Michael Collins - Life, Death and the Bits in Between: A collection of stories about life as a priest ...

LIFE, DEATH, AND THE BITS IN BETWEEN

Michael Collins

Life, Death, and the Bits in Between

First published in 2014 by

55A Spruce Avenue, Stillorgan Industrial Park,
Blackrock, Co. Dublin

Cover by David Mc Namara
Origination by The Columba Press
Illustrations by Joe Connolly
Printed in Ireland by SPRINT-Print Ltd

ISBN 978 1 78218 133 0

This publication is protected under the Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000. Conditional to statutory exceptions, no part of this work may be reproduced without the express permission of The Columba Press.

The moral rights of the authors have been asserted.

Copyright 2014, Michael Collins

A Time of Innocence

A Bishop Calls

The Parish Priests temper had reached ignition point over the visit of the new Bishop, and his curates were showing a predictable lack of interest in the entire affair.

Their obvious ignorance of the scriptural warning to kings who go up against the enemy, to pick someone smaller than themselves, had not registered, for in similar vein a priest and especially a curate who went up against his bishop either by thought, word or deed and especially by omission, could expect to get it in the neck; and sadly, when curates got it in the neck, parish priests tended to feel the pain.

The red piping on his clerical soutane, the emblem of his high position as a Canon of the Diocese, quivered at the thought, and he made one more despairing attempt to breach the walls of their indifference.

You must surely have some idea what he likes to eat. Werent you in the seminary with him for five years?

The Senior Curate laid aside his newspaper with an elaborate show of patience, and addressed his superior, much as a severely tried father might address his persistent but feeble-minded son.

As I have explained already, Father, in exhaustive detail, he displayed no particular preference for any item of diet during his days in college, due no doubt to the fact that, like the rest of us, he had nothing to express any preference about, and had to make do with what was laid before him or decline and diminish from starvation. I see no reason to assume that he has departed from this fundamental, and I may say admirable, principle of eating what is set before him, and I can think of no sufficiently cogent reason why we should attempt to persuade him to do so at this juncture.

The Senior Curate had read a lot of books in his time, and tended to address everyone like a public meeting.

Well, thats not much help, snapped the Parish Priest.

The Junior Curate was a nervous young man, with a scrupulous turn of mind, and he questioned the morality of leaving his parish priest in such acute, though uncalled for, distress, without doing something to alleviate it.

Perhaps we could start the dinner with smoked salmon, he ventured. It was served at Bishop Traceys Ordination dinner.

Smoked salmon, said the Parish Priest blankly. What kind of stuff is that?

It is thin slices of salmon that has been smoked over an oakwood fire.

I dunno, said the Parish Priest vaguely. Mary Ann is not a great hand at cooking these fancy dishes.

Oh, you dont cook it, said the Junior Curate. You eat it raw.

What? barked the Parish Priest, and his voice started to climb the scale into what the Senior Curate had once described as his hysterical mode.

What? Are you mad? The Bishop is coming to the parish for the first time in his life, and you want me to feed him raw fish.

The Junior Curate abruptly closed his mouth, and reproved himself severely for ever having opened it. Fraternal charity might indeed be like oil running down the collar of ones robe, but his boss had just cut off the supply.

His senior colleague merely returned to his newspaper with an air of languid superiority and a prolonged and meaningful sigh. The Parish Priest flicked his gaze from one to the other, finally aware that he had just buried all hope of further discussion, and then turned on his heel and left.

The conversation at the episcopal table was dying a slow and painful death. The Bishop dragged it bodily up one avenue after another in the plaintive hope that someone would follow him, but the Senior Curate was doing his bored intellectual bit, the Junior Curate had taken a vow of silence as an alternative to saying the wrong thing, and the Parish Priest was watching the Bishop so closely for signs of dissatisfaction with the dinner that he heard nothing of what was being said.

The Bishop finally decided to adopt the direct approach, and aimed his questions first at the Junior Curate.

And how many years are you ordained, Father?

Two, MLord, replied the Junior Curate. Three next June.

The Bishop gazed at him with all the innocence of a cobra in a hen house. And has your experience of the clerical life lived up to your expectations? he asked.

The Junior Curate started like one of the aforesaid hens and tried to avoid the fangs. Well, some things are a bit different. I mean, some of the clergy, for example, are a bit different from what I expected.

Ah, I see. You feel that they would give a better account of themselves if they conformed more to your own ideal of the priesthood?

The Junior Curate fluttered around in panic, looking for an escape hatch. Oh, no. No MLord, I didnt mean it that way. O !

The Bishop dropped him smoothly from the conversation by turning to the Senior Curate. And has your significantly greater experience, Father, led you to a different conclusion?

The Senior Curate was no chicken. Indeed, he was more of a clerical mongoose, and bishops did not frighten him. In common with the poet Donne, Bishop, I find comparisons odious. If the generality of the clergy have difficulty framing even a coherently grammatical sentence it does not follow that those who can are intellectual or artistic giants. I prefer to abide by my own standards of excellence and leave those who must to struggle with their grammar as best they can. No doubt they are content with popular acclaim in other fields of endeavour such as sport or, what is loosely termed nowadays, entertainment.

The Bishop did not bat an eyelid but smoothly picked up the gauntlet. May I ask what standards then you would apply to your own humble efforts say in the art of letter writing?

If a model must be named then I think I would tend to emulate the gifts of the Marchioness de Svign in her letters to her daughter, said the Senior Curate, and though his acquaintance with Madame de Svign was distinctly superficial he could not help adding under his breath, Lets see you catch that one with your crozier!

But catch it his Lordship did; and he also returned it with some force. One would hesitate to classify the exchange of idle gossip between Madame de Svign and the Countess de Grignan as noteworthy literature.

This stymied the Senior Curate for a moment, but when it came to chancing his arm he had a head start on both fools and angels. Whatever judgement may be passed on her letters to the Countess de Grignan, I find her letters to her daughter to be both subtle and polished.

Strange, murmured the Bishop, quietly yet distinctly. I was under the impression that the Countess de Grignan in fact was her daughter.

The Parish Priest had listened goggle-eyed to this exchange. He could hardly believe his ears. For the first time in living memory his Senior Curate had been flattened. That was the only word for it. Flattened! How he would enjoy telling this one at the next clerical conference.