The Pilgrim by Paul Almond

Author:Paul Almond [Almond, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Red Deer Press
Published: 2012-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Saturday morning arrived at last: the day of the big races. I found Lorna in a high state of excitement at the prospect. What did that augur for me? And I was also disturbed by a conversation I’d had the previous evening when the couple I had married in October, Howard Gallibois and Gladys, told me a troubling story. Gladys went to church in Red Bay, part of Tabacher, and one Sunday the Roman Catholic priest, Father Poudrier, had taken her aside after the service. She had told him that she was now with child and as agreed with her Anglican husband, if it were a girl it would be brought up in the Catholic faith. That was the practice hereabouts, and indeed in the Gaspé where I came from. Couples in mixed marriages often went to different churches.

Imagine her consternation when the priest gave her a big dressing-down and said that her children would be bastards because she had not married in “God’s church.” She was living in sin and the priest feared for her immortal soul. He even went so far as to say that unless she confessed her willful deed and received absolution, she could not take Communion.

Well, this was indeed a situation that needed dealing with. But how? Here again, amidst all the theology, New Testament, ethics, and biblical history that I had absorbed, nowhere was I told how to deal with a priest of a different faith within the bounds of one’s own parish who was dog-in-the-manger about his pronouncements.

I tried to put this situation out of mind and let myself enjoy the proceedings as I walked down to the temporary stage thrown up by the enterprising Phillip Vatcher and his team of workers from the school and some local men. In the winter, it is true, there is not a lot to do, once the seals had been harvested and their pelts stretched, many high on the walls of houses. Women made the garments in winter, not men. Of course, men went back into the interior, hunting or cutting stove wood, but this week, in view of the coming races, most of them had elected to stay home, so Phillip had plenty of help.

I was pleased I had arrived back in time, and had been asked by my two wardens if we could sit together and discuss the rest of the winter. I had decided that Clayton, having absorbed a good bit of English, history, and geography on the trip, should stay and even teach a class of younger children while I was away travelling on my rather long western pastoral trip. This meant no driver for me and both wardens were mightily concerned.

“Not even Mr. Bishop went alone, Mr. John,” Thomas Bobbitt said. “With all due respect, that’s some risk you’re taking, going all that way by yourself. She’s one big trip.”

“But our young people here need the teaching,” I countered. “And I feel perfectly fit. I’ve actually been planning just such a possibility.

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