Attic Term: Readthrough, Chapters 1-4

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

Thanks very much to coughingbear for writing the posts on The Cricket Term. I'm back in the saddle for this one, but if anyone is interested in a post on later chapters of this novel, on Run Away Home or the Players novels, please let me know below or by pm. Discussion proceeds here about exactly what order we're going to do things in: if you have feelings please let us know in comments at that post. Suggestions for themed posts are here.

So, forward to The Attic Term!


We pick up the story again at the end of the summer holiday that is beginning at the close of Cricket Term, leaving a swathe of unnarrated summer into which to insert fic. This has been your regularly scheduled fic prompt. Ginty and Patrick's friendship has clearly developed, and they have privately continued their Gondal fantasy. I enjoy the detail that Ginty finds more opportunities for romance with Patrick's Hamlet in reading Horatio than she does in reading Ophelia, because it's so true! There are! Her continued nervousness around Regina is an ominous sign, though, and Patrick does seem as skittish as Catkin when things get a touch amorous. Ginty's disinclination to talk to Patrick about Monica and vice versa continues the series' theme of Home and School and never the twain.

We learn something of Patrick's school life, and its contrasts with Kingscote: it seems more academically pushy, with O-levels taken early, and with far less of a culture of compulsion around extra-curricular activities. There are hints of Patrick's dissatisfaction with reform in the Catholic Church and his school's enthusiastic embrace of that--Ginty presumably knows something of his views there, because she doesn't enquire why the 'trad' Christmas Play was hastily rejected, though we sense that perhaps Patrick doesn't discuss theology with Ginty very much. (Incidentally, I'm wondering what sort of details might make a Nativity Play seem too 'trad' in a post-Vatican II climate?) It is, in any case, a lot more satisfying to have him expound his beliefs to Nicola in the next chapter, because of the resonance with the ride from Wade Abbas in End of Term. The discussion of plays--whether Hamlet or Eugene O'Neill, furthers the theme of pretence. Patrick cannot act, but he can pretend to be someone--a nice and subtle distinction. This month's number of the Journal of Read It Somewhere Studies tells me that Forest's school put on Marco Millions, which must then have been a pretty new play, since it first appeared on the Broadway stage in 1928. Anyone ever seen it?

'Imagine asking. Suppose you got told,' says Ginty of Unity Logan's officious efforts on behalf of June White, demoted from Candle Angel in the Play in End of Term. Here Ginty asks, and very nearly gets told, but in the last sentence of the chapter decides that there are some things she'd better off not knowing. It's a wonderfully light-touch portrait of two young people who like the idea of being in a romance rather more, one senses, than they actually like each other. The moment at which Patrick shies from Ginty's 'tense, insistent' face and diverts the conversation to Claudie (oh, Patrick!) is brilliant. If he was conscious of what he was doing it would be cruel, but Forest switches point of view to show us he isn't, though I'm not sure that makes him any more likeable at that moment. What do others think of Ginty and Patrick's doomed friendship?





Nicola's awkward presence at cubbing uncomfortably reminds us of happier times she's spent with Patrick. Forest--rather cunningly--doesn't give us Patrick's viewpoint in this chapter, so we're left with the sisters as mutually resentful rivals. I'm also amused by her misunderstanding of the age and state of growth of their quarry, and her perking up when she realises they're not actually sending 'fubsy' cubs to their deaths. Is Ginty's 'resigned sisterly contempt' feigned? It's only just over a year ago in story-time that she was a fervent anti-bloodsports type, after all.

The breakfast-table conversation is notably malicious on Patrick and Ginty's part--I'm glad that Mr Merrick is there to stand up for Nicola. I rather wish that Patrick had got the telling-off he deserves for his bad behaviour at the hunt in Peter's Room, though. I like the oxymoron of '"Yup," said Nicola, automatically doom-laden, her spirits leaping up.' at the news of Ginty's being summoned away to packing.

Nicola's ease with Regina contrasts with Ginty's continued nerves, as the conversation which follows is surely intended as contrast: eccentric but revealing where Ginty's interactions with Patrick are bound by certain conventions and superficial.

