Church may advertise vacancies in press

THE CHURCH of England may advertise vacancies for suffragan bishops and cathedral deans in the national press. This is suggested in a report to the General Synod proposing that the appointment of the Church's 'middle management' be streamlined and made more open.

But the report has been strongly criticised by Frank Field, the Labour MP for Birkenhead and one of the members of the working party that produced it, for not going far enough towards openness and for centralising power within a narrow circle of church bureaucrats and activists.

Mr Field produced a memorandum of dissent to the majority report of the working party, claiming that it was part of a process of 'disestablishment by stealth'. He said yesterday that the Prime Minister would be lobbied to reject the report, and demanded that Synod present its proposals as a Bill that Parliament could debate.

These assertions were denied by Sir William van Straubenzee, the chairman of the working party. 'Our recommendation is an adaptation of the established nature of the Church of England, most emphatically not the destruction of it,' he said.

The main recommendations of the working party are that formally constituted groups of churchmen and lay activists should propose candidates to become suffragan bishops and cathedral deans.

At present, the appointment of suffragan bishops is entirely in the hands of the diocesan bishop whose assistant they will be, and cathedral deans and provosts are appointed by the Crown - in practice, the Prime Minister's patronage secretary.

The final choice of suffragan bishop would remain with the diocesan bishop. When he presented the report yesterday, Sir William was at pains to emphasise that it would still be the Sovereign who appointed whoever was chosen by the new machinery.

Mr Field suggests that the commission proposing candidates for the Church's middle management posts should have a permanent group of Crown (government) nominees, and that the representatives should always form less than a third of the commission's membership. He also suggests that it contain representatives of other churches.

That way, he says, the influence of the Crown would still be exercised, but in public. He also says that the advertising of vacant posts should become the rule, rather than discretionary, as the working party recommends.

Supporters of the ordination of women are being urged to demonstrate outside the Church of England's General Synod meeting on 11 November, which will decide the issue, in defiance of the offical policy of the Movement for the Ordination of Women.

The organisers of the protest are concerned that there will only be 20 places in the gallery of Church House, Westminster, available to the public.