Whenever I hear the old gospel song of the Plantation Workers of Southern Alabama – ‘That Old Time Religion’ – I think of our religious ways of the 1940s and ‘50s and the intensity that accompanied it.
Karl Marx is
reputed to have said that religion is the ‘opium of the people’. Certainly, the
community of the ‘40s and ‘50s, in which I grew up, lived and practised their
religion voraciously. I was an altar boy back then serving the 11.30a.m. mass
on a Sunday morning and relishing the little feel of importance that went with
it; again there were Sundays I enjoyed the game of handball in the local Ball
Alley or meandered my way to Lough Key, Doon Shore for a swim. Life is a
kaleidoscope of memories of schooldays, holidays, birthdays, Holy Communion
days, Confirmation days, wedding days, good days, bad days, sick days; all part
of life’s cycle from boyhood to manhood to old age. Today’s generation would
have a mountain to climb if they were to live the religious intensity I
remember of “order and obey” in all things! They’d likely fall at the first
fence; draconian might be a better word! There was an innocence that imagined
evil lurked in dark corners, that life’s pleasures could be an occasion of sin,
that temptation lay waiting to pounce at your weakest moment. Books and films
were censored and mortal sin hung like the sword of Damocles above your head
ready to bring you down in a moment of weakness. Stoicism, the ancient Greek
philosophy that preached self-control, was part of your daily curriculum and
Satan was renounced at every opportunity with all his works and pomps. The day
was a war between good and evil.
The present
generation lives in an alternative universe, a hyper-liberal society where
precious little is left to the imagination; everything and anything goes! The
psychologist’s couch is the modern-day confession box, the snort of cocaine is
the Highway to Heaven and the shot of Valium offers a soft landing after a
‘high’. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram make up the new ‘World Book of
Fairytales’ replacing many of the grand old reliables like Our Boys, Ireland’s Own,
comics and magazines for boys and girls, a wide variety of Detective, Western
and Romance novels to suit all ages; all for the more heady toxic stuff of
today. That being said, and to paraphrase an old school companion John Keats,
“When old age shall this generation waste and we stand in the midst of other
woes than ours”. And having failed to learn the lessons of history, old
draconian ways might slip back to haunt a new generation with penances
reminiscent of a bygone age. To wax humorous for a few moments, imagine a
neighbour having to dress in sackcloth and ashes and sit outside his local
Church or Market place for a month for spreading lies and fake news about a
prime enemy, or television’s ‘Nature Boy’ spending a month (in solitude) on
Lough Derg as an antidote to the abundance of female flesh he wallowed in on Love Island, or a man to spend all of
Lent on top of Croagh Patrick for stealing his neighbour’s wife. The old
Canonical penances doled out in the early Church certainly knew how to bring
the serial sinner back into line; no three Hail Marys then, or a decade of the
Rosary for a penance! Life was never going to be a bed of roses or a Garden of
Eden.
With the existence
of God smiled upon by many of today’s intellectuals and bearded philosophers,
surely it must dent the ego when they see flocks of highly intelligent people
enter a church or a sacred place in search of a bit of meaning to life and
death. The Creator in recent times has been replaced by something called ‘The
Big Bang’ (i.e. a gigantic ball of wind that originated from nothing and seems
to be travelling nowhere (has no destination) and has all of us humans stuck
here on earth whether we like it or not). It’s like a scene out of ‘Game for a
laugh’. So with Mother Earth hijacked between a combination of half-wits and
power-crazed misfits who see themselves as ‘Masters of the Universe’ is it any
wonder we’re on the verge of the ‘Sixth Extinction’, or looking down the barrel
of a gun at this latest phenomenon – the Coronavirus. If you feel you’ve heard
enough, kindly switch off now!
The Religious Calendar of the 1940s and 1950s
The Church Calendar was a mixture of
ritual and ceremony. In chronological order, there was Christmas, Lent, Easter,
the Parish Mission, the Forty Hours Adoration, First Holy Communion,
Confirmation, Corpus Christi Procession, Feast days and Holidays of Obligation,
the Nine (First) Fridays, November (month of the Holy Souls), the Sodality
Meeting (i.e. Confession\Saturday, Mass\Sunday once a month and all year
round), Station Mass in the country home during Lent and Advent. Mass, the
epi-centre for all religious practice, was offered daily throughout the year
including three Masses on a Sunday. In the midst of all this religious
intensity there were the many joyful occasions like family christenings, First
Holy Communion Days, Confirmation Days, Wedding Days, Ordinations Days, Station
Mass in the home, and many other joyous occasions to celebrate along the way.
