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#1: EBD's religious views Author: Jennie, Location: Cambridgeshire

Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2007 2:22 pm
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Right, I know EBD was deeply religious, and she converted to Catholicism, but where did she get her rather odd views from?

Jo Maynard often refers to Christ as being the son of a humble carpenter and lowly village maiden.

Joseph might have been a carpenter, but he was a descendent of King David, ( a rod from the Tree of Jesse) therefore Jesus was himself of royal blood, and Herod certainly would not have been worried by the son of a nobody and order the massacre of the innocents for a child of two humble parents of no perceptible lineage.

And, since Judaism is transmitted by the female line, wasn't Mary then just as noble, well born as Joseph

None of the Gospels that I have read calls Mary a daughter of a humble family, so where does this idea come from?

ETA: I'm not nailing my colours to the mast, but, whilst far from being an atheist, I dislike most forms of organised religion, and have very little time for them, so cannot really follow EBD's reasoning.

Last edited by Jennie on Mon Aug 20, 2007 2:41 pm; edited 1 time in total

#2: Author: Róisín, Location: Ireland

Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2007 2:29 pm
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From memory (don't have the book to hand) I think that Helen McClelland found the period around the time of EBD's conversion to be the foggiest and least-documented. Previously, I thought that converted to Catholicism meant that EBD thought very deeply about such things and that this was a major step in her life on a personal level. But then it came out that Nelly, her mother, had converted too, and seeing as she had always dominated over EBD for most of her adult life, I think now that EBD's conversion is diluted in my mind, ie was she, to an extent, just following where her mother led?

Apart from the conversion, I don't think EBD was the type of Christian who interpreted or questioned the bible - I would imagine she was focussed on faith and on good works (which makes it sound like she was always more of a Catholic in her views, but really, I'm just speculating...). I imagine that she didn't find the details of the bible as important as the way that the morals of the bible were carried out in modern life.

Interesting topic, must go away and think about it more. Very Happy

#3: Author: Alison H, Location: Manchester

Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2007 2:53 pm
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Helen McClelland said that EBD's holiday in Pertisau probably influenced her view of Catholicism - presumably meaning as a way of life rather than in terms of theology - which I found interesting because, whilst I personally don't subscribe to any form of organised religion, I found the deep-seated Catholicism of Tyrol (Kitzbuhel in my case) very moving.

Maybe Jo was just trying to make Rosamund feel better Confused

#4: Re: EBD's religious views Author: JackieP, Location: Kingston upon Hull

Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2007 9:37 pm
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Jennie wrote:

None of the Gospels that I have read calls Mary a daughter of a humble family, so where does this idea come from?

My only theory on this is that as Joseph was a humble carpenter in her eyes - then only a girl from a humble family would marry him, as more noble families would not consider him worthy for their daughter...

Makes you wonder what EBD would make of all the religious conspiracies that are around these days.

JackieP

#5: Author: Kathy_S, Location: midwestern US

Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2007 11:32 pm
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I can't speak with any authority on the history of the carpenter/village maiden portrayal, but I'd say it's a fairly standard view in some faiths. God is not just made man, but a man of humble means, as symbolized by birth in a manger, entering Jerusalem on a donkey, etc. It is quite true that the Davidic ancestry is also emphasized, as required for fulfillment of prophecy, but, in my experience, religious ed materials did place the Holy Family firmly as villagers in Nazareth. In terms of specific sources that might have been available to EBD, one that comes to mind is the George MacDonald poem that begins,

Quote:

O Lord, at Joseph's humble bench
Thy hands did handle saw and plane

.
On the Marian side, one example might be the hymn, "Sing of Mary, Pure and Lowly," dated 1938. I wonder if some of this language might ultimately have derived from the bit of the Magnificat (common Latin name for the part of Luke that begins "My soul magnifies the Lord....") that goes, in the Vulgate: Quia respexit humilitatem ancillae suae. [For he has regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden] Of course this humilitas has more connotations than as a statement on social status, but Mariologists do regularly contrast Mary's lowly rank in worldly terms with her status as 'holy Mary, mother of God.'

