What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • Who is the happiest of the them all?

    Mirror, mirror, on the wall….
    Who is the happiest of them all?

    Turns out the answer is clergy.

    According to the BBC, the government is beginning to include measures of happiness in what it attempts to do and part of that has been trying to quantify who the happiest people are in society. Turns out the answer at the top of the list is “vicars/priests”.

    I’m not at all surprised. Oh, but there’s so much to say about it – not least the fact that I know plenty of clergy who are very far from happy. My hunch is that those who are unhappy in this job tend not to be unhappy about the essence of the job and are frustrated because they can’t vicar enough to fulfil the hopes that they once had. (My apologies for verbing the noun in that last sentence).

    The list itself is fascinating as it lists job categories by average income too. Second most happy people are CEOs bringing in lots of dosh.

    Here’e the top ten happy categories:

    (Rank) Occupation Mean income (£s)
    (1) Clergy 20,568
    (2) Chief executives and senior officials 117,700
    (3) Managers and proprietors in agriculture and horticulture 31,721
    (4) Company secretaries 18,176
    (5) Quality assurance and regulatory professionals 42,898
    (6) Health care practice managers 31,267
    (7) Medical practitioners 70,648
    (8) Farmers 24,520
    (9) Hotel and accommodation managers and proprietors 32,470
    (10) Skilled metal, electrical and electronic trades supervisors 35,316

    I’ve been asking myself why it is that clergy come out at the top. Some combination of the following factors is probably at work:

    • Very high degree of autonomy – notwithstanding bishops, presbyteries and other forms of oversight, clergy have to be very self-motivated.
    • We are in the joy business.
    • There’s a relatively high level of vocational testing before you get in – the churches try to select those who are most likely to cope with a very odd life.
    • High satisfaction levels around being with people in trauma and emotional need – you know you are doing good very often
    • High level of variety in daily life.
    • It is a life not a job.
    • Inner calling is a greater motivator than money – you don’t go into it for more money.
    • Lots of opportunity to develop a life where internal reflection allows you to work through your own stuff.
    • The job involves telling people they are loved and learning how much you yourself are loved too.
    • You get to walk into places and situations where others are frightened and help them deal with their fears.
    • Worship.

    I’ll write sometime about why clergy are not happy. But for today, I’d be interested in any further comments about why clergy are happy.

    Anyone?

    ,

14 responses to “Liturgical sadness”

  1. Robin Avatar
    Robin

    Has anyone else been following the series in ‘The Tablet’ taking the Latin Sunday Collects from the Roman Missal (Ordinary Form), printing alongside them the official English translations and then commenting on the Collects?

    The effect the series has on me is not what was intended. I spend much of my time being puzzled and irritated by the looseness of the translations from the Latin – words and phrases left out, new ideas included, and sometimes translations which are at best a paraphrase.

    The point of mentioning this is that what I’ve seen of the new English translation of the Roman Mass is undoubtedly more faithful to the Latin, which is, after all, the definitive form.

    This will be important to some and, I expect, an irrelevance to others. However, an ecumenical gesture we could make (pause for breathtakingly unpopular suggestion!) would be to incorporate the new relevant parts of the new translation in our own Liturgy. That really *would* show ecumenical goodwill.

    Reply
  2. David |Dah • veed| Avatar
    David |Dah • veed|

    “…the Latin, which is, after all, the definitive form.”

    That is certainly debatable. I fail to see that the purpose of the liturgical reforms of the 70s and 80s which resulted in many new liturgical books for most major denominations and prayer books for Anglicans, was to get us all back to the Latin Mass.

    Rome has pretty much cut the rest of us “free” so to speak, as irredeemable for all the heresies of women’s ordination and now GLBT ordinations and same sex blessings, and I am fine with that. I would not go anywhere near the Tiber, but I share Kelvin’s sense of loss of something we pew sitters shared around the world.

    Reply
  3. Robin Avatar
    Robin

    Just to clarify, when I wrote “…the Latin, which is, after all, the definitive form” I meant that it was the definitive form for Roman Catholics.

    Reply
  4. Ritualist Robert Avatar
    Ritualist Robert

    Vicky wrote: “… it is unlikely new conversion areas such as China would find Latin accessible.”

    A Roman friend of mine who probably would know said to me the other day that the Catholics in China use the Latin mass because they missed out on the reforms of Vatican II. Does anybody know if this is true?

    I went recently to a Latin mass here in Sydney with the same friend and most of the servers and the priest were from Vietnam … and a good deal of the back-to-the-future seminarians one sees at the papist cathedral seem to be Korean … so I am not sure that the formality of the Latin mass, or a more formal English one will put off Asian converts.

    It’s a pity that the ecumenical implications of this translation exercise haven’t been pondered a bit more.

    Reply

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