The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-12-07 00:00:00

THE PAY OF THE FRENCH CLERGY,

In a leader on the above subject The Times remarks :

"In the Chamber of Deputies the pay of the French
clergy has been made the subject of an interesting
debate, which may be profitably studied by the friends
of religious endowment in our own country. The
French priests, as everybody knows, are dependent
for their pay on the annual grants of the Legislature.
Somewhat more than £ll,OOO is voted for the ex-
penses of central administration ; the Cardinals, Arch-
bishops, and Bishops get between them £6,000;
and the amount divided among the lesser clergy is
about 21,600,000. Less than two millions sterling,
therefore, is apportioned among the great army of
the French ecclesiastics, and thus about 19,000
of them receive only £36 a year from the
State. ahey get, in other words, a smaller sum
from the Government than the most ignorant o
labourers can earn in this country. It is true that
the whole of their income is not represented by what
they receive from the public funds. They also profit
by the f.-es which are paid for religious services and
by the offerings of their flocks. In the debate of
Saturday one otthe deputiee. M. FalKres. who spoke
in the name ot the budget Uomnassion, gave some
curious calculations of the sums which a parish priest
could thus obtain in the course of a year. He makes
a charge when he says a mass for the repose of the
soul of any particular person; but the price varies
with the parish, and even with the diocese. It is
fixed, as the Chamber was gravely informed, by
something like free trade. In places where few
masses were demanded they would be cheap; but in
others the applications would be so many that
one priest could not attend to all of them, and thus
the pressure upon his time would warrant him in
raising the fee. If he asked too much, the applicants
would go to a cheaper parish, or even to a cheaper
diocese. But M. Fulli6res thought that it waspossible
to learn the average price of a mass, and he believed
that it was not less than a franc and a-half. Some
Deputies on the right of the Chamber believed that it
was not more than a frame; but we fear that it would
not be easy for the Chamber to get an exact return.
According to the calculations of the Budget Com-
mission, the parish priests thus add between ten and
eleven pounds a sear to the £36 which they receive
from the State. They are supposed to get £5 more
from the offertory, and thus they would receive a salary
of about £5O in the form of money. They have also a
house and a garden, and it must be supposed that their
people occasionally send them gifts. A considerable
number of the oldest priests get £52 from the State, and
others obtain from £4O to £5O. Thus, it was said,
the whole body of theCatholie clergy are better off than
most of the village schoolmasters; and their lot is
much brighter than that of the Protestant clergy, who
haye not the pecuniary advantages of masses, and who
have usually to support a wife and a family on little
more than £6O a year. M. Bardoux, the Minister for
Public Instruction, met that objection by proposing
to raise the salaries of the Protestant pastors, and to
add £4 a year to the income of 2,000 deserving
Catholic priests whose age may be supposed to have
brought with it infirmity and the need of ca. e. But
the Budget Committee declined to sanction either of
the proposals, and the Chamber rejected by a large
majority that in favour of the Catholic priests. It
then felt equally bound to set aside the proposal to
improve the lot of the Protestant pastors. . . .