#6: Author: Mrs Redboots, Location: London, UK

Posted: Tue Aug 21, 2007 11:19 am
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The only real glimpse into Joseph's status comes from when Jesus is teaching in his home town, and the locals say,

Quote:

"Where does he get all this wisdom and the power to work these miracles? Isn't he the son of the carpenter? Isn't Mary his mother, and aren't James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas his brothers? Don't his sisters still live here in our town? How can he do all this?"

Although someone did tell me that the word translated "carpenter" is the Greek "technion" (transliterated), from which we get our word "technology" and "technician". Joseph wouldn't just have worked with wood, but would have designed and built entire houses and other structures.

#7: Author: Jennie, Location: Cambridgeshire

Posted: Tue Aug 21, 2007 3:40 pm
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Well, the gospels were not written until 40/50 years later, so perhaps the downgrading of Mary's and Joseph's status was done deliberately to minimise Mary's role in their son's life, and especially to downgrade Mary in order to keep women in their proper place, according to the unsaintly Paul. This is of course, to ignore the fact that there would be no Christian religion without the wealthy women who supported Jesus in his ministry, and the body of Christian worshippers after his death, and this attitude was almost certainly supported by the RC church with it's emphasis on a male ministry, with women being seen as very much the inferior sex.

#8: Author: Róisín, Location: Ireland

Posted: Tue Aug 21, 2007 5:30 pm
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While those points are fair enough, I don't think they are something that EBD would have been interested in even considering - though of course that's only my speculation as who knows what went on in her head. I think she was all about the application of a set of received Christian morals, rather than the investigation of the text that gave Christians those morals.

#9: Author: Sarah_K, Location: St Albans

Posted: Tue Aug 21, 2007 5:32 pm
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To start with your last point first Jennie, tradition says that Luke's Gospel was written from stories told by Mary and she wasn't written out really. There are plenty of women in the gospels and in the rest of the New Testament too.

As to your original post. It certainly isn't an unusual idea that Mary and Joseph were poor/humble people. It's a fairly standard assumption, made in prayers and hymns and motets and devotionals, so it's not surprising Joey picked up on it.

Further more it's entirely likely to be correct to a certain extent. There's a very long time gap between King David and Joseph & Mary, so there's no reason to think that everyone who could trace their lineage back through that family would be of a high status particularly. Of course when it comes to figures who are so central to a lot of people's faith (Mary in particular) aspects of their lives tend to get exaggerated, but the point Joey was trying to make, that God's mother wasn't a rich or noble lady, stands.

#10: Author: Joan the Dwarf, Location: Er, where am I?

Posted: Tue Aug 21, 2007 6:31 pm
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The idea of being "of the House of David" is very different from being eg of the House of Windsor! Kinship was a lot more spread out. Put it this way: we're told that Mary, Joseph, Bump and donkey go to Bethlehem because that's where "House of David" people are being registered for the census. And when they get to this big city it's full up - of descendants of David. So not exactly royalty there in the worldly sense.

And that's the point - all of the "lowliness of his handmaiden... all generations shall call me blessed", "cast the mighty from their thrones and exalted the humble and lowly" etc etc etc ad nauseam et ad finitum in the bible and scholarship for 2000 years since then, is saying that God's structure of what's good is not our social structure. The Kingdom is this world turned upside-down. Anyway, who did God hang out with when he incarnated? Hint: he didn't end up at many polite dinner parties (the ones he did go to he had a tendency to disrupt).

#11: Author: Mrs Redboots, Location: London, UK

Posted: Tue Aug 21, 2007 7:32 pm
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Jennie wrote:

Well, the gospels were not written until 40/50 years later, so perhaps the downgrading of Mary's and Joseph's status was done deliberately to minimise Mary's role in their son's life, and especially to downgrade Mary in order to keep women in their proper place, according to the unsaintly Paul.

Um, actually, I think you'll find, if you read the Epistles more closely, that Paul is actually amazingly liberal and forward-thinking in his treatment of women, compared to the normal ways in which they were treated in that time and place. Particularly in the way Jewish women were treated at the time.

In fact, one of the main reasons he wrote his Letter to the Romans was as a letter of introduction for Phoebe, a deacon in his then church, who was going to Rome.

