Advent Group (UK)

Jane Austen once claimed her novels were all contained on “the little bit (two inches wide) of ivory” on which she worked – a commentary, that is, on a thin slither of life. My own little bit of ivory on which I’ll try to construct a farewell to Pat consists of the 3 years and 4 months during which we shared 12 Eastgate Gardens, Guildford (less than 5% of his natural span). But they were a very important 5% for both of us – and strangely fruitful, too: the years during which I learned how to be a presbyter under his guidance, the years during which Pat’s love for Nichola grew and blossomed.

I don’t think it was the pressure of dealing with his harum-scarum new curate (less young fire-brand than bull-in-a-china-shop) that forced him to leave the ministry – in fact I know it wasn’t; though it must have pained him when I scraped the wheel-arch of his Nissan on the gatepost … twice in one weekend; or when I brought home the conman who proceeded to put the lives of both of us in danger (and relieve the parish of a couple of hundred pounds); or simply when I went over the top in a sermon, which probably happened a few times. I haven’t always accused Bishop Cormac of inspired moves, but – looking back - placing me with Pat was an act of no little wisdom. Pat was an ideal mentor.

As you all know, Pat was always understanding, patient, gentle, long-suffering, unassuming. He was compassionate to the poor – no backdoor in Guildford was busier than the backdoor of the presbytery as a stream of homeless folk called for tea, sandwiches and (if they thought they’d get away with it) requests for money. He was a tremendous listener – to people and to God. He was always a man of prayer. His quest was ever the discernment of God’s will: to listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.

It was the desire to serve the Church and the Gospel which led him into the ordained ministry in the first place, but he had the broadest and least clerical understanding of the nature of the Church. The idea (derived, I think, from Renew) that next Sunday’s readers might be invited to the presbytery on a Tuesday night to reflect together on the Scriptures and help the clergy to prepare their sermons was pretty unusual – and could bear replication, perhaps. There were regular sessions for both of us priests at the old Maryvale pastoral centre to pray and to plan. Parish team meetings were always begun with and built on prayer. The Chrism Mass at Arundel was followed not by the clergy bun-fight but by a parish meal for 15 or 20 people. The whole way of ministering was collegial.

Pat’s gifts were many, more than he probably recognised. There was his attention to detail (to the point of perfectionism), which served him, the diocese and the church nationally well in his time as Bishop’s Secretary, as Director of the old Maryvale Pastoral Centre, in his work at Dabcec and in his stint at the Catholic Information Office at the time of the papal visit. There was the will to serve others in all he did; and there was the desire to bring peace – peace of heart for the individual, peace within groups, peace between the nations.

But these gifts didn’t come without a price. He worked long hours, wasn’t terribly good at setting boundaries to his availability, would avoid bringing issues to a head if that meant confrontation. And precisely his openness and attention to others meant that an awful lot of people felt that he ‘belonged’ in some way to them. Pat gave and gave, listened and listened, so that by the early 1990s he was pretty exhausted. 68 years is certainly no great age, but I suspect that had he not left the ordained ministry he would have gone to an even earlier grave.

His finding of human love with Nicola and the need to take more control of his life led him out of parish ministry but never out of the Church. As always, the decision was made and matured in prayer. Many of us regretted it, some of us were angry at it; all might now permit ourselves to thank God for what God made of it; for Pat found happiness, a family, even step-grandchildren, to place alongside his love for Robin and Shirley and their children, for Rosemary, and for all his many friends.

And, miracle of miracles (or so it seemed to me at the time) when he left he walked into a job precisely in the field for which he was trained, as communications officer for Southwark diocese of the CofE, where he made his usual gentle, pastoral contribution and elicited the same affectionate high regard. Let’s call that appointment Divine Providence! (I think we’re still allowed by Rome in these ecumenically straitened times to allow that Providence operates within Anglicanism, too.)

Pat would have made an excellent married priest, were married priests more allowed. Or maybe we should say, he did make an excellent married priest. His whole bearing was as pastoral and priestly as ever. His gifts of listening to others, bringing peace to others, serving others remained undimmed, though he could no longer preside at the eucharist. But he was happy, too.

Conversely, one thing Pat was never good at was being a Monsignor. Rarely can anyone have been less impressed than he was when he was summoned back from retreat by Bishop Cormac to be told ‘the good news’ of his elevation to the ranks of ‘papal chaplains’. I always felt the honour was a burden for him: people placed on him expectations (as administrator, shaker-and-mover, picked-for-promotion, high-flyer, and so on) which just weren’t Pat. He certainly wasn’t ‘my Lord’ when I was his curate; but that’s because he didn’t want to be anyone’s Lord, simply ‘Father Pat’. Perhaps in his next motu proprio Pope Benedict will do something useful like consigning such honorifics to the history books.

We human beings are earth-bound beings who follow a linear logic. We see full-stops, disjunctures, failures and interruptions where God sees one journey, forming one graceful span from our pitfalls, pratfalls and hiccoughs, writing straight with crooked lines, and setting the arc of the Covenant over it all. One priest, two vocations. Le Coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point. Pat became married - and marriage became him - and so marriage became his calling.

So, en fin, thank you Nicola, for that last 12 years of companionship, and to your children, too. Thank, you Rosemary, Robin, Shirley, Frances and Marianne for a lifetime of love and care for him: you know how much you meant to him. Thank you to all his friends and to all he served. Thank you, Pat, for all your years of ministry, prayer, kindness, friendship. Above all, thank God: for this faithful servant – 12 years a good husband, 40 years a priest, 68 years a Christian - who goes before us, marked with the sign of faith.