Of deep and powerful significance always has been the consolation and strength
the Church offers at times of sickness and death.
The Gregorian Mass: A Personal Memory
(Priest) Introibo ad Altare Dei
(Altar Boy) Ad Deum qui laetificat iuvum tutum meum
Translation:
I will go unto the altar of God, to God who giveth joy to my youth.
The above were the first lines of the old
Latin Mass served by the altar boy. Today, when one sees the angelic little
altar girl dressed in her cream-coloured robe on the high altar, it begs the
question as to why it should have taken a further 40 years before she was
permitted to grace the altar of God! My Grandmother was a teacher in the old
Before the Second Vatican Council
(1962/65) the liturgy of the Mass was entirely through the medium of Latin.
Many changes would come as a result, one of the most important being that Mass
could now be said in English or the vernacular. The Celebrant faced the
congregation and delivered his sermon from the altar instead of the lofty
heights of a pulpit. Another very important change was the mass-goer being
allowed to eat food up to an hour before receiving Holy Communion. Prior to
that one had to abstain from the previous midnight.
Leading the Celebrant and four more altar
boys to the altar in front of a thousand people on a Sunday morning carried its
own little challenge; you had to be fully alert and know your Latin off by
heart like a school poem. Paddy, the Sacristan, was strict and scrupulously
fair. If you passed the test to his satisfaction, you became part of the
‘Church in action’ and were given your robes of office; a white surplice and
black soutane. You had to buy your own slippers which must be dark in colour.
To keep you on your toes he would sometimes say with a little smile ‘you know
the Celebrant can’t say Mass without you, that’s how important you are!’
Promotion in the ranks came slowly (like all good jobs) but the day eventually
came to pass when you led a small bunch of beginners onto the altar of God. You
had reached the pinnacle of success, you were the leader of the bunch!
The candles in their great cylindrical
tubes, five each side of the tabernacle, were lit by means of a long slender
pole with a tiny flame flickering on the end that blinked and laughed back at
you; a tricky little operation that could sometimes come a cropper and call for
outside help! Oh, the embarrassment of it all in front of a thousand people,
many of whom (you imagined) must know you! The 11.30a.m. Mass on Sunday was a
Missa Cantata, a sung Mass that began with the Celebrant walking down the
centre aisle sprinkling the overflow congregation with holy water as the choir
sang the ‘Asperges me’ (i.e. Cleanse me). Some Sundays when Mass was finished a
lady might come to the side altar requesting to be churched. You stood with a lighted
candle as the Celebrant read a list of prayers and blessed the said lady; the
ceremony was over in five minutes. Looking back on those unquestioning times
you presumed the lady might be ill or about to go to hospital; to be churched
carried no other connotations!
Christmas was one of the great high points
of the Church year with Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve and an extra early one
Christmas Morning (7.30 a.m.) to cater for the increased number of the faithful
home for Christmas; then there were the usual three Masses as on any Sunday
which brought the total to five on a Christmas Day. Setting up the Christmas
Crib was a high point of the hubris and excitement of Christmas with Paddy the
Sacristan acting as a kind of Snow White and calling on (approx.) seven altar
boys to assist him in the operation. Enthusiasm could run high leading
sometimes to a confusion not unlike what we’re told happened at the building of
the ancient Tower of Babel (i.e. members of the Holy Family took quite a while
to find their exact positions in the crib, not to mention the Shepherds with
their family of animal friends).