#12: Author: Sunglass, Location: Usually London

Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2007 5:32 pm
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I always find her ecumenism at the CS likeable, and rather forward-looking for its time. She goes into a lot of detail about how the girls divide for prayers and for Sunday services, but, given that she's very interested in presenting a kind of ideal schoolgirl piety, we never hear about what the school offers as religious education. There's the odd reference to Miss Annersley teaching Luke's gospel for Scripture lessons, but nothing, for instance, about whether they had sect-specific religion classes, or about Catholic girls making their first communion or confirmation, and the large amounts of preparation necessary for both. When was time found for this?

#13: Author: Mel, Location: UP NORTH

Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2007 6:05 pm
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That's something I've always wondered about Sunglass. I went to a Catholic school in the 1950s/60s and religious teaching played a very important part. There is no evidence that the girls learned anything apart from Scripture and as they boarded for most of the year, there would be little time for parents to do much instruction.

#14: Author: NineLivesBurra, Location: York, North Yorks

Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2007 6:41 pm
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I think part of the idea behind Mary being lowly comes from the general idea of the status of women of the time.

As for EBD's religious views, I know many converts to catholicism, my mother included, who are extremely devout and the simple trusting faith of the people in the Tirol would have done much to increase that in EBD.

I went to Catholic schools throughout my entire school life and I remember that whenever we had First Communion/Confirmation classes, these were done outside of school hours. Perhaps, the girls who were being prepared for any of these sacraments, whether RC or CofE, had classes in the afternoon/evening, perhaps during the hobbies club time etc?

#15: Author: Sunglass, Location: Usually London

Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2007 6:57 pm
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It's just that religion, both C of E and Catholicism, and belief and prayer, both private and as part of school ritual, is so important to the CS books, that it seems odd that there are no references to the sacraments the girls would have had to have lengthy preparation for, or to have to assume they took place out of hours, so to speak. (I also went to a Catholic school for my entire education, and we never once had an out of school religion class - in fact, during the years we made our first confession and communion, and our confirmation, we spent enormous amounts of the school day preparing, rather than on lessons!)

The only rationale I can think of is that she definitely tries to minimise the differences between the C of E and Catholicism - and that references to the girls being separated for, say, confirmation classes (as communion would only involve juniors or older converts), would have drawn attention to doctrinal differences etc. There's also never any reference to different national varieties of Catholicism - I imagine that, say, the English Catholic teachers and jack Maynard would be a very different type of Catholic to the Tyrolean peasants...

#16: Author: NineLivesBurra, Location: York, North Yorks

Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2007 7:17 pm
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Hmmm, Yes, I see what you mean. I'd never looked at it from that perspective. There seems to be more of the guides/brownies and their badgework than there is of the sacraments and yet the religious ethos is so important.

Perhaps she was trying to minimize the differences. I wonder if she just expected people to assume that such things occured? When the majority of the books were written, Church attendance, and usually twice, was de rigeur so perhaps we are meant to assume that everything that went with it happened.

Your point is valid though. For such an important part of their lives it is nto really talked about. The few times the girls talk about their faith they seem to do so "shyly".

#17: Author: Katherine, Location: London, UK

Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2007 7:40 pm
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NineLivesBurra wrote:

Your point is valid though. For such an important part of their lives it is nto really talked about. The few times the girls talk about their faith they seem to do so "shyly".

I wonder if that was a device to avoid the girls from seeming too pious to readers. It allowed EBD to keep their feelings genuine and important but not labour her point.

#18: Author: Sunglass, Location: Usually London

Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2007 7:46 pm
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Oh, I think you're right - especially about the 'shyly' thing. It's as though she's trying to mediate between her own obvious piety and what she assumes to be her putative reader's possible lack of interest - converts in my admittedly limited experience tend to be far more zealous than the cradle variety of any religion. I don't know anything about the circumstances of EBD's (or was it her mother's?) conversion, but my impression is that it would have been far more unusual for a lower-middle-class Englishwoman to convert then than for someone further up what was still a fairly rigid social hierarchy - and there's still a residual suspicion in this country towards Catholics, as seen recently when Blair was said to be converting. Maybe she was trying to make the CS variety of Catholicism seem mainstream and non-cultish. Certainly one of the odder aspects of the CS is that everyone (bar Naomi Elton?) is, with a bit of encouragement, quite devout.

