CLERICAL BLOOD PRESSURES SIR,—I read Mrs. Furlong's articles with interest,
but she is less than fair to Mr. Ferris over his article on Anglican parsons in the Observer. It did not appear to me, and I have been in Orders thirty-two years, serving in the Royal Navy and also in one of the great London teaching hospitals, as well as doing parish work, 'inept and ill-informed.'
Mrs. Furlong probably knows the London diocese best. In the country, and I speak mainly of the North, things are totally different. could take Mrs. Furlong in a day to a dozen decaying parsonages where there are frustrated and embittered clergymen literally rotting—physically, mentally and spiritually.
Unfairness is the keynote of diocesan administra- tion, and favouritism is the ecclesiastical sin. Oxford and Cambridge men are frowned on, particularly if they have an honours degree (they are liable to be too independent). A few, it is true, are groomed from their earliest years for replacements in the hierarchy, but any clergyman is aware, after three or four years, whether he is going to be one of the favoured ones or not. And if not he will probably end in a remote clerical Coventry on the diocesan minimum stipend in a house literally collapsing about his ears.
The key fact is that the bishops have got into their own hands all patronage not held by the Crown, and even Crown livings they have empowered themselves to 'freeze' so that an appointment cannot be made. The Church Assembly, in promoting the Benefices (Exercise of Rights of Presentation) Measure 1931, thought they were going some way to fulfilling the dream lay people have 'always had of being able to get a parson they liked and to get rid of a parson they. disliked. In effect, the Measure simply allows the bishop to refuse to accept the patron's nominee, and eventually to make the appointment himself. It gives no benefit whatever to the parishioners, and it takes away the rights of the patron.
There was a great outcry when the Church of Ire- land was disestablished, and I can just remember the similar outcry when the Church of Wales was dis- established. There has been a far greater robbery of
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