'"Though I suppose she is quite used to strangers nowadays"' (ouch, Patrick!) is flagged by the authorial voice as significant; if it implies that Nicola is a stranger, it also suggests that Ginty is one too. Nicola's cheerful acceptance of the labour of sweeping out (the Merrick Boy displaying his extraordinary tact and charm again) eases the atmosphere between them, and their conversation becomes almost immediately quite profound, with Nicola's revelation of Edwin's researches into the farm log. Patrick's moment of reaffirmation in faith (and Nicola's initial misunderstanding of it) is quite touching, I think, the more so because it only makes emotional sense: his ancestor's courage on the scaffold doesn't render his beliefs (or Patrick's traddiness) any whit more true (as Nicola's later, private conviction that nothing is worth Tyburn acknowledges.)

Nicola and Patrick's shared dislike of being 'talked to' in ways they see as patronising by adults perhaps provides a further contrast with Ginty's horror of rows, and offers a distant fore-echo of Ginty and Nicola's later interviews with Miss Keith. I'm tickled and a bit appalled by Patrick's desire for 'masters to keep their distance and answer to Sir' (just like dogs in trouble, splendid bit of landed gentry arrogance from the Merrick Boy there). But he's clearly unhappy enough at school to want to leave before A-levels--I can't imagine that he struggles academically in the humanities, though I can quite believe his own estimate of his maths. Patrick's account of his school assemblies provides the irony that the trendier end of the Catholic Church is rather more low church (with extempore prayer and 'holy pop') than the Church of England solidities that Nicola is used to. In his reluctance to stand up and be counted we see Patrick's shyness emerging again, but perhaps also an ironic contrast with his illustrious ancestor. Later in the chapter, Patrick reflects sadly that there's no real danger involved in his modern sort of recusancy, only the sort of social embarrassment that a 'madly trad' assembly might bring. (I'd be inclined to regard this a very callow and silly sort of nostalgia were Patrick not the sort of bloke who brings an eighteenth-century throwing-knife to a showdown in a medieval dovecote, sees someone killed with it, hops into a stolen Rolls-Royce for a sexually-charged joyride with a teenage drug-smuggler who dies crashing it and then casually passes an ounce of uncut cocaine to his naval cadet friend as a souvenir of a crowded weekend. He's nothing if not a risk-taker.)

Mention of the Forty (Martyrs of England and Wales) places us presumably in summer 1971, since their canonization took place in October 1970. Anyone more up on matters theological than I care to comment on Patrick's views on the Vatican II reforms? How well do they represent traditional Catholicism in general, and Forest's own in particular?

I simply adore Nicola's persistent analogies of the Catholic Church with the Navy, by the way, and her reflections on Ginty's showing off to Patrick by affecting interest in Dante and medieval Latin are delicious. I first read Dante in Sayers' translation, and retain a fondness for it despite its terza rima being pretty cumbrous. (It's the only translation I know that bothers with a linguistic difference between Dante and Sordello, for example, for which I'll forgive it a lot--Sayers' Sordello speaks (rather kailyard) Scots.) But I also rather like The Constant Nymph, whose themes of rivalry and jealousy are obviously relevant here (also the source for Edwin's surname?) Forest seems associatively to connect The Constant Nymph with Sayers through Hilary's admiration of it as a bestseller with artistic merit in The Nine Tailors.

How do people read Nicola's interest in going to Mass? It's picked up again in Run Away Home, and I'm sure there'll be more discussion there, but what do you think her motivations are?

Though really, I think Nicola deserves better than the Merrick Boy, it is delightful to see them happy and self-forgetfully, adolescently earnest together; and by the time Nicola's recalled to Trennels, she's a good deal happier.





