Bishops and archdeacons tend to
disapprove of eccentric clergymen, especially in their own diocese. I love them and, as A N Wilson has noted,
there can be few professions which have contained a richer spread of eccentrics
than that of the clergy.
He tells of an incumbent of the same
church for forty years who, among many other eccentricities, became so addicted
to watching television in his latter years, that his congregation would start
the service without him... “The music of the opening hymn would vie with the
strains of oriental music which came wafting down the corridor, at the end of
which sat ‘Father’, fully vested, but unable to tear himself away from a
program designed for oriental immigrants learning English.”
The most pleasing eccentric
clergyman that ever I worked with was Fr James Woodrow CR. He was a thin, grey and ascetic looking
priest who had been a successful teacher of science at the great Anglican
Mission Station in the west of
He was very pious. He would lope down to the Cathedral in
Salisbury every morning in his white cassock, grey scapular, sandals and odd
socks to say a couple of extra offices before anyone else got there. He lived to celebrate the Eucharist. When he did so the congregation was
irrelevant to him and so, at significant moments he would become inaudible as
he whispered quietly to God. This
annoyed the Dean beyond measure, he thrust microphones under Fr James' nose and
remonstrated frequently, but to no effect, and for no reason either, because
most members of the congregation mightily appreciated a priest as their
celebrant who so obviously lost himself in God, even at the cost of him losing
them as well!
He had very odd eating habits,
snatching little meals between bouts of prayer and the saying of innumerable
offices throughout the day. You would
come across a plate bearing a half eaten piece of bread or half an apple with a
couple of bites taken from it, deposited on a pew or stained glass window's
ledge and forgotten in his rush to be off to pray. If he was reading a book
from the Cathedral library he would invariably write in it, In Usum J.W. CR. I
always half expected to find a part eaten boiled egg on a ledge somewhere in
the cathedral with In Usum J.W. CR written on that.
It wasn't only around the cathedral
that he left half finished meals. I once encountered him with a mouse trap in
hand and murder in his eye. He told me
that he had fallen asleep the previous night while nibbling a biscuit only to
wake at two in the morning to find a mouse sitting on his chest polishing off
what he had left uneaten.
Outside his office there was a table
upon which there stood a large and superfluous wooden crucifix. One wet day, needing somewhere under‑cover
to dry the only articles of clothes he seemed to own other than his cassock, a
vest and underpants, he was other‑worldly enough to see nothing at all incongruous or inappropriate
about hanging them to dry on the crucifix.
I am sure our Lord would have smiled with amusement, the Dean did not!
Fr James was a thorough‑going
misogynist, although much loved by the majority of women in the
congregation. When challenged by the
Dean for insisting on washing his own purificators
after the Eucharist, he looked up from the office he happened quietly to be
saying while the staff meeting was in progress, and said "purificators are not to be washed by a mere
woman!"
He once was asked by the dean to
take a wedding. It was the wedding of an
African couple, a modest affair held in the Lady Chapel. Sensing that a wedding by such a misogynistic
and eccentric celibate was likely to be unique, I watched from behind a pillar
with interest. All went well until Fr
James asked the bride to pass her bouquet to her bridesmaid. She did not understand. He asked again, louder. No response.
He asked once more, even louder. Again no response. He
snatched the bouquet from her and threw it over her head, down the chapel!
I used to use him as my confessor
and although eccentric he was a wise one.
I remember once blathering on a bit about my relationship with the Dean
who, although in many ways a remarkably gifted priest, was also something of a
bully‑boy. Before absolving me old
Fr James spoke for a few moments about the necessity for courage in the ordinary
affairs and relationships of daily life.
At the next staff meeting, quite inadvertently, I am sure, he provided
me with a perfect example of what he meant. The Dean asked the five of us on
the staff what we thought of a new scheme of his... canned holy music in the
Cathedral during certain hours of the day. Because we seemed less than
enthusiastic collectively, he asked us for an opinion one by one. “Fr Neaum, what do
you think?” “It seems a reasonable
idea,” I tactfully replied, as similarly did all my colleagues, except for Fr
Woodrow, who had his nose in his office book.
“And what do you think Fr Woodrow?” asked the Dean with some venom. Fr James took his eyes from the book and his
mind off God, looked the Dean in the eye and said, “Ghastly, Father, absolutely
ghastly!” And then went back to his
devotions. It was indeed courage,
because the Dean was an insecure man, and eventually he got rid of Fr James. He couldn't stand being stood up to by so
courageously frail a priest and man.
I loved Fr James. It was wonderful to have such an irascible
old man, such a mixture of saint and curmudgeon, so devoted to the sacraments
and to God, flitting eccentrically about that large and beautiful cathedral. My favourite and most lasting memory of him
is appropriately of him as alter Christus. The Cathedral had a very fine choir, and on
Palm Sunday we sang the Passion Narrative.
The Narrator stood right at the back of the Cathedral in the gallery. Fr James took the part of Christ, standing in
the pulpit. There was a spotlight on him
and he appeared grey, slight, ascetic and almost ethereal. What a tremulous, quavering Christ he is
going to be I thought. Not at all. He filled
his lungs and the voice of Christ boomed forth great, strong, true and tuneful down
the cathedral, as it has from a mere cross down through the ages .... Strength perfect in
weakness.