When I was 11, I played at saying mass. With one of Mum’s old satin skirts around my shoulders, I bobbed up and down in front of the bedroom chest of drawers, my makeshift altar, uttering gibberish “Latin”. Our parish priest, Father Cooney, noted my religiosity in church and, to my mother’s pride, had the local bishop assign me, aged 12, to a junior seminary.
Junior seminaries (mostly abolished in the mid-1970s) educated young priests-to-be, especially in Latin, and protected them from the temptations of the flesh. There were no girls, and no women (save for “enclosed” scullery nuns); no newspapers, pop music or TV. We were encouraged to practise “custody of the eyes” in the holidays, avoiding the sight of women’s legs, bosoms and bottoms. Ironically, the closest I got to an adolescent sexual encounter was when one of our seminary priests proposed that he should inspect my penis during confession in his room. I declined. Had my hormones not run riot in my seventh seminary year, lusting after Grace Kelly on illicit escapes to the cinema, I might be running a parish in the East End of London today. That’s where Father Denis Hall, a seminary companion of mine, is a parish priest. And that’s where I recently spent a week discovering what I had missed, and how he has coped in the wake of a scandal that has seen more than 20 Catholic priests charged with paedophile offences in Britain, and many more in Ireland.
Father Denis Hall’s domain, St Stephen’s, Manor Park, is a parish of 3,000 souls in the borough of Newham. The main artery is Romford Road, north of East Ham, with its halal butchers, kebab takeaways and scruffy emporiums selling everything from burqas to bustiers. Its high-density Edwardian terraced streets comprise a mix of 70 or so ethnicities – especially Asians, Afro-Caribbeans, Vietnamese, Chinese and Poles.
Father Denis, a bit fleshy nowadays, greets me at the doorway of his 1920s presbytery (priest house), noisily sited between the bus stop and the Catholic primary school playground. As I enter I’m greeted by religious knick-knacks crowding every surface. The walls, institutional cream, are plastered with portraits of the new pope, the old pope, the Virgin and the Sacred Heart. There’s a smell of boiled cabbage and incense.
When I was a junior seminarian, a lay person never set foot inside the presbytery. Denis’s kitchen is packed with chattering parish helpers enjoying their elevenses. There’s Sally, an elderly housekeeper, refilling the teapot; Sister Anne, a nun in trousers, checking a list of confirmation candidates; Martin, a tough-looking old Afro-Caribbean, is the sacristan. They all live out, but Denis has two priests living in, one from Kerala in south India, the other from Cameroon. Priests are bringing the Gospel to us from countries once considered pagan missionary lands.
Denis had a keen sense of humour as a boy, but he was quiet and introverted. Now he’s cheerfully garrulous and extrovert, and sees the funny side of most things. “When I was ordained,” he tells me, “I had all this pent-up energy. I was like a racehorse charging out of the stalls.” He was one of 22 priests ordained in our seminary in 1965, and there were four other seminaries in England with similar numbers. Only six of his year are still working in the ministry. Three died; the rest left to get married. Recruits to Britain’s priesthood have dwindled. In the 1960s there were typically a hundred RC ordinations every year. Nowadays, five or six is considered a good year.
“Surviving as a priest,” Denis tells me, “depends on keeping your faith simple and taking on everything the life throws at you; always being available.” He has slowed down, briefly, he admits, only twice in 40 years, after each of his heart attacks. “It’s my lifestyle,” he says. “Always rushing around, bad food, no exercise, pushing myself to the limit each day… never taking a proper holiday.” Ten years ago he had a quadruple bypass. He is hurrying me through to the sacristy, a long room that connects the presbytery with the church, to prepare for a children’s mass. As he emerges onto the altar, the kids greet him enthusiastically. He has a line of banter, a bit like Frankie Howerd without the innuendo. The children sing and pray and offer each other the sign of peace, and he tells them they are wonderful. I count among some 300 children no more than 12 white faces. Among the teachers, strategically placed to keep good order, there are several Muslim veils. After mass I stand with Denis at the back as the children return to the school next door. They look up at him eagerly, hoping for recognition and approval; he knows them all by name, has a word for most. Some smaller ones can’t resist touching him.
Back in the sacristy, we talk about child abuse and the priesthood. “It’s tragic,” he says. “There was a time when the children of the parish were seen as a substitute family for a priest. But you don’t demonstrate physical affection for children any more, and you don’t dare be alone with a child.” He tells me that a mother once called him a “pervert” in anger, after her child had been excluded from school for bad behaviour. “Unfortunately, it’s now an accusation that can be made with impunity. That’s how a lot of people think of us nowadays.”
I’d kill for a cup of tea, but there’s no stopping. “We’re late for the inter-Christian thing!” he cries, hurrying me out into the street. Christian denominations, once hostile towards each other, are seeking protective strength in solidarity in inner-city areas. St Stephen’s stands opposite one of the largest Hindu temples in London; down the street there’s the mosque. The buzz phrase “Christian unity” spells extra work, extra meetings, in a priest’s already crowded day.
We join a lunchtime ecumenical service in the neighbouring St Mary’s Anglican church for a series of meditations on the resurrection. Denis stands out in his black trousers, black bomber jacket and roman collar. He is enthusiastic for joint denominational activities, but he is not about to give ground on his distinctive Catholic clericalism. We finish with lunch at two: powder soup and dry french bread.
I’m still dying for a cup of tea, but Denis is off in his Megane on a sick-call round. First, an elderly woman dying of cancer on the top floor of a block of flats. She’s overjoyed to see her parish priest. Denis produces from his trouser pocket a tiny silver box containing holy-communion wafers. As he places the sacrament in her hand, her face lights up. For a moment she seems to forget her evident pain. He talks to her for a while – jovial chitchat – but he turns down an offer of a cup of tea and a biscuit. I notice that he’s doing all the talking. As he returns to the car, he says: “You have to control the conversations, otherwise you’d never get away. If you take tea from one, you have to take it from all of them.”
He has four more calls to make, punctuated by a stop at the bank to deposit the Sunday collection money (lots of silver, not many notes) and a trip to the local supermarket for the week’s shopping. As we walk along the high road he is stopped at least six times by parishioners, all
of whom express respect and seem to seek his approval. But there are dissidents. An elderly Irishman mutters “Scum!” as Denis passes. A bunch of teenagers give him a withering look. He seems cheerfully oblivious.
