11 MARCH 2006, Page 28

Who owned our churches?

From Susan Wood

Sir: Matthew Parris’s modest proposal (Another Voice, 25 February) is based on a false premise. Rome never had ‘ownership and control of the Church’s fixed assets’, nor was the Church as a whole or in England ever a property-holding entity. It was particular churches that owned property, while for much of the Middle Ages each was itself in various ways and in different degrees the property of a landlord lay or clerical.

Rome’s authority had given it a (much contested) claim to fill some church livings and to tax the clergy, not to ‘own’ church property in general.

Susan Wood By email