Boys are like hedgehogs. Really?

I have had a recent correspondence with Fr Tim Dean of the Diocese of Westminster. He told me that his comment on my blog had not been posted, which was bizarre because I've just found one from him dated 5 May 2014. Anyway, we exchanged emails which I reproduce below without further comment. 

On 11 May 2014 16:08, Tim Dean wrote:

I wrote a comment on the Millstones website, but as you know, I thought I had posted it but it's disappeared. So I'll send this as an e-mail, because I'm certainly not going to write it three times! In fact this will be briefer than my original musings.

I went to Cricklade in the fifties but I can't quite work out the exact years. I am older than you, (72 last month) so maybe that's an indication. I was there in the year of the Queen's Coronation (!) I remember that very well. We put on a special concert in the Village Hall and a few days later we invited Cricklade's OAPs in for tea. They seemed a bit bewildered, sitting at our little tin tables. But the boys enjoyed serving them tea and cake.

Brother A was the Head. He was basically kindly and not, I thought, over-familiar with the boys. At least, no boy of my aquaintance ever said anything to that effect. It was well-known that the Brothers each had a leather strap but it was rarely used. In fact, I don't remember the strap being used at Cricklade EVER. It was used at Prior Park which I later went to and where I spent all my senior school years. But it was largely kept as a deterrent. Again, the 1950s were another age - corporal punishment had not yet been outlawed by our society and was not seen as brutalist in that post-war era. Boys are very hardy and if you were foolish enough to get the strap you quickly "moved on" as the saying goes nowadays and "got over it".

I and my year were happy at Cricklade. We neither liked nor disliked the Brothers. Boys tend to accept the status quo in most situations. We kept small pets like hamsters - mine were always dying of pneumonia - I learned a bit of pottery in the village, in the summer we walked through the meadows to swim off the riverbank. Athough an insignificant stream I believe it was actually the Thames.

Brother Hayes introduced riding. I was the first boy to fall off a horse and break my arm. As you say he would sometimes play us 78 rpm bakelite records on a preposterous gramophone with a giant horn on the landing. There wasn't much of a selection. I remember some mawkish songs like "In a Monastery Garden". 

We were each allowed to keep a tin of Golden Syrup in the Refectory to make the breakfast porridge more palatable. There was a Matron who was quite motherly, as I recall.

For me, the great thing about moving up to Prior Park College, Bath was the beauty of the location. A palladian mansion with its own 18th Century landscaped gardens and man-made lakes overlooking the city of Bath. We had the CCF, good drama taught by a BBC actor, Hedley Goodall, An excellent art teacher - Ronnie Palmer from whom I learned a great deal about the Arts. It was Palmer who pushed through the idea of the Choir and Orchestra performing Faure's Requiem in the College Chapel - quite ambitious for those days. I didn't get great exam results - just average - but that was entirely my fault and it shames me still. The Brothers were mad-keen on rugby which had no appeal for me - but our teams did well in competition with other schools.

Entering the world of work I spent many years in London and later worked overseas. In 1984 after returning to England I started training for the priesthood in Rome and was ordained by the late Cardinal Basil Hume at the age of 50 in 1992. I recently retired, although there is much to keep me busy.

I don't recognise the Cricklade you have described in Millstones. I am not saying bad things didn't happen in your time. I wasn't there. The particular Brother you describe must have been in residence at some stage and been a total disaster. (From time to time, all boarding schools are vulnerable to appalling 'teachers' who get into the system when they should have been excluded.) And I am glad I must have moved on before his time. But because I was happy at Cricklade I must reject as unreasonable the following photo caption from Millstones:

Prior Park Preparatory School, Cricklade, scene of miseries suffered by generations of Catholic children at the hands of the Christian Brothers

That reads as absurdly melodramatic and doesn't make any sense to me. In addition - NOWADAYS - both the Prep School and the Secondary School are doing very well under lay supervision. They deserve our support and affirmation. I went back to Prior Park last year for a lunch and was very impressed by what I saw. But I can't say Millstones serves any worthwhile role in support of today's schools.

Have you watched "Philomena"? Wonderful film, based on the same sad realities of a former age.

Regards,

Tim Dean

Diocese of Westminster

I replied as follows on 11 May 2014: 

Many thanks for your contribution, Tim. All I can say is that I am really pleased that you enjoyed your time at Cricklade. I would hate to think that all its ex-pupils had as bad a time as we did.

In view of that, I will change  the caption you mention to 'scene of miseries suffered by many Catholic children...'  I do mention the pleasant aspects of Cricklade; I enjoyed the countryside, and Br A struck me as a kindly man compared with Br B. But he did have those wandering hands, I'm afraid, and two of my contemporaries had to endure them. I don't know what his problem was, but the current spotlight on child abuse proves that it was shared by many. And no doubt always has been.

I agree about the spectacular scenery at Prior Park being an uplifting aspect; 'Toffee' Palmer was my favourite teacher and I still remember singing in the Faure Requiem and feeling that it was one of the best things I'd ever done.

You may like to know that a group of Prior Park College ex-pupils, some three or four years younger than me, had vile experiences there but that was apparently because of bullying by other pupils. It took them some years to recover from these experiences. Today, of course, one would say that the College Brothers at the time did not perform their pastoral duties as they should have done. But bullying in those days was endemic.

I do also mention on Millstones at http://millstonesblog.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/so-i-didnt-imagine-horrors-of-cricklade.html the fact that Cricklade is now "a happy and fulfilling institution" and my introduction to the site does warn that it focuses on allegations of abuse by the Christian Brothers.  That is because the abuse that my brothers, some of our contemporaries and I myself suffered made a deep impression on us.

