THE POVERTY OF THE CLERGY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 21 September 1907, Page 3

THE POVERTY OF THE CLERGY.

Members of the Anglican Church in this country (wrote a London conespondent of July 20) must feci rather ashamed to read that no fewer than 045 of their clergymen had to be helped last year with grants of clothing by the Poor Clergy Relief Corporation. It is a queer state of things that makes it necessary for 045 expounders of a church's creed to have to accept doles of clothing like so many paupers. In addition to those helped with grants of clothing, 700 clergymen were given money grants out of the relief fund during the year to a total amount of £11,038. The explanation of this pitiful state of things lies in the disgraceful fact that over eleven hundred clergymen hold livings of less value than £IOO a year. There arc in England and Wales 5334 Anglican benefices with less than £2OO a year, and 113!) have less than £IOO. This state of things was called attention to by the Bishop of London at the annual meeting of the Poor Clergy Relief Corporation the other day, and the Bishop added that in London he knew of parishes such as these—population 3000, income £10; population 1100, income £53; population 13,000, income £124. The Bishop of Croydon added the information that in Canterbury diocese there was a largo agricultural parish, with nearly 1200 inhabitants, none of them well-to-do, and the clergyman's net income was £4O. Neither bishop explained why the Church thought fit to distribute its enormous revenues so unequally, giving £IO,OOO and £5,000 a year to some and £4O a year to others. Instead, they blamed the laity for not discharging their duty to contributing towards the maintenance of the clergy as a body. There is apparently not so much honor and glory in feeding the parson as there is in putting up a stained-glass window. At any rate, people donate large sums to windows and tablets and so forth, and leave their clergymen to scrape along on his fifty or a hundred pounds a year. One result is that many parents dissuade their sons from entering the ministry; another is that when a living falls vacant the authorities have to look out, not for the best man, but for a man with £3OO or £4OO a year of his own. The Bishop of London says he is sometimes asked to send a clergyman, who is expected to be a paragon, to a place where the income is, perhaps, £l2O a year. When a man with a rentroll of £IO,OOO a year makes such a request, the bishop replies: "Of course, you will make it up to £3OO yourself." But if the laity do not make it up to a living wage, and too often they don't, then the hapless clergyman has to face and silently endure a life of ignoble poverty. For a church whose members constitute the richest laity in the world this is a deplorable state of things. The Bishop of London blames the laity, and says they do not show their adequate appreciation of the clergy's needs. This is no doubt perfectly true, but, as the Daily News points out, the charge is not met by scolding the laity, for "their conduct is the inevitable result of the system. The reason is that the State connection has destroyed the spirit of sacrifice. It is notorious that the Church has enormous revenues. They are badly distributed, but they exist, and they liave created a double evil in the laity. On the one hand, the rich have never realised the duty of giving: on the other, the poor have come to regard the Church as an almsgiver. The Church lias cultivated that view. It has songi.t to associate itself in the mind of the poor with the power over blankets and coals, ignoring the fact that its own ministrants are often most in need of both. The result is disastrous in cases in which a relatively poor man succeeds to a living previously held by a wealthy mail." The Daily News seems to have hit the nail on the head when it says that the only way to arouse the laity to a sense of their duty is lo make the Church free and sc'.fsupportiug, and to dissociate it from the distribution of alms.