I'm always sorry we don't see Joey's conversion, although it was set up well in advance, with her willingness to go to Catholic services etc. But I wonder, given the war and the circumstances of Jo and Jack's marriage, whether she would have had time to take instruction and thus for them to marry in a full Catholic ceremony - I'm fairly sure that marrying a non-Catholic in the late thirties or early forties still got you a rather grudging ceremony on a side altar with no Mass...

#19: Author: Han, Location: Wondering what to do with herself

Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2007 8:36 pm
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Do you not think that the reason EBD does not choose to focus on the more public events in a person's spiritual life is because she places a greater value on the private? There's a passage in one of the early Tyrol books about Jo's faith and how it is so private and personal. And I always feel that the "simple faith" of the Tyroleans is extolled for its simplicity and its depth. It sometimes feels as though "true faith" is far deeper and expressed in ways that are far removed from the public ritual of a first communion or confirmation.

I've never really thought about the lack of certain aspects of religion in the books, marvelling instead at the prominence of true faith, which is so rarely seen in modern fiction. Thinking about it, I wonder if EBD's reticence about the ceremonies and actual content of services came from a desire to prioritise private, personal faith over the public. On the other hand, might she not have felt ill-qualified to teach her readers about the significance of such an event? Particularly the theological aspects.

#20: Author: Mel, Location: UP NORTH

Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2007 9:51 pm
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It may also have been to keep her readership wide. If she had been too detailed about the the religious side some readers may have been lost, baffled or put off. Most books of that era mention regular church going, a Christian ethos and little more. I would have thought she might bring in visiting chaplains though, for character interest, especially in the Swiss books after they built the chapels.

#21: Author: Alison H, Location: Manchester

Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2007 10:48 pm
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A Mr Eastley - an Anglican vicar IIRC - whose wife is a patient at the San and sadly dies there is mentioned in the Tyrol books, and somewhere in the Armiford books there's a reference to an Anglican vicar and a Catholic priest who've been friends since college days. Then we're told that a monk from an island near St Briavel's will row over to conduct services for Catholic girls there as there's no Catholic church there. I can't recall any mention of ministers at the Gornetz Platz though, other than when the school chapels are actually opened.

Considering that all the main characters do have a strong religious faith, it seems strange that there's never any mention of religious ministers visiting in times of trouble - e.g. when Jack is feared dead - or illness.

#22: Author: Sunglass, Location: Usually London

Posted: Thu Aug 30, 2007 8:10 am
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Now that you mention it, Alison H, it is odd, especially when there is so much serious illness. (There's also the issue of extreme unction for Catholics thought to be in danger of death, so it's not even just a matter of having a priest of some kind around for purposes of counsel or comfort... Being flippant, is fragile Joey likely to have had the last sacraments at any point after her conversion, or are all her near-death experiences prior to her marriage?)

I realise, though, that the CS specialises in often being in fairly remote locations, with no obvious chaplains on tap - only those references to the St Briavel's monk and Mr Eastley, and very minor figures in the early books like Frieda Mensch's bishop uncle and the Benedictine cousin who plays the organ for the wedding. I come back to assuming that despite her own belonging to a form of religion in which the mediation of a clergy between an individual and the divine is crucial, EBD either retained a Protestant preference for private communion with a godhead, or simply thought that tacking on to her all-female community a male spiritual director/chaplain (who couldn't even provide exciting plot developments or (if RC) marital opportunity like the doctors, was not appropriate.

#23: Author: Sarah_K, Location: St Albans

Posted: Thu Aug 30, 2007 11:42 am
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The near death experiences are an itneresting point though thinking about it Joey's are mainly as a kid (before conversion) and we actually see very little of how Joey is dealing with the news of Jack's "death" (just the news and then when the Twins come to visit leaving a biggish gap for her to consult a priest)

One practical point is just how many plots EBD could have got out of religious ceremonies? After all even the wickedest of the Middles is unlikely to have played up hugely in a Confirmation class or at their First Communion. Plus the Protestant/Catholic balance always seems to be slightly in favour of Protestants so it would be cutting out a largish part of the school.

#24: Author: Alison H, Location: Manchester

Posted: Thu Aug 30, 2007 11:57 am
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There's the rather silly incident when cockchafers (sp?) fly into the church and get in people's hair!

