I have few claims to fame but one of them is that I belong to that select band of people who have never been to Lichfield. I know of it as a city having a cathedral with three spires. I also know that Samuel Johnson once stood bare-headed in the city centre expressing a debt to his father. After that my store of knowledge is empty.
But, after reading last week’s ‘Church Times’ I find myself being thankful to that indefatigable editor Paul Handley for an unexpected item of information about Lichfield and its cathedral. So taken was I with this bounty that I hasten to share it with Humpty and my readers. Here we go.
Now, Lichfield cathedral has a canon custos. I hasten to say that I had no idea what this meant. From my brief schoolboy contact with the Aeneid (thank you, Mr Bidmead) I could not remember the term coming up in the midst of all the goings on in those days when a thousand ships gathered to assault Troy. I looked up the word and found that it means ‘guardian’ or ‘’watchman’. I must say, I still have my doubts but they evaporated entirely when I discovered that the occupant of this post was one Jan McFarlane.
As well as being a canon of the cathedral Jan McFarlane is a former Bishop of Repton. She has also been a director of communications so I guess she has views on her present title. But that is not what has endeared her to me. She has had a letter published, as I say, in the ‘Church Times’ that is unusually direct and plain-spoken. Clearly she has not been contaminated by the fashion for bureaucratic church-speak that traps so many in high office these days.
I borrow an expression from a neighbouring letter to say that she has drawn our attention to an elephant in the room. Here is the decisive sentence: ‘Over the past few years, diocesan bishops appear to have been appointed in part for their ability to acquire “management speak” with an appointment process more akin to that for a CEO of a secular organisation than for a spiritual leader in the Church of God.’
Bishop McFarlane is on to something. It’s worth getting hold of a copy of the CT to see the rest of the letter. When I mentioned this to Humpty, he gave a cheery grin and said: ‘She’s done something better than fall off a wall.’
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