The differing reactions of the family to Nicola's arrival are nicely observed, I think, from Rowan's amusement, through Ann's worried humourlessness ('remindingly' is a good adverb), to Lawrie's immediate relating of the situation to her own concerns (the detail that Lawrie has developed a genuine fondness for the Idiot Boy, though, is charming--even if--typically Lawrie, she only does so when he is actually hers.) And oh dear, Ginty's jealous fury. Her anger at her mother betrays her into positively Lawrie-ish fantastic hyperbole ('suddenly famous and interviewed on TV'). Nicola's 'bubble of happiness' breaking as she realises that the conversation doesn't necessarily mean a renewal of her friendship with Patrick is rather heartbreaking though. But at least she's lucky at the dentist. I rather like the subtle difference drawn between 'smug' and 'cat-with-creamy', too: though 'unusually perceptive' is backhanded: Forest can't quite let Ann have her due.





We begin with a glimpse of Mrs Lambert's officious inefficiency, which will later produce some disastrous results. Causation and responsibility are important themes here--the novel is in fact full of 'coughing bears'--which is in its turn, I suppose, Forest's meta-narratalogical commentary on story-telling, its conventions and structures.

Esther's affection for Daks? Affected, babyish or 'scarey' [sic]? Her response to her mother's pregnancy does rather suggest the last, doesn't it? An echo with Nicola's 'one would always much rather it were one of the family', too, perhaps. Flats where they don't allow babies (as opposed to flats unsuitable for)? I can imagine some restriction of the sort in 1930s service apartments, possibly, but it seems a bit peculiar in the 1970s. But maybe people know of similar rules from their own or others' experience?

Ann gets her step to prefect, and is observed in her element with the Junior Side infants. Nicola's expectation of saccharine gratitude for taking Ann's trunk tray down gets a rebuke that is both enjoyable in itself and for the equanimity with which Nicola receives it. I'm also delighted by Nicola's observation of the carpenter's filling in a gap with spare parquet. I always rather enjoy that sort of thing myself.

Miranda's continued devotion to Jan--aw! Complete with illogical wish for her to have failed but not failed her A-levels. Miranda's holiday in Venice (tempered by the realisation that it would be 'gaudy' to send Jan a gift or card alluding to it) contrasts with Jan's postcard ('written small', oh Miranda) from her Norfolk or Lincolnshire home. A Wool Cross works well for either--I like the detail that while Forest is inconsistent about which side of the Wash Jan's hometown is on she has a clear idea of what sort of country she hails from. In case anyone has missed it, here is fic, by legionseagle, exploring Jan's past, and the slight mystery that seems to surround her mother.

Comments on Wendy Tredgold's anti-semitism? Interestingly, both Wendy's implied remark about Miranda's father, and her articulated one about Miranda not knowing about the existence of Oxfam shops are tacitly supported by Nicola. Forest is characteristic in leaving it to the reader to decide whether Wendy really is anti-Semitic or whether she simply resents Miranda's wealth and (it has to be admitted) slight tendency to snobbery: the comments of hers that we hear are insinuating, but only of Miranda's wealth and privilege, not her Jewishness. There's a similar entwining of issues of class and anti-Semitism in End of Term, with the 'common little soul with the perm and the Jaguar'. Miranda is embarrassed, however, by her remark about the 'dreggy uniform dress', which draws attention to the Marlows' relative poverty. It's a very effective and understated sketch of the ways in which wealth does, and does not, map onto social privilege and status.

We see Miranda's unpleasant side in her dealings with Sandra Grigson, who is harmless if rather prolix--Miranda's putdown is startlingly vicious--if again, as Nicola is forced to admit, accurate. Miranda appears as an edgy and unsettling presence here, I think, with Nicola finding herself in agreement both with Miranda and her antagonists. The moment when Nicola wonders if her hurt at Patrick's rejection of her shows in similar ways to Sandra's by Miranda is actually painful to read. I'm mildly surprised that no-one but Sandra recognises Sara Crewe--if Cousin Jon had sisters (and perhaps even if he didn't, though it's perhaps not one that boys would be as familiar with as girls might be), there must surely be a copy of A Little Princess in the Trennels playroom, and Rose would have no trouble identifying the reference. Perhaps this is the flexible timeline coming into play, but I read A Little Princess in the 1980s, and indeed played the rat in a stage version. Burnett's novel, with its reversals of fortune and status and its emphasis on the power of imagination and storytelling, resonate subtly and slightly uncomfortably with this scene and the previous chapters.

