There simply aren’t enough to go round. We might be talking about ships in a navy or their commanders. It’s an old, old story. There couldn’t always be a complete match. Hence the captains vegetating on half-pay and providing the raw material for Jane Austen. It’s difficult for a captain to be in two places at once. One captain for each ship is the rule. Equally difficult would be the appointment of two captains to one ship. In the days of sail their lordships at the Admiralty had enough problems on their plate controlling the likes of Bligh and Cook. Crewing the vessels was another head-ache. They were doing their best to micro-manage a huge industry that swallowed tar, ropes, timber and canvas. They copper-bottomed where they could, crammed in guns up to a hundred a ship. Prize-money was vital to keep the system going. How Samuel Pepys could manage all that and write a diary as well is a story in itself.
But our concern is not staffing the Royal Navy in its prime. It is filling the vicarages up and down the land with incumbents. Things have changed. The Church no longer lives on the fat of the land. Where once it was just a matter of matching one vicar to one vicarage, the matter was simple. If one vicar (squarson with a plum living) lived the life of Riley and another (dutiful curate) was on his beam-ends, no matter. Provided somebody answered a knock on the vicarage door, all was well. The vicar’s in his vicarage; all’s right with the world.
So it was. But think of it from a vicar’s point of view today. He is the one who must manage the parish terrier, tick boxes, fill in the forms, be a visible presence (as the ads will have it) in all six or twenty-six parishes in his purview. He it is who must manage the PCCs, deal with the leaky roofs, publicise the Gospel, tabulate the burial sites, pour oil on troubled waters and generally come up smiling. Some urban parishes have administrators and operations managers who deal with these things. Otherwise vicars get on with it. Even if the territorial system of the Church of England is a shadow of what it once was, the vicars of England do what is required and keep their small-holdings in order.
Half a vicar or one-sixteenth of a vicar plugs the gaps in the system. He or she bears the burden, carries the load and ensures that the Church of the English people does not altogether fade away. Two hundred years ago it seemed that the Church was on the brink. Against all expectation surprising things happened. That is the way of it with God’s people.
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