What it’s really like to be a priest
by Rev Fergus Butler-Gallie, Telegraph:
Baptising a baby or comforting the dying is an enormous privilege – but one that is becoming the preserve of an ever decreasing few.
[…] I trained some years ago, when numbers were slightly healthier. It was an odd experience, a sort of cross between The Mission and St Trinians. There were ridiculous moments – I recall the chaos caused by a phantom obscene graffiti artist, and the infamous tantrum of one ordinand who stormed out of the dining hall as they were serving ‘f-ing quiche, again!’. Yet alongside these there were incidents of profound holiness – ordinands who would normally endlessly bicker united in silent prayer around the sacrament, the chance to study doctrine and philosophy with some of the finest minds in the country and, above all, placements out in parishes working alongside the good, holy, extraordinary people of God.
Varied though it is, I suspect it is not the process itself that is putting off would-be trainees for Holy Orders, not least because there is now a pathway for almost every type of potential cleric. The Church retains its academic hothouses in Oxford and Cambridge and its monastic model at Mirfield, but it now also has flexible and part-time training available too, for those for whom taking three years out of work is not viable.
No, the decline in people answering the call of God is, I imagine, much more to do with the current crisis in the Church’s leadership. We have bishops who speak like management executives, structures that refuse to accord even basic employment rights to the clergy, an endless string of scandals about how predators, bullies and abuses have infiltrated even the highest levels of the institution and, perhaps above all, a sense that it is increasingly hard to see the pattern of Jesus in a Church that treats people in the way it often does.
There is a great yearning for something deeper in the spiritual life of the nation; a profound opportunity for the Church to engage with. Yet, while it is unambiguously clear that providing specific places with specifically dedicated priests, ideally paid, is the best way to grow the Church and get more people engaging with the life of faith, the central CofE and its diocesan powers seem determined to move in a different direction.
Read here (£)
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