Father Padraic Brant and the Pale
“There is nothing which raises the spirits of a priest to what one hopes is holy gratitude than being elevated to the Monsignori,” said Father Brant, speaking in his precise English voice, just a trifle over-accented. (He had studied for a year at Oxford, and the other priests, understanding, ignored the accent politely. He saw this, and smiled a little, ruefully.) He went on: “Nevertheless, as priests are only human, it is a hard struggle, sometimes, to keep from indulging in a feeling of purely human exultation tinged with pride. One has been recognized, after all, as somewhat superior to the run-of-the-mill priests. The Church, knowing this, has a wise and ancient way of calling on the Monsignori at unexpected, and often inconvenient, moments, and sending them into highways and byways and humble vineyards to ‘help’ a hard-pressed old pastor, and hear Confessions, and celebrate Mass in less than notable parishes. After a few such experiences in the practice of humility, a young Monsignor comes to realize that his duties embrace harder service to God and His children, and that his elevation means simply that, and not a personal honor. He has just been called to heavier labor, for which he has been prepared by the Grace of God in being given a better physical constitution and a better mind, not through his own merits, but only by the merits of Our Lord.
“But shortly after my elevation I did not realize that in its entirety. My parents in Sligo did not have the means to enable them to travel to London, but they sent me their happy blessings and expressions of joy. The Bishop in London, an old man and an old friend, kindly granted me a holiday so I could visit my parents. ‘And no side,’ he said, winking. The Bishop had a lot of wisdom; I remember blushing. It was twenty years ago.
“It was a joyous reunion, with my parents, and all my brothers and sisters and scores of uncles, aunts, cousins and in-laws, and all their collateral relatives. They were so proud of me. I found myself becoming a little pompous, but they appeared to expect that, so I became even more pompous. My English accent increased, and my delicate ways. They were awed, and not resentful. If my Dada had kicked me briskly it would have done a lot of good, but what humble Irish father of a Monsignor would remember that that Monsignor was the fruit of his own loins, a squawler in the cradle, the once-wearer of very damp nappies, a screaming toddler and a nasty little boy? Such remembrances, in the presence of the Edge of the Purple, would be sacrilege to such a father, who was probably, in the sight of God, much worthier than his son. So, nothing was too good for me at the old, battered homestead on the few meager acres, and the female relatives cut into the household money to serve me dainties, and the male relatives were lavish with the best Irish whiskey and the kegs of beer. The men of the village strutted about proudly, and talked of the next village, which could not boast a Monsignor. As I was naturally priggish, and had, up to then, an unsuspected reservoir of snobbery, or ‘side’, as the Bishop had called it, I became an elegant English Gentleman. In fact, so elegant was I that the English landlord, visiting his mansion a few miles away, invited me to dinner! Though my family, naturally, detested the Sassenagh, they were overwhelmed by the invitation, and there is another evidence of the paradoxical quality of human nature. ‘It is possible,’ I said, in my gentlemanly accents to my parents, ‘that I may give him A Word.’
“I am afraid,” said Monsignor Brant, “that I forgot all about A Word when I arrived at the mansion, for the Englishman talked only of guns and shooting, which interested me, and the results of the Famine some decades ago which had killed so many of my people and had cut down the revenues of the landlords. Moreover, I was overwhelmed by the grandeur of his house, the lordliness of his servants, and the excellent table and wines. He had sent a carriage for me, and the carriage carried me home, and it was only then that I remembered that I had given no Word at all. Worse, I remembered that the Englishman, kindly, quizzically, had said to me, ‘Brant? Brant? Isn’t that an English name, and not Irish?’ I had replied, ‘I really do not know,’ and had sipped at my gold-and-crystal glass with the most delicate air.
