One of the features of an interregnum in a parish is that those left in charge are often reluctant to make decisions pending the arrival of a new vicar. ‘Wait until the new vicar arrives’ is the cry of many hard-pressed churchwardens over some intractable problem. When I became an incumbent, back in 1979, of a group of parishes in Herefordshire, I was fortunate that the in-tray only consisted of one query about a memorial stone which had been left till my arrival by the churchwardens. It turned out to be a matter of spending time with a widow explaining why a particular choice of words would look strange after a period of time. I don’t recall the details, but at least it could be sorted within 24 hours of my induction. The in-trays for most arriving clergy are usually far fuller than that. Some decisions are the difficult problems that have been left unresolved from the time of their predecessors. The failure to make a decision is, in many cases, a fear of having to favour one of two or more parish factions. From the very beginning a new vicar is closely watched to see which group he/she is likely to support. Decision making becomes a political matter of trying to balance the interests of competing groups. Whatever choice is made is going to be wrong for someone.
If the in-trays of parish clergy are often full on day one of an incumbency, the same is also true for bishops. The newly arrived Bishop of Norwich, Graham Usher, inherited a particularly intractable problem when he took up office in 2019 – the problem of Wymondham Abbey. This parish has been plagued with unhappiness and conflict for some time and no doubt the filing cabinet of the previous Bishop of Norwich contained letters and the minutes of meetings on the topic. In his own words, when speaking about this correspondence generated by the problem, Bishop Graham stated that ‘these matters have monopolised a huge amount of my time since becoming Bishop of Norwich.’ What the Bishop is stating is that this one parish has given him a great deal of stress and aggravation. This, no doubt, has affected the time and attention available to him for the care of the rest of the Diocese. In an attempt to deal with the issue rather than let it continue to fester, the Bishop set up a Bishop’s Visitation to the parish. The seven-page document that has been recently released is a summary of the report made by three commissioners appointed to conduct the Visitation on the Bishop’s behalf. The document also sets out the Bishop’s Directions as to the way that each of the identified problems in the parish should be dealt with. It is essentially a public rebuke of what the Bishop has determined to be the damaging behaviour on the part the Vicar and some of the parish officials This published document is dated All Saints Day 2021 and it has been picked up by several newspapers, including The Times. https://www.dioceseofnorwich.org/app/uploads/2021/11/Wymondham-Directions-Final-All-Saints-Day-2021.pdf
A word about the Vicar of Wymondham, Catherine Relf-Pennington . Her professional record does not appear in my online Crockford directory of the clergy, but she has been Vicar there since 2017. The Crockford details the recent staffing of the parish, and this tells us that Catherine came to the parish as a curate in 2014. It is highly unusual for a curate to be ‘promoted’ to Vicar. Such a move can possibly suggest that the post was hard to fill, but that part of the story is not in the public domain. Wymondham was not Catherine’s training parish as, according to an earlier printed Crockford, she had already served as an incumbent for five years. Before that, her career was fragmentary. She served two curacies of a year each and was briefly an assistant at the American Episcopal church in Paris. Her training and ordination were all in Australia.
The headline of the public document about Wymondham is that the Vicar has been ‘directed’ by her bishop to apologise to her congregation for aspects of her ministry. A public rebuke of this kind is unusual, and the question immediately arises: is she being treated fairly? My normal inclination when hearing about clerical misdemeanours is to start with an assumption every priest has a combination of strengths and weaknesses. Some may be excellent preachers but very poor at administration. Others may be excellent pastors but find delegating an impossible task. Every clergyperson I have ever known is good at some parts of the total package and less competent or even weak in other aspects. My first inclination is to look for the strengths in ministry and then see if the weaknesses come anywhere near cancelling out these strengths. The report, unfortunately, does nothing to help us see the Vicar in a positive light. After reading the document about the ministry at Wymondham, one is not given enough information to make a informed judgement about whether there are positive aspects in her ministry. Although it is said that there were some ‘who are appreciative of the Vicar’s ministry and the work she has done’ we are not told in which sphere this appreciated work is found. We find ourselves making our assessments of the situation without having all the facts we would like.
