The Picturegoers by David Lodge

Author:David Lodge [Lodge, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

PART TWO

FATHER KIPLING SLOWLY mounted the shaking wooden steps and placed the monstrance containing the Host above the tabernacle, in the sight of all. As he stepped down and turned to kneel before the altar, he directed a swift, appraising glance at the ‘all’. About twelve worshippers dotted the empty, evenly-spaced pews, like lonely beads on a child’s abacus.

O salutaris hostia

Quae coeli pants hostium,

they sang, without conviction. O saving victim, opening wide the gates of heaven … A motor-cycle roared past the church, tyres hissing on the wet road, insolently drowning the feeble chant. The Saturday Benediction was slowly dying of indifference. Barely twelve people, and those good pious souls who never went to the cinema anyway.

The crusade against the cinema had never caught the imagination of the parish since he had launched it with such lofty aspirations five—or was it six?—months ago. Nevertheless he had persisted with the Saturday Benediction, and Lent had impelled a respectable number to attend. But now, a week after Easter, his failure stared at him from the empty pews. A pitiful dozen worshippers. Where were the other two thousand souls in his parish? Slumped in their cinema seats no doubt. Failure was embarrassing when one had committed the success of one’s mission into God’s hands. It was almost as if God had failed. Surely He didn’t want people to go to the cinema? Yet nothing had gone right for the crusade. There had been that unfortunate controversy in the local Press with the manager of the Palladium, when he had been compelled, under pressure from his bishop, to issue a statement to the effect that all films were not necessarily harmful in the eyes of the Church. The parishioners had required no further encouragement to flock back to the picture-palace. They really didn’t seem to see anything harmful in it. Mr Mallory had said to him once, ‘With all due respect, Father, I think you’ve got to be more broadminded these days. What shocks you now—and would have shocked me when I was a lad—it just rolls off these kids like rain off a duck’s back.’ ‘Broadminded’ was a popular word, a word he just couldn’t understand. The context was always a plea for tolerance of something which he had been taught to regard as sinful.

Mr Mallory had advocated switching Benediction back to Thursday night. He said more people would come to Benediction then. He said everybody liked to go out and amuse themselves on Saturday night. He said everyone had to have some relaxation. He was a good man, but typical of his fellow-parishioners. Like converted pagans, they were reluctant to give up their old gods. But did they not realize that the God of Israel was a jealous God? Apparently his wife did, for she was in the church this evening. But their children were not. The Church of Christ was rapidly becoming the Church of middle-aged women. Soon it would be said in England as it was said on the Continent, that a good Catholic is a man whose wife goes to church.

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