Some seven weeks later the holy season of
Lent had arrived. That meant one thing only: Fast, Abstinence, Rosary/
Benediction in the evening, Stations of the Cross on a Friday, the nine day
Novena leading up to St. Patrick’s Day and finally the Holy Week ceremonies
commemorating Christ’s Passion, Death and Resurrection. The Stations of the
Cross on a Friday evening were a mini-marathon with a verse of the hymn ‘Stabat
Mater’ sung at each Station followed by the prayer “We adore thee Oh Christ and
praise thee, because by thy Holy Cross thou hast redeemed the world”, followed
again with more prayers. This was repeated at each of the fourteen Stations
ending with Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament and the pungent smell of
burning incense burrowing its way into every nostril, nook and cranny of the
old Gothic Building.
Not very long afterwards came the Forty
Hours Adoration, a ceremony that extended over a period of three days. Two
altar boys would kneel for an hour at a time, praying (a little) and keeping
close watch on the finger-sized candles lit and inset in the candlebras all
round the altar. As they burned away, the task of the altar boy was to replace
them with new ones. Members of the laity came and went during daylight hours to
pray till closing time at 9 p.m.. Nuns
from the nearby Convent usually came in pairs to fulfil an hour of adoration.
Looking down the years, remembering the solemn silence and air of sanctity all
round, brought back a memorable line from a poem by that wonderful poet William
Wordsworth that could have been written for such an occasion: “The Holy Time is
quiet as a Nun, breathless with adoration”.
With memories of Lent still fresh in the caverns
of the mind our Parish Priest delivered his own tidings of great joy, the
annual Church Mission was coming fast down the track. Held (usually) over the
first two weeks of May, the Mission was a renewal of penance for the already
battle hardened faithful not to mention extra working hours for the faithful
altar boy. There was Mass at 7.30 a.m.
to facilitate the early morning worker and a later one at 8.30 a.m. for the
faithful in general. That was followed in the evening by Rosary, Benediction
and a high-powered relevant sermon. The first week was for the women of the
Parish and the second week for the men, with children of school-going age
enjoying a little mission of their own over the final four mornings of the
women’s mission. Their little mission consisted of Mass at 10 a.m. with a chat,
a short question and answer session, and a few funny stories to hold their
attention. The altar boy now at the heart of the action was in top gear,
finding himself in the shadow of Doctors of the Church, Jesuits or members of
another Religious Order. The proverbial ‘Poor Scholar of the Forties’ had scant
room for mistakes!
During Lent and Advent, the Station Mass
was traditionally held in a country home. This was a very special occasion for
the family with neighbours coming together to pray and celebrate. As an altar
boy, I served at many of them and would travel with the Curate on duty on the
morning.
By way of a short anecdote, to find
yourself in the company of the late Rev. Dr. Seamus McLoughlin as he drove his
Ford Prefect ‘DI 3701’ to the particular rural home was an unforgettable
experience. The Rev. Seamus never exceeded 15 mph in town or country to ensure
he could get a full view of the scenery and all of God’s creatures great and
small. On such a journey little would have escaped him! He was reputed to have
a photographic mind and an ability to scan a book in minutes (so to speak)
rather than hours. An avid reader, he was a member of the three local
libraries. A brilliant orator of his day he was known throughout the Diocese
and the country, and in constant demand as a speaker at religious conferences
and important events. A leading critic and an authority on the evils of
International Communism and National Socialism, he was often quoted in
newspapers and on national radio. When in full flight delivering his Sunday
morning homily, the Rev. Seamus could have surpassed a De Valera or a Michael
Collins arguing for or against The Treaty. Sparks rose from the pulpit and a
packed congregation listened (in a mood of shock and awe) as they clung to his
every word. His sermons were phenomenal, with the rhetoric a mixture of wit,
humour and a little douse of sarcasm if required. As a Confessor and founder of
the local men’s sodality, he attracted large crowds to his confessional
(contrary to adverse opinion) where he put in exceptionally long hours on
sodality nights hearing penitents sometimes till 10 p.m. and later. For a man
who outwardly projected the stern inflexible image, he was of a completely
different disposition in the confessional with some of his more ardent admirers
comparing him even to the great Cure of Ars; no sin was too grave, no story was
too long for him to give ear to, nor were his penances ever draconian according
to the ‘Whistleblowers’ of the day, and they were readily available. When the
Rev. Seamus died on December 22nd, 1960, the vast gathering at his
Funeral Mass told its own story. The overflow congregation included the
nation’s President and his Aide-De-Camp (seated in the Church Sanctuary), some
members of Government, Bishops from several dioceses roundabout, and a headcount of a hundred priests. A towering figure of his time, he still remained
the country curate who had hailed from humble beginnings from the rural
countryside of Ballyfarnon.