Miranda's family, like Patrick's, has an au pair (in fact, 'one of our idiot au pairs' suggests a multiplicity, or a sequence at least, thereof). I'm not really familiar with au pairing and how it worked in practice in the 1970s--but Miranda seems to regard Elsa as a kind of servant, which I thought was very much not the idea. Anyway, it seems unlikely that Miranda has the sort of frisson with Elsa that Patrick has with Claudie, more's the pity.

The Disaster! The coughing bear! I love, 'Nicola meditated briefly on the disastrousness of being not merely rich, but an only child and never having to wear your sisters' outgrown gear.' And Miranda is notably cavalier about the garment, reflecting that ruining it will be no hardship. This passage is growling with potential coughing bears--from Miranda's anger at Wendy's 'nudging voice' to Avril's fear that chickens may come home to her roost.



I think that's enough from me for now. Over to you!

Comments

Patrick's views on the Vatican II reforms?

[liadnan]

Forest said in an interview with Sue Sims (somewhere on the internet, coughingbear pointed me towards it the other day but I can't find it now) that Patrick's views were hers.

An attempt at a bit of background for those who know little or nothing about this - feel free to skip if you do, feel free to correct if there's something I have got wrong.

Tinkering with the liturgy hadn't started with Vatican II - Pius X, not exactly the wet-liberal of 20th century popes, had kicked it off before WWI. However, much of this would have been non-obvious to the average layman or woman until about 1955 when the Easter services were radically re-arranged. Some further tinkering followed leading up to the 1962 Missal - that in use on the eve of and throughout the council and (later, I think after the publication of Attic Term) to be settled on by Archbishop Lefebvre as the last version acceptable to him (so almost by chance it has become a semi-compromise position between various camps and remains so). The constitution on the liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium was the first product of the council, promulgated 1st Dec 1964. A committee ("The Consilium") then set to work and in 1965 a new edition of the missal, sometimes called the interim version was promulgated. It was further tinkered with in 1967.

While this gets into ongoing liturgical history wars, I think it is fair to say that 1965 was in structure in continuity with the earlier editions of the missal. In 1969, however, the Novus Ordo Missae was published, to come into effect from 1st Jan 1970, and this did have radical differences in structure - as it says on its face, it is a "new order", not a revised new edition of the Missal of Paul V promulgated after Trent and based on the practice of Rome before that, as everything up to 1965 had been. However, in practice the use of the 1965 Missal had led to radical and obvious changes, most particularly (a) English was permitted in parts, increasing in 1967 and this was enthusiastically adopted, (b) despite it never being more than a permitted possibility in a low-level document of 1964, "priest-facing the people" swiftly became common (to this day the old stance is the official norm) and (c) I think but am not sure that the silent canon went (which was notable first because it was obviously, err, obvious and second because Trent had said in terms that it was heresy to condemn the silent canon. Shortly put, there were differences to be noticed by the laity from 1965.

The reason I find this slightly curious is that it is now in Forest time, as lilliburlero notes above, at the earliest the summer after October 1970 and the canonisation of the 40. Attic Term was I think published 1976 (I'll come back to that). Patrick is 16-17. So Attic-Term-Patrick cannot have been older than 11 when the 1965 missal, the regular use of English, and lots of rather enthusiastic and eccentric enactments of the mass took off, and was possibly rather younger. (I note in passing that if my mother and her friends are anything to go by the whole period of change has been elided in their memories to a single change). Admittedly Patrick is both precocious and precious (I can never be certain of my spelling of either of those words) but I find this a bit difficult to swallow - it is, I suppose, an inevitable result of the combination of Forest-Time and Forest wanting to put her own views into Patrick's mouth. (cont)

RE: Patrick's views on the Vatican II reforms?

