HARDSHIPS OF CLERGY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19460, 16 October 1926, Page 15

HARDSHIPS OF CLERGY.

months without stipends.

indebtedness of parishes

CLERGYMAN URGES LIQUIDATION

LOAN FUND PROPOSAL ADOPTED

The hardships and difficulties experienced by clergymen stationed in parishes encumbered with debt were vividly pictured by Canon C. H. Grant Cowen in speaking at the Diocesan Synod yesterday afternoon. " I can imagine," he said, " no harder thing than for a clergyman to go into a district, especially a back blocks district, and before he can start his spiritual work finds it necessary to raise funds to pay off the debts that have accumulated in years past." He spoke of clergymen, with no private income of their own, going for five, four and three months without receiving a penny of their stipends. How they managed to live was a problem that surpassed his comprehension. People* gpoke about St. Francis and all he did, but there are many Saints Francis iri New Zealand.

The central fund should be used, not so much to make small straight-out "doles" to parishes, as was being done at present, but to make £ for £ subsidies to parishes that urgently required to wipe out their debts. If a parish was encumbered with a debt, say of £SOO, a grant of £250 from the central fund, added to a similar sum raised locally, would clear the debt and enablo the clergyman to carry out his work without the distractions that hampered his work today. With the liquidation of parish debts better and more spiritual work would be done for the Church than ever before. The Fear of Hardship. Canon Grant Cowen added that he was looking forward to the time when the Church of New Zealand would not always be looking for help to the Mother Land in the matter of obtaining men for the ministry. He could not help thinking that the reason why a great many young men failed to offer their services for the ministry was a realisation of the hardships confronting them. So far only a very faw men had found their way into the clergy from such schools as Wanganui and King's College. He thought they should be able to look forward to more volunteers from such schools. Alluding to the recent election to the bishopric of Waikato, Canon Grant Cowen said it was a great opportunity to secure a New Zealand trained man as the first bishop. If it were said that the New Zealand ministry was devoid of men of quality capable of filling a post of God then it was a very poor outlook Iu order to strengthen the central fund and increase its scope of usefulness, Canon Grant Cowen moved: " That the attention of Church people of the diocese be drawn to the importance of the central fund, and that they be urged to give it their enthusiastic and liberal support." The Rev. C. L. B. Brown, Hokianga, said that as an Englishman he profoundly disagreed with the view that young men were avoiding the ministry for fear of hardship. He believed, however, that the constant repetition of the opinion Blight have an effect in that direction. Obligations of the Parishes.

Mr. C. J. Tanks agreed that some parishes were lax in paying the instalments of a clergyman's stipend. The Standing Committee demanded of every district each year an assurance that the stipend would be paid and it should be a matter of greater honour and effort on the part of districts that the obligations they entered into nhould be carried out. The motion was carried.

Mr. J. Hogben moved that the Standing Committee take steps to institute a loan fund for the diocese. Loans from bucli a fund, ho said, could be granted to needful parishes at a nominal rate of interest.

Speaking in support of the motion, Canon Grant Cowen said that in the past the Church had lent money on the security of members of the vestries. Realising that such a policy was wrong in principle. the practice had been discontinued, but the result was that many districts possessing no securities of their own weire at a loss to know how to carry on with their work. A loan fund was a move in the right direction. Archdeacon W. J. Simkin recalled that when Archbishop Averill was Bishop of Waiapu in 1912 he had instituted a loan fund, out of which 89 loans had since been granted. The interest was only 3 per cent, and on ri'6 occasion was there any difficulty regarding repayment. Archbishop Averill welcomed the motion and prophesied that if a loan fund were established it would prove as beneficial as other church loan funds he had been associated with in the Dominion. He hoped it would attract legacies or gifts from those interested in the welfare cf the Church, and especially (he clergy. The motion was carried.