Part 4
Some candidates became nervous wrecks after spending weeks and months
preparing as if for a wedding. Chalices were inspected and bought, visitors invited and
plans made for the first Mass back in the parish followed by ordination breakfast and
general and wide rejoicing. Sacristans seemed to be traditionally hard-boiled and inured
to such distractions and I especially simply looked forward to the event as being the end
of six years of seminary life. We were allowed 40 visitors each to occupy special places
in tiers in various parts of the chapel. Some needed far more than that so my popularity
rating soared for the event since I was only having two visitors - my mother and sister -
and was willing to sell my allotted seats at one ounce of pipe tobacco each. I arranged to
say one of the normal Sunday Masses in the church in Aylesbury with the old Canon to
assist me and simply to go back home afterwards for a normal breakfast. The princely
sum of £32 sterling was collected by the parish before the ordination and with this I
bought a chalice and a pyx which I still have and use ( some bought a chalice for over
£200, hand made and incorporating their mother’s engagement ring or other precious
jewel ).
The ceremony was not a test of nerves. I knew what I was doing and even noticed
promising obedience to the wrong Bishop and his successors but judged it to be a mere
blip and not worth making a fuss about. I did smash my pocket watch at the prostration
for the litany of the Saints [ which was a most uncomfortable and dangerous exercise. It
is very hard to know one’s length when having to lie face down from a standing start.
This meant that, before the ceremony, you had to practise just where your head would
be, on a cushion, from that standing start. A judicious line drawn on the carpet ensured
that as you prostrated you not only hit the cushion but also avoided smashing into the
boots of the bloke in front of you.] I got the length right but forgot that the watch was in
my waistcoat pocket and some twelve stone of dead weight would land on it - with the
predictable result. It has never been the same since. My first blessing to my mother
and sister was performed impeccably and gratefully for the years they had sacrificed so
much to make the day possible. The greatest shock - even though expected - was the
professors ( aloof and distant for six years) suddenly calling me ‘Father’ or, even more
traumatically, not ‘Mister’ but by one’s Christian name!
After breakfast in the staff room all the newly ordained priests departed with their
guests. Gratefully even though with some regrets at leaving friends and a world which
had guarded and cocooned one for so long, a structured life which needed little thought
and expected even less initiative. And with some dread - although, thankfully, not full
awareness - of the future in a parish. Most would have a holiday of some weeks or even
months and would then be appointed to a parish or even sent on for further studies. I
knew not only where I was going - to Corby, ‘Occupation Road’, ominously - but also
that because of the state of health of the parish priest there I would have to be in place a
week after ordination and look forward to a holiday some time in the indeterminate
future. A nice touch was the letter from the Bishop hand-written to inform me of this and,
on the day of ordination, a telegram of congratulations from the parish priest whom I had
never met but to whom I had been appointed as junior curate.
The next week passed quickly enough with my first Mass in Aylesbury parish
church on the Sunday and further Masses in convents and surrounding parishes where
they had never seen a newly ordained priest ‘since the Reformation’, as the local paper
had it. The embarrassing bit was the custom of people kissing the hands of such a priest
after his blessing. After a week or so this gradually stopped and the only thing was to
remember to react when someone called you ‘Father’ since that was a title to which one
was not accustomed to respond.
The anti-Modernist oath was a screed of some three pages of inscrutable Latin
instituted by Pope Pius X in his successful fight against the heresy of Modernism at the
beginning of the 19 hundreds. We had to take this oath before being ordained a Deacon
and then, again, before we received our faculties as a priest. For the ordination of a
priest is simply a sacrament which confers the power to say Mass and to bless and
absolve; it specifically stated in the ceremony that we could not exercise this truly
momentous gift without permission from our Bishop ( except in the case of danger of
death). This permission was what was known as the ‘Faculty’ given by the Diocese.
Somewhere I have a document stating that this has been given to me, renewed annually
at the discretion of the Bishop and eventually - now - granted to all priests unless
specifically withdrawn.
Which is more than can be said of a certificate of ordination. There is none.
Apart from memory and some photographs, perhaps a list in the archives of the
seminary and/or diocese, I cannot prove I have been ordained. [Just as I cannot prove -
by recourse to my place of baptism, since it has been destroyed - that I have been
baptised. In the unthinkable eventuality that I did not get baptised then my ordination is
not even worth the photographs or memories!]
