Bad Catholics Read Free Page A

showed no signs of dawn and the street lamps gave out a comfortless light. Christmas was only three weeks away but this was where the Irish working-class lived and when daylight came and curtains were pulled back there would be very little show in the windows to welcome the great Feast. Money was too scarce to spend it on entertaining passers-by.
    Eventually they arrived at the parish church. Two other people arrived at the same time and they smiled acknowledgment at each other as they made their way out of the darkness into the light of the church. This six o’clock Monday Mass would last no more than twenty minutes. Other weekday Masses were more leisurely and began at the more comfortable time of eight o’clock, too late for most workers but as early as the new parish priest would permit. He liked the sound of his own voice and a quick Mass with no sermon was not something he approved of. The Monday congregation was always quite considerable, about forty to fifty people.
    The brightly lit church was warm and welcoming after the wet, dark streets. Jimmy and his mother blessed themselves at the holy water font just inside the door and Jimmy snatched off his cap, tucked it in his mac pocket, and ran up the aisle and into the sacristy.
    A harsh voice met him.
    â€˜Don’t you know better than to run in church? Have you no respect for God’s house? Get out of here and go back and walk like a good Catholic and don’t run like some wild animal.’
    Jimmy turned and slowly left the sacristy. Father McGinty had shouted at him loud enough for everyone in church to hear. He walked slowly down the aisle, his head bent in shame. Those already in the church, sitting or kneeling, avoided looking at him and embarrassing him further.
    He wasn’t ashamed so much for himself, it was his mum he felt for. Everyone would see him walk down the aisle and then go back to the sacristy and know that Father McGinty had said he was a bad Catholic, no better than an animal. And Father McGinty was a clever and important man, a priest, so he must always be in the right. Jimmy added the shame his thoughtlessness had brought on his mother to his growing store of Catholic guilt.
    Suddenly she was at his side, taking his hand.
    â€˜Come on,’ she said in a voice unnaturally loud for the inside of the church, as if she was making an announcement, ‘We’re going home.’
    Jimmy’s brain turned slowly all the way home. This was a completely new thing, a new and totally unexpected star in his private sky. He couldn’t be sure, of course, but he had got the idea that his mum had defied Father McGinty, defied the priest, the parish priest, who had been to Rome and seen the Pope.
    The only other person he had ever heard of who had done something as terrible as that was Tim Folan’s father. He had heard his dad tell his mum that Mr Folan had sworn at old Father Shillitoe one night in the parish club and had never set foot in the club or the church since. Tim Folan and his mum now arrived just after Sunday Mass began and left just before it finished and always sat at the very back. Would that happen to him and his mum now, he wondered. Had his mum really defied the priest and would they have to sit right at the back of church on Sundays? And what about his altar serving, would he ever get to be a server? It took some thinking about. The seven years, eleven months, and twenty-eight days of Jimmy’s life had not prepared him for this.
    â€˜What will you tell Dad?’
    â€˜I’ll tell him you weren’t well so I decided you should come home.’
    So that was it, he was right, his mum had defied the parish priest and now she was going to have to tell Dad a lie. Now she would have to go to Confession and if anything happened to her before she could get to Confession she would go to Hell for ever and ever and never see God. And it was all his fault because he had run like an animal in God’s