No bishop for Tuam: The Church of England Newspaper, April 8, 2011 p 7.

Bishop Richard Henderson of Tuam

First published in The Church of England Newspaper.

The March 30 meeting of the Church of Ireland Episcopal Electoral College for the United Diocese of Tuam, Killala and Achonry, meeting at Church House in Armagh was unable to appoint a new bishop for the small rural diocese.

Under the constitution of the Church of Ireland, the appointment of a new bishop rests with the House of Bishops.  However, the appointment of a successor for Dr Richard Henderson, who stepped down as bishop last year to take up a parochial cure in Cumbria is uncertain.

On March 5 a special meeting of the Irish General Synod in Dublin rejected a bill put forward by the House of Bishops to postpone appointing a new bishop for the diocese of 2000 active members gathered in nine parishes, or unions of congregations in County Mayo and portions of Counties Sligo and Galway in the far west of Ireland.

While the bill was defeated by a ten to one margin in the lay order and a five to one margin in the clergy order, questions were raised about the feasibility of the current diocesan structures.

In a statement released after Bishop Henderson announced his resignation, Reform Ireland asked whether Ireland  could “afford so many bishops?”

It noted the number of bishops had remained unchanged for over a century, while the numbers of active members had declined as had the church’s “ability to finance itself. Just recently, the Church of Ireland was one of the biggest losers in Ireland’s banking fiasco, losing €17million euro in its share values,” Reform Ireland noted.

While “no-one wants to see Church of Ireland people not episcopally catered for” Reform Ireland asked if the church needed its current structure of 12 diocesan bishops to oversee approximately 500 clergy.  “The Church of Ireland has faced difficult days before and these are similar times when some tough decisions about the number of bishops need to be taken,” the conservative evangelical group said.

The Anglican Church in the West of Ireland has been undergoing consolidation since the early Nineteenth Century. In 1834 parliament amalgamated the diocese of Killala and Achonry with the Archdiocese of Tuam.  Following the death of Archbishop Power Trench in 1839 the province of Tuam was united to the Province of Armagh and its episcopal officeholder changed from an archbishop to bishop.