This article
was first published by The
New Oxford Review
The Cost
of Conscience
By
Tom Watkins
Tom Watkins
is a former Anglican priest.
There are
few conscious and educated
souls who would not be attracted
by the beautiful and ancient
Church of England. A visit
to England brings one across
mellow medieval stone churches
nestling in picturesque villages
as they have been for ages.
In Oxford and Cambridge the
Church of England seems a
cornerstone of the establishment
with college chapels and
male voice choirs singing
the services in the most
exquisite musical tradition
in Christendom. The cathedrals
are glorious centres of historical,
sophisticated and tasteful
religion. To be Anglican
in England is to share in
probably the most sublime
music, architecture and liturgy
in the world. But underneath
the flawless exterior the
beautiful old Church of England
is in crisis.
Numbers
of worshippers have plummeted
so dramatically that the
Church of England no longer
publishes annual figures.
The Church is led by an Archbishop
of Canterbury who is regarded
with embarrassment by his
colleagues and bewilderment
by the English establishment
at large. The leadership
of the church presides over
increasing doctrinal fragmentation,
internecine wars between
liberals and conservatives
and a constant struggle between
the thriving, but conservative
Third World churches and
the ‘pluriform’ branch of
Anglicanism known as the
Episcopal Church of the USA.
The
chaos is exacerbated by the
continuing
financial crisis in the Church
of England. Since her enrichment
from the despoliation of
the Catholic Church at the
Reformation she was the richest
landowner after the monarch.
But in recent years the Church
Commissioners (the Anglican
equivalent of the Vatican
bank) have lost millions
in bad property deals and
disastrous investments. The
grim picture is exacerbated
by the large compensation
payments which are being
made to the hundreds of clergy
who jumped ship since the
1992 decision to ordain women.
No one is saying just how
much money has been paid
out in compensation, and
both the Anglicans and the
Catholics aren’t publishing
statistics about how many
have crossed the Tiber in
the last nine years. Both
churches have good reasons
for massaging the statistics:
The Church of England want
to limit the damage and the
Catholics don’t want to endanger
the prospect of more conversions
through bad publicity.
The
compensation plan works like
this: Any
full time Church of England
clergyman who was in office
for at least five years prior
to 1992 is entitled to compensation
if he resigns over women’s
ordination. If he is younger
than 50 years old he is eligible
for three years of graded
payments. He gets full salary
the first year, two thirds
the second year and one half
the third year. In addition
he and his spouse are eligible
for the full Church of England
Pensions Board housing benefit.
This means the Pensions Board
will either buy a house for
the couple to rent, or provide
up to £75,000.00 towards
an equity shared mortgage.
The couple are eligible for
this benefit for the lifetime
of both the clergyman and
his wife. If the Anglican
minister is over fifty he
is eligible for a whopping
ten years of compensation
at which point he switches
over to his full pension.
He is also eligible for the
lifetime housing benefit.
The legislation says anyone
may claim up to the year
2004.
So how
much is this costing the Church
of England? Nobody is saying
for sure, but we can make
some guess-timates. One former
Anglican priest I have spoken
to says he and his wife took
the three year compensation
plan. That means over the
three years the Church of
England paid them £25,000.00.
Added to that is the fact
that the Church Pensions
Board invested £75,000.00
to give them a mortgage.
That £75,000.00 could be
tied up for another fifty
or sixty years as the man’s
wife is only thirty two.
How
many people are claiming? Both
the Church of England and
the Catholic Church are being
very cagey about numbers.
Both claim they don’t want
to broadcast the numbers
crossing the Tiber for ‘ecumenical
reasons.’ The rough estimate
of those crossing is based
on those who have claimed
the compensation. That number
is between 400 and 500. However,
the number of Anglican clergy
who have ‘gone over’ is likely
to be at least double that
because, for a number of
reasons, many of those who
have gone do not turn up
on the list.
A clergyman
only turns up on the official
list of those who have resigned
if he has claimed the compensation.
Far more retired clergy have
crossed the Tiber, but they
don’t register in the numbers
game. Many of them are now
active as Catholic priests.
Others who don’t turn up
on the list are Church of
England clergy who have resigned,
but are not eligible for
the compensation. Maybe they
are young priests who have
not served the necessary
five years before 1992. Maybe
they are from exempted categories
like chaplaincies or non-stipendiary
posts. Many older priests
were encouraged to take ‘early
retirement’ rather than resign
formally over women’s ordination.
