"Some priests are dissatisfied with their work, either because their freedom to do a good job is curtailed, or because they feel unprepared for the specific task assigned them. In the first instance, better job descriptions are proposed as a remedy; in the second, better education for the jobholder. Both solutions are no more than misguided palliatives. The question must be asked: Should not this job be dropped from Church control, and the cleric either fired or challenged to compete for it—under secular control and conditions?"
Can you rephrase the last sentence?
alibey1917Should not this job be dropped from Church control, and the cleric either fired or challenged to compete for it—under secular control and conditions?
Shouldn't everyone have the right to apply for the job (priests included) based on their qualifications, and compete with one another in equal fair conditions?
What the writer is driving at is that being a priest shouldn't automatically allow him to secure a job. The job must be secular, to be secured based on one's true talents, abilities and qualifications, or whatever the requirements are.
That's a hard one because I don't know what he's talking about. What kind of job doing what?
The sentence is a little convoluted. The injunction against contractions in formal writing can produce anomalies like "Should this job not be dropped", which in natural speech would be "Shouldn't this job be dropped". And I believe the writer made a poor choice in tacking the phrase "under secular …" on the end with an em dash like that because it seems to apply to the whole sentence, when he meant it to apply only to the part after the comma.
But anyway:
"Does it not seem appropriate for the Church to abandon responsibility for the accomplishment of this task? Shouldn't it allow everyday workplace forces to have their head and let the cleric be subject to the same hiring and firing criteria as anyone else in the wider world?"
That's what it means, but I don't think what I just wrote is the basis for a good translation.