UNITED STATES
Stocking the Corners
August 4, 2014 by Jennifer Fitz
I live in a relatively small house. Not Third World Shack small, but the square footage per person makes most first-world “Small Houses!” fans gaze longingly at off-site storage options. I have friends who squeeze way more children into way less space, and friends who do it the other away around. We’re happy with where we fall on the real estate spectrum, grateful for what we have and making the best use of it we can.
CNN, on the other hand, is very worried about People Whose Homes Are the Wrong Size. Well, not just any people. They aren’t worried about publishing executives, or journalists, or graphic designers and IT guys. They must already have the right size homes. It’s bishops, don’t you know. So let’s talk about the clerical housing crisis.
1. Priest & bishops very rarely control where they live.
You get assigned to a job, and the house comes with it. It might be magnificent, it might be horrifying, it might have a deadly elevator. 98% of priests surveyed* report that they’ve had to live someplace very, very tacky. Can you, the current resident, do anything about the situation? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
2. It’s not “your” house to do with as you please.
Unless they’ve gone and used their personal funds to rent an alternate location, the rectory or bishop’s residence does not belong to the occupants. It’s typically the property of the diocese, and each priest or bishop is just a temporary resident. Your local parish priest probably has to fill out an acre of paperwork just to get new wallpaper in the bathroom, because the diocese wants to make sure that no disastrous DIY horror show is awaiting Father Replacement a year from now. The bishop has to not just consider his own needs, which might be minimal, but also what every bishop for the next fifty years is going to reasonably need.
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