Every Anglican parish has a patron, the person, or body, who has the right
to propose someone to be its vicar or rector, a system which goes back to the
early Middle Ages when the system of parish churches was first established;
before the creation of Parish Church Councils representing the laypeople, the
patron merely appointed the incumbent, and the right to appoint to a rich
parish was well worth owning. When partisan activity in the Church was at its
height in the late 1800s and early 1900s the societies set up to promote
various aspects of either the Anglo-Catholic or Evangelical position gaily
bought up ‘advowsons’ – the patronage of parishes – to embed their own
viewpoint. The trade in advowsons came to an end in 1924, and, especially in
rural areas where churches have been yoked together in multi-parish benefices, patronage
is now often a complex matter, a patchwork of religious societies, Church
authorities, Oxbridge colleges, and private individuals; Fr Barkley’s patron in
Yorkshire is the local Lord of the Manor, while Il Rettore’s in Lamford
was the Lord Chancellor. Since the foundation of PCCs representing the laity, the
PCC has the ability to reject a candidate for the incumbency – not that it
would be advisable for them to do it too often.
I learn that the patronage of the putative united parish of Tophill, Bramblecombe
& Hornington is to be passed to the Church Pastoral Aid Society, an Evangelical
missionary society which has been around since the 1840s. Now, the last appointment to the united benefice
of Tophill and Bramblecombe, just after I arrived in Swanvale Halt, was made by
a patronage board including the Archdeacon, the Area Dean, the Lay Chair of the
Deanery Synod, the PCCs of the two churches, and the Martyrs Memorial Trust; the
MMT – like Simeon’s Trustees, another Evangelical body – has handed all its
patronages over to the CPAS which explains their involvement. But the patron of
Hornington is the Bishop. The proposal for the CPAS to take over the wholesale
patronage of the entire united parish is presented in the form of a request to
the Bishop to surrender his interest in Hornington, and as a tidying-up exercise.
But, although our current Bishop is an evangelical, his successors might not
be, and the removal of the Bishop effectively disposes of any non-evangelical
influence in the appointment of a new incumbent.
Of course it makes me think about Swanvale Halt’s position. With the exception of Thorpe, whose patron is Keble College; St Augustine’s Aldershot, where the Bishop and the Society for the Maintenance of the Faith appoint the incumbent jointly; and the Clandons, where the Bishop and the Earl of Onslow alternate to make appointments, all the remaining Catholic parishes in the diocese are pretty vulnerable. Our patron here is the Bishop, making another reason for me to stick around to see whether Guildford Diocese is abolished and merged with a more congenial neighbour. I wonder how the Bishop would react to a suggestion from our PCC that he ‘surrender his interest’ in the patronage in favour of, I don’t know, the Guild of All Souls?!
Oh dear! The Minster thing is just plain daft and knowing Hornington Church I can think of little to justify it beyond a couple of possibly Saxon windows only visible from the ringing room. Speaking with my union hat on, Minsters seem to have a nasty habit of becoming toxic parishes too! The Patronage thing is more worrying and I can see another decent Prayer Book Catholic parish going down the liturgical tubes very quickly.
ReplyDeleteI think the title is becoming used for any church which is larger than its surrounding churches and acquires a responsibility of some kind for them. Of course there *was* an Anglo-Saxon minster about a mile-and-a-half from Hornington parish church, but it was about the size of my sitting room, nobody really knows how long it existed for, and it had a completely different name.
ReplyDeleteIt's a minster in the modern sense of a large and important church, rather than the continuation of an old monastic foundation. Apparently it has a vision. In practice, a large vibrant evangelical community with a small overcrowded church building has swallowed a dying traditional community with a large empty church building. Handing the patronage to the evangelical CPAS is one of the two prices the junior partner paid in the interest of becoming a live dog rather than a dead lion. The other is the decision to distance itself from the pro-LGBT+ movement known as Inclusive Church. Reminiscent of The Longest Journey by EM Forster, in which the protagonist similarly sacrifices his principles for shallow conformity.
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