FROM A SCOTTISH CORRESPONDENT:
Priests derive their income from their parish. Priests in Scotland receive a salary of just under £3,000 per annum.
Although the policy regarding the purchase, maintenance and running of cars differs from diocese to diocese, in most dioceses, the car is a private expense, a further £2,000 is available to help with petrol for ‘work mileage.’ So, that’s about £5,000 a year.
In some parishes where finances are stretched, priests don’t always take their full allowance some clergy beyond the state pension age choose to live the state pension instead.
If you add in the provision of the house, heat, light and food, then you arrive at a perfectly reasonable standard of living.
A parish priest is allowed to keep one Mass stipend per day, (currently £10) although he must celebrate a Sunday Mass for the intentions of the people.
This earns him £ 3,120 a year – more if he gets bigger stioends than £ 10.
Masses are celebrated during the month of the Holy Souls in November and any Mass offerings enclosed in the November lists can either form part of an individual priest’s stipendiary income or, be shared at deanery or diocesan level.
Weddings £100
No 35,000 Euro’s here or separate homes.
They get free prescriptions and dental health from the NHS.
Now encouraged to get Funeral Plans themselves so the Dioceses do not need to pay.
No credit cards or mobile phones.
It is spam Tuesdays and Fish Fridays in Scotland.
Must be fantastic to be a Priest in Ireland.
IRELAND:
Priests in Ireland now have salaries of between € 20,000 and € 35,000.
Presumably they can also keep their Mass stipends?
Do they keep what they get for funerals and weddings?
Many priests have cash pressed into their hands regularly by laity and I’m sure priests in wealthier parishes get gifts of hundreds or thousands.
Priests get money left to them in wills sometimes.
WHEN I STARTED OFF:
My first parish was Bridgend in Wales starting in September 1976.
I had my keep and no household bills and the PP gave me £ 5 pocket money.
I had no car and a widespread parish. The PP refused to lend ne the price of a car.
A very generous elderly lady friend, Mary Hodinott, RIP, a retired teacher, bought me a used Opel and taxed and insured it for me.
The PP was furious because then he had to give me a car allowance 😁
In Belfast, St Peter’s in 1978, I had my keep and £ 70 a month and some car allowances and part of Christmas, Easter and November clergy collections.
I think Kilkeel and Larne were similar.
Daly cut off all my money in July 1986 and have been self-financing for 35 years.
All Oratory priests have been and are 100% self-financing.
CONCLUSION
Good priests, who offer good services to those who seek those services from them, are, to my mind, perfectly entitled to be remunerated.
“The labourer deserves his wages”.
A good priest will not be money orientated even though like all, he needs money to survive.
Some priests, like some people, suffer from avarice, greed and meanness. Such people are offputting in the extreme.
Personally, I think it a scandal when I hear a priest leaves a lot of money and property in his will.
I knew an Irish priest who kept a yacht in the Adriatic.
I have known Irish priests who have gambled vast fortunes in their lifetimes.
In the past some Irish priests owned a lot of land and a lot of stock.
Jesus never said it was a sin.
But he did say it was a sin for the rich to share with the poor.
AND
Is it the business of someone who does not contribute to the church or priests what priests earn?
HANS KUNG FUNERAL
BISHOP PAT BUCKLEY 