A Pillar of Church

Waiapu Church Gazette, Volume 35, Issue 7, 1 September 1944, Page 3

A Pillar of Church

The "pale, young curate" was proclaimed as one of the pillars of the Church of England, at a meeting m Caxton Hall, Westminster. Presiding, Archbishop Lord Lang confessed that, during his career as an "ordained animal," he had probably been more efficient at his job as a curate than he had ever been since. When he returned as a bishop to preach m Leeds, where he had once worked as a curate, a factory girl said to him after his sermon: "Nay, but you preached better sermons'n that when you were nobbut a curate!" Additional curates, continued the Archbishop, were essential to the proper fulfilment of the Church's mission. There was no escaping the fact that the English Church was both Catholic and national. It had a special responsibility to bring the influence of religion to bear on the mass of Christians within reach of their town homes. At the moment, the parochial work of the Church was suspended, and was inevitably becoming increasingly merely congregational. Its restoration was essential if the people m the coming time were to be given the foundations on which, all j other new schemes must be built; and if the system was to be saved there must be a: continuous supply of additional curates. Trumpet And Brass Band l Lord Selborne also described it as a matter which Churchpeople ought to have m the forefront of their hopes and prayers. The forces which had dragged down Germany were even now at work m this country. Ignorance of God, as well as materialism, seemed to be spreading. The population was increasingly vaster than the Church's organisation seemed able to cope with. The Church must be a great propagandist organisation. For centuries it had had propaganda to itself. But m recent times other ideologies had organised propaganda machinery, and the Church was now trying to make its trumpet heard' in; a world where a brass band was playing. Tens of thousands of young people were growing up m great, cities without having the Gospel preached to them. In the countryside the Church's parochial organisation was better able to cope with the situation; but it had broken down m the towns, and the cause was lack of man-power. There were a great many young men now serving with the Forces whose aim it was to seek Holy Orders after the war; but it would be impossible for them to do so unless funds were forthcoming to train them and to maintain them as curates. /