The reception of the Faculty explains why Saturday, May 30th, 1959, at about
4.00 p.m. and just a week after my ordination I was to be found solemnly kneeling in front
of the fireplace in the Presbytery of Our Lady’s, Occupation Road, Corby, reading
through the oath and understanding it as little as I did on the original occasion a year or
so before. Witnesses to this less than earth shattering event were the Parish Priest and
his curate who both sat comfortably having a smoke while I laboured through the Latin
text and duly signed the oath. All this to enable me to go into the confessional box at
5.00 p.m. for the routine Saturday Confessions - 5.00 p.m. to 7.00.
To say that this was a traumatic experience is a massive under-statement.
Obviously, there was no possibility of previous experience of hearing confessions. The
theology of it all was that a priest is there not just to forgive but also to be a judge, a
doctor and healer, a teacher and instructor and an adviser and consoler. A practical
hint was to take the words of absolution - in Latin, of course - into the confessional in
black and white since no matter how you might think you know them by heart, when it
comes to the crunch you may well forget them. Armed with all this profound knowledge
and a slip of paper I marched down the very long church of Our Lady to the confessional
right at the back of the church; a sort of primitive horse-box reserved for the junior
curate with five or six benches of penitents waiting and all looking at this young, slim and
handsome cleric trying to exude confidence; not to say judicious sanctity of life and
wisdom and experience. Children, men and women, young and old all itching to do their
religious duty of weekly or fortnightly confession and get away for their Saturday night
activities.
Corby in 1959 had just one Catholic church and a new parish just starting
in a developing district and still based on a school hall. Our Lady’s claimed Easter duties
of 2714 in 1960 and this would have been a pretty exact number since the Easter
confessions were, in fact, counted one by one. [ Just to remind the young and innocent:
this meant that between Ash Wednesday and Trinity Sunday - a matter of 14 weeks -
that number of people went to confession at least once. Let’s say 193 per Saturday. It
was, of course, a lot more since many did go every week or two or three but were not
then counted as ‘Easter Duties’ after the first time.] Of these souls some 75% were from
Scotland with a firm Irish foundation and a genuine piety which, however, did not help
with their peculiarly Corby/Scottish accent. It is absolutely true that quite apart from
natural nerves and inexperience on my part things were made quite impossible by my
inability to understand the whispered peccadilloes, sins or even crimes coming through
the hole in the wall for the next two hours or so – non-stop. I confidently gave out
penances according to the length of the list of sins rather than its content and absolved
everyone without hesitation. My attempt to give a little and well prepared ‘ferverino’ was
soon thwarted by a banging on the door by the parish priest telling me that I was taking
too long per sinner and that the queue was increasing outside my box rather than
decreasing. By 7.15 or so the door stopped opening and shutting and, after a pause, I
cautiously emerged from the box to find the church empty, myself utterly punch-drunk
and late for supper.
When you think about it, two minutes for each confession means that the end of
the second bench of patient penitents ( say number 12 since one can reckon on six in a
bench according to the usual architect’s allowance of 18 inches per bottom) would be
there and waiting for 20 minutes. Weekly confession was by no means a rarity at that
period and with the opening and shutting of the door, kneeling down, sometimes in slow
motion due to arthritis or devotional slowness, an introduction by the sinner, often with
some hesitation whether the previous confession was one or two weeks away, a short list
of sins and imperfections and a brief statement “…for these and all my other sins which I
cannot now remember I am sorry” there was not all that much time left to teach, inspire,
heal or console plus giving a penance and a Latin absolution consisting of two prayers.
In due time I did manage to understand things like ‘wee wains greetin’ as the
vernacular for ‘small children crying’. When some stated : ‘I missed’ it meant they had
not been at Mass on the previous Sunday. By diligent questioning one usually
discovered that they had been genuinely ill, sometimes even hospitalised, but still felt
guilty and no matter how often they were assured of their innocence they still preferred
absolution. Children (then aged 6 when making their First Holy Communion) quite often
came in and said nothing. After some coaxing and encouragement a little voice well
below the hole in the wall would go through the Ten Commandments - including adultery
- and accuse itself of the lot. Some spoke up as if shouting orders in the steelworks blast
furnaces while others whispered into my right, confessional and even then partly deaf
ear so that all I got was a sibilant hiss as of a slightly irked snake.
