Father Michael Daly was supposed to be the breath of fresh air St. Anselm's so badly needed. The parish had been suffering from pernicious boredom and frustration under the auspices of an ailing, semi-senile Father Keane. But it took a collapse, and a letter to the Bishop from the Parish Committee, to force the change. Yet still there were some older parishioners, who saw the move as disloyal. I suspect it might have been nearer to the truth to say that they found it disturbing to see their own frail mortality reflected in the old priest's demise. Father Michael, a disgustingly young, fresh, handsome priest who preferred to use his first, rather than his surname, rubbed salt in their wounded pride.

Naturally the bishop had agreed to allow Father Keane to remain at the parish house with Father Michael to show him the ropes and support him in his first attempt at being parish priest. But rather than appreciating the bishop's compassion, there were some who saw it as condescending.

  Father Michael installed himself in the Parish House in the hot, sweltering summer. He engaged Daddy's services in setting up a sink with running hot and cold in the upstairs storeroom that he felt would be an ideal bedroom cum study. Daddy told us all about him. Shouldn't have I'm sure, but still we sat enthralled as he related the secrets he had discovered whilst odd jobbing for the new priest. Daddy was shown the masses of old, thick, highbrow books for which sturdy shelves were needed. He had opened one or two and been shocked at their controversial contents. Foreign books, translated of course, on radical subjects like the necessity of divorce, the acceptability of contraception, and worst of all, a leaflet which had fallen out of a hardback theology tome on the virtue of married priests, using the Anglican Church as an example.

   A scandal.

As a member of the Committee who had asked for this gust of fresh air, Daddy began to feel he might be responsible for the eventual moral downfall of St. Anselm's into Sodom and Gomorra. Mam almost burst a blood vessel laughing. Kitty too, when Mam told her.

  “I married a fossil,” Mam told Kitty.

  “Sure aren't most men fossils. It's only when they've experienced a life of deprivation like our Father Michael that they even dare to consider a more modern approach to life.”

  “My mother always said it was because they can't have children.”

  “And because they can always run off to the pub when the going gets tough.”

  “Aye, you're right there.”     

  But apart from his books, Father Michael had an unusually large amount of lay clothes which he explained away, unasked, to Daddy, by saying that when he went to America during the summer to visit his brother he liked to dress casually.

  More scandal.     more

 

 

 

 

 

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