Back to the country Station, the Curate
and his young assistant were given a hearty welcome by the host family. He
began by hearing Confessions in a private room with Mass said immediately
afterwards. Breakfast followed and what a memorable occasion that was for a
young ‘townee’ lad to have his breakfast in a country home with the added
delight of the morning off school. The host family had their best china on
display, while breakfast boasted pure home produce; soda cake, scones, country
butter, fresh milk, boiled, scrambled, poached egg, apple tart, a variety of
sandwiches and a special treat Boxty. An air of welcome filled the home on
those mornings, together with a kind of feeling that God was partying there as
well. The memory of the Station Mass whether the Plains of Boyle, Brishlagh,
Deerpark or Doon, would remain with you for the rest of your days; a chapter in
the story of your life.
The Corpus Christi Procession that was
held in the month of June attracted a thousand and more of the faithful. The
enormous gathering was made up of annual First Holy Communicants, Children of
Mary, Legion of Mary, members of the Men’s and Women’s Sodality, and a gathering
of the faithful. Members of St. Vincent De Paul carried the canopy above the
Priest bearing the Blessed Sacrament and a contingent of young fresh-faced
members of the local F.C.A. acted as bodyguards. The huge procession wound its
way through the streets of the town reciting the Rosary along the way. First
Holy Communion girls with little ornate baskets of flowers scattered the petals
in the way of the Blessed Sacrament in an act of homage while the Church Choir
sang the regular hymns of the time.
To serve at a Requiem Mass (usually 11.30
a.m. on a weekday) had a little bonus built-in for the altar boy; he had the
morning off school, lucky boy! Mass for the deceased person by its very nature
was a mournful occasion with tears shed by the family and friends. Towards the
end of Mass, the Celebrant with three more Priests stood around the coffin as
the Cantor sang the deeply solemn and very mournful dirge ‘Dies Ira’, a hymn
that rose like a cry to Heaven in memory of the deceased.
A period of respite in Church ritual
seemed to occur over the autumn months. Then almost unnoticed All Saints Day
and All Souls Day, November 1st and 2nd respectively, had
arrived. All Souls Day saw the Priest saying three Masses consecutively. These
were shortened somewhat by the long gospel and prayers denouncing the devil
being read-only at the end of the third or last Mass, while Holy Communion was
distributed only during the first Mass.
Returning to more worldly trappings, there
was the odd occasion when a senior altar boy might be called upon to open the
Church if the Sacristan happened to fall sick suddenly or was unavailable. The
great key to the house of God hung on a hook on a hall rack in the Presbytery.
You unlocked the Sacristy door, proceeded to switch on the lights, walked the
length of the interior to the West Wing door (the only door opened on weekdays)
to be met by the ‘Magnificent Seven’. I see them to this day, and remember
their names, standing silently outside at 8 a.m with Mass at 8.30 a.m. Apology again
for a little anecdote ‘for the sake of posterity’ and a further insight into
local history! Pat Walsh, the big man
with a broad hat and a broader smile, was in his 80s and had been a daily Mass
goer all his life. During the Arctic weather of the Great Blizzard of 1947, Pat
struggled his way to Mass each morning dressed in what one could only describe
as a Himalayan style dress with matching footwear, that included two massive
bawneen socks like shin guards pulled up almost to his knees. As a young lad, I
wondered why Pat didn’t wear wellingtons like everyone else? The ingenious mode
of footwear seemingly was his chosen way to navigate across the vast carpet of
snow in front of him. Pathways had been cleared to a degree but the same
pathways didn’t travel all the way to the door of the West Wing! Pat had to get
to Mass, and being one of the ‘Magnificent Seven’ he’d be standing outside
awaiting a young St. Peter to open up! The faces are embedded in the memory as
clear today as in 1947, standing like the seven signatories of The
Proclamation. Before he died a few years later, the Parish Priest of the day
took the unique step of saying Mass for Pat in his own home in Bridge Street
for the final days of his earthly life. A man I feel privileged to have known,
he lived the quiet simple life with a smile and a friendly word for everyone.
