I was once told that Evelyn Waugh bought Combe Florey, his house in Somerset, because it was sufficiently far from a Catholic church for him to be excused attending the post-Vatican II Mass he so despised.
Sadly, I fear this anecdote may be, as we journalists say, too good to check. Whilst the “buggering up of the Church”, as Waugh put it, undoubtedly exacerbated his choleric rage, contributing to his death, aged 62, Combe Florey was purchased in 1956. The new rite wasn’t promulgated until the end of 1963.
Still, as I contemplate how to get to Mass – when the closest church is a 25-minute drive away and my preferred one 40 minutes – one son has rugby training, the other a children’s party, my young daughter morphs into Damien in The Omen at will (once projectile vomiting as we pulled up outside the church), I spend quite a lot of time wondering how I can weasel out of the Sunday obligation. Oh, and there is Sunday lunch to be cooked, too – and re-heated stew rather than a roast is met with pained expressions and heavy sighing.
As the late, lamented nature writer Ronald Blythe pointed out, traditionally, only those Anglicans who could afford servants to prepare lunch went to church in the morning; if they cooked the food themselves, they went to Evensong. Pre-lockdown, living in London, we were spoilt with a smorgasbord of Sunday Mass times over a full 24 hours (25, if you squeaked in with the 7pm at the Oratory on Sunday evening). But here, deep in the north Norfolk countryside, it’s 10.45am or bust.
My husband, who isn’t Catholic, but enjoys throwing heavy weights around with something approaching religious fervour, once had a personal trainer who’d say that the hardest part of going to the gym was getting through the door. With increasing sadness, I find this to be the case with Mass. Frankly, the suspension of the Sunday obligation during Covid was a bit of a blessing. But can private devotions cut it now it’s back to business as usual? For guidance I call a friend; the priest who presided at our wedding and baptised our children.
The Sunday obligation is there because it’s “the most fundamental and based on the commandment of worshipping God on the Sabbath”, he counsels – “but included in its application has always been the understanding that if you can’t get to Mass, you can’t get to Mass, but you have to fulfil the obligation in another way”.
Can popping into the village church (so convenient, being hard by our house) ever count, I ask, tensing in anticipation of the inevitable “No!” And I know this already, for though we sometimes go to local church services in an attempt to feel part of this scattered community, these fine medieval buildings – though built by Catholic hands – leave me stone cold. As Waugh’s creation Cordelia Flyte says, when the chapel is closed at Brideshead, they are “just an oddly-decorated room”.
What about the Combe Florey clause, though. Does it exist? My friend reads to me from Davis, the classic text for parish priests, published in 1935, and we shriek over some of the excuses for missing Mass. These include “having no suitable clothes” or if it would “give great offence” to one’s husband. Farmers during the lambing season are also excused. Those “who live at a distance of three miles from the church, or an hour’s walk, or even less if the weather is bad” are also excused (there it is!) although the distance “would be greater for those who can use cars, tramways, railways, cycles, without occurring expense which they can ill-afford”.
We are multiples of three miles from any church and I can “ill-afford” to fill up my superannuated Land Rover, though I confess that I am still hazy as to whether this constitutes a viable excuse (I prefer “dispensation”). My friend reminds me that then, as now, those who are sick, who attend to children or have domestic duties, are excused. Technically, I suppose I may be excused. But talk of technicalities makes me think of Mr Loophole, the motoring lawyer who can get you off your drink-driving charge, if only you can afford his fees. Better to flex my feeble metaphysical muscles and get through that door.
Here, a bit of stick – in addition, of course, to the carrot of salvation – is useful, and comes from doing the rounds of senior schools, with applications and entrance exams now less than a year away. Near the top of our list is a hotly-contested Catholic academy, which requires a priest’s signature on its supplementary application form. It’s time to start batch-cooking those Sunday lunchtime stews.
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