I wasn't expecting to be granted a curate to start in the summer of 2012, and yesterday had confirmation that this is so. I am not that long from being a curate myself and only became a 'training incumbent' because there was already a curate at Swanvale Halt when I arrived; and given the somewhat hazardous financial situation of the church we could do with having the curate's house rented out and bringing in a few thousand pounds a year. But I was rather taken aback by the email from the diocese which informed me I had failed to 'demonstrate that you fully understood the role a training incumbent undertakes'.
It made me think about my own curacy at Lamford. In my first week Il Rettore told me 'I can't do anything for you except teach you how to say the Mass' and so that was what he did. In my first year we had Mass practice most weeks, but everything else I had to work out for myself. I asked about what he did to prepare couples for their wedding or having their children baptised and he would shrug and say 'I don't know, I just chat to them'. Whenever I saw him take a funeral service his preparation seemed to consist of scribbling a few notes on a scrap of paper in the Vestry before the service started. Our 'staff meetings' (the diocese is very, very keen on staff meetings) occurred over coffee on a Monday morning in the café run by the Turks round the corner from the church, and consisted of me, Il Rettore, the organist, and sometimes the parish secretary if she wasn't too hung over from the weekend. Occasionally we opened a diary but never a Bible. I don't think the powers-that-be like this model very much.
But the thing about Il Rettore was that he cared about people. He could get away with pretty rough prep for funerals in a way I never could, but he dealt so brilliantly with bereaved people it didn't matter. He couldn't tell me what he did with wedding or baptism couples because each time he just engaged with them and who they were, not with a scheme or system (I need a scheme or system). And as for myself, he cared about me. He was my friend and I could always take him into my confidence in absolute trust that he would keep it; the advice he might give me was almost invariably wrong, but that wasn't the point. He was there and cared, and being given advice mattered less than being given tea and being taken to look at the new season's tomatoes in the greenhouse.
It's worth saying that we were all rather scandalised to discover that a curate in an adjoining parish to Lamford was approaching presiding at his first Mass having had no liturgical preparation at all from his incumbent, who was the husband of the diocesan Director of Training. He came, rather on the quiet, to Il Rettore for that.
I'm being offered the chance to talk this over so it will be interesting to discover what the diocese thinks the role of a training incumbent really is!
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No doubt it has something to do with instructing your apprentice in:
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- proper compliance with Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups regulations
- Discussing with your apprentice the Curacy Development Benchmarks he or she should expect to fulfil, and his or her progress therein
But I imagine the basic problem is that, perhaps in the short time since you were a curate, the diocesan authorities have devised a Policy regarding the development of curates (professional and pastoral). It'll be written down somewhere, and you're supposed to track it down, memorise the jargon and spout it back to them. Honour will be satisfied on both sides, they can tick whatever box needs ticking, and you'll be able to put the Policy in a drawer and forget all about it.
The tiny fragments of response I have had so far indicate that you are, not unexpectedly, on quite the right lines.
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