More Freakonomics: The Episcopal Church in the US is rational in paying its clergy “professional-level salaries” even in an impacted labor market. High salaries confer prestige and authority on priests and, indirectly, on the institution. Clergy need to grab at all the prestige they can get—they’re generalists with no special technical skills; they aren’t any more educated than most members of their congregations; no one believes they can do transubstantiation magic, make rain or protect them from the evil eye. If they didn’t have the prestige and authority conferred by high salaries people might question paying them any salaries at all. If however they’re highly paid, people infer that there must be some reason for it.

Still more Freakonomics: By the same reasoning, Rove has got to get an award or promotion to signal his worthiness to stay on—otherwise he has to get kicked out.

I doubt it, frankly. The CofE generally are incapable of such clarity of self-interest. I think we’re looking here at the converse of a cock-up-not-conspiracy situation.

[Cracking post, though.]

If this compensation package is offered to those resigning over women bishops (and there is every reason to suppose that it will be) then the Church of England certainly does not stand to gain any financial benefit from a mass exodus of traditionalist clergy. On the contrary, it faces the prospect of ruinously expensive payouts – which is one reason why the legislation to ordain women bishops has been delayed so long, and why many senior bishops (even those sympathetic in principle to women’s ordination) are still dragging their feet.

In addition to the 18% mandated contribution to the Church Pension Fund there’s a minimum stipend for clergy and a variety of requirements to see to it that priests get gentlemen’s salaries—in spite of the fact that there’s a substantial oversupply of priests, and would be even more if dioceses didn’t restrict the number who are ordained. Consequently, as of a few years ago when I was on vestry, it cost a church about $100,000 a year to employ a priest—a heavy hit for most congregations, which are small.

A solution proposed locally was to set up lay volunteers and parish secretaries, who would be paid pink-collar wages, as “lay parish administrators” to conduct all the business of the parish and do the pastoral work, while priests, like bishops in the early Church, acted as overseers, supervising 3 or 4 churches and popping in every month or so to do a service.

Even a 1/39th cut in pay was not acceptable. Having supernumerary priests in secular employment do the services pro bono or for a few bucks a pop was also not on and my proposal, simply ordaining the lay volunteers or parish secretaries who were supposed to run parishes so that they could conduct services too was definitely not on. Ordination per se—as distinct from all the administrative and pastoral tasks that were part of the job—was an indelible character that required a “professional-level salary.”

Well, that’ll be a new thing. In the early sixties dear old Dudley Narborough was Bishop of Colchester, and a more cheerful and out old steamer was never seen.

A mass clergy exodus in the US where there are too few Indians and far too many chiefs could be very good all around though especially if they cut a deal with the RC church and became Catholic priests. Of course it would mean a major cut in salary and benefits, and a significant increase in the work load.

Clergy in the Episcopal Church are paid on a scale better than academics with PhDs. The academic qualification for the job, an M.Div., is comparable to a master’s degree in education or community college course to be a medical records clerk. The work load in minimal—two or three services a week, tending a congregation of perhaps 300 souls with the help of an assistant, occasional sick calls that can be palmed off on lay volunteers and a weekly 10 minute sermon to prepare. The benefits are terrific: great pension scheme financed by a mandated 18% contribution by the congregation and approximately half their salary tax free as a “housing allowance.”