#25: Author: LizB, Location: Oxon, England

Posted: Thu Aug 30, 2007 12:32 pm
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And didn't Len cause a scene at Stephen's(?) Christening?

#26: Author: Jennie, Location: Cambridgeshire

Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2007 11:47 am
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That's one of the things that puzzled me. We hear a lot about Prayers, but very rarely anything about church services.

#27: Author: Rosalin, Location: Swansea

Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2007 4:36 pm
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It does seem odd that we never hear of Confirmations. That would affect at least the Catholics, Anglicans and Lutherans (I think) which must be a significant portion of the school.

#28: Author: Lottie, Location: Humphrey's Corner

Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2007 5:13 pm
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I always assumed that any confirmations would take place at a girl's home church with her family around. Although, thinking it over, I suppose it is likely that some of the preparation and instruction might have taken place at school.

I presume religion doesn't get much of a mention because EBD thought of it as a very private thing. There are one or two instances in the books where one of the girls talks about her faith to another one, and it is always stated that it was something she was shy of talking about very much - even (I think) when it was Mary-Lou talking!

#29: Author: Róisín, Location: Ireland

Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2007 6:35 pm
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Catholic confirmation (in my experience) takes place at the age of 11 or 12 - when the Swiss branch started, they were only taking girls over 14 (?) so maybe that's why it didn't come into it there?

#30: Author: Rosalin, Location: Swansea

Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2007 10:12 pm
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Given the Christian ethos of the books I'm quite surprised none of this occurred to me before.

I think confirmation often takes place at boarding schools - the proportion of time spent there is higher than at home so you would probably get to know the chaplain quite well. Summer holidays, the longest stretch of time you would be home for would not be good for confirmation classes as family holidays would get in the way.

However the Chalet School doesn't seem to have anyone fulfilling that role. There must be ministers of various denominations on the Platz even before the building of the chapels especially given the number of people who were dying. There is provision for both Catholics and Protestants everywhere else that the school is (do we hear anything about church on Guernsey?) but they never get involved in prayers or the religious instruction of the girls. Once the chapels were built I would have thought that the ministers would have become the school chaplains, they were presumably employed by the school. Given it's size by this time, and the fact is has strongly Christian foundations it seems odd that there wasn't more imput from them.

A point against confirmations at the school when it was in Austria and Switzerland would be the difficulty of getting parents there if they wanted to witness their daughters being confirmed. Maybe they could have combined it with something like the Sale week-end, although the girls might not have gone into it in the right frame of mind.

Whilst a Catholic bishop would presumably be not that hard to find (I'm not sure exactly which other denominations have confirmation, I had an idea Lutherans do, but I don't know who by) an Anglican one could be another story. I don't know what it was like in the 1950s and 1960s but AFIK today the whole of Europe has one Anglican bishop, the bishop of Gibraltar (postal address Crawley, West Sussex) and a suffragan bishop (postal address London).

There are also six assistant bishops from churches in communion with the Anglican church, one of whom is in Switzerland. These six appear to be able to take confirmations. This may have made being confirmed as an Anglican during the Austrian and Swiss years somewhat tricky.

Most of these objections certainly don't apply to the Plas Howell years when I think in-school confirmation would have been the most likely. Does anyone know whether confirmation would have taken place at boarding school or at home during the CS period?

#31: Author: JackieP, Location: Kingston upon Hull

Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2007 10:15 pm
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On the subject of First Communion, I'm under the impression that it's something that takes place at Primary School level (so 10 and under), which would account for it not being mentioned in the books, as EBD rarely wrote at length about the Juniors.

JackieP

#32: Author: Elder in Ontario, Location: Ontario, Canada

Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2007 11:17 pm
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I was always under the impression (and since I'm not Catholic, am open to be corrected on this) that first communion actually took place when a child was about 7 or 8 years old, so well before a girl would have been at the Chalet School. I do remember from my schooldays that the Anglicans of my acquaintance were confirmed anywhere between the ages of 13 and 15-16 (again, please will someone correct me if I'm wildly out on that - I'm not an Anglican, either). In which case, it is quite interesting that EBD doesn't in fact, have any of the C of E girls being confirmed during a school term.

