It’s true what people say when they have retired: “ I’m so busy now I wonder
how I ever held down a job”. After a year of retirement I can honestly say that I have
never been bored, never at a loose end, never wondering what I could do next. Failing
all else: one potters.
Most priests never retire – unless through extreme old age or chronic sickness when
they are tucked away in a home or friendly convent to end their days vegetating in one
room. In 1994 our Diocesan Yearbook listed eleven retired priests. In 2004 this had
risen to twentyone. Thirty, forty years ago ‘retirement’ was considered to be a move to
a tiny parish on the east coast where one would eventually ‘die in harness’ – an
ambition which was somehow considered to be virtuous and devoutly to be hoped for.
There was no question of any kind of Diocesan pension – although the Sick Clergy
Fund did sterling work and never allowed a sick or retired priest to live in poverty or
squalor; but this was a charity, there was no way a priest had a right to any fixed
income. Just as all one’s priestly life – and this is no complaint, priests do not live on a
shoe string – we received no salary ( apart from the £500 – yes, five hundred) which a
parish priest can draw every year from his parish by right while everything else in one
way or another ( mainly Christmas and Easter offerings) comes from charity – a point
which on very rare occasions is uncharitably pointed out to priests by some grumpy
parishioner ( although usually it is just a joke that the priest keeps the collection).
Saving for, providing for a private pension was considered not only impossible on such
an income but also flying in the face of Providence - ‘Deus Providebit’, God will provide,
was the customary attitude.
[ As an aside: this lack of a salary not only makes one ‘feel’ one lives on charity. It is
also a constant problem for tax collectors and the fiscal consciences of priests. ‘Ear-
marked’ offertories are clearly the personal property of the priest to be taxed according
to law and spent or salted away by the priest as he wishes. Heating, lighting,
rates/council tax, repairs, ordinary food, maintenance of the house etc are all obvious
charges on the parish and are catered for by special income tax arrangements. A
reasonably clear system exists to work out a car travelling allowance - but who buys
the car? There are other grey areas. Who should pay the T.V. licence, daily
newspaper, theological publications? All of which, it could be argued, make it possible
for a priest to keep himself up-to-date and ‘with it’. How profligate should the priest be
with personal telephone long-distance calls to his friends in Timbuktu? Who subsidises
the ‘gentleman of the road’ who bangs on the door and wants money for his bus ticket
to the Outer Hebrides to visit his sick mother? If racked with ‘flu does the parish pay for
hot toddy/lemsips/cough drops to enable the victim to pursue his labours? Or should
he or the parish subscribe to private medicine so that cataracts can be treated
immediately rather than waiting a year for the NHS and meanwhile making an intelligent
stab at the liturgical readings or baptising the wrong end of an infant? Some guidance
on some of these and other burning issues have come from various authorities through
the years but, in the long run, a priest has to be trusted to some extent to be
reasonable, not to be over generous to himself [ a good rule of thumb guide may well
be that his living style in every way should not be above that of the average parishioner]
nor drive himself into penury. One is reminded of a case many years ago when cataract
operations were a much bigger deal than they are now. An elderly priest went through
several operations on the NHS followed by the then usual series of getting different
glasses paid for from his own pocket. On the fourth change of lenses his resources
were running out and he argued – quite correctly – that his eyesight had been spent on
Church work through the years and was essential for his duties for the future. He
therefore paid for his final specs – about £40, worth a lot some forty years ago – from
the parish funds and put it down as: “Windows”.]
All this gave one a feeling of ‘living on charity’ even if one’s rational conviction has
always quite rightly been that ‘the labourer deserves his wages’. Many more priests
seemed ( although this may not be statistically correct) to die before the age of 65. We
can all remember priests, our friends, dying at comparatively early ages, usually
suddenly and unexpectedly and some years ago there was a genuine statistic – as far
as statistics are ever genuine – that the average age of a Catholic priest was some 12
years less than that of a Church of England clergyman ( could this be due to the
absence or presence of a good woman?).
