A THRIVING team ministry in Suffolk is to be dismantled and then re-formed to ensure that the appointment of a new team rector can be advertised as open to women as well as men.
Pastoral reorganisation in the Sole Cove benefice of 12 parishes will allow for the splitting off of two of the smallest, which passed Resolutions A, B, and C during the time of the previous Team Rector, the Revd Jane Wilson. Miss Wilson was Team Vicar from 1998, and Team Rector from 2002 to 2007.
Parishes passing the first two resolutions do not accept women presiding at communion or pronouncing absolution. Critically for Sole Cove, Resolution B does not accept a woman as incumbent, priest-in-charge, or team vicar for a benefice. Resolution C asks for the services of a Provincial Episcopal Visitor (flying bishop).
Covehithe, an isolated church with no electricity, has a population of 20. Its PCC passed all three resolutions before Miss Wilson was appointed as Team Vicar. Legal opinion, in hindsight, is that she should not have been appointed. When she became Team Rector in 2002, she ministered as a deacon at Covehithe.
There had been one objector, an Evangelical, at Henstead when she was made Team Rector, but the parish — which has a congregation in single figures — had not passed the resolutions. Miss Wilson continued as Team Rector, but the PCC voted to pass all three resolutions.
Miss Wilson’s departure last year to a new appointment prompted the move to put right the benefice’s legal position. The other ten parishes in the benefice did not want to advertise the post with the notice that two parishes had passed Resolutions A, B, and C.
A statement on Tuesday from the diocese said: “Draft proposals have been prepared in accordance with the Pastoral Measure. We are consulting with interested parties and inviting comments by 31 March.”
Pastoral reorganisation is posing problems in Wiltshire, where the diocese of Salisbury is planning to amalgamate the benefice of Donhead St Andrew, Donhead St Mary, and Charlton (the Donheads), with that of East Knoyle, Semley, and Sedgehill.
In order for the new benefice of St Bartholomew to be formed, the Donheads must be declared vacant, and the diocese must revoke the licence of the Revd Tom Curry, Priest-in-Charge of the Donheads since 1982. He has been asked to leave his post and rectory by mid-April.
When a future amalgamation was being discussed in 1995, Mr Curry, who is 61, was given a written assurance by the then Archdeacon of Sarum that the scheme would remain on ice “until such time as you choose to move”. But, under the scheme, when the Donhead parishes become vacant, the priest-in-charge of the benefice with which it is being combined will take over the new benefice.
The Salisbury Journal reported a stormy meeting of 300 parishioners with the Bishop of Ramsbury, the Rt Revd Stephen Conway, and the Archdeacon of Sarum, the Ven. Alan Jeans, on Sunday evening. Simon Cooper, churchwarden at the Donheads, reported “shock and distress for a wide section of this community”. The parishioners protested at Mr Curry’s loss of home and income, and have asked the diocese to reverse the decision.
Bishop Conway is reported to have responded that the current Bishop of Salisbury had the right to alter policy. He apologised unreservedly to the churchwardens for the lack of consultation, which he said had been “neither deliberate nor malicious”. He told the meeting: “I shall most certainly tell the Bishop of Salisbury how angry you all are.”
A diocesan spokesman said: “The situation concerning the Revd Tom Curry is currently the subject of involved conversations between the Bishop and the priest concerned.”
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