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Research suggests that the well-being of clergy in the Church of England is closely tied to the way that they feel about themselves, their vocation and their employer. Yet whilst successive studies have investigated the role of the Church in contemporary society, the impact of secularism and the professionalisation of the ordained ministry, little attention has been paid to the formation of new priests and the way in which this shapes their self-understanding and identity. This longitudinal study follows men and women from their earliest days in theological training into their first parishes, asking what it is that they hope to be doing, what the Church appears to be training them to do, and what it is that they find expected of them after ordination. It questions whether new entrants to the profession have realistic models of what contemporary priestly ministry involves or whether they try to hold onto idealised, romantic visions of priesthood. In rapidly changing contexts and within an increasingly sceptical landscape, do they have the personal and institutional resources to grow and flourish? Do they find strategies to cope with the divergence between their hopes and the realities they experience, or does uncertainty about their role, and a divergence between the personal and the normative, lead to dissonance and alienation? Utilising qualitative techniques and a variety of interdisciplinary approaches, semi-structured annual research interviews allow the investigation of critical incidents and experiences that prove crucial to the development or inhibition of a priestly identity. The thesis takes a chronological approach based on the metaphor of a journey, considering the images of priesthood that inspire vocations, examining the experiences of those training for ordained ministry, identifying the ways in which they attempt to integrate theory with practice, and discovering how the process has shaped their expectations and identities. It makes acknowledgement of the effects of the research process upon the researcher, and makes proposals to the Church for improved practice.

No Catholic layman in modern times has played a greater part in ecclesiastical affairs than did Lord Acton. Although he was neither a theologian nor a man conspicuous for his spiritual insight, his relentless call for a reform of the Church and the brilliance with which he advocated a rapprochement between Catholicism and the modem world have earned him a place in history alongside the great churchmen and divines of the nineteenth century. Acton understood much more clearly than did most Catholics of his time that he lived in an increasingly secular age, the tendency of which was to regard the Church as an obstacle to human progress. This insight led him to believe that profane scholarship, and not merely theology, must be used as a means to defend religion; and he insisted that scientific history has an especially important contribution to make, because of the position which it occupied as the spearhead of an intellectual revolution. When he began his career in 1857, as an associate editor of the Rambler magazine, his foremost ambition was to communicate to English Catholics the ideas of the German Romantics, which he believed had already laid the groundwork for the recovery of religion. But the tragedy of his career was that his intentions were misunderstood by the mass of Catholics, largely because of his insistence on absolute candour, so that almost from the outset he found himself part of a resolute but small and loosely organised minority, whose views were never to triumph during his lifetime. He disputed endlessly with his co-religionists over the exigencies of the scientific method as applied to history, strenuously opposed the official position regarding the Pope’s Temporal Power, and finally conducted a vehement but hopeless struggle at the First Vatican Council against the proposed definition of papal infallibility.

This study investigates managing change in the Church of England. It focuses on the church leaders in the Diocese of Chelmsford, of working towards a policy of becoming self-financing churches proposed by the Bishop of Chelmsford, in his response to the recommendation of the Turnbull Report (1995). Data collected from church leaders by postal survey and the interviews carried out revealed that in achieving the policy, two key strategies were identified: (i) Income Generation and (ii) Cost Reduction. To achieve the first strategy, three activities or projects were initiated: training of lay people, church growth and increase in giving. For the second strategy, two activities or projects were introduced: use of more volunteers and energy consumption. Data collected from the postal survey on these two strategies were analysed using quantitative method. Data was also collected from publications and websites to reflect the comments of the respondents. Regarding the collection of interview data, one of the most significant findings in this study was that five church leaders adopted a working management style useful to them in their managing change, particularly, in the area of resistance and uncertainties. It was further identified from the data collected that to manage change it was necessary for the church leaders and their voluntary group leaders to have a new way (though differences and similarities were identified in their approach) to acquiring new knowledge through experiential learning during the process. The study further addresses the current issues of resistance as far as church management is concerned. It identifies the usefulness for adopting the skills of two disciplines: leadership and management in order that, the complexity of managing resistance, during change could be dealt with in the process.

