The Collar
Authors: Frank O'Connor
The Collar
Stories of Irish Priests
Frank O'Connor
C
ONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
by Harriet O'Donovan Sheehy
I
STRUCK
the board, and cry'd, No more. I will abroad. What? shall I ever sigh and pine?
My lines and life are free; free as the road, Loose as the winde, as large as store. Shall I be still in suit? Have I no harvest but a thorn To let me blood, and not restore
What I have lost with cordiall fruit? Sure there was wine Before my sighs did drie it: there was corn Before my tears did drown it. Is the yeare onely lost to me? Have I no bayes to crown it?
No flowers, no garlands gay? all blasted? All wasted? Not so, my heart: but there is fruit, And thou hast hands. Recover all thy sigh-blown age
On double pleasures: leave thy cold dispute
Of what is fit, and not; forsake thy cage, Thy rope of sands,
Which pettie thoughts have made, and made to thee Good cable, to enforce and draw, And be thy law, While thou didst wink and wouldst not see. Away; take heed: I will abroad.
Call in thy deaths head there: tie up thy fears. He that forbears To suit and serve his need, Deserves his load.
But as I rav'd and grew more fierce and wilde At every word, Me thought I heard one calling,
Childe:
And I reply'd,
My Lord
.
GEORGE HERBERT
(1593â1633)
I
NTRODUCTION
F
RANK O'CONNOR WAS OFTEN ACCUSED
of being iconoclastic â of being in a perpetual state of annoyance with the Catholic Church. It was even written that âthe sight of the collar was enough to make his hair stand on end'. It is true that he had little time for the institutional Church's pedantic and legalistic moralising, and even less for its Byzantine secrecy and triumphalist and authoritarian voice. But towards the actual men set apart by the collar â those called âfather' by people who are not their children â he had an attitude compounded of amusement, respect, curiosity and, above all, compassion.
Unikely as it may seem, he felt a certain kinship with them. In a review of J.F. Powers's book
The Presence of Grace
he wrote:
The attraction of the religious life for the story teller is overpowering. It is the attraction of a sort of life lived, or seeking to be lived, by standards other than those of this world, one which, in fact, resembles that of the artist. The good priest, like the good artist, needs human rewards, but no human reward can ever satisfy him.
Perhaps this explains the large number of stories about priests in his work â the first written when he was in his thirties, the last, unfinished and untitled, the year he died. Taken as a whole, they not only seem a salute from one maverick to others, but also show an interesting development in his understanding of the difficulties of the job. Some of the stories are funny â sly, wry evocations of the antics, foibles and vulnerability of cranky celibates. Others, however, look with respect at the difficulties inherent in the vocation, and the misunderstandings, failures and disappointments incurred in trying to live it. But perhaps the best of them attempt to look behind the collar at the loneliness of those âtrying to live by standards other than those of this world' and to show the struggles this can involve â the fight to overcome vanity and arrogance and quick-temperedness, the desire for a different, more ordinary life, the boredom, the longing for a woman's tenderness, the fierce urge towards self-justification and dogmatism.
Perhaps, too, the stories reflect the ambiguity in O'Connor's own attitude, torn between empathy with the men and antipathy towards the institution. Because of this they have been interpreted in very different ways. Take, for example, âNews for the Church'. When it was first published in the
New Yorker
magazine, the editors received a lengthy telegram from the pastor and congregation of a Catholic church in Brooklyn stating that they were cancelling their subscriptions because of the âblasphemous attack on the sacrament of penance' in O'Connor's story. Three weeks later the same editors received a letter asking them to thank Frank O'Connor for his story because it had reminded the writer â a lapsed Catholic â of the healing power of the sacrament of penance, as a result of which he had gone to Confession for the first time in twelve years. And a feminist friend of mine heartily dislikes the story because she feels that O'Connor sympathises with what she sees as the priest's âcruel and bullying behavior'.
âAn Act of Charity', one of O'Connor's last stories, shows where his sympathy lay when it came to a conflict between an individual priest and the Church. A friend had told him about a priest's suicide and he wanted to write the story, but found it difficult to imagine what had driven the man to reject the Divine Mercy he'd dedicated his life to serving. Since O'Connor never wrote about something he couldn't understand, he continued to mull it over, until one day he said: âYou know, the worst of it is that the poor man's final protest, whatever it was about, was never
heard,
because the Church covered it up to avoid giving scandal.' He could appreciate the Church's attitude, like Father Fogarty, who at one point says: âBelieve me, it's the best way for everybody in the long run.' But ultimately, O'Connor wasn't at all sure that it was the best way. Nor, in the story, is Father Fogarty. There is a great deal of Frank O'Connor in Father Fogarty â an emotional, compassionate man with a profound sense of his own frailty and inadequacy, who needed human rewards but was never totally satisfied by them.