The document containing Bishop Graham’s Directions does not pull it punches in listing the issues connected with relationships, property, finance and administration that are being raised against the Vicar and a significant cohort of PCC members. The list reads like a parish horror movie. Most of us know parishes where aspects of church life have broken down but, in the case of Wymondham, it seems that almost every aspect of the parish life has fallen apart. Without going into too much detail, the Churchwardens and PCC are in a bitter dispute with the Diocese over the maintenance and siting of the Vicarage. No parish share has been paid for several years, thus depriving the Diocese of a significant slice of its expected income. This failure seems to be part of a PCC resentment over the Vicarage disputes. The finances of the Church are in a state of disorder generally, with money being spent outside proper supervision. Auditing has become problematic, and it is evident that it has become difficult to know what is going on in this area. Issues over the place of music in the church remain to be resolved as the Vicar appears not to have an appreciation for the musical heritage in Wymondham. Pastoral care of the elderly and the young has also suffered.
The reader might wonder why the many problems raised had not be brought up in a complaint against the Vicar under CDM rules. Apparently two CDM complaints from 2019 and 2020 are still ongoing. Bishop Graham, no doubt under legal and pastoral advice, is making his main Direction as a way of clearing these out of the way in one dramatic gesture. He states: ‘the incumbent is directed to meet with all the complainants in person .. and to apologise to them without reservation for the behaviour which gave rise to the allegations which they raised.’ This is the language of a bold leader, but it will require considerable gifts of humility on the part of the Vicar to comply. It is this exercise of a bishop’s authority that has attracted attention in the press and no doubt throughout the Church. It also indicates that Bishop Graham has taken onboard the fact that the legal processes involved in CDMs do not often achieve good outcomes. In this blog we are constantly reminded of the fact that legal processes involved in safeguarding cases often leave behind lasting bitterness and enormous expense. The simple letter or word of apology may be the soft word that turns away wrath. This is what is needed in so many places in the Church at present. We desperately need other such apologies ‘without reservation’. We need the powerful in the Church from Archbishops downwards to be able to make this kind of gesture ‘without reservation’ to the wronged and abused. Here we are not talking about the original abuse (that may require legal remedies) but for all the ways that the Church has compounded the abuse by defensive unloving tactics – playing the legal games which inevitably batter down the weak.
A number of final questions arise which I am sure are being addressed in the Diocese of Norwich at present. How was the original appointment made when clearly the Vicar does not show evident aptitude for many of the routine tasks of parish life? Did not the somewhat eccentric CV raise questions? Is it ever a good thing to appoint a curate to become the incumbent of the parish, unless there are extraordinary circumstances?
The Wymondham case may prove to be a decisive moment in the history of the way that power is administered in parishes and dioceses. Bishop Graham has staked the moral power and authority given to him as a bishop to ‘direct’ an erring person to retract what is clearly poor behaviour. We hope it will work and, as a sweetener, the Bishop is offering to expunge all the legal CDM processes in the pipeline at a stroke. If his directions are not followed, then the price to be paid by the parish will be extremely high. The disputes will remain, and the diocesan and episcopal support structures will be unavailable to help the parish move into the future. The proud traditions of a church community based at one of the finest church buildings in the East of England will be dimmed, if not extinguished altogether. If the apology is indeed offered and accepted that will, importantly, also set a magnificent precedent for the wider church. We will all be richer if such an act of public restoration is achieved. The Church will be seen to be fulfilling its vocation to be a place where broken relationships are restored, and justice is achieved without a single lawyer or reputation manger anywhere in sight. Then it might be properly said: See how these Christians love one another.
No wonder there are problems at Wymondham when the diocese has behaved in a cavalier fashion, appropriating its Vicarage for the suffragan bishop to occupy (the substantial house at Castle Acre was apparently not considered suitable for such an important person) and requiring the Vicar to live in a much less convenient house for the ministry of the parish. Such a move is legal, but not moral and certainly not pastoral.
This should be a briiliant parish for the right priest (and I have known a couple who have served their curacies there). I agree about the CV of the current incumbent and as an experienced churchwarden / parish rep and deanery lay chair for over 30 years involved in appointments , would have been very wary about even shortlisting her as I don’t think she would have fitted the parish profile. This is not to denigrate her skills and experience, just to say in my view that they are not right for Wymondham.
