BURDENS OF CLERGY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 192, 15 August 1931, Page 19 (Supplement)

BURDENS OF CLERGY

APPEAL FOR LIVING WAGE. IMPROVIDENT MARRIAGES. “We must never rest until we have given our clergy a living wage.” This was the appeal made by the Bishop of London, Dr. WinningtonIngram, at the Church Assembly at Westminster a few weeks ago in the course of the debate on the report of the committee appointed to review the financial burdens c the clergy. Dr. Ingram asked why the Church had not taken to heart what he believed to be a very great scaldal. He thought that one reason was that the poverty of some of the clergy was hidden by the smiling self-control of the people who never complained about it. In one house in the East End of London, said the bishop, he found that the clergyman’s wife was housemaid, cook, and nurse to the whole establishment. Many thinking clergy were puzzled and distressed by the very early and.improvident marriages of the young clergy. <( 1 am bound to say,” said Dr. Ingram, “it is rather a shock to me when I spend £lOOO on the training of a : young to be informed, a few weeks after he has bsen ordained, that he is going to got married. I am one of those soft-hearted people who say, \God bless you and be happy.’ ” He was afraid, however, that happiness did not come in some cases. He knew that people had come for help to the Poor Clergy ± and within five years of being ordained. The Rev. H. Gathorne Crabtree said that the poverty of some incumbents was distressing. Some years ago he stayed with a country vicar and his wife, and their daughter danced joyfully into the room and announced that they were going to have steak pie for dinner. He learned afterwards that that was the first time they had had moat that month.