How Far Can You Go?

by David Lodge

  BEDE: Just to say that there’ll be confessions after dinner in the Chapel. Basically, we’ll just sit around and talk about our personal failures and hangups, then at the end I’ll give general absolution. If anybody here is still into old-style confession, St Peter and Paul’s is just around the corner…. (Laughter)

  RUTH stands up.

  RUTH: And if anyone is interested in a prayer group, there’ll be one in the Quiet Room starting at eight.

  Cut to

  The Chapel. Evening. About twenty people are sitting round in a circle, looking self-conscious.

  BEDE: Look, it might help to break the ice if I set the ball rolling. My own problem is anger. A well-known vice of celibates. (Subdued laughter)

  VOICE OVER (Michael): I haven’t been to old-style confession for years and years. Neither have my children. It’s really quite extraordinary. Twenty years ago, if you went into a Catholic church on a Saturday evening, you’d always find a queue of people waiting to go to Confession. And looking as though they were hating every minute of it.

  VOICE OVER (Austin): Oh yes, I think there’s still a place for the sacrament of penance, definitely. But it should be collective as well as individual. Just think of all the misery and repression and suffering the Church has caused in the past. Persecuting heretics, Jews. Torture. Burning at the stake. Terrifying people with the fear of Hell. I think we should do penance for that daily.

  Cut to

  The Quiet Room. RUTH and some others sitting in armchairs and on the floor in a loosely formed circle.

  RUTH: Let’s just start with a period of silence, just making space for the Holy Spirit.

  VOICE OVER (Ruth): There’s no set form for a prayer group. It’s however the spirit moves you. Sometimes we recite set prayers, like the Our Father or the Gloria, sometimes we sing hymns, sometimes one of the group will witness, tell the others what the Lord has meant to them. Perhaps someone will ask to be baptized in the spirit.

  Cut to

  The Quiet Room. A woman is kneeling and the others are standing round her with their hands outstretched, fingertips touching just above her head.

  VOICE OVER (Ruth): It’s like a second baptism. It’s a gift from God. Not everyone receives it. Very few receive it the first time they ask for it. Some people actually fight against it, which is not so surprising, really. Because it changes your whole life.

  VOICE OVER (Miles): The growth of Pentecostalism in the Catholic Church is certainly remarkable, because it’s a style of religious behaviour that’s utterly alien to the Catholic tradition – intensely Protestant, in fact. There’s no doubt in my mind that it’s a reaction against the demythologizing and politicizing of the Faith that’s been going on since Vatican II. The really emotive side of Catholic devotion has withered away – Benediction, Latin plainchant, the rosary, and so on. The magic has gone, the sense of the supernatural, which is what people want from religion, ultimately. So they turn to prayer groups – healing and speaking in tongues and whatnot.

  Cut to

  Close up of RUTH, eyes shut, speaking in tongues.

  RUTH: (unintelligible)

  VOICE OVER (Austin): I think you could say that the crisis in the Church today is a crisis of language.

  Cut to

  The College forecourt. Night. No lights visible. A crowd holding unlighted candles are gathered round a brazier. BEDE, dressed in white vestments, strikes a spark to ignite the charcoal bricks in the brazier.

  BEDE: Dear friends in Christ, on this most holy night, when Our Lord Jesus Christ passed from death to life, the Church invites her children throughout the world to come together in vigil and prayer….

  VOICE OVER (Austin): That metaphor of the Church as mother is highly misleading. Historically, the Church has been much more like a tyrannical father towards its children.

  The Easter candle is brought to BEDE. He inserts five grains of incense in the form of a cross on the side of the candle and lights the candle from the fire.

  VOICE OVER (Adrian): Undoubtedly the developments of the last fifteen years or so have shattered the old certainties forever. I think we can be pretty sure that no Pope will ever try to make an infallible pronouncement again, for instance.

  BEDE holds the candle aloft.

  BEDE (chants): Christ our light.

  ALL (chant): Thanks be to God.

  BEDE, carrying the candle, and preceded by an incense-bearer, leads the people in procession into the College, along darkened corridors.

