When I was 21 I spent a long holiday hitch-hiking to Nepal. While I was there, I received a letter from a fellow undergraduate who had given up his teenage ambition to become an architect, for the sake of the Gospel. He hadn’t intended to get married ”” he thought that he could be more dedicated as a single man ”” but he wrote that if he did, he’d want a wife who was prepared “to give up her career as I have mine”.
And yes, since you ask, it did put me off. I fancied him rotten, but I was passionately committed to my future as an actor. A few weeks later he persuaded me to change my mind, and the following summer, just before we married, he put himself forward for ordination in the Church of England.
There was never any doubt, in his mind or mine, that this was a sacrifice ”” if a joyful, willing one. When I asked my husband, years ago, if he thought that I ought to consider ordination too and he said, certainly not, one in the family was quite enough, I couldn’t have been more relieved.
One of the comments to the original article referenced the unfortunate Mr. Quiverful of Barchester Towers fame and wondered why so little had changed in 150 years. I’m inclined to agree. We’re probably never going to make the income of the ordained ministry reflect the educational background of many of its members, but how can one expect the young (other than the independently wealthy) to enter it if there is so little interest in the material well-being of its shepherds?
Perhaps, the Church of England should move more toward the American example, with housing allowances that clergy can invest in property from the Church Commissioners. Given the latter’s lamentable record of late, the clergy could hardly do worse.
Alternatively, I suppose we could make celibacy a condition of employment.
[url=http://catholicandreformed.blogspot.com]Catholic and Reformed[/url]
Of the folks I knew best in seminary – young men all ordained in their 20s, highly committed, enthusiastic, faithful – not one is now in parish ministry in the CofE around 20 years on.
There is much truth and sadness in this article…but it applies here in America as well….
Yes indeed it applies to us in the states. Of those who were ordained in ’84 from my seminary, about 80% are now gone. I read somewhere that if someone is ordained in the US in their twenties, they have a 5% chance of ending their career retired from ministry.
This is about 90% of the point of the whole celibacy requirement. And she is right on in her comment about women’s ordination. When women enter any of the helping professions in large numbers, the average salary drops. (This is a statistical fact.) This is because women with husbands to support them (and even those without) will sacrifice their time more readily than will men. Men then have to compete for employment oppportunities with those women. There then reaches a tipping point where the profession becomes virtually all female.
A very sobering, sad article indeed. This wife’s tale may only be anecdotal evidence, but it still makes the heart break.
FWIW, I think there must be special rewards in the next life for clergy wives; they often suffer so much so valiantly, and often with astonishingly few murmurs and complaints. My own saintly wife is one of them. But sooner or later there comes a point where the costs are too great to be borne any longer…
Driver8 (#2), the unanimous testimony of your seminary class speaks volumes. How long can any church endure if such a trend continues for a generation or more?
Brian from MD (#4),
Surely you know the old adage, [i]”Misery loves company?”[/i] Well, it’s slim consolation that you Lutherans are suffering the same sort of plight.
Lord, have mercy on us all.
David Handy+
“When women enter any of the helping professions in large numbers, the average salary drops. (This is a statistical fact.) ”
It is a statistical fact that salaries dropped as women entered the priesthood (not to mention law, medicine, nursing etc). However salaries have also dropped for construction work, engineering, computer programming etc. where men still dominate.
The real problem is that wages have fallen against inflation since around 1981. This has hit everybody, but has been particularly painful to those at the bottom of the salary ladder, including retail workers and pastors.