Saturday, 20 June 2009

Laus Deo!

A Catholic for ten years today.
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21 comments:

  1. Anonymous20 June 2009 at 13:07

    That's nice. My Dad used to be Catholic, too.

    What religion were you originally?

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  2. David Lindsay20 June 2009 at 15:34

    My late father was a colonial archdeacon turned country parson.

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  3. JohnJGMooney20 June 2009 at 16:22

    Ah congratulations.
    This explains your extreme views on Catholicism. The fanaticism of the convert.
    In a further ten years you will probably settle down to a form of Catholic normality.
    Had you actually been educated thru a catholic system your Catholicism would have been much more conventional.

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  4. David Lindsay20 June 2009 at 16:28

    Oh, I had an entirely Catholic secondary education.

    And I am the Catholic mainstream now. Look who is now the Pope. For that matter, look who was ten years ago.

    It's the "as long as you're vaguely Irish-ish, then that makes you a Catholic, since that culture simply IS Catholicism" school that has now almost completely died out, even including in the Irish Republic.

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  5. Anonymous20 June 2009 at 16:30

    What do you mean by that John? Only going to Mass at Christmas and on St. Patrick's Day?

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  6. David Lindsay20 June 2009 at 16:34

    Like I said, almost completely died out now. Well, bound to, eventually.

    And how many parishes still have an evening Mass on Saint Patrick's Day? Only those dedicated to Saint Patrick. In my own parish, people in their twenties with Irish grandparents (never mind great-grandparents) whinged bitterly about the singing of 'Hail, Glorious Saint Patrick' on the nearest Sunday and demanded that at least as much fuss be made of Saint George's Day.

    More broadly, the only people still attending Mass regularly now are the rather (or very) old and the totally, militantly orthodox. Or "Catholic normality", as we can now be described.

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  7. Anonymous20 June 2009 at 16:35

    Then there is how utterly middle-class the Church now is.

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  8. David Lindsay20 June 2009 at 16:37

    Well, indeed. The Catholic school system has done its work, all right. The poor just about still turn up for things like First Communions (although even that is coming to an end, I fear), but then the regulars talk for weeks afterwards about how unkempt they were and so forth. Sometimes it feels like being back in the Church of England.

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  9. R20 June 2009 at 16:39

    But they all grew up working class.

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  10. David Lindsay20 June 2009 at 16:41

    The older ones, yes. And they very often still live in basically working-class areas. The Church is now where they go in order to avoid the lower orders, even including their own quite close relatives. Historically jaw-dropping, but there we are.

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  11. Steve20 June 2009 at 16:41

    A lot of priests still affect to be working class when they are not.

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  12. David Lindsay20 June 2009 at 16:46

    I know, isn't it hilarious. But it is shifting, anyway. Younger people don't necessarily expect priests to be like the ones their parents and grandparents remember from childhood even though they themselves have moved on.

    Who now enters a seminary without having been to a university first? I doubt that it would take anyone like that.

    There is also a certain, though even more declined, stage-Irishness. I was never convinced by Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor's accent, for example. He is the public school educated son of a doctor from Reading, and he went on from Prior Park to the English College in Rome.

    But no one except on Coronation Street expects Catholic priests to be Irish these days, so they no longer bother pretending.

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  13. Mike20 June 2009 at 16:50

    Yes, that's the Catholic norm now. Militantly orthodox but just effortlessly middle-class and English, without even thinking about it. Unless a name begins with O' people who have it will deny outright that it is Irish. And every other person is a schoolteacher, second generation a lot of the time.

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  14. David Lindsay20 June 2009 at 16:51

    For good or ill...

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  15. Anonymous20 June 2009 at 17:30

    How did you come to decide to switch denominations, if I may ask? The Anglican and Catholic churches already seem kind of similar in many ways.

    Except that Anglicans always have the best thrift shops of any denomination, because that's their very own stuff they donate for sale, and those dudes are RICH.

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  16. JohnJGMooney20 June 2009 at 20:18

    Its a matter of regret to many real Catholics (including myself a daily mass goer) that our Church has been subverted by English conservatives like John Selwyn Gummer and Ann widdicombe.
    Thank God for the witness of the Catholic Church in Latin america, Asia, and africa who have remained true to Catholic principle.

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  17. The Bones21 June 2009 at 01:19

    Deo Gratias!

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  18. Charlie Marks21 June 2009 at 01:32

    I've always been a Catholic, though blissfully unaware of the details of the religion. Sorry, I didn't pay much attention in either mass or school.

    I'm currently agnostic, but still consider myself broadly in agreement with the Church on moral issues. Was disappointed that when John Paul II died that I didn't get a ballot paper to vote for his replacement - maybe it got lost in the post ;-)

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  19. Patrick Carr21 June 2009 at 17:53

    Congratulations David. Hope you still feel most welcome this side of the Tiber, which of course, you are.

    I think a point has been missed here somewhere. There are plenty of working class people in the Church right now. My rural parish is full of the older ones, and a couple of families I recognise at the school gates, wearing their gardeners', electricians' or care workers' uniforms as they pick up their children. The urban parishes in which I work are full of teachers and doctors, but so is the area. The newer members of the congregations are largley African and Polish- and that's where the militant orthodoxy is most likely to be found.

    Are we not called to be in the world yet not of it? Since when has having a faith true to Catholic teaching yet with the dynamism and passion to change the world been a bad thing?

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  20. David Lindsay21 June 2009 at 19:52

    Anonymous, it would take a whole book, which I once nearly wrote. About ten years ago, in fact.

    John, Gummer at least had the wit to vote against the Iraq War, and used his then column in the Catholic Herlad to decry the re-election of Bush in the most splendid terms. A bit Green and very pro-EU, but there are worse. And Widdy really isn't all that right-wing economically; I have heard her speak on that.

    Charlie, the right candidate still won.

    Patrick, oh, profoundly. Well, they've put me on enough committees (and did so from the start) to show me EXACTLY how welcome I am...

    I'm afraid that woking-class Catholics are generally either getting on a bit or the people one sees at the school gates rather than in church. It gives me no pleasure, but there we are.

    And I am not convinced about the Poles and others, although it is our own fault: used to Polish, or missionary African, Catholicism, who would bother turning up to many an English parish?

    I have just put up an entire post about the changing character of English Catholicism.

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  21. Patrick Carr23 June 2009 at 10:01

    The point I made was that I see them at the school gates and in the church. Didn't really need to comment again, but the word verification text was "tardwate", and I couldn't resist typing it. What a fantastic word! I know it doesn't have a meaning yet but I would love to get it in the dictionary with this as the first reference. It should mean "Lazy person who procrastinates by frequenting blogs such as this". Me, in other words. Oh well.

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