You say that you hardly knew the strap at Cricklade. I think you were just lucky that Daly was not the headmaster. His habit of strapping boys was imitated by other Brothers, though I cannot remember any of them actually beating a boy repeatedly around the head as Daly did on one occasion.

I am afraid that as I progressed in my education and discovered the damage that religion has done to milllions with its violent abuse of human rights - I did specialise in 16th century history of course - I abandoned any idea of continuing to practise Catholicism. I am still greatly moved by the religious music of J.S. Bach, the idea of Christ's sacrifice and so on.

You say that "boys are very hardy" and can "move on."  I do not think that this view is held by many people nowadays. It would imply that boys are tougher mentally than girls. Anyone with experience of co-education would question this. All young people are sensitive to a greater or a lesser extent.

Millstones is intended as a warning about the past rather than as a support for today's schools. Dwelling on the evils of the past, such as writing about world wars, can of course be seen as a constructive way of educating future generations. So in that sense it can be seen as a support.

I haven't seen Philomena but will look out for it.

It's possible that your comment was too long to be accepted by the blog. I will add it as a separate post. Could you please confirm that you are happy to be named.

Best wishes

Michael

Fr Tim wrote to me the following day:

Hmmm.... as a late vocation Catholic priest I am disappointed that you have walked away from the Catholic Church on the basis of human failure and wickedness - evil though it is. So that cancels out all the good the Church has done, is doing and will do? I don't get that. I would always need to know where faith in the revelation of Jesus Christ was leading me - towards the Church or away from it? Why would anyone reject the concept of the Redemption of the world by the Son of God on the basis of failures on the part of a certain percentage of the human membership of the Church? Makes no sense to me. Particularly at a time when Western atheism is increasingly belligerent and arrogantly convinced that it has reason on its side. Our Holy Redeemer needs all the friends he can get at a time like this.

I am not politically correct so I don't accept modern British mores without question. I am pretty sensitive myself - I used to 'weep myself to sleep' for several nights at the start of each term at Prior Park - but can honestly say that I did "get over" negative stuff at school, usually by the following morning. I am not condoning anything that falls short of pastoral care at school but I do believe that boys are hard-wired to bring down the shutters instinctively when things are going against them. Although they are children, nature does not leave them defenseless. Like hedgehogs that know when to roll themselves into a ball. I have no idea if girls are different, although I suspect they may be in important respects.... but I am no educationist. I spent my working life in a business environment.

Incidentally, there was NO bullying at Prior Park in my many years there. I would have hated that and would certainly have remembered it with a sense of smouldering resentment. I have no such recollections.

Once again - I seem to have been at these schools at a charmed period in their existence compared to you and your companions. 

"Millstones is intended as a warning about the past". Er, what does that mean? You can't warn somebody about a train wreck that happened yesterday - calamitous though it was. The past is the past. There needs to be a cut-off point, when the dead are entrusted to the mercy of God. 

The religious orders - the teaching orders - have been in retreat for a generation. Their day is gone. It seems to be the will of God that this should be so. As to how the Catholic Faith is to be made available to new generations of youngsters - that's a major challenge for the Church of today. And if you happen to be someone like me, who believes that Catholic kids have a right to receive knowledge of the Faith from their elders, it is is a burning issue.

Yes, you can quote anything I've written as long as you don't just fillet it or cut and paste. I am unlikely to want to contribute further on the Web.

 I should be signed off as Fr Tim Dean.

With the best will in the world, I think you were very unlucky to be at these schools at a given time. And I was very lucky to be at the same schools when they were pretty much OK.

What else can I say?

Regards,

Tim




Fr Tim wrote again on 19 May to reiterate his belief that boys are like hedgehogs  and can use defence mechanisms to protect themselves in cases when "things are going against them."  

He also believes that had he been in an abusive situation similar to the one I described he would have asked his parents to remove him from the school.  

I'm sure that if young victims of sexual abuse had been as confident and articulate  as Fr Tim evidently is people like Jimmy Savile would have been unmasked and jailed many many years ago. 

But sadly, life is not like that.  

Fr Tim may be happy with what the Catholic Church represents. Looking back on it as an extraordinary pantomime with its bizarre beliefs and nonsensical rituals I am quite happy to have rejected the Church and most organised religions. And that's without taking into account the violence and sexual abuse carried out by Christian Brothers that I've described on this site. 

 

19 May

Many thanks, Michael,

The two links you have sent show that there is no 'black hole' into which messages disappear as I had suggested. But I do find that just to go to the site and see what people may have posted is far from easy. Without those links you posted I would never have found anything.

My image of the hedghog was intended to sum up something I believe quite strongly - that children are endowed by nature with defence mechanisms which they employ almost unconsciously. There's also the support of other kids - and some kindly adults - which should not be underestimated. Children are a great help to one another in difficult circumstances. I am interested in getting at the truth of these matters while suspecting that this is going to be very difficult. Exaggeration makes for a better tale. I am certain that bad things happened but not as a constant pattern as the blogsite suggests. If I had been under the kind of pressure described I would have asked my parents to remove me from Cricklade - or indeed Prior - and send me somewhere else. So would the others in my year.

In those days, use of the strap was grotesque and outdated - a hangover from a very different age of disciplining children.The brothers clearly did not realise that times had changed and that they were not in Ireland. But every schoolmaster in my day (1950s) was free to use the cane. I often heard it discussed when I was a child. And since I had never seen a cane, I remember being a bit shocked to hear people at other schools talking about it from experience.

Don't you feel like rejoicing that the days of corporal punishment, once considered normal by most people are now gone forever?

As for the brutal headmaster you refer to - yes, I can believe he may have been mentally ill. But you may have noticed we share this planet with a number of people whose presence in our lives we could well do without. All we can do is pray for them. As Christ did when hanging on the cross. 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.'

What are you saying - that God can forgive if he wants to, but he can't expect human beings to do the same?