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Editorial
During the weeks immediately preceding publication the Editor has been been away on holiday. We mention this not only to crave our readers‘ indulgence in the event of some slight delay in publication but also in order to justify a train of thought which these days of leisure have brought to his mind.
HOLIDAY THOUGHTS.
The holiday of a priest, I suppose, especially if he is engaged on parish work, will generally be admitted to be be a good thing for all concerned. The people have the opportunity of a change of pastor and of preaching, and the priest rejoices in weekdays of leisure and a couple of Sundays without pastoral care.
The Editor is happy to say that he enjoyed his holiday very much indeed. Part was spent on Pilgrimage to Our Lady of Lourdes, always an occasion of solace and joy, and another part, as guest of a country priest in another part of France. For a few days he lived with dear friend and wartime colleague deep in the heart of that beautiful land, and the experience was memorable indeed. Surely there is no brotherhood so strong or so loyal as that which exists between priests. The outsider, even the Catholic, may be deceived by a certain bluffness into thinking that this community is but the laying aside of a professional reserve and that it is merely the easy sociability of old friends and school mates. There is much more to it than this. Priests love the company of priests; there is an unspoken unity of feeling for their common vocation which passes the power of easy description.
Clerical hospitality is always generous; clerical conversation is always joyous and innocent, and priestly sympathy and mutual counsel is ever tender and fraternal. It is not that we lack the weaknesses of other men or that our lives are unclouded by evil, but as fellow workers in the vineyard of the Lord we do look back to our hours of priestly companionship as times of joy and gladness – Quam bonum et jucundum habitare fratres in unum!
On Whit week I stayed at the Presbytery of Chezy en Orxois. It is a simple cottage with only four rooms. The village contains about 500 inhabitants and the church resembles the ancient parish churches of any such sized village in Norfolk or Suffolk. It seemed strange to be saying Mass in so old a Catholic church. It was built in 1548 when Rood Screens had begun to fall out of fashion but there were choir stalls, beautifully carved, with miserere seats separated from the body of the church by an iron railing. I sang the parochial Mass at half past ten; the Curé had already said two Masses at two smaller churches – in adjoining punishes. There were about two hundred people present; normally there would have been more but it was Whit Sunday and many had gone to the earlier masses in the other churches in order to receive Holy Communion. Strictly speaking I suppose it would have been described as a Low Mass with singing. There was no organ – only a harmonium – and an old man and two ladies sang the Proper of the Mass while the congregation sang, not too heartily, I must admit, the familiar Missa de Angeles. There was only one server, in red cassock, cotta and a red skullcap, and the congregation reminded me irresistibly, but with odd differences, of my own. The back benches had the same attraction for the men folk and there were the usual stalwarts who prefer to remain standing up at the back. The children were mostly in the front rows, but there were a few men and women who chose to occupy the choir stalls. The parish priest read the same kind of notices – time for Easter Duties was drawing to a close; there was to be a sale of Work shortly; please would the congregation find out the proper times for Confession and so on. Two girls took the collection – odd not to hear the coins falling on the plate because everyone uses the incredibly grubby paper money which afflicts France.
After Mass the noise of hoofs on the cobbles and of motors starting up. The children stay behind for catechism because the is no Catholic school in the village, only a state school where no religion is taught, although happily, and rather unusually, the schoolmaster is a good Catholic.
Some days later there was a little clerical party. About a dozen priests and the venerable Dean of the district. Oh the dear diversity of the Catholic priesthood! The same types I know so well at home, and yet how different. The kindly Dean – he had been in London with his sister in 1905 – before I was born. He had stayed near Charing Cross and the trip had cost him £5 for a fortnight – and did we still eat bacon and eggs for breakfast? The Vice-Dean, till recently a seminary professor and still with the eagle of eye of the schoolmaster; there was the mechanical genius – proud owner of a third hand Jeep and proprietor of a parish cinema — and there were the others, less well remembered but each a friend to the stranger—priest. Some had come on bicycles; one had a motor bike and the rest had compressed themselves into the Jeep.
The French priests are great gardeners; they have much need to be for their income is the merest pittance. And the meal, though simple, was a masterpiece. The good housekeeper pressed the goodly fruits of the earth upon us, and large portions of deceased parochial poultry and ham with the enthusiasm of a missioner. There was wine in sufficiency and wonderful coffee. I was tempted to say that this was a rare treat for one from hungry England – but it would not have been true. I was among priests and it would have been the same at home.
It was a delight to listen to the conversation of the Brethren. I have a special private system of speaking French which I find invaluable to procuring food, transport and the like, with unerring despatch and accuracy. I speak a kind of Red-Indian language which avoids all grammatical pitfalls and only requires the simplest vocabulary – a kind of Basic Basic in fact. At the Restaurant I just say " I hungry; show me Menu." and conclude the conversation with becks and nods and wreathed smiles. But as a medium of polite conversation my system is not so good. I was at first inundated with kind enquiries as to the state of the realm and the sentiments of the populace at home, but as the system only produced such gems as " Mr Bevin good man; Mr Molotov rather crafty man." the good fathers had soon to content themselves with the knowledge that I had a general idea of what their own conversation was all about and that I was was very pleased to be with them.
The French have a gift for conversation; they are animated without being contentious and they can be profound without sententious. My friend the Curé is an Englishman who belongs to a French diocese. He speaks French, of course, with extreme fluency. For all his poverty and hard life I envied him his lot in this Catholic countryside which his people and fellow priests who love him so much. Our country is fortunate in that through him they love us too.
I went out with him to see the clergy leave. My special favourites the Dean and the mechanical genius went off together in the Jeep. France has many of these relics of the Liberation and the bad French petrol makes them stubborn to start; and I had ample opportunity to study its every detail. It was still marked with insignia of some American army unit and below the windscreen there was a striking picture of Donald Duck.
I expect that the fathers have all forgotten about me; I was just a foreign priest with nothing much to say. Quite frankly I always used to feel a little distant about the French clergy with their inaccurate notions of Catholicism in England and their addiction to riding ladies‘ bicycles in dusty cassocks, but now I like them very much indeed. They are poor and overworked and have to face hostility such as we can scarcely conceive in England. It was pleasing to discover that although they all had learned English at School their English was, if possible, less than my French. But I felt at home with them because their constant solace was a smile; God bless them.
