At least this is a natural hypnotic

Look at the pictures of the 2013 General Synod in Armagh. Same old, same old. Where are the new faces? Where are the young people? Read the accounts of business. Where’s the reality? Where’s the vitality? Where’s the strategy? Where’s the vision? Where’s the engagement with science, with society? Why are Bishops apparently obsessed with sex, but say next to nothing about injustice and usury? Listen to the way at Diocesan Synods that rabbit’s friends and relations are voted into vacancies, or retiring members are immediately re-elected. See how fear of reprisal influences voting by show of hands.

Is this a portrait of a thriving organisation? It is not. It’s a portrait of an irrelevant and self-congratulatory club in which old people plan a future they will not be around to see. What’s the point of spending money on prizes for blogs, websites, media? Who, outside the membership of the select little club, cares a damn about this piffle? I’m reminded again of Aer Lingus being awarded the prize for the best Irish airline by Cara, the in-house magazine of Aer Lingus.

Well over half the clergy in this diocese are over 60. Will we be replaced? Even if replacements can be afforded, where will they come from? I suspect the trickle from Rome has peaked. Some of us come from England, and there are some from the kingdom of Far Far Away, but the church can’t rely on them. The Church of Ireland community can hardly be said to be enthusiastic about fostering vocations. Look at the pictures of synod again: how many of those people can even manage to get their children and grandchildren to come to church?

In Co Laois there are eight paid Church of Ireland clergy. Costs are rising, property taxes are passed on to churches. People are increasingly hard-up. Crisis looms (crisis does not mean opportunity—that’s management-speak invention). How long before eight are down to three: north, central, and south? And as for churches: there are too many. So close some. Simples.

What’s the chance of a rational and clear-headed discussion of these issues? None. It’s all about tribal identity, posturing and self-gratification. If the Church of Ireland population were even a fraction as loyal and committed as is the Muslim population, churches would thrive and lives would be changed.

The perfect pastor

In a letter to the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Pope Francis wrote that the pastoral ministry ‘is a call to walk in fidelity to the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.’ Good grief!  Has the Pope made his first error of judgement? What has the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ got to do with pastoral ministry? We must investigate!

What do parishioners want of their pastors?

• Someone to baptize, marry and bury. This is a statutory duty. It is a pleasure and a privilege.
• Someone to, in the words of the 1662 ordinal, ‘search for the sick, poor, and impotent people of the Parish’. So is this.
• Someone to lead public worship. As is this. Even though they don’t often come, most of them like to think that it’s happening.
• Someone to maintain the tribal temple in exactly the same state as it was when they were children. God forbid that the colour scheme be changed, or that pews be removed.
• Someone nominally in charge of the burial ground where they can go to talk to the people they feel guilty about having misjudged (or worse) when they were alive.
• Someone nominally in charge of the burial ground where they themselves want to end up.
• Someone they can complain about in other meetings and gatherings. This is a popular pastime in the Church of Ireland, and seems to be the cause of church-hopping. Catholics seem less bothered about it.

What don’t parishioners want of their pastors, though the Gospel says that they should?

• Someone who treats new arrivals the same as long established members. Body armour required.
• Someone who encourages parishioners to look into their own hearts before they start pointing out faults in others. It is one of the greatest pastoral joys to help people with this, and to see as a result more and more of the hidden murky depths of one’s own heart.
• Someone who challenges bullying in church meetings. Bullying takes many forms; it is insidious and malign.
• Someone who delivers parishioners of demons. Well, good luck with that, girls and boys.
• Someone who knows that the church is in law a charity and so insists that church affairs be conducted in a business-like fashion in accordance with the law of the land. Fortunately, there’s no argument with this, however much resistance one encounters – and one most certainly does.

Are there any clergy like Dick Emery’s character? Wouldn’t it be lovely if pastoring were merely a matter of drinking tea and agreeing with people? Perhaps not. It would be very boring, that’s for sure. The sermons that have brought me most trouble have been those that uncompromisingly preached the Gospel. I regret not one word of them.

Pompous, proud and prelatical

In my former parishes, I was often called Fr Stanley. I liked this, since I am a father, and at least in Derbyshire there was affection in it. But I understand that this is de trop in the Church of Ireland. Here, the tradition seems to be to call me Rev Stanley. I don’t feel particularly reverend, and anyway Rev is properly used with Christian name or initial and surname. My own preference is to be called, at least to my face, Stanley. Or Irreverend Stanley.

Institutions are obsessed with titles and rank. The church, which should know better, is riddled with them. Reverend, Venerable, Canon, Very Reverend, Right Reverend, Most Reverend, Frightfully Reverend, Your Grace. When Michael Parkinson interviewed Robert Runcie, about to become Archbishop and change from being Right Reverend to Most Reverend, Runcie with characteristic wit suggested that his title at that moment was Increasingly Reverend. One of Runcie’s predecessors, Cosmo Gordon Lang complained that his new portrait made him look pompous, proud and prelatical, to which one of his colleagues, the acerbic Bishop Henson, is said to have asked: “To which of those epithets does Your Grace take exception?” All this hierarchical nonsense is a sign of an institution in trouble. It signals a delusional and inward-looking club. Who, outside the club, cares? And if any organisation should care about those outside it, it’s the church.

It’s easy for us clergy to become institutionalized, and to imagine that our little clubby rules are important. I read church publications in which nothing controversial is ever reported and wonder what sort of la-la land they are talking about. How do they relate to real life? If you read the documents that parishes produce when they are looking for new clergy, you quickly learn to read between the lines (see attachment). I wonder how much the blurb for the post I’ve recently left will reflect the job that I knew …

We need to wake up to the fact that people see through this tripe. People see beyond this spin and hypocrisy. Yes, I know it’s easy for me to talk having ‘enjoyed’ rank and title in a former career, but we must try to see that our being obsessed with the churchy club flies in the face of incarnational reality for the world’s population.

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