For me it came down to two things, a Cataract which meant that I simply could not see to read the text, so I had to stand down from the Rota, for celebrating Mass at the Cathedral.
Perhaps more importantly was having to decline the Bishop's invitation to lunch on the grounds of the indoor critic's deteriorating health and the fact that the Bishop's house (He having recently downsized from a Castle) was not accessible for a wheelchair.
In both of these events one of the Cathedral Clergy has responded pastorally and out of friendship.
But despite the seriousness of the indoor critics situation I have yet to hear from the Bishop, not much of the pastor pastorum there!
And all of this set me thinking about what I expect from the Church?
Well I guess I like to see the Mass celebrated fittingly and appropriately with due dignity, however recently I have found myself thinking, when I have attended, that I'd prefer to do it myself than watch it being done badly or with the celebrant in a lounge suit rather than a cassock alb.
I guess I like to hear a sermon that struggles to make the lectionary readings relevant to the real world context in which I struggle to live out my faith instead of being patronised from the pulpit by a rehearsal of what we 'learned' in the recently completed Alpha Course.
I like to be welcomed as a member of the family rather than viewed with suspicion in case I am really there to blag the vicar for a few bob after the service.
So on the whole a cup of coffee, my FT Weekend and a pleasant walk with the dog in the afternoon and supper with the indoor critic in the evening makes my Sunday pretty complete without church.
Last week I received a letter from the two Archbishop's, I read it twice, but after reading it again I really hadn't a clue what it was that I was being asked to do?
If the future of the Church is being placed in the hands of God then I imagine that asking S/he (the alleged deity above) to get on and sort out the mess we have made of it makes some kind of sense but there was, throughout the letter a sense of hopelessness, what a mess we have made and are still making as the Church we inherited sinks slowly into a crisis that is becoming a chronic, and ultimately I suspect fatal, decline.
Recently in the FT I read an article by Philip Delves Broughton which reviewed a paper called Netflix Culture: Freedom and Responsibility.
The paper explains that as companies grow, so do complexity and bureaucracy, the effect of this is to drive the best people out of the organisation , the effect of this is that even more bureaucracy is required to manage the incompetency that remains.
Netflix's antidote to this is to hire ever more self managing, high performing people and not cramp their style.
By all means lay out a strategy, establish roles and objectives, but then get out of your employees way.
By comparison, and I have to accept that I am these days merely an eaves dropper, I seem to see and hear of more and more micro management of the Church emanating from the top, which is where my letter came from, with clergy seeming to think that survival is the best that can be hoped for and complaints coming forward that most of what was traditionally perceived as the role of the parish priest being abandoned in favour of 'management' with far to much time spent in front of the computer.
As a Parish Priest in Salford, Greater Manchester in the mid Seventies my experience was of very little interference from the hierarchy, once licensed I was allowed to get on with it with the offer of light touch support from the Rural Dean whose Parish was next door.
The collegiality of the Chapter was very real and as the congregation grew I was always aware of the very real evangelical opportunities offered by the christenings, the marriages and the funerals which it was my duty to officiate at.
As it said in the prayer at Mass, it was a 'duty and a joy'.
But the world has changed in the past forty years, now the naming ceremonies and the marriages take place in hotels or other licensed venues and, having recently attended two funerals of near neighbours, the funerals are conducted by a secular funeral celebrant who will tailor the service to your individual requirements. In fact the Co-op Funeral Director told me recently that the bulk of the requests they receive specify a secular rather than a religious celebrant.
Add to this the degree of theological speculation and reorientation, reflected in for example Richard Holloway's recent book, A Little History of Religion, where in his conclusion he observes that it is:
'the attraction and the difficulty of religion for secular-minded men and women. They may admire much of what religion has achieved, but they can no longer accept the supernatural beliefs on which it is based. They are suspicious of forms of authority that claim to be above human correction. They have noticed how slow religion is at adapting to good changes in human behaviour, as well as in accepting the consequences of new knowledge. Far from daring to know the new, religion usually prefers to cling to the old'.
So the tectonic plates that kept the Church relatively stable from the reformation until the 1970's when I was made Vicar have shifted, but the 'groaning and travailing' we can hear is not the 'giving birth' described by Paul or a future becoming rather, it seems, they represent the agonising death throes of an organisation and institution experiencing an existential crisis for which the leadership sees no solution.
