A Spectator's Notebook

Mr Graham Greene is now the only one of that ri_einarkable collection of English writers who ``ve been converted to Roman Catholicism !,!ace the beginning of the century — G. K. Lhesterton, Compton Mackenzie, Evelyn illVaugh, G. B. Stern, Sheila Kaye-Smith and 0Y Campbell are some of whom I happen to be liteare. They form a notable cross-section of

rarY figures, differing sharply in all respects !Jut this one.

(pew far they may have followed in the way born Catholic' poets and writers, mostly of a 1.)fe9us generation, like Gerard Manley ms Mrs Meynell, Francis Thompson and Ire gelloc it is impossible now to judge, for ,,w1_011g11 Francis Thompson and Alice Meynell errI to have had no literary successors, n°13

tho kins certainly inspired some followers Catuhgohlicsfe. w of them, as it happened, were

1/4f —riYiY OW n treading of the same path, unaware \sv IterarY precedents, was a lonelier and in some t:Ys a sadder experience. It began when I was pr eive Years old and my conventionally anotestant mother found a rosary in my pocket d raised such an outcry that if it had been a 'gecade or two later it might have been caused oir,_her coming on a supply of 'pills' or a quantity th P. °,t'. She had already reported to my father had an ill-printed copy of the Decamerort „ leh I had concealed by binding it in the cover s'in' an old dictionary but this was altogether too 131,4. ch for her, suggesting as it did furtive thlests, confession boxes and the evils of what "e Victorians called Mariolatry.

Paw.

uy tensions

wor -se was to come. It appeared that I had `nallY been to Mass and wanted to become a evatholic, and the 'foreign-ness' of this shocked or MY father who was normally permissive, Perhaps one should say indifferent, in all tinatters connected with religion. A period of eevhsion and unhappiness started which was bertually ended when a pact was made loween my father and me by w which I was ed to go to Mass provided it did not 'w"i-ierfere with the rules of Tonbridge School, tw ile I agreed not to be 'received' until I was ,,,,entY-one years old. ritwlY interest was at first almost entirely in the in u„al of the Church. I watched for the changes core altar cloths between the four liturgical of ,9le ,11.rs. knew how and when to make the sign At " Cross and was an expert on vestments. at. that time I stocked myself up with gurnents and anecdotes, chiefly at the h—,I3ense of the Anglicanism from which I felt I ro" graduated, and caused alarm and dismay to stockbroker father by maintaining be7.' \-nrist was a working-class man. Although first I reached my twenty-first birthday the docenthusiasm had been superseded by With to Eng. Lit, I determined that my pact MY father should be fulfilled. co'onY then I had gone to Argentina, so that I was in tt(Illonally baptised and became a Catholic reo,.:,? Church of San Isidro, near Buenos Aires, nacr ved by a priest named Father Actis, who . a ferocious body odour arid some very rious habits.

1111111utab1e • I ma_ ,0 now at the changes in the Church itts-411 entered then just half a century ago and pall e organisation which exists today, princiY since one of the principal articles of its

faith was that there would never be any change as there had been none since its foundation. Was not Rome the Eternal City and the Church founded there the One Immutable Religion which would see off and outlive the whole history of man? Were we Catholics not the aristocrats among Christians and were not we, who had found its sanctuary, able to smile patronisingly at lesser breeds without the law? It would be difficult, in the disputatious manner of converts, to maintain any such arrogant attitude today when fratting with Protestants is positively encouraged and the Archbishop of Canterbury in ecclesiastical drag calls on the Pope.

...or. not?

Of course, more profound theologians and observers maintain that in essentials the Church has not changed but I was not concerned with essentials, being a partisan schoolboy backing the minority persuasion of his choice, and it seems to me sometimes that in this connectibn I struggled and quarrelled with my parents in vain. How fiercely I Maintained that the Latin Mass was essential, unvaried as it was throughout the polyglot world. It was not necessary or perhaps even desirable for us to follow its translation word for word. We were intended to watch the actions of the celebrant and follow our own devotions. Mass in the vernacular would have been a tame and unorthodox proceeding and a cheapening of the Sacrifice. It should moreover, we considered, be said by a priest facing the East with the congregation behind him since he was leading them in prayer; unthinkable that it should be celebrated in the manner of extreme Protestant sects who called it The Last Supper and shared out a baker's loaf and — for all we knew — cups of tea instead of wine. All the other innovations which the last two Popes have introduced to popularise and 'bring into line with modern conditions' the old religion seem anathema to us who were once taught that we could not argue with the Church — we could either accept its doctrines wholly or not claim to he members of it. We believed it infallible and held its authority supreme, and now find ourselves tumbling resentfully between two stools, while to many of us hard line converts to Catholicism it seems that any concessions in matters of birth-control, mixed marriages or the strictly interpreted practice of monogamy are signs of weakness in the Church and a betrayal of its principles.

Scoring points

It was Maurice Baring, I believe, who used to tell a story of a Catholic doctor arguing with an agnostic one. "If you had a case in which both parents had inherited syphilis, the first son had been born blind and died soon after birth and the mother was pregnant again, what would you do?" asked the Catholic doctor. "I should arrest the pregnancy, of course."

"In that case," said the Catholic who knew the facts of the birth he was quoting, "in that case you would have murdered Beethoven."

Such arguments and scoring points in debate are meaningless today, we are publicly told. Now that all the great controversies of the last century are reduced by television to a chatty quiz game on Sunday evenings, or a succession of film shots of religious doings and sights all over the world, Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist, and we are asked to guess which is which and what each occasion portends; now that church services are shown and heard as jolly occasions for popular numbers with a suggestion of 'Sunday Evening' rendered by television stars and broad-minded clerics, how can it be of any interest to more than a handful of the general public to know how we argued and sought for ecclesiastical truths in a bygone period?

Fifty years on

It is scarcely credible that not fifty years tago people, in their vast majority churchor chapel-goers, would prefer this or that incumbent because he was High, Low or Middle Church, or because he had a livelier vocabulary than 'others in harrowing his congregation, or introduced more splendid rhetoric into his Sunday sermon. Not even the little-educated priest of a rural parish in Spain or Italy would use the doctrine of eternal damnation to discipline his people today, while the whole phenomenon of Lourdes seems to be remembered with scepticism or embarrassment by people who cheerfully attend sessions by advertised so-called faith healers.

We listen to hysterical revivalists, 'Jesus People,' followers of something they believe has some connection with Krishna, one of the incarnations of Vishnu in the Hindu pantheon, Black Muslims who do not even pretend to Mohammedanism, Zen Buddhists, followers of a more or less comic form of Buddhism, practicants of Transcendental Meditation, believers in ESP or in other forms of oriental charlatanism. We are bombarded by Christian Scientists, Mormons, Moral Re-armers, Jehovah's Witnesses, Scientologists and other victims of American credulity, or we chant and smoke 'pot' with plump Hindu gurus who ask us to support their 'missions'. So what relevance to the modern world have the differences in creed and practe_of nine teenth-century Christians ab which we got so hot under the (not ne essarily clerical) collar? Does anyone but a historian know anything about the Oxford Movement, the Countess of Huntingdon's Church or the primitive Methodists? Does anyone today read John Inglesant or The Ritual Reason Why?

Rupert Croft-Cooke

This the last of four guest 'Notebooks' contributed by Mr Croft-Cooke