The attitude to retirement among priests is now rapidly changing. Young priests are
encouraged to have some sort of retirement plan, the Diocese now gives a £5000 a
year pension, as of right, to a priest who retires while ‘in good standing with his Bishop’
as the saying goes. There are no tiny parishes on the east coast where a priest can
hope to live, do a bit of work and play golf. There are far fewer convents where an old,
benevolent and cuddly priest can retire, say a daily Mass but otherwise stooge around
being cared for by the Sisters. Many priests even have the heretical view that an old
priest hanging on in a parish for too long can do more harm than good.
That has always been my own, personal view.
Priests being as human as everybody
else, their thoughts do not turn naturally to retirement until they start feeling old, their
genuflecting knee goes rusty, patience shortens at the annual question: “ What time is
Midnight Mass, Father?”, the new Bishop is younger than oneself, respected and
welcomed no less but no longer a father figure, brainwaves and instructions from
think- tanks and H.Q. seem to be re-inventing the wheel and one has had put to sleep
and sadly buried one’s fourth dog. Dreams of retirement then beckon only to be
shattered by the facts of life: where to live, what to live on, what to live for and actually
do. And does retirement when still more or less fit and ‘compos mentis’ – in one’s own
opinion, anyway – mean letting other people down, being selfish, increasing the
problems in the Diocese one has tried to serve faithfully for years?
By the time I was 65 or so I was convinced that neither I nor anyone else was ever
indispensable. The Diocese and parish would survive my retirement. By what some may
call ‘the luck of the Irish’ ( which I have no right whatever to have) plus circumstances
and the generosity of others I found myself the proud owner for my lifetime of a small
bungalow. The Diocese established a fund which would pay a retirement pension and
thus, with the old age national pension, would give a priest some £8,5000 per year to
live on. Enough for a frugal life style if there is no rent to pay, no cigarettes ( pipe is
O.K.!!!), whisky and wild women nor other worldly or evil extravagances. The problems
of where to live and what to live on were thus solved while the question of
indispensability was never seriously considered. Having never been bored in my life I
had no fear of being so in retirement and being willing – as long as able and needed –
to help in parishes still gave a sense of some purpose in life while waiting cheerfully for
death.
Out of thin air I picked a retirement date - 1st January 2004 - formally informed the
Bishop ( who, rightly but surprisingly, did not bat an eyelid and made no comment
other than to “ put it in writing”) and started leaking the information to anyone who might
be interested. Responses were varied and fascinating. Some looked at this nimble,
youthful oddball and said I was too young. Others gave the impression that it would be
high time, I had done enough damage. Some charitably wondered what Holy Mother
Church in this area would do without me, some put on bets that I would chicken out
when the crunch came while others prophesied that I would be lost, bored, at such a
loose end that I would soon beg to be put back into harness. A few encouraged the
idea and agreed that an old priest in a parish runs out of steam, does not welcome
innovations, rests on whatever laurels he thinks he may have gained – and they wished
me well.
With some preparation in the parish to make it a pseudo democracy and cover the
plethora of jobs which a priest does simply because he lives on top of the shop, in spite
of the added difficulty of an Episcopal vacancy ( yet again) in the Diocese, the date
inevitably arrived and I cheerfully and quietly retired – with a generous golden
handshake from parishioners to ensure my non-return and the best wishes of all; I
hope.
A year has now passed and I have not dropped dead as so often happens to those
who retire. I have settled into the bungalow with next-door neighbours, two chickens
and three dogs ( recently reduced to just two since the sad demise of little Bonzo at the
ripe old age of nearly 15), a simple garden which only needs a mower and weed killer
to keep it tidy, an answering machine which does not get crowded with messages every
time I turn my back on it, a computer with e-mail and website, books, music and T.V.,
the ability and willingness to help out at week-ends and, just recently, a family of rats
settling in at the bottom of the garden who should have a limited lifespan now that the
local rat catcher has been at work. Plus a daily counting of my blessings, not enjoyed
by many priests in this situation, of having good health, a place to live, being content
with one’s own company and having the luxury of continuing to moan, complain, criticise
everything and solving nothing.
