The Dean’s rooms were on the top floor of a tiny quadrangle off the front court. The chaos reminded Powerscourt briefly of the office of the editor of the Grafton Mercury.
‘I only moved in here yesterday,’ said the Dean. ‘My apologies for the chaos.’ Powerscourt saw that there was some form of order in the confusion. All the books were stacked neatly under the shelves by the side of the window. The pictures had been placed around the room underneath the places where they were going to hang. A large pile of papers, sermons perhaps, or unmarked undergraduate essays, were on top of the desk.
The Dean himself was a tall figure in his middle forties with jet black hair to match the colour of his cassock. He wore a silver crucifix around his neck.
‘Thank you so much for taking the trouble to talk to me when you are in the middle of moving house,’ Powerscourt began, ‘and I fear you may find my questions somewhat unorthodox.’
‘Fire ahead,’ said the Dean cheerfully.
Powerscourt had already decided that there was no point trying to navigate his way towards the crucial query. He went straight to the point.
‘Can you be an Anglican priest and a Roman Catholic priest at the same time?’
The Dean stared at Powerscourt. Powerscourt said nothing.
‘God bless my soul,’ said the Dean. ‘Perplexed undergraduates reading theology – and most undergraduates reading theology these days are very perplexed indeed, Lord Powerscourt – ask me some pretty strange questions but I’ve never been asked that before. Just give me a moment to think about it, if you would.’
The Dean stared hard at the opposite wall. Powerscourt noticed that the Dean seemed to have a large collection of watercolours of derelict and desolate abbeys in the north of England. Fountains, he thought he could decipher at the bottom of one painting, Rievaulx on another. Desolate since the Dissolution of the bloody Monasteries, he said to himself. Were they never going to leave him in peace?
‘I think this might be the answer,’ said the Dean finally, his hands twisting at the chain of his crucifix for inspiration or consolation. ‘In theory, the answer has to be No. You have to swear allegiance and fidelity to one particular faith when you take holy orders. But in practice the answer might be Yes. It might be possible, if the person concerned is prepared to lie to their superiors and believes that the sins committed in terms of one religion are outweighed by the advantages conferred by the other.’
Powerscourt had suspected that the answer might be something like this. No certainty anywhere.
‘And do you think, Dean, that it would be possible to live this double life for years and years?’
The Dean’s fingers were off again. Powerscourt wondered how often he had to replace the chain.
‘I fear the answer is the same. In theory the answer would have to be No. In practice, if you were very careful and took great care to conceal your true allegiance, there is no reason why you should not keep up the fiction for a long period.’
‘I realize,’ said Powerscourt, ‘that this is an impossible question. In these circumstances, of a man masquerading, if you like, as a Protestant priest and a Catholic priest at the same time, which is likely to be his true position?’
‘Would he regard himself as a Catholic or a Protestant, do you mean?’ said the Dean quickly.
‘I do.’
Once again the Dean stared at his wall. Faint sounds of somebody practising the organ drifted in from the Chapel next door. Powerscourt thought it was Bach.
‘This time,’ the Dean said finally, ‘you’ll be relieved to hear that I think the answer is more clear cut, even if it’s not absolutely definitive.’
Certainly not, thought Powerscourt. In this world of scholarship and perplexed theology nothing was ever likely to be definitive.
‘Let me give you an analogy, if I may,’ the Dean went on, ‘between republics and monarchies. I don’t believe nations become republics because they want to be republics, if you see what I mean. They become republics because they don’t want to be monarchies. Republics, by definition, are non-monarchies. Anglicans are Anglicans to some extent because they don’t want or weren’t allowed by their governments to be Catholics. Anglicans to some extent define themselves by being not Catholics. Previous centuries have seen a great deal of anti-Catholic hatred whipped up in this country. Even today the celebrations of Guy Fawkes and Bonfire Night are hardly a celebration of Christian unity. But Catholics don’t define themselves by not being Anglicans, if you follow me. They have older, historically longer continuities. So I think it would be very difficult for this imaginary person to be really an Anglican purporting to be a Catholic. I think it is more likely to be the other way round, that he is truly a Catholic pretending to an Anglican.’
‘Or, perhaps,’ said Powerscourt, ‘that he was an Anglican and converted to Catholicism but forgot to slough off his Anglican skin, as it were.’
‘I doubt very much if he could have forgotten to get rid of the clothes, actually,’ said the Dean. ‘It would have been a deliberate act of policy, though why anybody would want to do such a thing I cannot imagine.’
‘One last question, Dean.’ Powerscourt was thinking about his return journey to London. ‘Is there much traffic between the two religions, Anglicans defecting to Rome and vice versa?’
‘There has always been a certain amount of traffic since the time of Newman and the Oxford Movement,’ replied the Dean. ‘Some people even buy season tickets for the journey. There was one wealthy man who travelled between the Anglican and the Catholic faiths and back again in the 1840s. Just before he died he reconverted to Catholicism.’
‘Is Newman still important? I thought he’d been dead for years.’
‘I don’t know very much about Newman,’ said the Dean, gazing at the great pile of papers on his desk. ‘Student at Trinity Oxford, Fellow of Oriel, Vicar of the University Church, prime mover in the Oxford Movement which tried to revive his Church, dithered about for a long time before he converted to Rome. Made a Cardinal as you know towards the end of his life. I do know a man, mind you, who knows all about conversions on the religious railway line. He’s writing a book on Newman’s legacy and his influence on subsequent converts. Man by the name of Philips, he’s a Fellow of Trinity, Newman’s old college at Oxford. Would you like me to write you an introduction?’
‘I should be more than happy to call on him tomorrow afternoon, if that would seem acceptable,’ said Powerscourt and headed for the stout oak that guarded the Dean’s quarters. He was almost on his way down the stairs when the Dean called after him.
‘Do you mind me asking, Lord Powerscourt, about the individual who might have been a Catholic and an Anglican priest at the same time? I presume he was purely hypothetical?’
‘He is not hypothetical,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Would that he were. He is alive and well and going about his business in the West Country.’
‘God bless my soul,’ said the Dean in horror. His fingers flew once more to the chain that held his crucifix.
Old friends of Johnny Fitzgerald would have been most concerned about his behaviour on the day of Powerscourt’s departure to Bristol and Cambridge. Many would simply have dismissed the reports as impossible. Others would have doubted for Johnny’s sanity.