• BISHOPS, IN COUNCIL
By BERNARD CROFT
ENGLAND this year will be full of bishops as Ireland was at one time said to be full of saints. They are all coming home (all those who look to Canterbury as their spiritual home, that is) for the Lambeth Conference in July, the first to be held since the war interrupted its meetings. From the far corners of the earth as well as from every diocese of the British Isles, from north, south, east and west—John Capetown, Wilfred Blackburn, James St. Andrews, Dunkeld and Dunblane, Evelyn Limerick, Ardfert and Aghadoe, Alexander Nagpur, William Saskatoon, Gerald Madagascar, Lucian Upper Nile, David St. David's, Clifford Gloucester, to name but a few. All the chief shepherds of the great flock comprising the Anglican communion—high and low, rich (not many of these) and poor, one with another. The streets of Ldndon will be sprinkled liberally this high summer with their lordships, most of them recog- nisable, if not by gaiters and apron, at least by purple stock beneath the -collar.
The provision of hospitality for all these is causing no little anxiety to those responsible. Offers of accommodation from church-people will be most welcome at Westminster, nor should those who proffer it forget that today a bishop is much more a Father-in-God than a Prince of the Church. I know at least one English diocesan who dons a domestic apron over the ecclesiastical one and most skilfully (by this time) wipes the crockery after breakfast after it has been washed by his wife. I know another who when at home answers his own front door, his only regret being that it is so far from his study ; "I could do with a bicycle," he remarked to me one day as I was admitted to the palace. Talking of bishop's palaces, it is worth noting here that these are gradually being forsaken where possible. The Bishop of Oxford, for instance, has not lived at Cuddesdon for some years, and recently the Bishop of Lincoln has found a more reasonably-sized house on the other side of the cathedral.
I have no doubt that there are many and important matters to be discussed at Lambeth this year, but it will suffice here to consider the general work and office of a bishop. A wit once said that whilst they were undoubtedly of the esse of the Church, they were not always of the bene esse. I think it is true to say that not for very many generations has the Church of England been so fortunate in its chief pastors as it is today. Outstanding personalities may be some- what lacking in Church as in State as far as leaders are concerned, but in the bishops we have good, men doing good work well even if sometimes one could wish they did it a little more excitingly. "A nice little speech from a nice little guy" is how an American com- mentator recently described the broadcast speech of a national leader
of ours. Many of us feel that in Church as in State these are times for some Churchillian forthrightness. I know that this Is
felt by many of those two thousand young men who, now out of the Forces, are beginning their training and testing for ordination. I hope the bishops at Lambeth will have these young men much in mind: They are looking forward to the day when they will be added to the ranks of the parish clergy, hoping all things. May they not be disillusioned. Uncomfortable curates many of them will make no doubt for some older clergy set in their ways, but there is a man's job to be done in the parishes (particularly among the men), and here are the men coming up to do it.
From the days of Timothy it has been recognised in the Church that if a man desires the office of a bishop he desireth a good work, and St. Paul in his letter followed this up with a list of qualifications which I am sure the modern successors of the Apostles all possess. Reform will be much in the air at Lambeth, for the bishops themselves will be the first to agree that many anomalies which are stumbling-blocks to the work of evangelism must be swept away—and in our time. And I think all of them will agree that not least is reform called for in connection with their own office.
It is easy to say that the bishops are, on the whole, too few and too old. What are the main items in the work of a bishop? First of all, that which he alone can discharge—the ordination of men to the priesthood and the confirmation of the children. Reform re- garding confirmation is receiving much attention at present in various committees of the Church. More than one modern diocesan has confessed to a feeling of regret that by his elevation to the episcopate he has become something in the nature of a confirmation- machine. Perhaps the time has come for a deep consideration of the question whether or not the sacrament of confirmation might be administered (as it is in certain parts of the Church Catholic) by the priesthood and not confined to the bishops. Or why not more bishops?
I have mentioned above the ex-Service candidates for the priest- hood. It will be a matter of regret to Many of these, and to their particular bishops, that their own diocesan will not, because of his over-crowded engagements-list, be able to take much personal interest in their curacy days. "Which is our bishop?" I over- heard one young curate say to another at a clergy school not so very long ago. There is something wrong there. I hope, too, at Lambeth they will remember the other two thousand young MCII who for one reason or another were rejected as unsuitable for ordination by the selection-boards set up under the archbishops. Unsuitable for the priesthood they may well be, but attention needs to be turned to the priesthood of the laity. The burden of the average parish priest could be much lightened by the service of good laymen.
As to the question of age, in the Forces it was found that a man still in his 'thirties could be a responsible commander with the oversight of many senior officers, though marly of us would like to continue to have set over us also fathers-in-God some way advanced in years to whom we could go for counsel and strength. The bishop must rule his diocese, be the head teacher of the Faith and keep his consecration promise to banish and drive away all erroneous and strange doctrine. But first and foremost he is the father-in-God, and that to his clergy first, the assistant shepherds, for each cure of souls is his as well as theirs. Here particularly I know many bishops regret their inability to find time to visit their parish clergy as they would like—not in a hurried descent upon the parish for the institution of the vicar or the occasional confirmation, but to drop in, maybe unannounced, and take tea in the kitchen (where most vicarage meals are taken nowadays) and follow this with a talk and maybe a smoke together afterwards. To do this it is essential that the bishop be himself a man of pastoral experience. Happily we seem to be leaving behind the age of the ex-headmaster, who may have served one curacy in a parish but often had not even this experience of parochial life and work. What we need, and what we largely have, are men who will be willing and able to give spiritual counsel and advice and, if need be, absolution on their visit to the individual priest and leave a blessing behind.
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