Sadly, when appointments go wrong, ‘the diocese’ in persona of Archdeacons and Bishops do not pick up the early signs which are flagged up to them. There is the wonderful tendency right across the C of E (and it might be to do with British culture which hates confrontation) that if we close our eyes, it will go away! I have seen it so often in parish and wider church life. Sadly it doesn’t go away. Lance a boil when it first appears can stop a later amputation. I pray that the situation will resolve so that the witness of this ancient building to the power of the Gospel may not be damaged.
Castle Acre was where the Bishop of Lynn lived. She now lives in Dereham. BTW Castle Acre was sold by the Diocese and then bought back, by the Church Commissioners a few years later.
My first thought was that it is clear the situation is irreconcilable and that the bishop wanted the vicar to resign. However she presumably isn’t taking the hint so she has been directed to apologise for things where she doesn’t accept fault to push her.
This actually feels very uncomfortable.
I am surprised she applied for the living, knowing what the parish was like.
It is good to see a Bishop exercising authority and pastoral care and good to see the Bishop is insisting on personal apologies. It just shows that Bishops can do more when dealing with complaints, especially when cdms are unlikely to hit the spot. And a much better example then my Diocesan Bishop who has simply ignored my formal complaint against my Rector who has sent me incriminating letters. May more Bishops follow his example.
The earlier Report from Sir Mark Hedley seemed to suggest that the Vicar was not entirely to blame.
And the existing report is flawed. It criticises the PCC for trying to gain control assets of a charity that is a separate entity yet demands payment of parish share from am charity that is a separate entity to the DBF!
From all the reports I haven’t been able to find out who has the patronage of the Abbey and is responsible for appointing the vicar.
It used to be the monks and the Bishop’s permission was not required.
There has been conflicts at Wymondham Abbey since the 1400s when the church was divided in two; half for the monks and half for the town.
The problem was referred to the Archbishop of Canterbury. A previous dispute was referred to the Pope prior to Henry VIII.
The bishop of Norwich is patron. The abbey originally had the patronage of the rectory from its foundation by William d’Aubigny [de Albani] in 1107 (the townsfolk having the use of the nave, which survives), hence the incumbent therefore being a vicar. The abbey and, with it, the rectory passed to the crown in 1538. Elizabeth I granted the advowson and rectory to the bishop of Ely (Martin Heton) in 1600, and it remained in the gift of the bishops of Ely (see ‘Windham’ in the section of Forehoe hundred in volume 2 of Francis Blomefield’s vast ‘Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk’ (1805; Blomefield was rector of Fersfield, between Thetford and Diss); this was presumably because the crown had appropriated the large revenues of Ely for state purposes (by keeping the see vacant, a common Tudor practice) from 1581 to 1600, meaning that Heton needed to be compensated by way of the greater tithes as the see had been exhausted. As Wymondham is one of the largest Norfolk parishes – and certainly the largest outside the Breckland and Fenland, and is relatively fertile till-land, it was an obvious target for a transfer to Ely.
The 1600 transfer made no difference to the vicarage: at the time of the 1600 transfer the vicar was Simon Welles, D.D. (of Queens’; 1590-1607: see the Venns’ ‘Alumni Cantabrigienses’ at v. IV (1927) at 363: the Venns were not only logicians and mathematicians), who would have subsisted on the lesser tithes. However
Blomefield notes that the vicarage was worth only £49.13.2, and that there was scarcely any glebe, the vicar enjoying only ‘small parcels’ of glebe, including the Westgate bequest of 1472 of a ‘close called Brothiways in Cakewike’. This may explain why vicars sought livings elsewhere. It will also have meant that the DBF obtained relatively little appropriated glebe from Wymondham in 1976-78 after the Endowments & Glebe Measure 1976, but it would already have obtained the rectorial lands.
What is not clear is when it was transferred from Ely to Norwich; it was retained by Ely well into the nineteenth century; transfers between sees and chapters in order to tidy by medieval and early modern anomalies have been ongoing since the 1840s, by way of accretion. There is sometimes information about this in the London Gazette, but a search has not turned up a result. The Norwich registry is going to make a copy of its patronage register available on the diocesan website, but that will not necessarily provide details of the transfer from Ely to Norwich, and it might be necessary to contact the applicable registrar. Back numbers of Crockfords might help, but unless there is a run in the UEA library (which is unlikely) or the cathedral library, you will find them only at the BL, the London Library and at Lambeth or a few of the other cathedral libraries.
However, as Ms Relf-Pennington was appointed in 2017, this was definitely the work of Graham James, who retired in 2018.