The picturesque medieval village in the Vaucluse area of Provence in France seemed deserted on Sunday morning as I made my way towards the old church, climbing cobblestone steps within the ramparts. But when I entered the church – built in a pretty Romanesque shape, with statues of Our Lady and Joan of Arc, I found a flurry of women busily preparing for the Sunday Mass. They were organising the music around the church organ, distributing the prayer sheets, setting up the altar, kissing each newcomer as she arrived, and nodding “Bonjour, Madame” to me, an evident stranger.
The church gradually filled up with more women of all ages, who looked busy and purposeful. I saw one older man, but even he seemed to be in the care of a woman. Finally, the priest appeared – a cordial countryman in early middle age who commutes between two village parishes – and he, in turn, was kissed on both cheeks by the womenfolk doing all the organising. Mass was to be fairly well attended, and as the church filled out, a couple of younger dads were visible with their families, and there were some teenage lads, too. The priest (and the sacristan) in this French village church were, indeed, men: but it was obvious that the church community itself was run and organised by women, and in an evidently confident manner. Women were also in the majority of the congregation.
This scenario is probably repeated in many locations, but sometimes you only really notice something when you are a visitor or an outsider. There are many debates about women being more involved in directing and guiding the Catholic Church, and I’m all in favour of enabling that to happen. But perhaps we should open our eyes and see that in many parishes, women really do run the community as well as many of the devotional aspects of the church. And in the debate about whether women should be ordained, perhaps we have sometimes been asking the wrong question: not how can we get women to be priests – but how can we get more men into church?
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We have become familiar enough with the jihadist war cry “Allahu Akbar” – “God is Great”. It has (sometimes) become a dismaying signal that an attack of some kind is about to take place. Yet an elderly Englishman said it to me in the street last week. He is growing infirm, and I asked how he was keeping. “Getting along,” he said cheerfully. “I’ll be fine. God is great.” I know the old chap is a churchgoer and for him the phrase is consolatory, not triumphalist. The Irish version is “Ah, sure, God is good.” This, too, is said as a note of consolation, sometimes self-consolation, and a way of hoping for the best and cheering oneself up. There is a note of both acceptance and philosophical endurance about it. Things will turn out just as they are meant to be. We’ll be all right. We must trust. There’s a divine wisdom we will come to understand.
The late Mary Holland, that fine journalist, said it to me at the end of her days, when we were (as it turned out) bidding farewell. She maintained she had given up her childhood faith, but all the same, the last thing she said to me was: “Ah, sure, God is good.” It’s sad to see “God is great” presented only as a war cry, when that, and similar expressions, contain other, gentler meanings.
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The annual church service for clowns, in full clown regalia, always looks so beguiling; it was held last weekend at All Saints Church in Haggerston, in the Hoxton area of east London. They should invite the Monagasque royals to this some time, since it is held in honour of the famous clown Joseph Grimaldi, who was one of their clan. A love for the circus seems to have been transmitted unbroken through the Grimaldi generations. Princess Stéphanie, now 49, especially loves anything to do with the circus. She’s often photographed surrounded by circus clowns (the Italians seem to have the best costumes). In the great tradition, Joseph Grimaldi could apparently make anyone laugh, though he himself was a man of melancholy mood.
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