Lord Have Mercy

This is a present which our neighbours from across the road gave me on the occasion of my first communion. I was aged seven, going on eight. I remember the day of this religious event, an important one for a Roman catholic. Somewhere I have a picture of myself, recently recovered from whooping cough, and all dressed up in a white shirt and white shorts, standing in front my dad’s Wolseley 15/60 looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth.

The book itself is a missal, a prayerbook which includes the text of the mass, in both Latin and English. By that time, the Latin mass was already being phased out, but it was still occasionally said, and as a trainee altar boy I had to learn how to read and pronounce it, thankfully not to memorise it by heart.

The Conways were a lovely family who lived across the road from us. Tom Conway had been a coal miner but had suffered a catastrophic accident down the pit, which had badly injured his back, and as a result he was now retired from work underground. He seemed to make up for the inactivity in other areas, as he and his wife Mary had six daughters and two sons. The Pope would have approved.

One of the Conway girls, Margaret, was my teacher at St Bride’s primary, and I think that even then she shared a bed with two of her sisters. I might be wrong about this, but it is true that the Conways with their eight children lived in a three bedroom council semi at the time, as we did.

As catholics in Presbyterian Scotland in the 1960’s, we felt a bit like an ethnic minority. We weren’t oppressed by any means, but Scottish society then was pretty sectarian, and there would be fights with the kids from the protestant school across the road from ours. I remember some years later as a student, applying for a summer job with a local metalworking company, and the moment I told the guy what school I had attended, the interview came to an abrupt halt.

However, there were some points of interest in a catholic upbringing. One was confession, which would usually take place on a Saturday early evening. If you are not a catholic, I’m sure you are nevertheless familiar with the drill from films and television. You go into a sort of cupboard and confess your sins to a priest, who is sitting in an adjacent cupboard with a grille between your cubby-hole and his. As a boy, you have to think up euphemisms for the various sins, which include effing and blinding, and masturbation.

For the latter, ‘impure thoughts’ is a suitable coded message. Incidentally, there was a funny story going the rounds about this when I was a kid. A man goes to confession and admits to impure thoughts.

‘Did you entertain these impure thoughts?’ enquires the priest.

‘No, father,’ the penitent replies, ‘They entertained me.’

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In a previous blog, I think I quoted Benjy Stone in the movie My Favourite Year, saying, ‘Jews understand two things: suffering and where to get great Chinese food.’ In my view, the corresponding saying about Roman catholics is that we know about two things: guilt, and what time the pub opens.

One thing about confession: like banging your head against a brick wall, you feel terrific when it is over. And generally, when I was a child, there was an almost euphoric release when I left the church, for some reason more intense in the evening than in daylight. I remember once, perhaps when I was in my early teens, I had been on altar boy duty in evening Benediction in the Church of Our Lady and St Bride. I had divested myself of surplice and soutane, said goodnight to Father O’Brien, and I was making my way home along Cowdenbeath High Street, with not much of a care in the world. That’s one thing I miss about being a believer. The feeling of release when you leave the church, freedom after having done your stuff, fulfilled your obligations. The release was even more intense if you had just been to confession. You can keep the guilt and the piety, but the release… there’s nothing like it.

Anyway, all of a sudden there was a flash of colour in one of the shop windows. Not still, but dancing colour. It was Pringles, the electrical appliance shop. In the window was what seemed to me an enormous colour television set, the first I had ever seen.

There was some sort of Variety show on, but the actual production was of no interest to me. I was fascinated just by the movement of colours on this screen, like a cinema in a box. And I had a feeling, a sort of premonition, that nothing would be the same again.

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For a while when I was an altar boy, our parish priest was Keith O’Brien, later Cardinal O’Brien, who resigned his eminent office when it was revealed that at some time in the past, he had indulged in ‘inappropriate behaviour’ with other clergy. I should say here that there was no question of this having been with anyone other than adults, and I have the impression that he was a fundamentally decent man. I remember mentioning to a colleague that once he had given me a fearsome telling off for giggling during mass when I was on acolyte duty. She said, ‘You’re lucky that wasn’t all he gave you,’ but the remark was unfair. There was never any stirring in the undergrowth towards the altar boys, and I assume that his inappropriate behaviour was homosexual activity with other adults.

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So what is all this about? Well, nothing really. I can no longer believe in anything, and as I approach my biblical sell-by date, I don’t feel so good about that. As a fully grown-up sceptic, I am reminded of the lines from Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses:

When I am grown to man’s estate,

I shall be both proud and great,

And tell the other girls and boys

Not to meddle with my toys.