Well, well, well. For all the “Shocked And Appalled” episcopal responses to #SaveTheParish, and all the protestations that the parish could never be under threat and anyone who says otherwise is scaremongering, Leicester has let the cat out of the bag. Read this & weep.
What the Bishop of Leicester is proposing the the complete dismantling and destruction of the parish system, the loss of independence for all the little platoons across Leicestershire and the creation of “Minsters”. This is the death of localism. It is why #SaveTheParish is vital
And what does this mean on the ground? You guessed it: redundancies. Fewer priests celebrating fewer sacraments to fewer people. And yet, what’s this? “If we had enough money would we still do this? Yes”
Well there we are.
Back in January, in the leak from the Church of England that really kicker #SaveTheParish off, they said that the many diocesan leaders wanted to use the pandemic “to embark on radical changes to re-shape existing resource patterns and ministry structures”.
Leicester 👀
The Bishop of Leicester posted this on Facebook 2 yrs ago. It is utterly revealing. Note: “avoiding clericalism” by having “almost no money spent on training, support or deployment”. This demolition of the Church of England is not because of force majeure but is actively desired.
People with a legal, particularly a canon-legal, mind: it strikes me that the replacement of parochial governance by a minster model led by potentially non-ordained ‘oversight ministers’ is a change to the doctrine of the CofE. Could this be ultra vires at a Diocesan Synod level?
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.