The Status of the Clergy
The Church Assembly has been dealing this week with a number of Measures touching the status and conduct of the Anglican clergy. Those which received general approval on Tuesday should, if ulti- mately passed, go a long way to prevent the occurrence, or at any rate the continuance, of those parochial scandals and semi-scandals which today are not rarer—and perhaps even commoner—than they were fifty years ago. They provide for the retirement of an incum- bent who through age or infirmity can no longer adequately perform his duties ; the disciplinary inhibition of one guilty of " unbecoming conduct or neglect of duty "; and the replacement of one whose ministry, through no cause meriting censure, has become ineffective. These three measures between them knock such a large hole in the
doctrine that the cure of souls is a " that -it is encouraging to notice how few spoke or voted against them. Another very signi- ficant indication of the Assembly's temper was given on the previous day, when a proposal came before it empowering the Ecclesiastical Commissioners and the Bishop in the case of a new parish to assign the right of patronage, either in perpetuity or for one or more turns to a person or-body of persons in return for providing the church or contributing to its endowment. Though this matter, unlike those mentioned above, was debated at considerable length, the proposal was thrown out by a large majority, the Bishops of Salisbury Derby leading the opposition. Nothing probably has done so much to discredit private patronage in the Church as the existence of H Church and Low Church bodies which make a practice of buying U or otherwise acquiring advowsons, in order to staff the Church' ministry with their own particular brand of churchmanship. Bu in a non-feudal society private patronage seems an anachronism any terms.
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