Perhaps more importantly was having to decline the Bishop's invitation to lunch on the grounds of the indoor critic's deteriorating health and the fact that the Bishop's house (He having recently downsized from a Castle) was not accessible for a wheelchair.
In both of these events one of the Cathedral Clergy has responded pastorally and out of friendship.
But despite the seriousness of the indoor critics situation I have yet to hear from the Bishop, not much of the pastor pastorum there!
And all of this set me thinking about what I expect from the Church?
Well I guess I like to see the Mass celebrated fittingly and appropriately with due dignity, however recently I have found myself thinking, when I have attended, that I'd prefer to do it myself than watch it being done badly or with the celebrant in a lounge suit rather than a cassock alb.
I guess I like to hear a sermon that struggles to make the lectionary readings relevant to the real world context in which I struggle to live out my faith instead of being patronised from the pulpit by a rehearsal of what we 'learned' in the recently completed Alpha Course.
I like to be welcomed as a member of the family rather than viewed with suspicion in case I am really there to blag the vicar for a few bob after the service.
So on the whole a cup of coffee, my FT Weekend and a pleasant walk with the dog in the afternoon and supper with the indoor critic in the evening makes my Sunday pretty complete without church.
Last week I received a letter from the two Archbishop's, I read it twice, but after reading it again I really hadn't a clue what it was that I was being asked to do?
If the future of the Church is being placed in the hands of God then I imagine that asking S/he (the alleged deity above) to get on and sort out the mess we have made of it makes some kind of sense but there was, throughout the letter a sense of hopelessness, what a mess we have made and are still making as the Church we inherited sinks slowly into a crisis that is becoming a chronic, and ultimately I suspect fatal, decline.
Recently in the FT I read an article by Philip Delves Broughton which reviewed a paper called Netflix Culture: Freedom and Responsibility.
The paper explains that as companies grow, so do complexity and bureaucracy, the effect of this is to drive the best people out of the organisation , the effect of this is that even more bureaucracy is required to manage the incompetency that remains.
Netflix's antidote to this is to hire ever more self managing, high performing people and not cramp their style.
By all means lay out a strategy, establish roles and objectives, but then get out of your employees way.
By comparison, and I have to accept that I am these days merely an eaves dropper, I seem to see and hear of more and more micro management of the Church emanating from the top, which is where my letter came from, with clergy seeming to think that survival is the best that can be hoped for and complaints coming forward that most of what was traditionally perceived as the role of the parish priest being abandoned in favour of 'management' with far to much time spent in front of the computer.
As a Parish Priest in Salford, Greater Manchester in the mid Seventies my experience was of very little interference from the hierarchy, once licensed I was allowed to get on with it with the offer of light touch support from the Rural Dean whose Parish was next door.
The collegiality of the Chapter was very real and as the congregation grew I was always aware of the very real evangelical opportunities offered by the christenings, the marriages and the funerals which it was my duty to officiate at.
As it said in the prayer at Mass, it was a 'duty and a joy'.
But the world has changed in the past forty years, now the naming ceremonies and the marriages take place in hotels or other licensed venues and, having recently attended two funerals of near neighbours, the funerals are conducted by a secular funeral celebrant who will tailor the service to your individual requirements. In fact the Co-op Funeral Director told me recently that the bulk of the requests they receive specify a secular rather than a religious celebrant.
Add to this the degree of theological speculation and reorientation, reflected in for example Richard Holloway's recent book, A Little History of Religion, where in his conclusion he observes that it is:
'the attraction and the difficulty of religion for secular-minded men and women. They may admire much of what religion has achieved, but they can no longer accept the supernatural beliefs on which it is based. They are suspicious of forms of authority that claim to be above human correction. They have noticed how slow religion is at adapting to good changes in human behaviour, as well as in accepting the consequences of new knowledge. Far from daring to know the new, religion usually prefers to cling to the old'.
So the tectonic plates that kept the Church relatively stable from the reformation until the 1970's when I was made Vicar have shifted, but the 'groaning and travailing' we can hear is not the 'giving birth' described by Paul or a future becoming rather, it seems, they represent the agonising death throes of an organisation and institution experiencing an existential crisis for which the leadership sees no solution.
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