Away Fixture

This Sunday I was at Canley next door to Swanvale Halt, filling in for Sue the priest-in-charge, who was away. Canley is much, much older than our church, Norman in origin at least, and has a more modestly centrist tradition. Still, the green chasuble arrived back from another church where it had been borrowed in time for me to wear it.

Not all went as smoothly as that. A member of the congregation apparently fainted on the way in to the church and fell, knocking his head and requiring a call to 999. The sound system buzzed and whistled unaccountably. A party of Americans walking a pilgrim route didn’t turn up as expected (perhaps they were as discombobulated by the attempted assassination of Mr Trump as everyone else was), but a couple wanting to light a candle in memory of a deceased friend did, and Canley isn’t the kind of church that has candles hanging around for that purpose.

I was able to help out at Canley because Il Rettore was holding the fort at Swanvale Halt. Retired though he is, he does appreciate having an altar once a month, and has been standing in now and again at other parishes which are in vacancy. Vacancies are another matter. In Hornington Deanery we have two parishes which are vacant currently, and Curtbridge Deanery next to ours is positively devastated. Meanwhile the incumbent of Sands & Piddenton in our Deanery which contains several small churches is on long-term sick leave. And the Area Dean tells me that he was in the Diocesan War Room with our Archdeacon and suffragan bishop a few days ago watching them push little models of clergy across the map, as they do, and heard them remarking about how I had only one church to manage, and I had Il Rettore around, so could I not look after Sands & Piddenton pro tem as well? Donald, the retired hospital chaplain who worships with us, seems to have evaded their attention: nor will I draw it to Claudia, who used to be a worshipper at Swanvale Halt before she was ordained and, now she is newly retired, appears keen to return ‘home’.

This seems to me a misapprehension of what it means to be a retired priest. Retired clergy take different views of how to continue their ministry once they are no longer in full-time paid work. Il Rettore, as I’ve said, likes to preside at the Holy Sacrifice occasionally, but Fr Donald is less concerned with that and merely says that he will fill in if I ever need him to, as he indeed has done when I’ve been ill or on holiday. I don’t know what attitude Claudia will take. We have another retired priest worshipping with us who has chosen not to exercise their ministry in any public way at all. None of these souls are simply ‘members of staff’ for me to dispose at will. If I had a stipendiary curate I might well say to them (in a way Il Rettore never did to me) that conditions in the Deanery were such that I thought we might both help out in this or that church, but retired clergy have done their bit. What they do is, as far as I’m concerned, voluntary.

If the Archdeacon or the Bishop wants to phone up Donald, or Il Rettore, or Claudia when that time comes, and politely ask if they might consider going to another parish to help out one Sunday or two, fine, but I am not telling them to do anything. Nor would putting them on the Swanvale Halt rota so I can go elsewhere be anything other than crazy. I think.