the english clergy assocation

The new Editor of Parson & Parish the Rev'd Canon Peter Johnson, M.A., lately Treasurer of Bristol Cathedral.  His address is 4 St. John's Road, Windsor, SL4 3QN.  He can be reached on 01753 865914 and on e-mail at pfjohnson@virgin.net.

SUBSCRIPTIONS at £10p.a. (£5 retired and ordinands) for 2009 are now due and if not paid by Standing Order should be sent to the Old School House, Norton Hawkfield, near Pensford, Bristol BS39 4HB by cheque. New Members joining in October receive fifteen months' Membership as a welcoming gesture.

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING is at 12.15p.m. on Monday, 10th May, 2010, at St. Giles-in-the-Fields (near Centre Point/Tottenham Court Road, London). Holy Communion (B.C.P.) is at 12.45p.m., and a good Buffet Lunch 1.35p.m. (please reserve - donations basis rather than fixed charge).

ANNUAL ADDRESS 2P.M. - After the 2009 Address Double Jeopardy: Secularism, Militant Islam and Christian Faith by the Rt. Rev'd the Lord Bishop of Rochester, Dr. Michael Nazir-Ali, who has accepted our invitation to become a Vice-President, the 2010 Speaker will be the Rt. Hon. the Baroness Cox, of Queensbury.  Her web pages can be found at www.hart-uk.org

The present issue of Parson & Parish is the 168th. We have most of the old issues, as does Lambeth Palace Library, and the Copyright Deposit Libraries. Read the Parson and Parish backnumbers on this site.  The new Editor is happy to consider contributions, and welcomes Letters to the Editor.  The Rev'd Jonathan Redvers Harris remains Vice-Chairman of the Association, and the A.G.M. thanked him warmly for 10 years of sterling work as Editor.

Download Next Event Poster - Monday 10th May 2010

The Ecclesiastical Offices (Terms of Service) Measure we campaigned against.  The Measure was amended, to lose the unfortunate proposals to confiscate Parsonages and Churches from Incumbents and place them vulnerably in diocesan ownership.  The Archdeacon of Berkshire and others played a huge part in this reversal of Synod's line.  Now the rest of the Measure has gone through Parliament, despite the stalwart efforts of our Parliamentary Vice-President, Sir Patrick Cormack, F.S.A., M.P., and Synod in its labyrinthine way is working on revised draft Regulations, by which, we would maintain, clergy's traditional freedom of work and association will be all but strangled.  Watch this space!  The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

Existing freeholders will be asked to surrender the freehold of office (retaining the freehold of property) and go over to Common Tenure.  The Archbishops say that they will do so.  The advice of your Council is: don't!  You'd regret it - as Esau did when he sold his birthright for a mess of potage.  Mess is the word.  Still, we await the new draft Regulations with great interest.  They will, if enacted, have statutory force of law.

The Incumbents (Vacation of Benefices) Measure 1977, expensively revised since, was also going to be the best thing since sliced bread. Will the capability procedure fare any better? The employment tribunals are unknown quantities, and too much expertise is asked of them if they are all to get to grips with the unique culture of the Church of England. Is not this passing the buck - and when the new Clergy Discipline Measure is still so barely tried and novel?

The Regulations will usher in a control freak's paradise. There is much good in the recommendations, particularly in the giving of real security to the licensed through common tenure. But those with permission to officiate are still in outer darkness. Ministerial review becomes compulsory and intrusive. Human-resources staff, costed at millions each year, will be in the control-room of a Big Brother House.

The distinction between enhanced ministerial review and the new capability procedure will be less than clear in the psyche of most clergy and laity. Bishops and archdeacons will be put in an impossibly convoluted position, needing to maintain a distance from anyone who might be likely to appear before them in a capability proceeding, and knowing that, costs apart, the whole issue is likely to go to an employment tribunal anyway.

What of St Paul's injunction that we should settle matters among believers? Do the proposals reflect badly on devoted chancellors and registrars? Do the new procedures apply to them? In the past, they were aided by elected assessors and committees. Even examiners under the consistory-court system were appointed by an elected committee. Now we go over to a system of non-transparent appointment. We shall all be sorry.

John Masding

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