VTO TIM EDITOR Or THE " SPECTATOR:1
Si,—What we seem primarily to need is the simplification of diocesan funds with a view to their co-ordination with a central organisation. I have always thought that the plan which was adopted in the Diocese of Oxford had the great merit of simplicity. There there were three main diocesan societies (1) for church building; (2) for the supply of clergy (this was known as the Spiritual Aid Society) ; (3) for the purposes of education. Each of these societies claimed the support of the whole Diocese annually, but to one was given each year a prior claim, and it had a special letter written in its behalf by the Bishop. The second point that occurs to me is the impropriety, to use a mild term, of having recourse to special agencies to provide with clothes the families of necessitous clergy. No one would wish such an agency abolished until the need for it had passed away, but instead of asking the charitably disposed for doles, we ought to claim from the members of the Church a living wage as our right, and the money which now goes to purely eleemosynary objects ought to be available for supplementing the incomes of the clergy so that the need of charitable assistance, which is no credit to the Church of England, should be made to cease.—I
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