“So I must go back a bit. A childless great-uncle, who had gone to London and made his fortune in the importing, and selling, of Irish blankets, tweeds, and sundry other goods — a shrewd trader, that — had taken a fancy to me in my early childhood. He was a widower and childless. He was convinced I resembled him closely, and as men love themselves so heartily and with such devotion, he extended his self-love to me. He persuaded my parents to let me live with him in London. He would send me to Oxford! He would make a gentleman of me. More, he hinted that I would probably be his sole heir. All this dazzled my poor parents, who had such a brood to feed and shelter and clothe in a time that was still struggling to overcome the effects of the Famine. They could not pack fast enough for me, and so I went to live in Uncle Padraic Brant’s comfortable, bourgeois house in London. It was not a fine section, for it was occupied by lower-middle-class tradesmen and some mediocre doctors and barristers, but in comparison with my old home it was the purlieus of Buckingham Palace. Uncle Padraic (for whom I had been named by my clever if simple parents) had a servant, too, an old lady with a hard eye and a hard hand, who did not like children, and I was then but nine years old.
“I could not go to the best public schools, of course; Uncle Padraic’s fortune, though comfortable by Irish standards, was not exactly magnificent. Moreover, he was a ‘nobody’. But he did send me to the best public school he could afford, being somewhat of a snob, himself, and it was my first experience with a school whose teachers were not Sisters and which was not under the direction of a priest. In short, it was a secular school. Uncle Padraic was severely criticized for this by his pastor, but he was a stubborn man. ‘Let the boyo have his experiences, Father,’ he would say. ‘It’s no harm they’ll be doing a good Catholic lad.’
“Perhaps it did do me some good,” said Monsignor Brant, thoughtfully, “though not for some years, and in a reverse fashion. My classmates tried to ape the snobbishness, aloofness and gentility of what they respectfully called ‘their betters’, and their efforts were so successful in this direction that they became obnoxious and vulgar. For, as we know, nothing is so vulgar as an oaf who exaggerates gentility, and thus parodies it. ‘Their betters’, however, would soon put them in their places once they entered society. But that was in the future. They, and I, had not yet learned that true gentility is simple, unpretentious, and kind.
“When I was fourteen Uncle Padraic sent me to a school, newly opened, run by the Jesuit Fathers, who tried to knock a little sense into me. I am afraid it did not do a great deal of good. ‘And where does the name “Brant” come from?’ a young priest asked me. ‘It is not a good Irish name.’ I had ‘passed’, more or less, as an English lad, or at the very least as a Scots-Irish lad, among my former classmates, though it had not been an entirely conscious deliberation on my part. I had simply decided that gentlemen avoid trouble at all cost, and controversy, which true gentlemen do not avoid at all. I had not discussed religion with my former classmates, who were all High Church, and I am afraid I had allowed them — in my pursuit of gentility and refinement — to believe I was ‘Chapel’. A Methodist or Baptist, say. This was their assumption, and I had not enlightened them.
“Half of the Jesuit Fathers were Irish; the others were Englishmen. I became a favorite of the English, perhaps because some guilt in them, only half known to them, themselves, had drawn them to me sympathetically. If the Church is not regarded with immense esteem in England today, regardless of the Norfolks, she was regarded with deep contempt, fear and loathing among the English in the days of my boyhood. A Catholic — English, Scots or Irish — could hardly hope to ‘rise in the world’, as they called it then, and I mean socially, for even Catholics of fortune and title were not invited to the better parties and events of their peers.
“Only those who are, or have been, without the Pale can understand what this can mean,” said Monsignor Brant, with some bitterness. “It is especially hard for proud young boys,
and I was proud. Young people want the esteem of classmates; this desire is rooted in human nature. To be despised, to be ignored, to be pushed aside by a gesture or a shoulder or a cold glance, wounds beyond imagining. And wounds for life. A man is a man, and those who regard him as less than a man, and challenge his humanity, for reasons solely of race or position or color, challenge God, Himself, Who was born of an oppressed, small people, of a Maiden despised of the Romans and of the grand gentlemen in Jerusalem, who, though of their own blood, thought themselves much more cultured and civilized than the wretched people of Nazareth, and preferred to forget that thousands of their fellow-Jews knew neither Greek nor Latin, and could not discourse on the latest philosopher or the most refined way to set a dinner table, and could not, above all, chatter knowingly of the cultures of the world.
