. H. C. Bell, who moved a minor verbal amendment, said that they were all familiar with the gross scandal of English Church life which was flaunted before them every week in the Church newspapers. << Therc, ,> he said, 1 we find clergymen seeking a new sphere of work telling us they want ‘good society, golf, sandy soil, sea (south or west’), and’it is not without significance that this long list of requirements is usually combined with another requirement—that is ‘mod.’ (Laughter.) “Everyone is aware of this tremendous reluctance on the part of a certain number of work-sliy clergy to go and put in work in the places where it is needed most. People sunning themselves in Bournemouth are sometimes to be tempted to the industrial north not- to take a curacy, but to take q. living, provided always that the income is sufficiently good. There is a feeling among people in the north that such arrangements are not very desirable.” Mr Douglas’s amendment was rejected.