[The clergy shortage is] not related to money but to vocations. “The bigger pressure is the really quite encouraging number of ordinations is not as big as the number of those retiring.”
Gee, if only those short-sighted fools in charge would see that if they would just permit....
What?
Oh.... never mind.
The Church of England is facing the loss of as many as one in ten paid clergy in the next five years and internal documents seen by The Times admit that the traditional model of a vicar in every parish is over.
The credit crunch and a pension funding crisis have left dioceses facing massive restructuring programmes. Church statistics show that between 2000 and 2013 stipendiary or paid clergy numbers will have fallen by nearly a quarter.
According to figures on the Church of England website, there will be an 8.3 per cent decrease in paid clergy in the next four years, from 8,400 this year to 7,700 in to 2013. This represents a 22.5 per cent decrease since 2000.
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