This thesis is an interdisciplinary exploration of the formation of virtuous character in the Church. It critiques the prevailing metaphor of growth within the Church, contending that it has failed within society leading to what Richard Sennett calls a ‘corrosion of character’. It is my contention that a similar process can be seen within the Church. I suggest that the growth ethic should be replaced by one based on virtue. The work of both Sennet and Erich Fromm is used to critique this 'growth ethic'. MacIntyre's proposal for a recovery of a virtue-based ethic is examined and interpreted theologically through the concepts of narrative theology, community, sacraments and sanctification. Here the work of Hauerwas is also significant. Central to MacIntyre's project is the role of 'practices' in developing virtuous character. MacIntyre's proposal is read in dialogue with the pedagogy of Etienne Wenger, and both are critiqued by the as potentially idealist by the work of Nicholas Healy. The nature of a virtuous organisation/church is then explored through the discipline of organisational psychodynamics, notably thought the work of Bruce Reed. The confluence between Reed's work and the ascetial theology of Martin Thornton is noted. This psychodynamic insight is then used to explore the role of character in the tasks of the Church that involves a focused understanding of kenosis as a form of vicarious self-offerting. This understanding of a virtuous Church is used to inform a model of Church as a Community of Interpretation, not just of its own normative narrative but also of the society in which it is placed - the Church offers an analysis of its own internal life as a mode of interpretation of the dynamics of the wider society. This preferencing of internal goods over external (in MacIntyre's language), or 'quest' orientation over intrinsic or extrinsic (in the language of Allport & Ross) then becomes a model for holiness, and I explore how in this context mission becomes the cultivation of holiness, wisdom and right action. I suggest that it is in and though sacramental practices that the transitional space for these virtues to be formed is created. The penultimate chapter uses current Church of England policy on theological education as a case study to explore the presence and/or absence of notions of virtuous character in ministerial formation. The thesis ends with a conclusion that seeks to identify some possible ongoing policy implications for the life of the Church were it to adopt the notion of virtuous character as part of its teleology.

The work offers a critical reevaluation of the Mission of the Old Catholic Church in Britain, following the Episcopal consecration of the Rt. Rev. Dr. Arnold Harris Mathew in 1908, by the Old Catholic Church Episcopal See of Utrecht employing the methodology of historical theology. The original contribution this thesis makes to scholarship is in the analysis of Mathew's Mission and its heirs from a postmodern perspective. I argue that Mathew's movement can be understood and, indeed, is best understood as a postmodem phenomenon. Furthermore, that the contemporary 'school' of theology known as Radical Orthodoxy can provide a lens through which to make sense of this movement, particularly as it developed into Liberal Catholicism and can provide a critical theological interface with the movement. I further argue that the contemporary emerging Church movement bears a 'family resemblance' with the independent Catholic movement Mathew did much to generate and provides an additional postmodem movement with which to make sense of Mathew's Mission and its heirs. The thesis begins with an introduction in which key terms are defined, the methodology established and a literature review conducted. A great deal has been written about Mathew and the independent Catholic movement, most of it critical, but no scholar has approached the phenomenon explicitly from a postmodern perspective. A biographical sketch of Mathew is provided.

This thesis offers a comparative examination of how expressions of nationhood and sovereignty in the four border nations of Poland, Scotland, Ireland and Lithuania were informed by the intellectual climate of the papal Curia in the early fourteenth century. It seeks to demonstrate that their shared conceptual language was in no small part due to their intended audience, the papacy, and the identity of their authors, whose understanding of apolitical language associated with the Curia was evidently profound. At a time when die more powerful monarchies of Christendom were articulating their national sovereignty in opposition to the universal claims of both empire and papacy, conceptions of nationhood and independence were evolving along, in many ways, quite different lines in these four frontier political communities. The inspiration for their assertions lay not with any powerful prince, but with a power vacuum, coupled with the threat of oppression or occupation from foreign neighbours. Responsibility for articulating concerns about nationhood and sovereignty lay with churchmen - both secular and regular - for whom such matters were naturally expressed within the legal and theological terms of reference provided by the Curia and its associated political discourse. While providing obvious parallels in conceptual language, the assertions of all four nations also demonstrate the breadth of ways in which canonistic thinking and other intellectual developments associated with the Curia could be harnessed as a means of expressing the political rights of a nation. The papacy's response to such articulations has often been characterised as unsympathetic, typified by the outlook of John XXII, to whom the most famed appeals from all four nations were directed. The comparative approach of this thesis reveals that in fact the pope's rather hesitant and carefully-worded responses did nothing to refute their assertions, and in many cases supported them, albeit sometimes inadvertently.

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The present study explores two late thirteenth-century bishops’ registers, one from Hereford diocese, the other from Winchester, in order to shed light on the act of registration during this period. In doing so, the thesis aims to further current understanding of registers and develop new methodologies for their use in historical research. Where previous studies only focus on one particular type of record in a register, such as charters, each chapter of this thesis examines a different type of record, meaning a far greater range of each register is explored. The thesis also considers what light the two registers can shed on episcopacy in Hereford and Winchester dioceses in the late thirteenth century. While most studies of this period focus on archbishops or royal government officials, this thesis turns to two workaday bishops in order to consider how those men who played a less prominent role in English political and ecclesiastical life practised episcopacy. Each chapter concerns a particular episcopal activity: the safeguarding of ecclesiastical benefices, the construction of episcopal households, ecclesiastical reform, episcopal visitations and, more broadly, the pursuit of a career, affording a broad investigation into each bishop’s activities. Using the two registers, this study argues that it is essential to consider episcopacy as something distinct to each individual, shaped by a range of motives, agendas, and relationships. It emphasizes the role of human beings and their interactions in diocesan administration and in producing registers, leading to diverse approaches to episcopacy and the record of episcopal acts. It also draws connections between registration and episcopal activity, developing new ways of reading the material based on a greater understanding of the content and production of registers and their contexts.

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