Cayton Guest

Each month I enjoy 'Tidings', the Parish Magazine of Cayton, Eastfield, Osgodby, Killerby and Cayton Bay. They are our parish neighbours and the parish priest (of my flavour) is Father Allan Campbell-Wilson B. Ed who has his own distinctive style of writing. Here is the editorial from the current April issue.

There might be trouble ahead...

When the fume cupboard exploded my mind was made up. Compared with my previous employment,it was an insignificant bang, but it had its effects. I had thought that I would make a good laboratory assistant. It was not that I was not qualified, nor that I was incompetent, it was just that the equipment, being mainly glass, had the unfortunate habit of disintegrating at my touch. On this occasion I turned my attention to some harmless cleaning. To remove the grease, I soaked a rag in cyclohexane, a liquid so volatile that cars would run on it. Unbeknown to me, the Bunsen burners were alight and the whole fume cupboard went up with a whoomph. This would have been bad enough but I compunded my error by throwing the blazing rag into the inflammable waste tray. Some brave soul emptied a whole fire extinguisher into it, so preventing a major conflagration. It was time for me to go.

Before they could dismiss me I found alternative employment. This is what sensible people do. They are useless at a job, they find another one that they can manage. Since that debacle, I have worked on computers, taught in secondary schools and I have been in holy orders for more than a quarter of a century, with some degree of success, or so I thought.

Now, at this late stage in my career, the church is adopting management techniques and is persuing reviews of ministry, to see if clergy are fit for purpose. The priesthood is no longer a calling, it is, it seems, a job like any other. Boxes will have to be ticked. Someone senior is going to try to put me to the test. If I had adjudged myself incapable of the task of being priest I would have gone long ago. I didn't and I won't.

This month we celebrate the feast of Saint Mark, reputed to be the youth who slipped out of the Garden of Gethsemane naked, and who Saint Paul wanted to sack, but changed his mind about later. I wonder if he would have passed the capability procedures favoured by the modern church. I wonder if any of Jesus' disciples would. It remains to be seen if I will come out of this trial by paper unscathed. This could be the final chapter in the book they don't want me to write. Watch this space!

May God bless you all, Fr Allan.