  VOICE OVER (Polly): Certainly Catholics are much more tolerant, much more liberal than they used to be. I was brought up as one and the nuns gave us to understand that unless you were a good Catholic, your chances of getting to heaven were pretty slim. Most of the people at this affair don’t seem to think that they’re in any way superior to Protestants or Jews, Hindus or Muslims, or for that matter, atheists and agnostics. Which is very decent and humble of them, but it does raise the question, why be a Catholic at all, rather than something else, or just nothing?

  Cut to

  The College Chapel. Dark. Empty. Camera on open door. Faint glow of approaching light. Incense bearer appears, followed by BEDE. He stops on the threshold and lifts the candle high.

  BEDE (chants): Christ our light.

  ALL: (chant) Thanks be to God.

  ADRIAN, immediately behind BEDE, lights his small candle from the Easter candle.

  VOICE OVER (Adrian): I think one has to be fairly tough-minded about this. Christianity is the best of the world religions – none of the others can touch it for universality of appeal. And, for all its historical sins, Catholicism is the best form of Christianity.

  Cut to

  The corridor leading to the chapel. The light is passed along the procession from candle to candle.

  VOICE OVER (Angela): Oh, I’ll always be a Catholic, I couldn’t imagine being anything else. I suppose it’s only chance, yes, the way I was brought up. If I’d been born a Baptist or something I daresay I’d be a Baptist. I think you need a religion to get you through life at all, and mine happens to be the Catholic one.

  Cut to

  The Chapel. BEDE goes to the altar and fixes the Easter candle in its holder. The congregation file in and take their seats, extinguishing candles.

  VOICE OVER (Tessa): I really don’t bother too much about theology, to be honest. A lot of things I had to subscribe to when I joined the Catholic Church even Catholics don’t believe now. I sometimes wonder if it matters whether it’s true, as long as it helps people to cope. And if it doesn’t help people to cope, would it be any use being true?

  DOROTHY goes to the lectern.

  DOROTHY (reads): “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was a formless void….”

  VOICE OVER (Austin): Catholics, like most other Christians, have accepted that Genesis is a poem, a myth, not a factual account of the creation. It’s rather more difficult for them to accept that a lot of the New Testament may not be literally true either.

  Cut to

  EDWARD at lectern.

  EDWARD (reads): “And we believe that having died with Christ we shall enter life with him: Christ, as we know, having been raised from the dead will never die again. Death has no power over him anymore….”

  VOICE OVER (Miles): I do think it’s a pity the way they keep meddling with the Bible. “Death has no power over him any more.” How feeble it sounds, compared to, “And death shall have no dominion over him.”

  VOICE OVER (Polly): I think death is the basis of all religion, don’t you? Hearing mass again after all these years, and in English, I was struck by how many references there are to dying and eternal life, almost every other line. I never realized that when I was young. When my father died, a couple of years ago, I found the ritual a great comfort. I shouldn’t be surprised if I called for a priest myself if I knew I was dying.

  Cut to

  The congregation relighting candles for the renewal of Baptismal Promises.

  BE
DE: Do you reject Satan?

  ALL: I do.

  BEDE: And all his works?

  ALL:I do …

  VOICE OVER (Ruth): Oh, yes, I believe in the existence of the Devil, evil spirits, certainly. I think anyone who has been baptized in the spirit is sensitive to these things. I know people in the Charismatic Renewal who have had very frightening experiences.

  VOICE OVER (Miriam): No, not as an actual being. The Devil I think is a sort of personification of the evil in all of us, the potential evil

  Cut to

  BEDE, celebrating mass, turns to face the congregation.

  BEDE: The peace of the Lord be with you always.

  ALL: And also with you.

  BEDE: Let us offer each other the sign of peace.

  BEDE advances smilingly upon a girl at the end of the front row and

  embraces her warmly. The rest of the congregation smile, kiss, shake hands, etc., as BEDE moves along the front row, greeting each person.

  VOICE OVER (Dorothy): Catholics, English Catholics, anyway, and Irish, have always been very frightened of the body, of physical contact. In our parish they think it’s terribly daring to even shake hands with your neighbour.