One worry and feeling of guilt remains: there are so many good and elderly priests
who cannot bear the thought of retiring, who are heartbroken if forced to do so through
circumstances. They feel – and this sadly makes them very unhappy - that they have
abandoned their people and not fully fulfilled their vocation. Is my cavalier attitude and
willingness to give up after 45 years a bad sign of lack of religion, faith, charity or other
virtue? Or is it a realistic act of kindness to parishioners who have nobly put up with me
through the years?
Making a detailed list of one’s activities - whether retired or not – is practically
impossible but there has to be some sort of structure to one’s days even if all kinds of
‘one off’ things happen all the time.
No day is the same as another and plenty of things happen to ring the changes – even
in retirement. If you want to have a glimpse into the personal lifestyle of a retired old
grumpy, here goes: generally speaking (excluding week-ends when I am helping out
somewhere) a day starts with the alarm going off at 7.30 a.m. resulting in mild, clerical
expletives and a remote-control switch-off of the offending time piece. Unfortunately this
has now woken the dogs who come trotting into the bedroom asking to be let out so
that the other alarm – at the other end of the room and requiring throttling manually –
goes off just a few minutes later simply as a long-stop and precaution to oversleeping.
The dogs rush out as if they had been kennelled for days while I peer out and either
thank the Lord briefly for a nice morning or complain bitterly if it is raining. A cup of
coffee, a pipe and a good cough give me time to look for any earth-shattering news in
the paper which is delivered early in term time but somewhat later during the school
holidays when, presumably, the paper-boy has a lie in. The dogs come back in of their
own accord, looking happy, a quick shower and shave ensure I remain hygienic and
handsome and I say a simple Mass with no responses, no sermon, no singing and not
even a canine congregation - but time to remember the living and the dead. Another
strong coffee and pipe ( no cough) gives time to have a closer look at the paper and
the Times crossword with the constant hope that I will, one day, actually complete it.
The two chickens are released and fed with a word of thanks for the daily egg ( often
even two) and the occasional drinking raw of same, straight from the shell, which,
according to the old wives’ tale, is good for you and puts hairs on your chest. The wild
birds get their feed next and the doggy dinner is soaked in boiling water for their daily
meal. A few odd jobs follow ( it is amazing what a good 'housewife' I have become) and
there are no telephone calls, no knocks on the door, usually nothing in the diary which
has to be done at any certain time or place. The rest of the day is filled with repeated
stabs at that crossword, the odd prayer, some reading or writing, a piece of toast some
time in the morning, more odd jobs, a bit of shopping for milk or other essentials ( no
milkman comes and I make my own bread), lunch/tea/supper when hungry and usually
one meal serves the lot, a walk with the dogs. They walk or run, I calculate, some three
or four times the distance covered by their master so that a mere amble for two legs
seems to cover their needs with four legs. Fan mail arrives around noon and is dealt
with ( usually bills!) right away, radio/music is a more or less constant background, T.V.
is watched occasionally when there is nothing better to do or something exciting worth
watching and there are some days when I don’t actually see another human soul.
In print it may sound boring and even a pointless existence. But I still appreciate the
peace and quiet, the lack of being nailed down to do certain things at definite times,
the freedom from having to meet people all day - all of this even more when I have
spent a Saturday night/Sunday morning helping out in a parish and seen the hurly
burly of parish life. It will be interesting, if I survive, how much of a vegetable I shall
become in time. Meanwhile, I would recommend retirement to anyone. I should have
done it forty years ago! But I also continue to appreciate the great blessing and fortune
I have in being able to retire because of the legacy of this bungalow. It would be a great
advantage -- and surely something to be aimed for -- if the Diocese had some way of
allowing other priests who may so wish to retire into similar accommodation. It has
enough land in various places - why not build the odd bungalow?
I still maintain that a crusty old priest hanging on in any parish for too long
does more harm than good. I look at the Diocese from a more detached perspective,
wonder how it will develop in the next ten or twenty years, how parishes will merge into
districts, how priests will find a new way of serving such districts and the needs people
have, pray and have full confidence that all will turn out well even if quite differently to
what we expect or grandiosely plan.