[liadnan]

(cont)

My understanding is that the changes were not enthusiastically welcomed by the laity in and after 1965, in England, but most merely grumbled a bit. Many priests were very enthusiastic and there was a period of liturgical experimentation in many parishes going well beyond anything you'd be likely to see at an average parish mass in England now, this wasn't just about tedious guitar music. Cardinal Heenan certainly thought his own flock were reluctant and was very concerned that it would have a devastating effect on the faith - he said as much in a speech after a presentation by the concilium of what was intended, and a homily he gave in Westminster Cathedral is very much on the lines of "yes I know this is all very unsettling and lots of things you love have gone, but there are Good Reasons". In letters to Evelyn Waugh he was rather less guarded (the correspondence with some other bits and pieces relating to Waugh and Heenan's views on the subject is collected in "A Bitter Trial" by Dom, Alcuin Reid OSB.). I don't think Patrick is referring to Heenan as one of the "Cardinals who have gone on record as saying the whole thing is heretical, more or less" - that looks to me like a slightly over the top reference to the views of Cardinals Ottaviani and possibly Siri (Ottaviani did I think say something of the sort about an earlier draft that went into the bin).

It's all made rather more complicated by the fact that as we've discussed before English Catholics were and to an extent remain several quite-distinct camps separated by, among other things, class and also by some other things - there have been wars within English Catholicism since the day the Jesuits decided that the remnants of the Marian secular clergy weren't up to the job and took over the English Mission, and they only got nastier when O'Connell managed to get emancipation through. Recusant English aristos and middle class Anglican converts do not typically see themselves as one with the Irish and the same is true with interest the other way. Heenan was motivated by a - arguably slightly patronising - concern for the faith of his working class Irish flock. The middle-class converts (there had been several waves since Newman) of whom Waugh was one and Forest another (and then there's Greene, Knox, Tolkien's mother, the list goes on) lived in an entirely different world and tended (being converts) to have decided and thought out views on theology and liturgy, also they often came from a nose-bleedingly High Anglican background, the recusant aristocracy were slightly different from them, though closer, and then there are the bits of the country where you did get reasonable numbers of rural non-aristocractic recusants (Durham, Lancs, bits of the east midlands). It is quite difficult to generalise. And the pre-conciliar experience of all those groups would have differed markedly. (one last bit to come)

RE: Patrick's views on the Vatican II reforms?

[liadnan]

(final bit)

The Latin Mass Society was founded in 1965 and has had an enthusiastic membership ever since. Members I've met tend to have a thought-out position - it isn't something people join because of a knee-jerk reaction or nostalgia. I think I am right in saying Forest was a member. (It had a minor schism in 1969 between those who wanted to champion the old mass and those who were content to argue for the new rite done as conservatively as possible (ie there's nothing to say the new mass can't be in Latin, priest and people facing same way, gregorian chant, even the silent canon), the latter group, the Association for Latin Liturgy, still exists in theory but is pretty moribund (but arguably that view has become an established element of the mainstream). In 1971 Paul VI granted permission for the old rite to be used by those who wished in England (so the LMS was able to remain inside the church and was able to keep its distance from the Lefebvrites.) - the permission was known as the Agatha Christie Indult because it was obtained on the back of a petition signed by many of the great and good outside the church as well as inside, including two Anglican bishops as well as Christie - legend has it that it was Christie's signature that swung it because Paul VI was a massive fan. Nevertheless, for a long time old-mass devotees were regarded with enormous scepticism by the English hierarchy. Hume had sympathy for them but he left keeping the troops in line to Derek Warlock, who was very definitely of the modern persuasion.

