THE “REFORMED” PUBLIC HOUSE

Gisborne Times, Volume XXX, Issue 3559, 26 June 1912, Page 7

THE “REFORMED” PUBLIC HOUSE

STRONG ADVOCATE IN DR, GORE Di. Gore, the Bishop of Oxford, who says he finds the case for Welsh Disestablishment irresistible, was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, and it was in those days that he founded his famous brotherhood of young men sworn to celibacy, poverty, and communion of goods. When Lord Salisbury first made Dr. Gore a Bishop, those clergy of the diocese of Worcester who had not taken their duties too seriously, found they had to change either their habits or their living. To begin with, the Bishop expressed a wish that incumbents should! live permanently within the boundaries of their own parishes, no matter how lonely and depressing those parishes might be. In this he asked no more than h© was prepared to do himseif. In fact, he refus.ri to live.in Hartlebury Castle, wbi h had been the official residence of the Bishops of Worcester for a thousand years, saying that nothing would induce him to live so far from the heart of his diocese. Dr Gore, is, of course, unmarried, for he believes ini a celibate clergy. ' Therefore, he has no one hut himself to consider in leading an almost ascetic life. He approves of the stage, which lie considers an excellent institution. More tliaii that, he is an ardent advocate of the reformed public-house. ■. “I do not,” he once said, “think it necessarily wicked to manufacture or to sell, or in moderation to consume, alcoholic liquors,” but he does .think our public-house.system all wrong. He once spent a. holiday in Barcelona, and came hack full of its “delightful public-houses,” where whole families sit chatting and drinking tea or coffee, or anything else they fancy.