Eschewing the option of driving at 120 km/h on the M8 motorway, I drove the old road from toward Dublin – Horse and Jockey, Littleton, Urlingford,  Johnstown, Cullahill, Durrow, Abbeylex.

The fading light of the February evening seemed to belong to August rather than February. The colours in the sky were full and rich, there seemed a mellowness in the air.

This was the Ireland I had most loved in former times, a land of gentle people living in a soft landscape, a place of space and beauty.

Visiting the remains of the 12th Century abbey at Kilcooley, I had stood at the gate of Kilcooley church. There had been a temptation to take a photograph of the telephone number of the church warden. I knew his name. A man who represented the Church of Ireland at its best.

I had walked on. A telephone call would be pointless. I am persona non grata. I had a relationship with a woman to whom I was not married. Inquiries about appointments were ignored or rebuffed. To have contacted the church warden would have been only a cause for further embarrassment.

It was listening to a YouTube recording of Charles Dickens’ Bleak House as I drove along that made me realize that I would not wish to return to parochial ministry, even if it were an option.

Dickens laid bare the hypocrisy of the Church and embraced a Christian faith far closer to Jesus than any gaitered prelate would ever be.

There is a compassion in his narration of the street child Jo that expresses a theology more profound than that of any mitre wearer.

After a short relapse into sleep or stupor, he makes, of a sudden, a strong effort to get out of bed.

“Stay, Jo! What now?”

“It’s time for me to go to that there berryin ground, sir,” he returns with a wild look.

“Lie down, and tell me. What burying ground, Jo?”

“Where they laid him as wos wery good to me, wery good to me indeed, he wos. It’s time fur me to go down to that there berryin ground, sir, and ask to be put along with him. I wants to go there and be berried. He used fur to say to me, ‘I am as poor as you to-day, Jo,’ he ses. I wants to tell him that I am as poor as him now and have come there to be laid along with him.”

“By and by, Jo. By and by.”

“Ah! P’raps they wouldn’t do it if I wos to go myself. But will you promise to have me took there, sir, and laid along with him?”

“I will, indeed.”

“Thankee, sir. Thankee, sir. They’ll have to get the key of the gate afore they can take me in, for it’s allus locked. And there’s a step there, as I used for to clean with my broom. It’s turned wery dark, sir. Is there any light a-comin?”

“It is coming fast, Jo.”

Fast. The cart is shaken all to pieces, and the rugged road is very near its end.

“Jo, my poor fellow!”

“I hear you, sir, in the dark, but I’m a-gropin–a-gropin–let me catch hold of your hand.”

“Jo, can you say what I say?”

“I’ll say anythink as you say, sir, for I knows it’s good.”

“Our Father.”

“Our Father! Yes, that’s wery good, sir.”

“Which art in heaven.”

“Art in heaven–is the light a-comin, sir?”

“It is close at hand. Hallowed be thy name!”

“Hallowed be–thy–”

The light is come upon the dark benighted way. Dead!

Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, right reverends and wrong reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, born with heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us every day.

Right reverend? Not one of them who contemplate injustice, inequity and suffering and respond with platitudes.