  Cut to

  BEDE, facing the congregation, the host in his hand, raises it over the patten.

  BEDE: This is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. Happy are those who are called to His supper….

  VOICE OVER (Angela): When my little girl, she’s mentally handicapped, wanted to go to Communion with the rest of the family, I didn’t see why not. She’s always been very interested in the mass, very reverent. Some busybody, a woman in the parish said, “But does she really understand what it’s about? Could she explain?” I said, “Could you?” That shut her up.

  The people in the congregation begin to come up to the altar to receive communion. BEDE administers the host, which most receive in the hand. DOROTHY and ADRIAN each take round a chalice.

  VOICE OVER (Polly): In my day it would have been sacrilege to touch the host with your hand. And as for drinking the wine! In fact, the mass is hardly recognizable. It’s certainly more comprehensible, but rather flat, somehow. Like a room that’s too brightly lit. I think you have to have shadows in religion. Bits of mystery and magic.

  VOICE OVER (Michael): I suppose it all goes back to primitive ritual, like when a tribe would kill their king and eat his flesh and drink his blood to inherit his strength. Then you got a lot of vegetation gods who were identified with the crops and the vine, bread and wine. I don’t think it’s surprising that Jesus adopted this archetypal symbolism. That’s why it’s terribly important to have communion under both kinds. Otherwise you completely mess up the symbolism.

  VOICE OVER (Edward): I suppose I’m very old-fashioned about this. I believe Jesus Christ is really and truly present in the Eucharist. Don’t ask me to explain it. Otherwise it would be just a rather empty ritual as far as I’m concerned.

  Cut to

  BEDE, smiling, arms outspread, faces the congregation.

  BEDE: The mass is ended, go in peace.

  ALL: Thanks be to God.

  An ensemble of guitars, recorders, percussion, etc., strikes up the tune of “The Lord of the Dance”, and the congregation sing:

  I danced in the morning

  When the world was begun

  And I danced in the moon

  And the stars and the sun,

  And I came down from heaven and

  I danced on earth,

  At Bethlehem I had my birth.

  Dance, then, wherever you may be

  I am the Lord of the Dance, said he.

  And I’ll lead you all

  Wherever you may be

  And I’ll lead you all in the dance, said he, etc.

  A few members of the congregation step into the aisles and begin to dance in a free-form, improvised fashion. More join in. They move up towards the altar. BEDE joins in. All around the altar people are dancing.

  VOICE OVER (Who?): Undoubtedly the Catholic Church has been turned upside down in the last two decades.

  Cut to

  The Students’ Common Room. Night. Party in progress. Disco music. Shots of TESSA dancing with BEDE, MICHAEL with POLLY, and AUSTIN holding hands with LYNN, tapping his feet.

  VOICE OVER (Who?): Many things have changed – attitudes to authority, sex, worship, other Christians, other religions. But perhaps the most fundamental change is one that the majority of Catholics themselves are scarcely conscious of. It’s the fading away of the traditional Catholic metaphysic – that marvellously complex and ingenious synthesis of theology and cosmology and casuistry, which situated individual souls on a kind of spiritual Snakes and Ladders board, motivated them with equal doses of hope and fear, and promised them, if they persevered in the game, an eternal reward. The board was marked out very clearly, decorated with all kinds of picturesque motifs, and governed by intricate rules and provisos. Heaven, hell, purgatory, limbo. Mortal, venial and original sin. Angels, devils, saints, and Our Lady Queen of Heaven. Grace, penance, relics, indulgences and all the rest of it. Millions of Catholics no doubt still believe in all that literally. But belief is gradually fading. That metaphysic is no longer taught in schools and seminaries in the more advanced countries, and Catholic children are growing up knowing little or nothing about it. Within another generation or two it will have disappeared, superseded by something less vivid but more tolerant. Christian unity is now a feasible objective for the first time since the Reformation.

  Cut to

  The College playing fields. Dawn. The rim of light on the horizon. The tired but expectant faces of the crowd. The nuns begin their dance mime of the Resurrection.