All of this came to a bit of a head in 1`975, the year before Attic Term was published, with the affair of Father Oswald Baker and the mass at Downham Market, which briefly hit the headlines. Briefly, Baker had cheerfully refused throughout to say the new mass. Increasing pressure was brought to bear on him and yet he persisted and became more and more popular (it probably helped that a Telegraph journalist was a regular and wrote about it from time to time). People travelled from all over the country to go to mass there. His very last mass in the parish church before the bishop acted to chuck him out was recorded and released as an album to raise funds - my father had a copy and I am willing to bet Forest did too. Curiously the bishop never chucked Baker out of the presbytery, the replacement priest had to rent a flat. Funds were raised and Baker set up shop in a converted building down the road (he went progressively off the reservation over the following years, to the extent that he thought Archbishop Lefebvre was overly-liberal, and ended up a sedevacantist. Mel Gibson and his father became supporters and visited). The whole affair seems to me a significant bit of context to the Catholic elements in Attic Term.

One final note - as well as the Attic Term 1976 saw the publication of Michael Davies "Cranmer's Godly Order". Davies, a Welsh grammar school teacher and a convert from the Baptists, was a major figure in the trad community and his book, polemical though it is, is a solid bit of work, properly argued and researched and well-written, and it sold very well - a revised edition was republished a few years ago. The thesis of the book and later volumes by Davies is precisely that advanced by Patrick - that the mass of 1970 has had everything done to it that Cranmer did at the reformation. I have not been able to find out whether Davies' book came out first, but in any event I would not be at all surprised to learn that his arguments were already circulating around the trad community in the form of talks and articles and that Forest was well aware of them.

Re: Patrick's views on the Vatican II reforms?

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

This is amazing, thank you!

Re: Patrick's views on the Vatican II reforms?

[liadnan]

Thanks - I didn't realise I'd wittered on so much until lj refused my first attempt to post and I briefly worried it was poor etiquette to post something so long. But I thought I might as well put it all in one place...

Re: Patrick's views on the Vatican II reforms?

[coughingbear]

I hoped you would do something like this! As an adult I've found Patrick's attitude a bit unconvincing, though probably that's because the adults I knew who had gone through it were mostly OK with the reforms once they had got used to them - though my father, born 1941, certainly cared about the musical effects, which often were dire.

Our local parish priest in the early 1970s did say the Mass in Latin for several years - he did 'parish surveys' at the church door as evidence that the congregation wanted it that way, but I think mostly that was the new Mass in Latin rather than the Tridentine rite, though that did happen on occasion. He was eventually pushed to change to English, probably around 1975.

RE: Re: Patrick's views on the Vatican II reforms?

[liadnan]

On a hunch I went to check where Lefebvre had got to in his slow-motion ... I will say separation rather than schism,,, in 1975.

Wikipedia:

In January 1975 the new Bishop of Fribourg stated his wish to withdraw the SSPX's pious union status. Though Lefebvre then had two meetings with the commission of Cardinals, the Bishop put his intention into effect on 6 May 1975,[54] thereby officially dissolving the Society.[Notes 16] This action was subsequently upheld by Pope Paul VI, who wrote to Archbishop Lefebvre in June 1975. Lefebvre continued his work regardless.[57] In the consistory of 24 May 1976, Pope Paul VI criticized Archbishop Lefebvre by name and appealed to him and his followers to change their minds.[58]
On 29 June 1976, Lefebvre went ahead with planned priestly ordinations without the approval of the local Bishop and despite receiving letters from Rome forbidding them. As a result Lefebvre was suspended a collatione ordinum, i.e., forbidden to ordain any priests. A week later, the Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops informed him that, to have his situation regularized, he needed to ask the Pope's pardon. Lefebvre responded with a letter claiming that the modernisation of the Church was a "compromise with the ideas of modern man" originating in a secret agreement between high dignitaries in the Church and senior Freemasons prior to the Council.[59] Lefebvre was then notified that, since he had not apologised to the Pope, he was suspended a divinis,[60] i.e., he could no longer legally administer any of the sacraments.[61] Lefebvre remarked that he had been forbidden from celebrating the new rite of Mass.[62] Pope Paul VI apparently took this seriously and stated that Lefebvre "thought he dodged the penalty by administering the sacraments using the previous formulas."[Notes 17] In spite of his suspension, Lefebvre continued to pray Mass and to administer the other Sacraments, including the conferral of Holy Orders to the students of his seminary.
Pope Paul VI received Lefebvre in audience on 11 September 1976,[63] and one month later wrote to him admonishing him and, repeating the appeal he had made at the audience

