Tidings

>Is a touch of madness one of the hazards of the parson's profession? It may be, at least among the Presbyterian ministers in the straitlaced Church of Scotland. A recent study of a representative sampling of the church's clergy men claims that fully 68% suffer from "mental, psychoneurotic and personality disorders." Dr. Hugh A. Eadie, a young Presbyterian minister from Australia, made the findings while at the University of Edinburgh, as part of a larger examination of the health of Scottish clergy. The first section of his inquiry determined that ministers enjoyed better health than most other Scottish occupational groups--both fewer illnesses and longer life. But a second part revealed that many of the supposedly robust clergymen complained of psychological and emotional problems. In the group under 45, three out of four had such complaints. The figures led Eadie to discern a "parsonic personality" among those who choose the church in the first place--persons afflicted with a "guilt-neurosis syndrome," who try to be "omnipotent and omnicompetent, on the one hand, and all-loving and all-lovable on the other." When a clergyman fails to achieve such inhuman perfection, Eadie notes, the results range from simple depression to compulsive sexual fantasies.

> Roman Catholics who have divorced and remarried have rarely had the official sympathy of their church. Indeed, unless the first marriage can somehow be proved invalid, the second union is considered to be no marriage at all, and canon law bars the partners from the sacrament of the Eucharist. Even so, there has been one slight softening in Rome's attitude. A recent letter to the world's bishops promises that the Vatican will soon amend a canon law that forbids Catholic funeral services --or even burial in consecrated ground --to "public sinners," a category that has often included Catholics in "irregular" marriages. The new law will allow religious funerals for those who, "although finding themselves in a manifest situation of sin, have retained their attachment to the church and have shown some sign of penitence." Pastors must avoid "public scandal," however, and can do so by explaining the "meaning of Christian funerals, in which may be seen a recourse to the infinite mercy of God." Thus, while irregularly remarried Catholics cannot join their fellows for Communion while they live, they can at least join them in the graveyard when they die.

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