OxfordEXCELLENCE

Who would want to be a Bishop?

Not only must he be seen to be impossiby holy, he has to put up with everyone who isn’t: including his underpaid staff, variable clergy, hapless volunteers and errant flock. Add in to the toxic mix several hundred parishes with enormous crumbling mediaeval buildings, no money and tiny congregations; a diverse but underpaid, often absentee clergy, some of whom are Regis Professors of Theology or brilliant theologians, others are dons and university politicians; while others are either simply holy men, or may be political activists of either or both wings; many parish priests who do not believe in the things their parishioners do; some overworked, poorly prioritised or simply unworldly clergy; and Pariochial Church Councils run by entrenched lay Vice-chairs, some of whom can no longer organise a knees-up in a brewery, if grey ever could..

You can delegate some of the rubbish to a bright chaplain, suffragan or archdeacon. However, welcome to Bethabara, a rustic parish in an ancient but vacant

suffragan see; with a naive archdeacon unsupervised by the vacant suffragan; an overworked or at any rate non- performing rector and a parochial storm in a teacup which is threatening to involve The Queen in a public scandal!

A rector of many parishes has neglected all his parochial charities, failed to hold any trustee meetings, failed to account for his five-figure trust funds, and failed to distribute any benefits for ten years. Even during the depths of the pandemic, when one villager was selling herself in order to make mends meet, the Rector failed and refused to call a meeting and distribute thousands of pounds which he has improperly accumulated, unspent.

The Charity struck the historic parochial charity off its Register of Charities on the grounds that it Does Not Operate. They are correct, the Rector has grossly neglected his trusts, and he has not answered their correspondence. He may well be too embarrassed that he has not made any of the basic reports, accounts and returns, either to the village, the Charity Commission or anyone else.

However, the charity’s investment funds can only be held by Registered Charities, and the charity is not strictly entitled to reregistration.

In his neighbouring parish, the churchwardens arranged to wind up a parochial charity, but the Rector refuses to sign the documents until his churchwarden dies, leaving the trustees inquorate. Although required annually to elect churchwardens, who are sworn to keep an eye on the clergy, the Rector evades that obligation too.

The rector and his Vice-chair evade the annual elections of churchwardens, who are supposed to be the Bishop’s eyes upon the parish, and although the parishioners complain, the rector still does nothing. Eventually after eighteen months, one of them is duly elected unopposed in order to blow the whistle on the charity, but the rector bamboozled the young associate archdeacon

Light touch paper, run and pray!

An ancient role, as powerful as any dotard.