Something akin to partnership
Edward Norman
This week the General Synod of the Church of England has before it a report by the Bishop of Manchester's committee on The Reform of the Patronage System.' If accepted, it will produce a series of really momentous changes not only in the practical operations of the Church but also in the theory of the national Establishment of religion. The authors of the report have declined to notice the wider implications of their conclusions, and have, in a mere eighteen pages, settled for a decisive change in the nature of authority in the Church.
All patronage, as presently understood, is to cease. In each parish, upon a vacancy, an ad hoc Parish Appointments Committee (' PAC ') is to come into existence, consisting of parish representatives, officials represent ing the bishop and diocesan committees, and the patron. 'Staffing Panels ' will emerge alongside the existing Diocesan Pastoral Committees. The bishops will initiate what the report calls ' the process of appointment each post will be advertised, each candidate.
scrutinised by the Parish Committees, and the object "should be to achieve agreement by consensus and not a decision by a majority vote." If the PAC does not reach agreement, the appointment passes to the archbishop.
But voting is absolutely forbidden: there is to be a ' consensus ' or nothing. "We reject the suggestion sometimes made that some parish es are not equal to the task which would be given to them," remark the authors of the report; "we expect that the new system . . will bring a greater understanding and realism." Realism by consensus.
It therefore comes as something of a surprise to reach the last page of the report and there to discover the committee confessing that "After two years' work in this field we have not reached a consensus on proposals for the reform of patronage; perhaps the nature of the subject makes this inevitable." A memorandum of dissent by two of the com mittee follows as an appendix. Nor is this ad mission, as the reader might have supposed, an eccentric ecclesiastical joke: the com mittee really have proposed to the Church a system of appointments intended to enshrine the fashionable notion of consensus ' in a re port which itself bears direct witness to the idiocy of the idea and its practicality. The two dissenters — who go for the total abolition of all private patronage — do actual:y see this. The PAC set-up, they write, "seems to us, quite frankly, to be unworkable."
How did the committee get itself into this position? For a start, it oversimplified its task by assuming that there is a large body of opinion which regards all forms of patronage as undesirable. It then conflated the case for reform on grounds of efficiency with a few vague allusions to the need for reform on ideological grounds. " Patronage, where this perpetuates patronising attitudes, is an out dated concept and must surely be replaced by something akin to partnership," the com mittee write. But what is the evidence for this? The committee do not adduce any, and in general they assume the case for radical change to be too self-evident to require ex planation. Some adjustments may indeed be necessary. It is, on the face of it, extremely important for the effective working of the Church that a bishop should have some control over ' the deployment of manpower' in his diocese. But the report hardly helps there. The proposed structure of parish committees would hinder episcopal strategy far more ef fectively than any recalcitrant lay patron might be in a position to do. The real losers if this report is implemented are not the lay patrons — many of whom will surrender their thankless and expensive duties with relief — but the bishops.
Those who have been concerned with ecclesiastical appointments know that the pre sent arrangements work reasonably well — even though they are a curious legal survivor from the wrecked world which went before.
The need for a root-and-branch reform is not
self-evident: it really stems from the application of an unthinking attachment to the transient notions of • consensus ', and participation in decision-making '• and from the unwholesome experience of submerging values in those who have lost their nerve.
But whatever new arrangements are contrived, someone is still going to have to tell the parishes how to make a valuable contri bution to an appointment. Upon a vacancy at present, the churchwardens have a legal right to be consulted by the patron. The incumbent they envisage is always the same: a married man of about forty with three children — one
boy, one girl, and one spare (in case of a roa accident or something) — larger families a now frowned upon as being socially irrespon sible (in view of the ' ecology crisis,' and s forth). He must be temperate, liberal, no stuck up, and faintly worldly. What usual] happens, of course, is that the patron and th bishops (where they are not one and the sam person) work together in mutual con sultation, and decide how best to match tin personal gifts of the available men to th, peculiarities of the locality, and the result sold to the parish by further consultation Everything is informal, unbureaucratic, it laxed. And it works. The parishes, as it hap pens, really are as mature as the Bishop o Manchester's committee says they are.
The report claims that existing rights a patrons are to be diminished but not esi tinguished: ' The patron certainly loses old rights, but gains the new right to share wit others in the making of appointments.' Th committee actually say this with a straigh face, too. In fact they are proposing to con fiscate all the legal rights of a patron in parish (though he will retain the very ex pensive legal liability to maintain the fabric of the chancel — a consideration the repori fails to mention); he loses also the right tf initiate an appointment and to present a can didate to the bishop. His sole remainini. ' right ', indeed, is to sit on a PAC and help tin discovery of 'a consensus '. The best recen description of an ecclesiastical consensus wt offered in the last edition of Sensation, a pub lication issued by the Church of England' Board of Education. "There is something so lutary and humbling about the process 0 consensus decision-making," we read there " it is also a mark of growth in humanity. But in the real world of real decisions this just clap trap. Whatever changes there are to, be in the arrangements for filling ecclesiastic' al appointments they must be based upor considerations which have no affinity wit1 such fantasies. The bishop and his diocesar committees have the overall view of tW Church's needs; the parishes have the loco knowledge which can adjust policy to cir cumstances; patrons are a chance catalyst, al additional and fortuitous link with the seco' lar world. It is almost impossible to supposl there is anyone who would not wish to set these three elements work in harmony. Th, truth is that they usually do already.
Where there is a real need for a reform is ir the compilation of a detailed list of vacancies and a similar list of men seeking aP pointments. Canon Bostock at the Synod' Board of Mission at present produces an eN cellent list of men returning from oversea' service who are looking for a domestic aP pointment. A general list based upon ht model would be an inexpensive solution half the difficulties which at present disturl the minds of those seeking ' a radical change (Perhaps the money and resources at presen allocated to Sensation could go to this stead.) But it is very much to be hoped tho the Bishop of Manchester's report will not implemented. The replacement of an anoma lous but working arrangement by a quasi Presbyterianism resting upon undefine6 principles and effective for its operation upol) the propagation of a transient social myth I! not what the people of England have a HO to expect. A very much more systematic ill; quiry needs to be made into the effectio' working of present arrangements, and the Dr clinations for change quantified and aca rately described, before anyone should (lc' anything, It is a great pity that the Synod which is dissipating a lot of its energy fto! week over the trivial issue of South Africa'. investments — cannot allow itself more tiri$ to see the real gravity of the changes pro' posed by the Bishop of Manchester's corr mittee.
Dr E. R. Norman is Dean of Peterho use, CO' bridge
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