How Far Can You Go?

by David Lodge

  These developments were not, of course, universally welcomed. Evelyn Waugh, for instance, did not welcome them, and wrote furious letters to the Tablet saying so. Malcolm Muggeridge did not welcome them, and wrote a polemical piece in the New Statesman in 1965 urging “Backward, Christian Soldiers!” But it was none of his business, anyway, Michael thought, reading the article in the College library. What people needed from the Catholic Church, according to Muggeridge, was its “powerful pessimism about human life, miraculously preserved through the long false dawn of science.” Reading this, Michael recognized a version of Catholicism he had once espoused. He no longer espoused it. Neither, it seemed, did Graham Greene, whose most recent novel, A Burnt-out Case, reflected the evolutionary Utopianism of Teilhard de Chardin’s The Phenomenon of Man, a book published in 1959 to international acclaim, after having been long suppressed by Rome as heretical.

  Miles, on the other hand, considered Chardin a wet and muddled thinker, and reading the same article of Malcolm Muggeridge in the Combination Room of his Cambridge college, nodded gleeful agreement. The Aggiornamento or Renewal of the Catholic Church instigated by Pope John looked to Miles more and more like a Protestantization of it, and as he said to Michael and Miriam at the christening of their third child (rather to his surprise he had been invited to be its godfather, and rather to their surprise he had accepted), if you liked that sort of thing the Protestants did it much better, and it was not what he, personally, had joined the Catholic Church for. Michael, at the time something of a fellow-traveller with the Slant group, was dismayed by this reactionary declaration, but wishing, ignobly, to avoid a row with Miles, his closest personal link with the great academic world, retired to the kitchen to help his mother-in-law prepare tea.

  Miriam did not agree with Miles either – as a convert from Evangelical Protestantism she felt quite at home in the new-style Catholic Church – but she was unable to put her point of view with any force because she was tired from lack of sleep and preoccupied with the needs of her three-week old baby and the jealous demands of the two older children and worried about whether there would be enough cups with handles still on them for their guests. So Miles held forth uninterruptedly, which he was used to doing, being a Cambridge don, while Miriam listened with one ear and cocked the other for sounds of crisis in the kitchen and surreptitiously sniffed the baby to ascertain whether she had soiled her nappy and scanned the crowded living-room for other signs of trouble.

  “The trouble with Catholics, my dear Miriam,” said Miles, “in this country, at least, is that they have absolutely no taste, no aesthetic sense whatsoever, so that as soon as they begin to meddle with the styles of architecture and worship that they inherited from the Counter-Reformation, as soon as they try and go ‘modern’, God help us, they make the most terrible dog’s breakfast of it, a hideous jumble of old and new, incompatible styles and idioms, that positively sets one’s teeth on edge. Do you remember that little church, Our Lady and St Jude’s – no, of course you wouldn’t, you didn’t know Michael in those days.… Well, anyway, it was a terribly dingy, dilapidated neo-gothic place without a single feature of interest or beauty in it, but at least it had a certain character, a certain consistency, a kind of gloomy ambiance which was quite devotional in its way. You know, banks of votive candles simply dripping with congealed wax, hanging down like stalactites, and shadows flickering over painted statues…. Well, I happened to be in London on Ascension Day, so I dropped in for an evening mass, and, oh dear, what a transformation! No, not a transformation, that was the trouble, it hadn’t been transformed, just meddled with. The candles had gone, and most of the statues, and the oil paintings of the Stations of the Cross, which were admittedly fairly hideous but so heavily varnished that you could scarcely see them, had been replaced with ghastly modern bas-reliefs in some kind of aluminium more appropriate to saucepans than to sacred art, and the altar rails had been removed and at the top of the steps there was a plain wooden altar, quite nice in its way but utterly incompatible with the old high altar behind it – all marble and gold inlay, turreted and crenellated in the gothic style… and quite honestly the mass itself seemed to me to be the same sort of muddle, bits of the old liturgy and bits of the new flung together, and nobody quite knowing what to do or what to expect.”

  “These things take time,” said Miriam. “Catholics aren’t used to participating in the liturgy. They’re used to watching the priest and saying their own prayers privately.”

  “Well, I must say that some of the things I’m supposed to say publicly nowadays make me cringe with embarrassment. The Responsorial Psalm on Ascension Day, for instance, what was it? ‘God goes up with shouts of joy; the Lord goes up with trumpet blast.’ I mean, really! It sounds like a rocket lifting off at Cape Canaveral. Or something even more vulgar.”

  Miles tittered, and glanced covertly at the clock on the mantelpiece, wondering when he could decently make his departure. He had been invited to stay the night, but had no intention of trying to sleep on the Put-U-Up sofa in the living room which, he had established by a discreet survey of the premises, was the only accommodation for guests. The tiny, semi-detached house, overcrowded with people and cheap furniture so that it was scarcely possible to take a step without bumping into something or somebody, depressed him and made him restless to return to the cool, quiet spaces of Cambridge. It had been a mistake to come. Every now and then he succumbed to a feeling that there was something hollow and empty about his privileged existence, and then he would seize any opportunity to plunge into the ordinary world of domesticity, children, simple living and honest toil. But invariably it was disillusioning. He could see nothing to envy in Michael’s existence. How could the spirit develop in such an environment? How right the Church was to insist on a celibate clergy!