But, of course, there were also actual priests, friends, whose stories O'Connor made his own and whose characteristics are blended to create a Father Jackson or a Father Devine. Perhaps his best friend was Father Tim Traynor, whom Father Fogarty most closely resembles. I'd like, therefore, to dedicate this book to the memory of Father Traynor, about whom O'Connor once wrote: âHe gave me an understanding of and sympathy with the Irish priesthood which even the antics of its silliest members have not been able to affect.'
H
ARRIET
O'D
ONOVAN
S
HEEHY
M
AY
1993
U
PROOTED
1
S
PRING HAD ONLY COME
and already he was tired. He was tired of the city, tired of his job, tired of himself. He had come up from the country intending to become a great man, but he was as far as ever from that. Lucky if he could carry on with his teaching, be at school each morning at half nine and satisfy his halfwitted principal.
He lived in a small house in Rathmines. His window looked down on a little oblong of garden. The trams clanged up and down outside it. The house was kept by a middle-aged brother and sister who had been left a bit of money and decided to end their days enjoying themselves in the city. They did not enjoy themselves and regretted having sold their little farm in Kerry. Sometimes about midnight Finegan woke up to the fact that another day was passing, and sat at the piano and played through Moore's
Irish Melodies
with one finger. Miss Finegan did not even play. âAh, Mr Keating,' she said with a sad smile, âyou will always be happy. You have your dreams.'
Keating felt that now he had little else. He was a slow, cumbrous young man with dark eyes and a lock of dark hair which kept tumbling into them. When he spoke he stammered and kept running his big hand slowly through his hair. He had always been dreamy and serious. Farming had meant nothing to him. Sometimes on market day he could be seen for hours in Nolan's little shop among the bags of meal, stepping from one foot to another as he turned over the pages of a book. After his elder brother Tom had decided to enter the Church there had been a fight between himself and his father about the teaching. His father had not helped him. Nor even his mother, who felt that in some way he intended it as a slight on Tom. And Tom himself, no book-lover, joined in the conspiracy. With an obstinate, almost despairing determination he had fought his way through the training college to the city, and the city had failed him. In the evening he might still be seen before the bookstalls on the quays, drooped, powerfully built, shambling; obviously a country lad, but no longer seeking a certain path to glory.
It had all seemed so clear! But he had not counted on his own temper. He was popular enough, but popular because of how many concessions to others, from the children up! He was hesitant, gentle, slow to see round a thing and slow to contradict. He felt that he was constantly underestimating his own powers, but he could not straighten out his confused and passionate thoughts.
And ideals! He had enough to set up a federation of states but they were all at war with his slow, cautious, country wits. Gentle, submissive, suspecting everyone, he was glad if he could create a momentary good impression, no matter what it might cost afterwards in loss of self-esteem. He did not drink, smoked little and saw dangers and losses everywhere. He accused himself of avarice and cowardice. His favourite story was of the country man and the pillar-box. âWhat a fool I am! Put me letther in a pump!'
He had only one real friend, a nurse in Vincent's Hospital, a bright, flighty, vivacious girl. He was fond of her, but something â shyness or caution â kept him from going farther. Sometimes he planned excursions beside the usual evening walk, but they never came off.
He no longer knew what had brought him to the city but it was not the prospect of his solitary bed-sitting room in Rathmines, the shelf of books beside the window or the occasional visit to the pictures with Nora Delea; the long evenings of rain, the solitary musings. To live, that wasn't enough. He would have liked to leave it all and go off to Glasgow or New York as a labourer, and it was not the romantic quality of the gesture which appealed to him; it was the feeling that only when he had not a roof to his head, only when he had to cadge a bite to eat, would he see what all his ideals and emotions meant and where he could fit them in. When he thought of this he looked at his hands. They were huge, powerful hands, which could pull a heavy boat or hold a plough in the straight.
But no sooner did he set out for school next morning than the fancy took flight. He wouldn't do it. Put his letter in a pump, indeed! He would continue to be submissive and count his salary and wonder how much he could save. And his nature would continue to contract about him till in ten years' time it would tie him hand and foot.
2
Tom wrote, suggesting that they should go home together for the long weekend, and he agreed. Tom was a curate in a small country parish.
He arrived on Friday night and on Saturday morning they set off in his old Ford. It was Easter weather, pearly and cold. Tom stopped at several hotels on the way and called for whiskeys in which Ned, in an expansive mood, joined him. He had never quite grown used to his brother, partly because of old days when he felt Tom was getting the education he should have got, partly because he was a priest. Tom's ordination seemed in some strange way to have shut him off from the rest of the family; even his parents, who liked him far better than Ned, found themselves ill at ease with him.