The miracle of the sacrament at that time was not just that a priest could sit,
solidly, for five hours (as I did at my first Christmas Eve confessional marathon) and not
get ratty with the awkward squad but that the people had a simple faith in forgiveness
and they did confess, repent and try to improve. It very soon became clear that there
were many who lived incredibly holy lives with problems and hardships which were mind-
boggling. In many cases the absolution was more a blessing or even a thanksgiving
prayer rather than a sponge wiping away dirty spots and blotches on the soul. The
simple faith in God and their trust in the wisdom of the priest of so many people was
something which never ceased - or ceases - to amaze and often frighten me with the
responsibility it imposes.
The next day, Sunday, consisted of five morning Masses starting at
6.30 a.m. I was not required to preach that day but had to be present at all Masses to
hear a sermon on the Priesthood and have the solemn blessing and kissing of hands. I
did have to sing the 11.00 a.m. main Mass and be present at afternoon Benediction so
that everyone would have the opportunity of seeing the Parish’s new acquisition.
At lunch that day - an immutable 1.00 p.m. - I quite unwittingly had my first
brush with the parish priest because the housekeeper actually asked me what I would
like for my dessert. This was due much more to my loving attitude to her little dog than
any inherent charm on my part or her love of the clergy. This poor little pooch was
hounded by the then Dean (later to become a Canon) who boasted that he once met
him on the stairs and booted him down and straight through the front door. Being offered
a choice of dessert went contrary to the accepted custom that the housekeeper was
there for the parish priest alone and would only be allowed barely to tolerate such lowly
creatures as curates.
Perhaps as a direct result of this clash I was told that I was to do the Baptisms at
3.00 p.m. This was a weekly event when whatever turned up, with or without notice, was
small, preferably loud and accompanied by family (usually extended), got baptised in
Latin and entered into the register. Having only once baptised a doll in the privacy of the
seminary and an audience of two or three fellow students I was unprepared for a crowd
of ten babies of assorted sexes, ages and vocal capacities accompanied by lots of
children and adults who had to be sorted out according to who belonged to whom and
who were parents, god-parents, just an audience or doting grandparents. The whole
ceremony took very nearly two hours and the pious were already coming in for
Benediction at 5.00 p.m. by the time I finished and left it to the mercy of God and
efficacy of the sacramental system whether there were ten new Christians or not.
It was, of course, all done in Latin - as were the entries into the
Baptismal Register. This meant that a James was entered as 'Jacobus' in spite of the
parents objecting that they did not want a Jacob; while the distress of parents calling
their pride and joy Gladys or Gay or Joy or Joyce can be imagined when they saw the
entry as 'Laetitia'. Romeo, Kylie, Ashton, Gavin, Tracy, Ashton and innumerable modern
names did not, fortunately, seem to arise at that time.
Evening Mass had at that time not been invented so here was a shortish gap of
inactivity until supper - dead on 7.00 p.m. That, I cheerfully presumed, was the end of
the day and the rest of the night would be all mine!
No way! By 10.00 p.m. it was expected that both curates be downstairs with
their parish priest watching the television which, mercifully at that time, used to end
shortly after 11.00 p.m. with a dot of light disappearing into itself and a voice saying:
“Don’t forget to switch off your set”. It was then my duty, as junior curate, to do just that.
To this day the tune advertising Fairy Liquid ( ‘The hands that do dishes can be soft as
your face’) brings back vivid memories of youth, the ‘old man’ and what, in time, became
a quite pleasant evening ritual of mostly silent companionship.
To be fair, the old man ( probably all of 59 or 60 at the time) insisted on this as a
means of keeping in touch with his curates and making them feel at home. He sat there
with a whisky, the senior curate had a gin and I eventually graduated to a Jumbo Stout
imported free from the Catholic Men’s Club next door for that very purpose.
Unfortunately the conversational prowess of the parish priest was very limited and
watching the box inhibited whatever temptation there may have been to discuss things.
In time the silence became quite companionable and after a few years I could sit with him
for an hour and we would both be quite content not to talk at all. He did, however,
honestly think that this invariable nightly procedure was a fatherly and caring way of
looking after his young men. When the box was switched off we all got up, locked up,
trooped upstairs and wished each other a ‘good night’ and retired to bed.
