“One of the good things about a Catholic church is that it isn’t respectable…You can find anyone in it, from duchesses to whores, from tramps to kings.” — Dame Philippa Talbot, “In This House of Brede”
It’s a great line because it is true. Uttered by a fictional Benedictine nun in Rumer Godden’s classic novel, the sentiment was probably first voiced to the writer by a live monastic woman.
Over the course of five years, Godden spoke with English Benedictine nuns during long stays in guest houses at Ryde and Stanbrook Abbeys, and quoted them liberally. When one of them tossed off that observation, I imagine Godden eagerly scribbled it into her notebook, recognizing it for the dishy gold nugget it was.
Conclave talk
The line came back to me while chatting with various friends about the upcoming papal conclave and we wondered which Catholic man (hey, he doesn’t have to be a cardinal!) might emerge onto the balcony amid cries of “Habemus Papam!”
Having read an excellent New York Times chat piece in which writer Leah Libresco Sargeant wisely demurred from participating in papal prognostications (“for me, it’s like for alcohol for some people,” she said. “I can’t touch it.”), I considered whether it would be good for my soul to join in on the admittedly vulgar and unseemly practice of handicapping the papabile.
Then, because I am an unholy mess of a girl, I jumped in with both feet, offering mostly gut-feelings and wishes, which are what prognostications come down to, unless you’ve got a helpful bookie, or some really good gossip coming out of Rome. The latter of which I actually did have, but (knowing gossip to be what George Harrison called “the devil’s radio”) I knew better than to take it seriously.
It involved some Roman sneering about one cardinal’s “big send-off” as he headed into conclave, which was deemed (in line with Godden’s Benedictine nun) “not respectable.” But people forget that we are a not-respectable, sometimes downright vulgar church most of the time, because we can be. We drink, we dance, we parade around, we brawl and weep and kneel and adore, and we do it all in public while the world looks askance and wonders why we Catholics can’t just pull it together and maintain.
There is another exchange in “Brede” that fits here. A young female reporter (Godden?) asks if a nun was surprised that God had chosen her for the monastery. “Yes,” the nun answered, “but not nearly as surprised that he should have chosen some of the others — but then God’s not as fastidious as we are.”
Wishing and reality
If I am being confessionally vulgar here — and I am — I might as well admit that I’m basically very bored with the Catholic conversation as currently found, where everything everyone says falls along completely predictable lines with no new thoughts or considerations evident. What I see is mostly ideological wishing.
These people who believe an uber-conservative, Latin-Mass-lovin’ cardinal will become Peter’s succesor strike me as deliberately setting themselves up to be disappointed so they can commence with hating on the next pope, because in this century, in this church, pope-hate has come to feel like love.
Also lost in fantasy are the ones who think the cardinals will elect some heck-raisin’ rope-knottin’ socialist warrior to come a-whompin’ and a ridin’ to “fix” the church. Which would be pretty interesting, if anyone could ever agree with what’s wrong with it.
In all honesty, I don’t care who gets elected. I think this church is meant to be precisely the ignoble institutional mess it is — well-housed cardinals swanning about amid the homeless under the colonnades, frustrated people in the pews wondering why the priests didn’t get Francis’ memo on shorter homilies, disgust at the stubborn fact of our ineffectual dealings with finances and sexual abuse and all our ridiculous infighting.
A tidy church would be a dead church, so we may as well just keep to our ugly, vulgar and unseemly ways, remembering that (somehow) we, as church, have birthed so much wisdom and beauty century after tawdry human century! As Blessed Solanus Casey said, “Blessed be God in all his designs.”
Elizabeth Scalia is editor at large for OSV. Follow her on X @theanchoress.