So it was all slowly rumbling towards the precipice at the time. I hypothesise the hierarchy, with an eye to Rome, having a subtle crackdown on the refuseniks who had survived via a blind eye until then. (If anyone was wondering, the Agatha Christie Indult was limited - it allowed the rite as amended up to 1967 and it was dependent on explicitly accepting that the 1970 rite was valid - I think Baker tried to tread a fine line on what he said but the main problem was that he refused, as parish priest, to celebrate the new rite at all.

Re: Re: Patrick's views on the Vatican II reforms?

[coughingbear]

Actually I have just done some more poking around, and discovered that I was eliding two priests (we didn't go to our local parish but the next one along, partly because my mother (a convert) did approve of the changes, or certainly of Mass in English, and partly because they both needed an organist and had a proper organ for my father to play, unlike the wheezy harmonium at our local parish). In fact a priest retired in 1975 and was replaced with the Canon who's the one I remember, because around then we went back. I can't find anything about Fr Gomes on the internet, but he would have been about 66 in 1975 and was replaced by a man of 65 who'd been ordained the same year, 1933, so it seems quite plausible that the diocese heaved a big sigh of relief and said no, no, we couldn't possibly ask you to stay on, you must take a well-earned retirement. You'll not be surprised that it was also 1975 when the first parish council was formed.

I have assumed that 'our old lad' is a retired priest who lives locally. I had wondered if he was a distant relation, but then you'd expect him to live at Mariot Chase, and there's no suggestion of that.

It is a fascinating time! I do remember some slight odd liturgical experimentation, though mainly from Strawberry Hill priests providing holiday cover.

I did - and do - enjoy singing and saying Latin. And I remember carefully learning the Paternoster and Ave Maria as well as the English versions when I was about eight, because I'd come across a scene in a book where a character was asked to say them, so I thought it would come in handy if I ever went back in time.

Um, this is tangentially relevant to Patrick and the various RC views of the period, I suppose!

Re: Patrick's views on the Vatican II reforms?

[occasionalhope.livejournal.com]

Thank your this fascinating summary.

One =question: what was the silent canon?

Re: Patrick's views on the Vatican II reforms?

[liadnan]

Sorry, jargon. The eucharistic prayer, the core of the mass, is the canon. Technically it was never silent but in the old rite the priest said it in a barely audible mutter facing the altar - in a high mass there would be lots of music going on at the same time.

The reason why this was a Thing at Trent is complex but boils down to whether you think it matters for the efficacy of the mass that it is entirely heard - and comprehended - by the congregation.

Re: Patrick's views on the Vatican II reforms?

[occasionalhope.livejournal.com]

Thanks a lot.

Re: Patrick's views on the Vatican II reforms?

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Thank you, this is fascinating! The Irish Catholic part of my family parted company with the church at some point in the fifties, so my hereditary knowledge is non-existant.

Like coughingbear I personally find Patrick's attitude a bit unconvincing, but in the absence of personal knowledge that's because he simply feels like an authorial mouthpiece

Re: Patrick's views on the Vatican II reforms?

[liadnan]

It's fair to say I've met traddy 16 year olds. And indeed I went to trad mass on a couple of occasions when I was that age (though more in a spirit of inquiry than one of devotion, plus I was born 1972, so finding out about it long after it had all happened, which gives a quite different perspective). It's more the terms in which he expresses his views (and his articulacy) that I find unconvincing.

Re: Patrick's views on the Vatican II reforms?

[liadnan]

This is probably a point to confess that though I can certainly see Patrick's many flaws I am painfully aware I probably shared many of them at his age.

Re: Patrick's views on the Vatican II reforms?

[cleodoxa.livejournal.com]

My feeling about Patrick in general is that I can tell from what we know of Forest that he is at least in some ways an authorial mouthpiece, but at the same time I can totally buy him as a particular type of teenage boy.

