CHURCH AS A CALLING.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 225, 22 August 1938, Page 8

CHURCH AS A CALLING.

COLLEGES AT HOAIE FULL. GRATIFYING FEATURES; “A great many people would be willing to come to New Zealand if tliev saw exactly how to come,” said Rev. D. V. de Candole, to a “Standard” reporter, in speaking of the number of students leaving theological colleges of the Church of England in Great Britain and of his own undertaking in coming to the Dominion as assistant-curate at All Saints’ Church.

Explaining the difficulties in the way of more young ordained men coming to New Zealand to fill positions here, Mr de Candole said that there was always a certain diffidence in the unknown personal relationship between the vicar and the young curate from so far away as England. Neither knew the other, and for both there might be difficulties. Again, for a young man who had just completed liis college studies the amount of the passage money was a hurdle to be overcome. “X do not think they mind very much where they go,” said Mr de Candole, “and the idea of coming to New Zealand has very attractive points. I was lucky in that Canon Woodward, vicar of All Saints’, called at his old college, at which I was a student, and made contact with me there. ' “At the present time London • absorbs a lot of the young men becoming curates, and many others go to the big industrial centres in the North of England, such as Sheffield, Leeds,' and Nottingham. Not many go to the country parishes, because in many cases financial reasons preclude their finding employment in that sphere. “All the colleges are full and there arc plenty of men offering for the Church but there is a difficulty in England in that there arc not the jobs to pay them all with. Lincoln College, my own, is fully booked to 1941. The students are coming from all walks of social life, and I think there lias been a change somewhat in tlie outlook on the Church as a calling. Previously it was apt to be thought ‘respectable’ to become a cieric, blit there has been a change of outlook and the students are not coming, to the same extent, from the upper middle class. Also, education has become so much more open to everybody, and it is easier now for the young man without much money to secure the education required for the examinations he must take.” Coming from near Cambridge, where his home is, Mr de Candole, who is 95 years of age, attended the Oakham Public School at Rutland and later studied in King’s College, .in the University of London. From there he went to Bishop’s Hostel, Lincoln, and it was at Lincoln that he was ordained deacon.