“No other species in all the world hates its own as does mankind. A wolf is respected by his fellow-wolves, for his wolfhood, and so this is with all the others, except man. It is notable, and one of the grimmest of all jokes, that it is only the stupid, half-witted sheep which reject one of their own kind if his wool is black rather than the prevailing dirty-yellow. It is a commentary on mankind, which has more than just one resemblance to sheep.
“At any rate,” said Monsignor Brant, after reflecting a little, “I was sensitive, as all boys are sensitive, and I did not want to be despised and rejected, and I did not want to remember that Our Lord had been despised and rejected, too, of all men. I wanted to be charming, innocently happy, accepted by my peers. If by permitting my peers to believe a lie which I had not uttered, myself, and if by that permitting I was graciously accepted into hockey games and other sports and amusements, and was not looked on scornfully, I was content. I am afraid that I became hysterical when Uncle Padraic sent me to the Jesuit Fathers’ school, for now I was openly branded for what I was — a pariah in Protestant English society. My former classmates ignored me on the street. Isolation enveloped me, the sad, degrading and contemptible isolation of the Pale. For a few months I became physically ill, and cried at night.
“I could not become, for a long time, a member of the community in which I found myself. Even here, in the Jesuit Fathers’ school, there was snobbery and aspirations to a silly ‘refinement’. The Catholic English boys kept themselves apart, more or less, from the Irish Catholic boys. Or, at the very best, they tried to ‘tame’ them, as they called it. ‘One should show the Protestants that not all Catholics are simple or uncouth or unlettered,’ an older boy said to me, he thinking I was English, myself. ‘We have A Duty to our Holy Religion.’ On this specious rock we rested our battered scruples, and became more English than the English, with overtones of the High (Established) Church in our manner, accents and general behavior. This was all the result of our sin of pride, and it is Lucifer’s mightiest weapon.
“When I was sixteen we were addressed by a visiting Jesuit Father who spoke on vocations for the priesthood. I had been considering vocations of an entirely different kind, and had been meditating on the law or medicine. Law, in those days, was regarded as the profession with the greater prestige, though I was more drawn to medicine. I like to believe that unknown to myself, in those days, I wanted in my dark, young lad’s heart to serve humanity. But the Jesuit Father was two important things: he was gentlemanly and very elegant and spoke like a Fine Englishman, and he was eloquent and dedicated. The Church, he said, needed not only humble parish priests, who were, after all, he conceded with a gentle smile, the salt of the earth, but she needed Men of Culture and great intellect. (The Father’s name was Burnham, and he was English.) There was a sudden and tremendous release in me, and I do not like to think of the full meaning of that release, which seemed to promise me freedom from the Pale and at the same time service to suffering humanity. It was this dubious release which inspired me to speak up and blurt out that I thought I had a vocation.
“Strange to say,” said Monsignor Brant, “it appeared that I did have! Under all that fraud and hypocrisy and mournful longing to be accepted and not despised must have lain a quivering human soul that really panted to serve. My teachers questioned me for hours; if some of the wiser looked a little doubtful or thoughtful at first, I ignored them. Meeting some considerable resistance from them, I was inspired with ardor and vehemence. At any rate, I was finally accepted to attend the Seminary. My original exaltation was severely tested, for the Church will not have a heart divided. But I was dogged, and the more resistance the more ardor and devotion, until, finally, long before I was ordained I was, in all the recesses of my soul, a priest. For that most awesome Grace of God I can never express, fully, my gratitude.
“My parents were wild with joy, though Uncle Padraic managed to restrain his enthusiasm, and once called me ‘a damn young idiot’. I loved Uncle Padraic, but I had loved his fortune more. Now, I loved only God. During those years in the Seminary I knew the first peace I had known in my life, the first true dedication.