Curates had one right – that of Christian burial. By law and custom they lived
in the house ‘owned’ by the parish priest, run by his housekeeper who was employed by
him and principally for him. The curate kept to the house rules set for him with no
consultation and no discussion or court of appeal. By the age of 25 a highly educated
young man was given a bed-sitter, a set of rules, rigid times and menus of meals and
expectations of rising and going to bed at certain times while his friends whom he
vaguely remembered from school were, by then, fathers of families, held down good jobs
and enjoyed mortgages. The salary of a curate was £70 per year with board and
lodging free. Any offerings for weddings and baptisms as well as the customary
Christmas and Easter offerings were the property of the parish priest and only shared at
his pleasure. A curate had to get the Bishop’s permission to purchase a car and, as
Bishop Leo maintained, this was not easily given since most curates wanted a car to get
out of the parish rather than use it to work in the parish!
As it happened, my parish priest was a very just man and shared the money equally and
was not mean in any way. He had a genuine care for his curates but also a strict manner
of imposing this with his own way and will and a manner which was bound to conflict with
men a generation or more younger than himself. In short, he meant well but it took a long
time and a lot of forbearance to recognise this.
Just as a curate only had the one right so he usually had only one ambition
- to get his own parish; get his feet under his own table. The time span for achieving this
could vary from an average of nine or ten years in our Diocese to twenty or twentyfive
years in Southwark or some of the northern Dioceses. It was even worse in Ireland
(although often the curate had a house or flat of his own) where the story goes that a
priest of 65 had just arrived back home after having retired from England to find that the
priest in his parish was 66 and just reached the lofty status of a parish priest. All these
things were simply facts of life. Curates grumbled, they wished for better things, they
lived for the future; but nothing could be done about it and, most probably, did not do as
much harm as may now appear. Things had to run their course and change gradually -
and not always for the better.
Everything, therefore, depended on the parish priest and life could be good,
tolerable or downright impossible at the whim of one person. Curates themselves could
be impossible and rebellious and so were moved off; usually at a week’s notice. They
received a letter from the Bishop simply telling them that from next week their services
would be required elsewhere. It was not uncommon even in this Diocese ( which had
fewer priests than most and was growing and starting new parishes and thus the
average years of a curacy tended to be eight or nine) for a curate to be in four or five
parishes before having his own.
In a parish the size of Our Lady’s the new recruit was the junior curate and
thus even a lower form of life in an institution very much geared to a hierarchy. Looking
back forty years it is clear that in many ways, according to the circumstances prevailing
at that time, I was incredibly blessed and lucky! To begin with, the senior curate was a
man in his early thirties, ordained some four years and incredibly kind and
understanding as well as willing to give advice and help. He had been in the Army and
was an unusual personality, much liked by the parishioners, given to bad language when
irked but with a realism and sense of humour and willingness to buck the system.
Unfortunately he went off on his annual holiday three weeks after my arrival and then
disappeared off the face of the earth. Literally, nobody ever really found out what
happened to him except that he had obviously planned not to return. All kinds of
rumours did, naturally, spread but nothing conclusive nor more scandalous than that he
had become a shepherd in Devon or Cornwall.
The result was that within four or five weeks of my elevation to the
priesthood I became a senior curate! The old man, not all that well already, got really
sick, blamed himself for not looking after his vanished curate properly and took to his
bed determined to make sure that his new protégé would not go astray one inch. We
received the help of a Dutch priest with a limited knowledge of English and I ran the
parish. Not as an independent agent but a dogsbody governed from a sickbed by a very
unhappy parish priest who not only told me what to do and how to do it but also took it
for granted that I would do it wrong every time and listened to any reports of my activities
with deep suspicion and fear that the place would fall apart and that he would be blamed
- as he suspected, quite wrongly, that he was being blamed for the disappearing act of
his senior curate.
Eventually, in mid October, I did get a part of my ordination holiday due
to me. I spent four or five days of that three weeks visiting the Cistercian Abbey at
Nunraw in Scotland. A friend of mine from school had been 'ear marked' for the
Franciscans but actually left a year early to join the monks at Nunraw. After his novitiate
he continued his studies and was ordained the same year as myself. The peace and
quiet of the monastery, its routine and order and location in a beautiful part of Scotland
all seemed quite idyllic and the Guestmaster was good to me for those few days - he let
me sleep until 5.00 a.m. When I was leaving I asked the Abbot ( a tiny little man with
great presence and wisdom) if he thought I might try my vocation in the order. He looked
up at me with a kindly smile and said: " I think you would do less harm outside than
inside." Needless to say, I took his advice but what amount of harm I have done or may
have done is not for me to say.