  That, of course, was the obvious way in which he could make his life less selfish; and he often allowed his mind to play over the possibility, weighing the pros and cons of the various orders – not the Dominicans, certainly, far too left-wing and anarchic, and the Carmelites were not quite learned enough, but both the Benedictines and the Jesuits had distinctive attractions, the former having by far the nicer habit.… But it would be tricky, taking orders at the present time, compelled to implement liturgical changes with which one had little sympathy, and wrestle with the squalid intricacies of the birth-control controversy.… Besides, he would have to give up the elegancies of college life, the good food and wine, the servants and comfortable rooms, and most important, the mildly flirtatious relationships he enjoyed with young men of the same temperament. Not that Miles ever indulged in anything grossly physical, but he moved on the circumference of circles where such things were indulged in, and derived a certain frisson of excitement from the contiguity.

  Aggiornamento came very slowly to Father Austin Brierley’s parish at the end of the Northern Line, where the Parish Priest regarded Vatican II and the whole movement for Catholic Renewal as an irritating distraction from the serious business of raising money. Fund-raising, mainly to pay off the debt on his church and to meet the Diocesan levy for Catholic education, was Father McGahern’s all-consuming passion. Parochial life was one long round of bingo, raffles, whist-drives, dances, football pools, spot-the-ball competitions, sweepstakes, bazaars, jumble sales, outdoor collections, covenant schemes and planned giving. His addresses from the pulpit consisted of one part homily to three parts accountancy. The church porch was papered with graphs and diagrams in several colours, especially red, illustrating the slow progress of the parish towards solvency. The pastoral side of things he left pretty well entirely to Austin Brierley, who could scarcely cope with all the work. There was nothing selfishly materialistic about the PP’s single-minded pursuit of lucre – on the contrary, he denied himself (and incidentally his curate) many home comforts in order to swell the parish funds. Heating in the presbytery was turned down to a barely tolerable minimum in the winter, and the electric light bulbs were of a wattage so low that Austin Br
ierley was sometimes obliged to read his breviary with the aid of a bicycle lamp.

  It was a continual source of surprise to Austin Brierley that the parishioners did not seem to object to this constant harping on the theme of money. Indeed, the more active laymen threw themselves into the various fund-raising campaigns with enormous enthusiasm, competing eagerly with each other to bring in the largest amounts, while the apathetic majority paid up regularly and uncomplainingly. Austin Brierley very much feared that they confused this activity with the business of salvation, and measured their spiritual health on the same scale as Father McGahern’s graphs, reassured to see that each week they had crept a little nearer to heaven.

  Father McGahern had been in charge of the parish for a long time – ever since it had been a raw, unfinished housing estate, with a prefabricated hut for a church – and he rarely left it except to go home to County Cork for his annual holiday. His parish was a little kingdom, which he ruled despotically, and somewhat idiosyncratically. For example, it was his practice occasionally to interrupt the celebration of mass, and step down to the altar rails to deliver himself of some ex tempore exhortation or reproach that seemed to him timely. Thus, if there were an especially large number of latecomers he would take a break between the Epistle and Gospel to remind the congregation of the importance of punctuality in God’s house; or if it occurred to him that he had not adequately emphasized some point in his sermon, he would interrupt the Eucharistic prayer to add a postscript. Having to say the mass facing the people seemed to make him especially prone to this kind of digression – the expressions he perceived on their faces perhaps put ideas into his head – and it became a special feature of the new liturgy in this parish. Visitors found it strange and indecorous, or engagingly informal, according to their temperaments. The regular congregation, however, grew quite accustomed to it, and did not manifest any surprise or restiveness when these interruptions became increasingly profane in content, reflecting the priest’s preoccupation with money, and bearing much the same relation to the mass as commercial breaks to a television broadcast of a Shakespeare play. “You may not realize it, my good people,” he would say, putting down the chalice in the middle of the Offertory, and ambling to the altar rail, “but the cost of heating this church is something shocking these days. I have just paid a bill for one quarter to the North Thames Gas Board for one hundred and twenty-seven pounds. One hundred and twenty-seven pounds for one quarter Now, the reason it’s so high, my dear people, is quite simple. During mass the heaters are warming the space inside the church, but as soon as the doors are opened after mass, whoosh, all the hot air flies out and the cold air flies in. So it would be greatly appreciated if you would leave the church as smartly as possible at the end of mass, and not be hanging about talking in the porch, holding everybody up and keeping the doors open longer than necessary.” And back he would go to the altar to carry on with the celebration.

