Towards the end of Graham Greene’s <em>The End of the Affair</em>, Sarah’s mother tells Bendrix that she always hoped her daughter’s secret Catholic baptism would “take”, in the way a vaccination does. As my eldest son becomes increasingly resistant to attending Mass, even espousing a nascent atheism at times, with the odd explosive “I don’t even believe in God,” I am nurturing the same hope.
I hope I have done enough to plant the seed, and by tending it with our own family offices: Grace before lunch and supper, making a May altar by the statue of Our Lady with peonies and early roses. Setting up the crib scene in Advent, fish (of the battered variety if possible) on Fridays. He is only 10, so cannot yet be sure what he believes – or doesn’t. When even Richard Dawkins professes himself a “cultural Christian”, things can’t be that bleak.
When I can get my son to Mass, he will happily come up to the altar rail with me. At children’s Stations of the Cross in the cathedral on Good Friday, he seemed thoroughly engaged, even possibly – whisper it – a little pious. Though that may have been the promise of lunch at YO!Sushi afterwards. A contrary child, he doesn’t like sushi but does enjoy the theatrics of the conveyor belt – perhaps he will grow similarly in his faith.
I frequently resort to bribery: five pounds to spend in the arcades on the seafront if you come to the Vigil Mass with me. “It’s not bribery, it’s incentivising,” says my husband, who converts minutes spent doing music practice into time on the laptop for Minecraft or coding. I have pledged a games console in exchange for his Grade 3 French horn certificate.
It is comforting to know that I’m not alone here. A good friend is bribing her teenage daughter to be confirmed, with cash – perhaps surprisingly, on the advice of her parish priest. Bribery is “his recommendation for most things”, she divulges. Otherwise – apart from Christmas and Easter – her daughter has completely jacked it in. “I find it utterly, desolatingly bleak,” says my friend.
The Anglican theologian Theo Hobson has written about paying his teenage daughter to attend church for her confirmation. “I don’t expect her to come out of classes a fervent believer,” he wrote in the Spectator in 2021. “Real belief matures slowly and co-exists with scepticism.” Religion might be something “she ignores for a decade or two, then finds she is glad she has access to”.
Sadly, unless you find yourself raising the next Little Flower, Mass for most children – like a lot of classical music, I find – is branded “boring”. The calm poetry of the liturgy and the reassurance of the responses rather eludes them and – especially for boys – the requirement to sit still for so long seems somewhat unreasonable.
For older children, there is little in the way of Instagram-able moments and it’s not exactly cool. Though now that religion is virtually counter-cultural, that might change.
The cry, “Oh no, not Radio 3!” goes up on the school run when it’s my turn to choose the music. I had a bit of a breakthrough with my eldest son with the Horrible Histories ’Orrible Opera prom at the Royal Albert Hall last summer. As this most inaccessible of art forms was broken down expertly and hilariously for the young audience and the Queen of the Night began her aria, my Radio 3-resistant son snuggled up to me and sighed, “Isn’t it wonderful?”
I’d like to hope for a similar breakthrough with Mass. One friend suggests altar serving as a way to engage a child’s interest. Sadly it’s a hard “no” from my son. At least in the pew he gets to read his Brick Bible and fiddle with Lego, is his thinking. His godfather, a priest, notes that “boys crave identity” and sometimes it can be as simple as making it clear that “we are on a side in the history of our country”: the monasteries, St Thomas More, the penal laws, etc. But my most recent attempt at this – driving over an hour to see a priest hole (which definitely piqued his interest) at a famous recusant house – was thwarted by the dead hand of the National Trust. Neither the priest hole nor the chapel was open, nor expected to be any time soon.
Another friend recommends getting together with other parents to lay things on and celebrating what feasts we can, such as St Nicholas on December 6. Dutch children get a little present in their shoe the night before, which goes down well. As I said, a little bit of bribery doesn’t go amiss.
Of course, in <em>The End of the Affair</em>, Sarah moves towards Catholicism as an adult without ever having known she was baptised. With our reluctant offspring, we pray that their very visible baptisms, our ongoing efforts – not to mention the cash-for-confirmations – will one day “take” just as strongly as their childhood vaccinations.
