Paul's purge

TABLE TALK DENIS BROGAN

Pope Paul VI has surprised me and upset me again—with something even more serious than his trousers. For he is downgrading saints, limiting the ecclesiastical territories of some of the most famous of them and, as far as I can understand the rather mixed messages coming from Rome, declaring that some famous saints have never existed. Natur-

ally, this has produced a few protests. Patriotic English Catholics like Mr Biggs- Davison have warmly protested against down- grading Saint George. The most universal pro- tests seem to come from the very numerous admirers and clients of Saint Christopher, who, I believe, is now asserted not to have existed at all. Of these, the most important, I suggest, is Signorina Lollobrigida. who has been photo- graphed outside the Vatican wearing a Saint Christopher emblem, set off in the background by her Rolls-Royce. Saint Christopher medals are a serious industry and are worn by a great many non-Catholics and, indeed, non- Christians. The allegation that there never was anybody called Saint Christopher will not con- sole the numerous people who are called Christopher.

Of course, there is a case for getting rid of some saints whose physical existence is open to serious doubt. For example, in the nineteenth century a new saint was launched called Saint Philomena, and this euphonious name was very popular , for a time. I have known two young women called Philomena. The name was also given as the dedication of various churches. There is a story that a few years ago Cardinal Cushing of Boston, driving one Sunday to dedicate a new church to Saint Philomena, turned on the radio and learned that she had been abolished as being entirely mythical. In fact, Philomena was not a saint at all, but a piece of bad Greek treated as a proper name which had been found in one of the catacombs during nineteenth century unscholarly excavations. We can do without Saint Philomena, although I do not know what the bearers of this name are supposed to do about it. (It is perhaps significant of something or other that one of the prenonts of the only living Irish cousin of General de Gaulle is Philomena; but I suppose her cousin can deal with the Pope in matters like this:) Fortunately, the Pope has not followed out all his own principles rigorously: for example, we are told that it was his personal interven- tion that prevented the abolition of Saint Cecilia. Some over-pedantic Catholics have suggested that the virgin-matron Cecilia never existed. This is a much more serious charge than any brought against 'Saint Philomena,' for, as we all know, Saint Cecilia is the Patroness of music and has been painted a great many times playing various instruments.

I am willing to believe she never played the organ; but the abolition of Saint Cecilia, as such, is an insult to a great many painters, a great many musicians like Dr Arne and Ben- jamin Britten, a great many poets, notably John Dryden. There is, in fact, a statue of Saint Cecilia in her church, Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, which is about as bad as the Shelley statue in University College, Oxford, but the badness of the statue of Shelley does not abolish Shelley. I think the badness of the statue of Saint Cecilia should not abolish her. In any case, Saint Cecilia is not repre- sented naked as Shelley is in Oxford.

Then a number of very common and popu- lar female names have been abolished, some of them, such as Susan, coming close to my bosom. And there is in Catholic countries the serious problem of what happens to the fete patronale if the patron is alleged to be fictitious or, at any rate, under grave suspicion. For many Catholic women living abroad, it is the fete patronale rather than the legal birthday that is celebrated by gifts and other offerings. Should I try to save money on the Cecilias that I know?

I remember walking with my wife on the edge of the Puy-de-Dome and the Cantal. We found ourselves, one Saturday, in a tiny village which was obviously celebrating its fete patronale. There were flags; a clique (a very primitive band); some sideshows, and a great many children running about amusing them- selves. It was a very successful fête patronale, and it is not likely to be abolished, for the fete was taking place on 24 August. Looking back to the fête patronale of 1572, I thought of the pleasure with which the inhabitants of this then—and now—steadily Catholic village must have received the good news from Paris: 24 August is Saint Bartholomew's Day.

Then there are a large number of Celtic saints who may lose their rank or be demoted to the third division. Saint Enoch in Glasgow had nothing to do with the Old Testament : it is a badly transliterated name of a female saint, the mother (I think, but my memory may betray me) of that very great saint, Saint Mungo, whose validity is guaranteed by his appearance on the arms of the city and of the university, and on the municipal buses. Saint Martin of Tours appears to be safe, which is good news for the numerous effigies of the saint on the lamp-posts round Trafalgar Square.

My own patron, Saint Denis, is, I presume. entirely safe, if only for his celebrated feat of walking with his head under his arm from Montmartre, where he was beheaded, to the site of the future Abbey of Saint Denis. where he was buried, a distance of some miles. As Madame du Deffand said in reply to a sceptic,

'Dans ce cas. it n'y a que le premier pas qul coate.' But what is going to happen to Saint

Ursula and the 11,000 British virgins who are among the most celebrated saints of Cologne,

ranking just behind the Three Kings? What is going to happen to the Virgin Islands. which are called after Saint Ursula and her Virgins, not after all virgins?

On the other hand, the Pope's somewhat hostile attitude will probably put an end to various attempts to get people canonised whose claims are rather doubtful. The Holy See has refused to go on with any process of beatifi- cation. much less canonisation, of Matt Talbot of Dublin or Father William Doyle, si. The attempt of Catholic Etonians to get King Henry VI put on the canonisation escalator has failed; so has the less plausible attempt of Scots Catholics to get Mary Queen of Scots put on this escalator and to regard her as a martyr.

The last time this enterprise was launched, it was killed by my uncle, then the senior Scottish bishop. As he told my mother: 'I wrote simply to the Vatican, "She was a bad woman."'

I don't know what the Protestant churches do for saints. Of course, a kind of substitute for canonisation can be seen, especially among the Protestants of the United States. Thus, we had John Calvin Coolidge. We had Martin Luther King. (Both the names Calvin and Luther have become very common given names, as the Americans evasively put it.) Perhaps one of my favourites is John Wesley Mardin. He was the most expert and ruthless of the great western gunmen, far superior in scale and courage and success to the greatly overrated Billy the Kid. He would not have been found dead with such poor terrors as Bonnie and Clyde and Dillinger. Whether the Wesleyans could now deprive this ornament of the Con- nection of his given names is a matter for speculation.

I strongly suspect that Saint Christopher medals will still have a large sale. So will statues honouring various saints now pushed very far down the league table. But I noticed walking through the Place Saint Sulpice five or six weeks ago that the old bondieuserle seems to have gone. Modern statues, if very square compared with the new 'any old iron' school of sculpture, are very different from the horrible multicoloured statues that used to disfigure, and still do disfigure, a great many churches (in- cluding some very 'spiky' Church of England fanes). Perhaps the best comment on the Pope's sudden rigour is offered by the case of Saint Januarius, the great saint and patron of Naples who, having performed his regular miracle, the liquefication of his blood, at the appropriate time, performed it all over again once the news got to a very indignant Naples that the saint was to be rather in the position of somebody like Mr James Callaghan, not quite in or out.

What perhaps the whole world needs is the broad spirit of the Hindu religion. I can remem- ber going across the street from a very good, old-fashioned hotel in Madras in 1962 to buy papers at the local newspaper shop. It was a tiny little hut. and above the counter was a row of holy pictures which were not for sale, but were no doubt calling down blessings on honest devotion. They ran roughly as follows: Krishna, Vishnu, Buddha, Christ, Gandhi— and John Fitzgerald Kennedy. The question of going further with the beatification etc of the Kennedys is another that can, I think, be left to the most important resident in Ireland. Charles Marie de Gaulle.