  When, one Sunday, he took time out twice in one mass, first to draw the congregation’s attention to an increase in fire-insurance premiums, and secondly to say that if any more hymn books disappeared he would have to consider charging a deposit on them, Austin Brierley felt he could be silent no longer. After lunch he made his protest, excited and indignant at first, but gradually petering out, like his outburst at the St Valentine’s party years ago. The old priest listened without interrupting him and, when Austin Brierley had finished, remained silent for some minutes, as if stunned by the reproaches levelled at him. At last he spoke.

  “Tell me, Father,” he said abstractedly, “what do you think of Premium Bonds?”

  “Premium Bonds?” repeated Austin Brierley blankly.

  “Yes. Why shouldn’t we keep the money earmarked for the Diocesan Education Fund in Premium Bonds until it’s due to be handed over? Then there’d always be the chance of increasing the money with no risk. What d’you say to that?”

  A few days later, Father Brierley went to Archbishop’s House. He wasn’t able to see the Cardinal himself, but he saw a Monsignor who was quite high up in the secretariat. The Monsignor was sympathetic, but not surprised – Father McGahern’s eccentricities were well known to his superiors, it seemed. However, as the Monsignor explained, Father McGahern was an old man, and had not a great many years left to serve as parish priest. It would be difficult to persuade him to change his ways now, and harsh treatment to uproot him.

  “Well, uproot me, then,” said Father Brierley impulsively. “I can’t face another week in that madhouse. Counting-house, I should say.” He sat hunched in despair before the Monsignor’s desk, his knees together and his joined hands thrust down between his thighs. He was conscious of the Monsignor’s shrewd eyes appraising him.

  “How would you like to go on a course?”

  “What kind of course?”

  “Whatever you like. Ecumenical studies, pastoral studies, biblical studies, you name it. You know about this new theological college we’ve just opened? One of the ideas is that it will provide refresher courses for the secular clergy.”

  It was on the tip of Austin Brierley’s tongue to suggest that it was Father McGahern who stood in most urgent need of a refresher course, but he was not foolish enough to waste such an opportunity. “I used to run a New Testament study group, once,” he said reminiscently, “for university students. I shouldn’t at all mind picking up that sort of thing again.”

  The Monsignor looked slightly disappointed at his choice. “You don’t think something like Pastoral Studies would be more relevant to your work, Father? Or catechetics?”

  “No, Biblical Studies would be just the ticket. I’m terribly rusty. I don’t suppose I’ve read a book on the subject since I left the seminary.” He suddenly had a vision, flooding his mind like a sunburst, of himself sitting in a quiet room, slowly turning the pages of a thick, heavy book with nothing to do except finish it. “When can I start?” he said eagerly.

  Austin Brierley found that things had changed a lot since his seminary days, especially in the field of biblical commentary. When he was a student, the methods of modern demythologizing historical scholarship had been regarded as permissible only in application to the Old Testament. The New Testament was taught as a historically reliable text, directly inspired by God and endorsed as such by the infallible authority of the Church. It came as something of a shock to discover that views mentioned formerly only to be dismissed as the irresponsible speculations of German Protestants and Anglican divines who could hardly be considered seriously as Christians at all, were now accepted as commonplace by many Catholic scholars in the field. The infancy stories about Jesus, for instance, were almost certainly legendary, it seemed, late literary accretions to the earliest and most reliable account of Jesus’s life in Mark. The baby in the stable at Bethlehem, the angels and the shepherds, the star in the sky and the three kings, the massacre of the Innocents by Herod, the flight into Egypt – all fiction. Not meaningless, the books and articles and lectures hastened to add, for these fictions symbolized profound truths about the Christian faith; but certainly not factual, like the events one read about in the newspaper, or for that matter in Livy and Tacitus. And the Virgin Birth itself, then – was that a fiction? Well, opinion differed, but there were certainly many authorities who did not see that the literal, physical virginity of Mary (which was nowhere mentioned in Mark, Paul and John) was an essential part of the Gospel message. If this was accepted, then the doctrines of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption also ceased to signify, they became dead letters, not worth arguing about. What was important was the figure of Jesus, the adult Jesus, himself. But here, too, a startling amount of sceptical sifting appeared to have taken place. The story of his baptism by John the Baptist was probably historical, but hardly the temptation in the desert, a narrative with obvious folktale characteristics deriving from the Jewish Babylonian exile, like the more spectacular miracle stories, the walking on the water and the draught of fishes. And the Resurrection …? Well, here even the
most adventurous demythologizers hesitated (it was another kind of How Far Could You Go?) but a few were certainly prepared to say that the Resurrection story was a symbolization of the faith found by the disciples through Jesus’s death, that death itself was not to be feared, that death was not the end. That was the essential meaning of the Resurrection, not the literal reanimation of Jesus’s corpse, an idea that could not possibly be as meaningful to an intelligent Christian of the twentieth century as it was to the inhabitants of a pre-scientific world.