Your answers
At what age is it considered that an experienced Reader (or LLM) is too old to be ordained?
There is no age at which a Reader (or LLM) is too old to be ordained. Nevertheless, because such a person would have to undergo a rigorous selection process and then endure a three-year non-residential training, many dioceses set an upper age limit — which they impose “in most cases”. They do this on the basis that, when they have squeezed the candidate through these processes, there won’t be enough years of active priestly ministry left to justify the cost.
The simple solution to this conundrum is to make the selection and training simpler, less costly, and more appropriate. A single-day, diocesan selection conference would be preferable in the case of established Readers; two terms’ training, with concurrent placements, would be adequate pre-ordination, with continuing IME afterwards. And, in this context, I would also suggest ordination with a deanery licence.
We continue with the fantasy that making a road difficult is the same as quality control. It isn’t. We need to make ordination patterns far more flexible and varied.
(The Revd) Richard Dormandy
Tulse Hill, London
When my granddaughter and her husband approached their new vicar about baptising their baby, he said: “We do not do infant baptisms in this church.” Surely this is Baptist and not Anglican doctrine?
Obvious reply: Sack the vicar.
Stan Slatcher
Endon, Stoke on Trent
Your questions
When the Prayer Book was revised in 1662, and scripture translations were changed to the Authorised Version, was the Psalter left in Coverdale’s 1544 translation of the Vulgate? P. G.
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