Their benefits were slightly
better that way and the Church
of England succeeded in keeping
the official numbers down.
Some reckon the number of
Anglican priests who have
left to become Catholic is
between 900-1000. Considering
that there are only about
10,000 Anglican priests in
the whole country the numbers
are staggering.
To reckon
how much the exodus is costing
the Church of England we
could take the clergyman
and his family mentioned
above as average. Remembering
that some applicants won’t
cost the Church that much,
we also have to consider
that those over fifty years
of age are claiming ten years’ compensation,
so in their case the expense
is far more. If the conservative
numbers of those going across
is reckoned at 400 and if
the average case involves
paying £25,000.00 and tying
up another £75,000.00, then
the women’s ordination decision
is costing the Church of
England at least ten million
and tying up another thirty
million in property. The
amount could be far higher,
but nobody is saying. This
money comes from the Church
of England Pensions Board.
At present the parishioners
of the Church of England
are being pressed for more
and more money ‘to pay their
clergy pensions’. Is the
real reason behind this that
the Pensions Board is going
broke paying the price of
women’s ordination?
Another
fascinating twist to the plot
is the
silence of the Catholic Church.
The Catholics in England
are always frightened of
being seen to be ‘triumphalistic’.
When the huge numbers started
to cross the Tiber the late
Cardinal Hume was reported
as saying, ‘This may be the
conversion of England we
have all been praying for.’ He
quickly got his knuckles
rapped. Underneath the public
relations gloss the Catholic
Church has kept quiet because,
in the midst of her own shortage
of priests, she has received
an unprecedented flow of
cheap new manpower. The Anglicans
coming in are experienced,
orthodox, well trained pastors.
They have cost the Catholic
Church next to nothing to
train and equip. In many
cases the extra training
they undertook was during
the former Anglican’s three
year compensation period,
so in effect the Church of
England was paying to train
Catholic priests. Many of
the retired men live in Church
of England pension board
housing and their main income
is their Church of England
pension. In one Catholic
diocese in the West of England
a priest told me nearly half
the Catholic clergy are now
former Anglicans.
A former
member of the Church of England
General Synod told me that
a further irony is the fact
that the financial compensation
measure was devised by opponents
of women’s ordination as
a wrecking measure. They
tried to cook up a plan which
would look realistic, and
yet cost the Church of England
as much as possible in order
to deter wavering members
from voting for women’s ordination.
In the event the General
Synod was told that ‘only
a handful of priests’ would
resign and that the financial
situation would be no problem.
Believing this fib, and in
jubilation at getting women
priests through, the General
Synod quickly approved the
devastating financial compensation
plan as well.
Once
the real numbers of defections
became apparent the Anglican
bishops scurried to come
up with their now famous, ‘Pastoral
Measure’ which gave traditionalist
parishes their own episcopal
oversight. These so-called
flying bishops have helped
stem the tide to Rome, but
further developments are
worth watching. There is
pressure from the proponents
of women priests to have
women bishops. But this will
cause another flow to Rome
which will in turn put more
pressure on the Pensions
Board. As a result those
pushing for women bishops
will either have to wait
for 2004 when the compensation
plan expires, or try to get
rid of the plan so the episcopal
consecrations of women will
not cost the church as much
as their ordination did.
It is no surprise then, to
learn that moves are underway
to convince the General Synod
to suspend not only the pastoral
measure, but the compensation
plan as well. If the pastoral
measure which provides ‘flying
bishops’ is rescinded those
Anglican clergy who are just
holding on by the skin of
their teeth will finally
make their exodus to Rome.
The
Catholic Church in England
has its
own set of problems, but
at least she has been very
welcoming to the influx of
Anglicans. The Pope told
Cardinal Hume at the time, ‘Be
generous to these men,’ and
the Catholics in England
have been. Many single former
Anglicans were ordained quickly
to the Catholic ministry.
A committee of bishops was
set up to process applications
for dispensations from the
vow of celibacy to enable
married former Anglicans
to be ordained quickly and
now several hundred former
Anglican priests are doing
sterling work in Catholic
parishes. Only time will
tell the true cost of the
Church of England’s disastrous
decision in 1992 to ordain
women priests, but even now
the cost has been astronomical.
