A Lost Tribe
a novel by William King (Lilliput Press, Dublin, 2017).
This novel derives from William King’s experiences as a clerical student and priest in the archdiocese of Dublin during the last fifty years.
Through his character Fr Tom Galvin, a 70-something parish priest, he narrates the story of the Catholic Church in Ireland as it struggled to cope with the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, a rapidly changing milieu, and the clerical sex-abuse scandals.
The scene is set with Fr Galvin arriving for the annual diocesan priests’ retreat. Seeing students who were helping to organise it, he is reminded of a September many years earlier when he and more than 20 other young men had arrived at the seminary.
Discipline
They soon became aware of the discipline which would be required of them in their future lives. Rigged out in Roman collars and black soutanes and given their places on a seniority list they had the rules of the college read to them by the rector who emphasised the crucial importance of obeying the rules, the college authorities, and (after ordination) the archbishop.
In a further flash-back Galvin recalls cycling in twos with classmates to lectures in UCD where after three years they graduated in philosophy and other subjects.
Strangely he recalls nothing about the lecturers or professors, but does remember the firm direction they were given not to socialise with the lay students, nor to join the various college societies.
Galvin muses how he and his classmates “let off steam” by grumbling. The main target was the dean of discipline. Strict on minutiae such as deportment and dress one could receive a reprimand from him for wearing a biretta (the square hat worn by priests in the pre-Vatican II period) at a jaunty angle.
As Galvin recalled, the dean’s attempts to impose a veneer of sophistication on some of the rough diamonds in his charge was never going to succeed.
Galvin vividly remembers the banter and repartee of his fellow students, some of whom were openly ambitious for preferment, others less so.
Galvin’s arrival at the seminary with his classmates coincided with the opening of the Second Vatican Council. Three years later it concluded and proposed substantial changes and reforms in the liturgy, an updated approach to catechesis, and a new emphasis on the promotion of moral imperatives in society at large.
During the Council’s deliberations there were occasional press reports that the requirement of celibacy in the priesthood would be relaxed.
After the Council, when this did not happen, some of Galvin’s classmates left the seminary to pursue other vocations, while others did so after ordination.
However, as is clear from Galvin’s recollections of his life and that of his elderly colleagues, celibacy was a serious challenge for all of them and not only for those who left to get married.
William King’s descriptions of some of the episodes in the life of ‘Fr Galvin’ are somewhat racy, almost with shades of the Graham Greene novels of the 1950s.
Throughout he focuses on the underside of the priesthood and laces his narrative with generous dollops of cynicism.
There is an underlying dismissive theme with regard to the present leadership of the Church and a naïve assumption that the abolition of celibacy would solve most of its problems.
There is no doubting the author’s comprehensive knowledge of his subject.
His pen pictures of the archbishop of his time and of his high-profile and popular contemporaries are superb. Dublin priests will also have little difficulty in recognising some of the other characters featured.
The book is beautifully written and for the author’s fellow diocesenists cannot be but a page turner.