Re: Patrick's views on the Vatican II reforms?

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

Thank you, this is really interesting and helpful!

Re: Patrick's views on the Vatican II reforms?

[schwarmerei1.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this, other than Forest, my only other encounter with Vatican 2 was an episode of (excellent) Australian TV series "Brides of Christ" http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brides_of_Christ
It was actually terribly affecting as it depicted the plight of nuns who didn't wish to embrace the changes vividly.

Re: Patrick's views on the Vatican II reforms?

[oursin.livejournal.com]

On middle class converts, Letitia Fairfield (Rebecca West's sister) was one of these and on entirely different lines from Waugh and Forest - I cherish her comments on the sleaziness of clerical exhortations to, and policing of, female modesty, not to mention her commitment to the Church's social agenda. But someone like her gets pretty much overlooked compared to Waugh, Forest, Antonia White, etc.

(I also find my beloved GB Stern's approach to her conversion a bit hard to fathom.)

Re: Patrick's views on the Vatican II reforms?

[liadnan]

Yes - there's lots to be said about the complexity of 20th century English converts.

Re: Patrick's views on the Vatican II reforms?

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

On the point of Patrick's awareness of the changes, I wonder if some of this wasn't present in embryonic and slightly inchoate form in The Thuggery Affair, in which Patrick tells the others in the priest-hole about his infant misunderstanding that they were still living in Penal Times (I think he's supposed to be about 6 when he was labouring under that misconception). TTA was published in 1964, so predates the people-noticing-changes watershed, but presumably as a well-informed convert Forest was more alert than most to what was going on. And it does provide some in-universe plausibility for Patrick's precious precocity.

Forest interview

[liadnan]

Since I referred above to an interview in which Forest said Patrick's views [on Vatican II] were hers, and even though at 378 comments there may not be much more life in these chapters (did someone above say they found them slow?) people may come back here, I should note it is at http://www.maulu.demon.co.uk/AF/author/interview95.html

Re: Forest interview

[legionseagle (from livejournal.com)]

Her mother was an Ulster Protestant living in Dublin? Thats -- unusual, given the direction of AF's later religious interests.

Incidentally, it occurred to me thinking over the second half of the Ampleanecdote that clearly 25% can't possibly have been a normal percentage of vocations (and even given the tendency to over-estimate the numbers of a visible minority, there clearly were one hell of a lot of dog collars in that bar) and my former colleague would have graduated in the mid '70s, so I wonder if there is any correlation between an unusually large percentage of boys discovering a vocation in the generation immediately after Vatican II?

Re: Forest interview

[liadnan]

It is curious but I think the contrary is true - the high point was 59 and the post war to 1960 period is the boom time for ordinations generally and then they began to fall. There has been some research on this and I have the numbers somewhere (though they are much more difficult to put together and analyse than one might think - a priest who knew his way around historical stats spent a lot of time going through diocesan and order yearbooks)

Re: Forest interview

[liadnan]

Here we are: Rev Gareth Leyshon's work on Catholic demographics here http://www.drgareth.info/demographics.shtml and a set concerned with ordinations in particular (to be used with caution given the source - it was a salvo in a heated debate on this very topic a few years ago) at http://www.lms.org.uk/resources/statistics-from-the-catholic-directory . I was incorrect about 1959 but I may have been thinking of entries into the seminary - on average it is six years from entry to ordination at the moment. The lms graph for ordinations per 100,000 is probably more significant than the absolute numbers.

Re: Forest interview

[coughingbear]

Good question. I'm sure there are figures somewhere about vocations nationally, but if it's Ampleforth-specific it may well have been Hume's influence.

I've been wondering about where, other than school, Patrick has attended the new Mass. If the Merricks have been having Mass said in their chapel all along and just ignored all or some of the changes, I can see that the sort of school Mass Patrick then starts attending could be a real shock (English, facing the people, guitars and holy pop all at once, though possibly not liturgical dance).