Last week, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York published a consultation paper in response to the Prime Minister’s proposal that the Prime Minister should no longer exercise any element of choice in recommending appointments to senior ecclesiastical posts. In future, the paper said, the Church would forward only one name to convey to the Queen when diocesan bishops are appointed.
The Archbishops are asking for responses to the paper to be sent by 7 December.*
In the selection of cathedral deans, the paper said that the Prime Minister’s Office would no longer lead the process of recommending a new dean. The paper recognised that a cathedral was the mother-church of the diocese, but that it is “the relationship with the bishop that is the defining characteristic of a cathedral. As a matter of principle it seems to us questionable whether, with the Prime Minister’s Office no longer in the lead, anyone other than the diocesan bishop should oversee the process.”
But, in their letter to The Times, John Arnold, Dean Emeritus of Durham, Richard Lewis, Dean Emeritus of Wells, and Edward Shotter, Dean Emeritus of Rochester, say that canon law laid down that deans were part of the government of the Church.
“Deans have been part of a system of checks and balances in the English Church, at least since the Reformation, when papal powers were divided between the Crown and the Archbishop of Canterbury,” they wrote.
(1) Shades of Trolloppe’s Barchester novels. (2) I note that the Prime Minister’s Appointment’s Secretary is currently the wife of the Bishop of Derby. (3) In many dioceses – including NC and Western NC where I have served – by diocesan canon the bishop’s prior approval is required before any parish may call a rector. In others, e.g. Washington DC, the bishop (mis)uses the national canon on letters dimissory to exercise a veto of vestries call. Both a free and a controlled call system have problems, but they are different problems.
Tom Rightmyer in Asheville, NC