He’s surely one of the many unnamed saints that ramble the highways of Heaven!
Back to reality, you rang the bell for
Mass at 8.15 a.m.. The great rope dangling from the Belfry a hundred feet above
dropped into a tiny dimly-lit porch at the bottom of the women’s aisle. To ring
the great bell could be a tricky business (especially if you didn’t know the
ropes!). If you failed to pull and release almost simultaneously you could find
yourself five foot off the ground trusting to a soft landing. A few of us did
learn the hard way!
Come retirement around the grand old age
of 12, you would have built up a little cache of happy and in some cases funny
memories; a few unforgettable ones! A once in a lifetime event occurred on a
quiet weekday morning during Mass. The Celebrant that morning had recently
returned from hospital having had a serious brain operation. After Holy
Communion he sat for the usual few moments of reflection and failed to return.
Three or four minutes passed with no movement from the Celebrant! The
occasional cough or clearing of a throat rose from the small congregation but
to no avail. The Celebrant was in a deep slumber, or was he? More agonising minutes
passed but still no movement. An air of panic was setting in. Could our
Celebrant have suffered a stroke? Who’d make a decisive move? Then Paddy the
Sacristan came to the rescue, having realised Mass was running quite a bit over
time. He came onto the altar and approached the Celebrant, still in
slumberland, and touched him gently on the shoulder and whispered something in
his ear. Mass came to a speedy conclusion with a profound apology and an
embarrassing little smile from the Celebrant. All was well. The scene brought
to mind the popular school poem by W. B. Yeats, ‘The Ballad of Fr. Gilligan
asleep upon his chair’. Those same mornings a deeply religious lady went around
the Stations of the Cross four or maybe five times, pausing for a few moments in
contemplation at each one. She had her mission accomplished in maybe ten
minutes. Remembering the Stations of the Cross on a Friday evening in Lent,
that might take an hour to complete with prayers and a verse of a hymn at each
Station, left one pondering if the same lady could reap an equal harvest of
grace with her own personal version? The Parable of the labourers in the
vineyard come to mind when one recalls those employed at the ninth hour were
paid the same amount as those who worked longer hours and endured the heat of
the day. Strange the ways of the Lord!
The final act of the day would be to
assist the Sacristan to close the Church at 9.30 p.m., and to prepare the
vestments to be worn next morning by the Celebrant. The colour was indicative
of the Saint or Martyr to be remembered in the Mass, and the great Missal was
left open and ready on its tripod at the correct page. One by one Paddy
switched out the lights and just before the moment of complete darkness (except
for the sanctuary lamp), he would call out as he had done a thousand times
before: “Everybody out”. One cold winter’s night a voice rose from out of the
darkness: “Not yet, I’m here”. A sound of high heeled shoes could be heard clip
clopping up the old flaggered women’s aisle. A young lady emerged into view,
somewhat out of breath and in a mild state of shock. “You could have been
locked in for the night,” Paddy said with a friendly smile! Regaining her
breath she replied, equally with a smile: “I could think of far worse places to
be locked up” and continued her way out by way of the Sacristy door. The great
key was left sitting on its hook in the Presbytery hall for another night. God
alone would decide who’d be the next mover!
CHRISTY
WYNNE
Postscript
In
light of the terrible scandals regarding the physical and sexual abuse of young
boys and girls inflicted by different religious institutions over time, I can
only speak for myself when I say that being an altar boy was one of the happiest
experiences of my life. For this reason, my story is just one more happy memory
of growing up in Boyle, ‘the town I love so well’. I have written on every
aspect of life as I remember it from my earliest days of the 1940’s up to the
present-day, and the above story has been as rich in memories for me as anyone
gone before. I would have dearly wished the same could be repeated by every
young boy or girl growing up then. They are supposed to be among the happiest
and best days of a young person’s life and serve as a bulwark for the tougher
times that might lie ahead in later life; unfortunately it doesn’t always work
that way.
Haec olim meminisse iuvabit.
Virgil.