“Well, I was ordained. Did I mention how I became a Franciscan priest? I had deeply admired the English Jesuit Fathers, and some of the Irish ones, but the finger of God directed me to the Franciscans, and how that was I suppose I will never know. Some of the Jesuit Fathers were disappointed at my choice, but the older and wiser ones nodded their heads and all their original doubt of me disappeared.
“I was assigned to one of the poorest and meanest of parishes, in the West Side of London. At first, I felt a little rebellious. I was a learned, intelligent and educated young priest, and here I was, cure of souls, in a parish whose richest man dealt in harnesses and other horsy goods, and whose poorest were prostitutes, occasional laborers, charwomen, street-sweepers, drunkards, wife-beaters, and the physically and mentally diseased. Violence was the customary thing, and vice the customary amusement. Did I say I was a ‘little’ rebellious? That is an English understatement! I am sure that I spent more time on my knees than I did standing, praying for humility and consolation and help. I prayed to St. Francis almost constantly. There were times when I wondered how I could have chosen such an Order. But again, that was the Grace of God.
“In time I was given another parish. Without pride I can now tell you, my friends, that my Bishop was pleased with what I had done in that awful parish, though I am sure it was only through the intercession of St. Francis of Assisi and the Grace of God. Each parish was better than the last. And finally — I was a Monsignor, and I went to Ireland to visit my parents.
“It was all that adulation of the humble — and the relatives — that undid me. I preened. My name was Brant, and not Murphy. I was very young, and though a priest, I was also dreadfully human. I basked. I walked with elegant strides. My English accent — for I had spent a year at Oxford at Uncle Padraic’s insistent request, to test me, as he said, hopefully — became extraordinary. On the last day in Ireland the old parish priest, who had a really devilish twinkle in his eye, presented me with a blackthorn shillelagh. I looked into his wise old eyes, and I was embarrassed. Had I really been that silly, that obvious? Nevertheless, I tucked the gift into the bottom of my handsome luggage — presented to me on my elevation by very old Uncle Padraic — and took the boat to Liverpool, and there picked up the train for Manchester and London. It is sad to remember that when I was on the boat I furtively threw overside the large brown package of food my mother had prepared for me, though I kept the bottle of the best Irish whiskey an uncle had given me. I had a moment’s regret that it was not Scotch.
“The train was crowded — that is, the third class, and the first — for liners had come in from America. I had thought to indulge myself in the first class, but there was not a seat in the carriage. As for the third class — that was unthinkable. I was a Monsignor now. I soothed my conscience with the observation that there was no room in the third class, either. So I found a second-class carriage which was not too crowded. I had neglected some reading, so I looked for a compartment that was not seething. Amazingly, I found one that was totally empty, and I disposed of
my luggage in the rack, and settled down with a book, very learned, on the life of St. Francis. It was also stupefyingly dull. I had assigned myself this book as a spiritual exercise. I had had the vague thought that I needed it.
“Suddenly the door of the compartment opened. I thought the intruder to be a very young priest like myself, and then I saw he was an Anglican Catholic. He stared at me, then impatiently tossed his bag onto the rack, and chose a seat opposite me, and near the corridor, so he could be as far from me as possible. He was not a Bishop; he was only an Anglican priest. He probably had a country parish. He was a vicar, and, I observed to myself, smarting, he possibly had a frightful time with the tithes and the old ladies who were penurious, and the matrons with marriageable daughters who no doubt pursued him relentlessly if he was still unmarried, and the coarse country gentlemen with their horses and their sealed purses, and the spinsters who oversaw everything and were arrogant, and the country gentry to whom he had to defer and placate and plead with for funds, and the rich old widows who put buttons in the plate. So, benevolently, I pitied him.
“And, of course, he despised me as a Roman. In turn, I despised him as a harried mere Anglican priest, under the thumb of his lordship, the Bishop. His clothing was far better than mine; he wore gaiters, too, modest ones. He also had a fine cane. I suddenly thought of the shillelagh in my luggage. His cane had a silver top, beautifully scrolled. He made a point of putting it close to his knee. He opened a London newspaper and affected to be immediately engrossed in it.
Grandmother and the Priests Page 30
