Penelope and I have been fortunate with priests, friends and priest friends.
Our latter category is impeccably ecumenical: breaking bread with us have been two Anglican priests, two Catholic ones and even a Copt (whom I had the gall to lecture on the evils of Monophysitism).
Last Sunday came the tragic news that one of those friends won’t be with us for much longer. It was announced after Mass that Fr Michael Daley, who has been ill for a while, is dying. As he was receiving treatment for Parkinson’s, he developed an aggressive brain tumour and is now in end-of life care.
Just a month ago Fr Michael rang to tell us he was too unwell to come to lunch. Now we’ll never see him again: he can’t handle any visitors, asking instead for our prayers.
That we’ll miss him as a close friend goes without saying: Fr Michael’s genuine faith, generosity, sardonic wit, and rare combination of all such qualities have been a source of our great joy for years. And he is the only friend I have who shares my taste for dry martinis.
What, however, needs saying is that we’ll miss him as a priest as well, hugely. Last Sunday we found out exactly how much.
Fr Michael is a conservative man, although opponents of Vatican II may not recognise him as a conservative priest. Apart from references to the Pope, his liturgy is indistinguishable from the High Anglican equivalent, and I’ve never heard him utter a Latin word.
Nevertheless, his moving homilies and intercession prayers never lost touch with his mission. He has neither spoken about, nor asked the congregation to pray for, any fashionable causes: climate, negotiations in places where there is nothing to negotiate, rights that are actually wrongs, social justice. Fr Michael serves God, not woke fads, and he has never conflated the two in his life.
On occasion, Mass at our church has been celebrated by visiting priests, one young, the other less so. The young one is very good and the older one is the Vicar General. It was he who broke the tragic news last Sunday – but not before serving an unintended reminder of how much we’ll miss Fr Michael at the altar.
The good VG inclines to the left so much that he sometimes loses sight of God. Unlike Fr Michael, he has been known to ask us to pray for ‘our planet’ and some such, with Penelope and me steadfastly refusing to say “Hear our prayer”.
And during last Sunday’s reading, he made sure God himself spoke with all the right pronouns.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with such uncool things, during readings from the Bible the parishioners have the prayer sheet in front of them, so they can follow the text if the acoustics aren’t up to scratch (or if English isn’t their first language, which is common in Catholic churches).
Hence we had the privilege to hear the VG replace every ‘he’ and ‘his’ with ‘they’ and ‘their’, making one wonder if Jesus Christ was actually a diversity consultant for the NHS, vox DEI and all that. I winced in disgust, which is hardly the grimace and the feeling one expects a priest to elicit from the pulpit. That’s what we have politicians for.
On the way out, I chatted with the VG’s younger colleague, Fr Antony, whose own homilies are invariably inspiring. My side of the conversation was rather limited, what with my throat feeling constricted and words being extruded from my mouth, rather than flowing from it of their own accord.
Fr Antony assured me that Fr Michael, his friend and mine, was lucid, at peace and not in pain, with even his Parkinson’s now gone. But he didn’t know who, if anyone, would replace Fr Michael. Apparently, six local churches are already without priests, which is astounding in an affluent area with a large French and Italian population.
The situation in rural France, certainly our part of it, is even worse. There one priest has to cover up to 40 churches, which among other things means that many pious Catholics are denied the funeral Mass at their death. One wouldn’t expect central London to have similar problems, but that’s globalisation for you.
Should the priest’s personality really matter to his congregation? It shouldn’t. But it does, at least as far as I’m concerned.
When he is at the altar, a priest is an intermediary in the dialogue between man and God, a conduit through which this two-way communication can flow. His own vices and devices should have no effect at all: when he is at the altar, he is the stand-in for God, not a first person singular.
Such is the theory. But in practice it matters when the priest exudes and elicits the warmth and joy of someone celebrating the best news of all. He doesn’t have to be a beloved friend, like Fr Michael is to us, but he should be likeable, someone who never utters jarring, ungodly things.
The sound of such things punches a hole in the aura one feels at Mass, turning one’s thoughts away from God’s love and towards political rancour. That shouldn’t happen, but it does. And when it does, the joy goes, the contemplation disintegrates, and one’s Sunday is damaged, if not ruined.
Mass is all about love, God’s for us and ours for God – that is indisputable. But when a priest says something one hates, a drop of tar drips into a bowl of honey, making it all unpalatable. Yes, one loves God. But it helps if one at least likes the priest.
We love Fr Michael, weeping for him as his friends, praying for him as his parishioners. May his last days be filled with love – God’s and people’s.
We will pray for Father Michael.
The priest’s personality should not affect the celebration of the Mass, and does not affect the consecration. However, when the change was made from reciting the canon silently, facing east, to being broadcast over a microphone, facing the people, personality took center stage. And that is exactly what the sanctuary has become: a stage. None of that was advocated by the documents of Vatican II, but is certainly in keeping with the spirit we so often hear about. As if some gnostics are able to read those same documents and extract a deeper meaning than the rest of us can discern. That is not Catholic (universal).
When travel or schedule requires us to miss both of our local Latin masses, we invariably assist at some bizarre version of a honky-tonk mass, complete with piano and drums, appalling attire, applause, and desecration of the host that would have been reason for excommunication a century ago but has now become commonplace. I have to admit that sitting through such a mass is painful for us, confusing for our youngest son, and leaves us with new sins that outweigh the graces received.
Thank you for this. You are absolutely right, it’s the spirit of Vatican II that counts. For example, the letter of it doesn’t explicitly ban Latin mass, but you can now find it at only at two or three London churches, and it’s a pretty large place. How you manage to attend on your travels the kind of masses you describe is beyond me. I simply wouldn’t, sinful though it is to ignore one’s obligations. But then I’m not what Fr Michael descibed as a ‘cradle Catholic’.
He died yesterday, as I found out after posting my piece. Few deaths have ever affected me as deeply, but life has to go on. When one gets to a certain age, one often has to deal with friends dying, but Fr Michael was 10 years my junior. I wish he could have stayed for a while longer.
My condolences to you, your wife and your fellow parishioners.
Thank you.