You could probably, if you are willing, clear up some matters about Mansfield about which I am in dark ignorance. I was told by the denizens of the Austen-L that Sir Thomas selling the pastorship of Mansfield Park was not Simony becuase he did not sell the office, but the right to appoint the next parson. This seems like an incredibly fine distinction. What I wonder is how an appointment to a parish church is made today (I assume they no longer have any income attatched other than the voluntary donation of the congregation, but is that correct? I suppose individual churches, monasteries, etc. could still possibly own land or have some other right to rents from land, though surely not the compulary tithing that was then enforced by law?). My guess would be that all such appointemnts would be made by a bishop, or is that not the case? Surely money no longer changes hands in any way to gain such an appointment?

What I am dimly driving at is that when post-modern critics attack the unexamined assumptions of Austen's world, they require the people of that age to have been abolitionists and feminsits or else suffer the consequences of being damned as not politically correct. Yet to my knowldge they never touch on Simony as an abuse common in that time that is not tolerated now. Onviously this is a bit of a reductio ad absurdam and I don't know what I might do with the idea. But I would appreciate it if you could write briefly on the differnces in C of E practices bewtween then and now.