The Dutch priest sent to us to help out was a quiet and gentle fellow, ordained
some years already, but belonged to a religious order, not to the Diocese. He said the
required Masses and visited the people and was very much liked by them. He worked
hard to institute the devotion to the Sacred Heart in many homes and families and is still
affectionately remembered by many. But he was not trusted with the important parts of
the parish - money - and his limited English meant that I had to help him write his
sermons and he was unable to instruct converts and heard confessions at a snail’s
pace. He also had nothing to lose or gain by keeping to arbitrary house rules; he did not
rely for a good report to the Bishop and did not have to worry about gaining a reputation
of being a ‘difficult curate’ - a tag which once gained could take at least two priestly
generations to lose again. He thus did his work but was not expected to take any
responsibilities and showed this by consistently appearing in the old man’s room for the
evening ‘social happy hour’ promptly at 10.00 p.m., having a gin (neat!) and then getting
up and politely wishing us “ Good night, Fathers” and going off for a good night’s kip. He
was not even attached to doorbell or telephone to answer sick calls at night. He stayed
with us for some ten months, his English flourished, we got on very well and kept in touch
for years remembering our odd existence with some affection. He eventually went to
work in Singapore and is surely, by now, a retired gentleman like myself or, even, may
have died.
My job, from the day of departure the senior curate, was therefore to look
after everything, spiritual or profane, and report every detail to the boss. His
independent sources of information [one or two of the nuns who taught in the school at
the back of the church and presbytery, the odd parishioner and - soon - the new
housekeeper] filled in whatever I may have forgotten, sometimes deliberately, to tell him.
Parishioners did so mainly in all innocence. They cheerfully told him how wonderful his
new curate was - as all new priests are - or assured him that things ain’t what they used
to be. I soon got the full grasp of the definition of a curate: “ A mouse training to be a rat”
- by acquiring the art of saying, or at least implying, that there were all kinds of things I
would love to do to make life easier for people in the parish but the old man would not
allow it!
I could drive a car - so I claimed - but had obviously not had the opportunity at
the seminary to take, far less pass, the test. There was a parish Ford which ran well
enough but seemed to need nearly as much oil as petrol. Any journey had to be
accompanied by a gallon can of oil. This vehicle had hardly been used for two or three
years since my predecessor sported a very noisy motorbike. My first non-spiritual task
was to go out and buy some L plates and then rely on brave or suicidal members of the
St. Vincent de Paul Society to accompany me ( their shift in the steelworks permitting) on
trips around the parish with Holy Communion or expeditions into the countryside to teach
children in villages. I also borrowed a bicycle for local work since my vow never to walk
again was still in full operation.
It was the custom at that time that on the first Friday of the month innumerable sick
and housebound people would want to receive Holy Communion at home. This could
quite easily amount to 30 or more, some of whom were genuinely housebound and also
would receive the Sacrament every Friday. The additional number was usually
accounted for by pious old ladies who somehow could manage to get to Bingo regularly
but would hate to miss the first Fridays since they had a firm faith in the miraculous
powers of that devotion. [Propagated by St. Margaret Mary Alacoque in the 1670’s who
was reputedly told in a vision that anyone receiving Holy Communion on nine
consecutive first Fridays of the month would be assured of eternal salvation. Although it
was not quite as stark and simplistic as it was made out to be it did remain a very worthy
devotion.]
My first job of the day would be to say Mass in either the church or the convent
and after whatever breakfast I wished to have [ cup of coffee and a pipe or - in the
weeks after Christmas, often nearly up to Easter] a piece of Christmas cake(s) which
were regularly delivered at the festive season to the presbytery, were usually delicious
but not touched by anyone but me. Then a pow-wow with the parish priest who may have
been fit to have said a Mass or not but was certainly not tempted to do anything more
active. I was told what had to be done, how to do it, when and where and when to report
back. This kept me going until 1.00 p.m. lunch which was prompt and good and plentiful
and never to be missed on pain of instant displeasure.
Monday morning, always, was bank day when the old man was driven (unless
prostrate) to the bank with all the cash from the week before and myself as bodyguard
and carrier. There was a lot of copper because of the system of collecting the necessary
weekly funds. And, to his credit, he did raise the cash that was required to pay for the
schools, the church and presbytery and to allow him to plan future parishes in the town
and even to ‘endow’ them to some extent to give them a good start.
He was good at finances and shrewd in getting loans from the bank or
Education Ministry. The debt on the parish was a heavy one and expansion was rampant
at that time. But the manner of getting in the cash was the despair of his curates, the
envy of other priests and a source of constant wonder to the parishioners.