  VOICE OVER (Who?): But Christian belief will be different from what it used to be, what it used to be for Catholics, anyway. We must not only believe, but know that we believe, live our belief and yet see it from outside, aware that in another time, another place, we would have believed something different (indeed, did ourselves believe differently at different times and places in our lives) without feeling that this invalidates belief. Just as when reading a novel, or writing one for that matter, we maintain a double consciousness of the characters as both, as it were, real and fictitious, free and determined, and know that however absorbing and convincing we may find it, it is not the only story we shall want to read (or, as the case may be, write) but part of an endless sequence of stories by which man has sought and will always seek to make sense of life. And death.

  Freeze frame of dancers leaping from the ground, the sun shining through their robes.

  ENDS

  The Catholic Herald liked the programme, but the Universe panned it. The Telegraph said it showed that the Catholic Church was now in the same state of confusion as all the other Christian churches. The Guardian’s TV critic suggested that the dancing nuns should be signed up for a programme to be called “Top of the Popes”. There were many resignations from Catholics for an Open Church after the broadcast. Some members resigned because they thought the image it presented of the organization was too radical, others because it was not radical enough. The bishop of the diocese was displeased for a number of reasons, and disciplined Bede for his part in the proceedings. A specially convened meeting of the College Governors deplored the use of College premises for the event, and Michael, as member of staff responsible, was severely reprimanded. His colleagues rallied round him, and wrote a letter to the Governors in his support. When, however, a couple of years later, the Catholic authorities announced plans to close down the College, as part of the nationwide cutback in teacher training, many thought that the Paschal Festival had contributed to this adverse decision, and Michael became less popular with his colleagues. Offered early retirement or alternative employment as a schoolteacher, he chose the former, and intends to move to London to try his luck as a freelance writer. With his pension and Miriam’s salary as a social worker, they should be reasonably secure. Their son Martin is reading Phys
ics at Imperial College and Helen, no longer a tomboy, but a rather stunning young woman of Pre-Raphaelite looks, is reading modern languages at Oxford, where she met Polly’s Jason again and, to the astonishment of both families, converted him to Catholicism. When she heard about it, Polly commented cynically that she supposed that even in these liberated days a nice Catholic girl wouldn’t sleep with non-Catholic boys. In fact the two young people are quite traditionally and chastely engaged.

  The Paschal Festival, which Adrian had hoped would inaugurate a new chapter in the annals of Catholics for an Open Church, seemed rather to hasten its demise as a vital force, perhaps by uncovering the irreconcilable variety of aims and assumptions among its members. Adrian survived a vote of no confidence as Chairman, but resigned anyway. The movement continues in a shadowy form, but without his or Dorothy’s participation. They are both, these days, heavily involved in the Catholic Marriage Encounter movement, an importation from America which aims to “make good marriages better” by gathering couples together on residential weekends, lecturing to them about married life, and making them write confessional letters to each other. Edward and Tessa, whom they persuaded to go on such a weekend, found it all rather embarrassing, and not only because the conference centre turned out to be, under a different name, the one where they had first had sexual intercourse. A couple of years ago, Edward decided to risk the operation on his spine, and happily it was a success. He has taken up athletic pursuits again, and he and Tessa go jogging together every evening, cheered derisively by their two younger children slouched in front of the television. The two older ones are at University. It is known to Tessa that Becky is sleeping with her boyfriend, but not to Edward, who would not stand for it, and is sufficiently concerned that she does not go to mass any more. Edward has become an enthusiastic student of the Holy Shroud of Turin, after seeing a film about it a couple of years ago. He will explain in detail to anyone prepared to listen that the image of the man on the Shroud is anatomically perfect, that the wounds shown correspond exactly to those inflicted at the Crucifixion as reported in the Gospels and interpreted by modern historical scholarship and forensic medicine, that pollen tests have proved the fabric has been in Palestine at some point in its history, and that nobody has been able to offer a simple, materialistic explanation of how the image got on to it. Suppose it was scorched into the shroud by radiant energy released at the Resurrection? Edward admits that this is only a theory, but is encouraged by the Shroud in his inclination to ignore the theories of modern theologians and stick to his old-fashioned belief in the Divinity of Christ.