#33: Author: Alison H, Location: Manchester

Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2007 11:35 pm
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I would assume that confirmation would take place during the holidays so that parents/other relatives and friends could be there, and in my experience first communion for Catholic children takes place at the age of about 7 so well before girls would be at the CS, but I find it surprising that we never see any of the Maynard/Bettany/Russell clan being confirmed, or (in the case of the Maynards, or Robin for that matter) making their first communion. Even if there wasn't a detailed description of the occasion, you'd think that it'd at least be mentioned in passing.

Even christenings aren't usually mentioned - we get a description of Stephen's, a brief reference to the fact that the triplets are going to be christened on whichever day it is, and a mention that the Lucy girls have gone home for the weekend to attend Katherine/Kitten's christening but that's all, IIRC. Madge says something about the Mensches (I think) sending David a christening present when the girls use it (I forget exactly what it was!) for doing "tableaux" but we never see the actual ceremony.

Maybe EBD didn't want to write too much about religious ceremonies in case it sounded too much like preaching or because she thought it might bore people, but given she refers to religious matters so often in the books that seems unlikely Confused

#34: Author: Sunglass, Location: Usually London

Posted: Sat Sep 01, 2007 12:15 am
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The more I look at other people's responses the more I realise that, as a convert in a country where Catholics were in a minority, and not having herself gone to a Catholic school (I gather) and experienced just how irreverent it's possible to be towards a faith you grew up taking for granted, EBD must have realised that she couldn't walk the line between ideal schoolgirl and delightfully naughty Middle if she depicted religious ceremonies in detail. We can handle the CS minxes being reverent for once at the Oberammergau Passion Play, and at least going through the motions at Prayers, but what would we make of, say Cornelia Flower or Jack Lambert, or any phalanx of Middles displaying genuine piety at their confirmation ceremony? Yet EBD would, I think, have baulked at showing CS girls doing the kinds of things my class did during the endless confirmation preparation at my convent school - making up rude alternative words for the prayers, etc etc.

The various Christmas plays are the closest she regularly comes to showing us religious ritual, if we see them as regular collective acts of worship - and of course they are ecumenical, and look like acting and singing, so no one looks excessively goody-goody to the reader, and are invariably described as moving 'because we did it meaning it, every word.'

#35: Author: MaryR, Location: Cheshire

Posted: Sat Sep 01, 2007 3:07 pm
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There seems to be some confusion about Catholic confirmation. In the fifties, when the Swiss books were set, we made our First Communion at the age of seven. But Confirmation depended on the visits of the Bishop. In my diocese, it took him three years to go round each parish and confer Confirmation, so I made mine just after my First Comminion, and indeed wore the same white dress, but there would have been children there aged up to ten. Then there would be a three year gap before the next time. And we were prepared for them in church at Sunday school, not at school.That would explain why EBD doesn't mention Catholic sacraments -they would have been conferred before the girls arrived, and why they didn't have lessons in such. I am not so conversant with Anglican sacraments.

Personally, I have to say that the poor woman couldn't write about everything, and, as someone else has said here, she may have felt that too much religion would have been rather off-putting for her readers. My RE lessons in the fifties were very definitely about the tenets of the Catholic faith, eg the Catechism, the Sacraments, the Mass, etc. This has changed a lot over the decades, of course, and the RE lessons I later taught as a Junior School teacher were nothing like the ones I HAd received.

#36: Author: NineLivesBurra, Location: York, North Yorks

Posted: Sat Sep 01, 2007 4:17 pm
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I know what you mean about the changes in Catechism, Mary. When I made my confirmation in 1982, I had to know all the gifts and fruits of the holy ghost, be able to recite the Apostles Creed and know all sorts of other things. My sister was confirmed in 1999 and she didn't have to know any of it.

I remember learning mine after school or on Sunday evenings after Mass. My sister learnt hers the same way.....I had forgotten that.

#37: Author: Róisín, Location: Ireland

Posted: Sat Sep 01, 2007 6:39 pm
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MaryR wrote:

There seems to be some confusion about Catholic confirmation. In the fifties, when the Swiss books were set, we made our First Communion at the age of seven. But Confirmation depended on the visits of the Bishop. In my diocese, it took him three years to go round each parish and confer Confirmation, so I made mine just after my First Comminion, and indeed wore the same white dress, but there would have been children there aged up to ten. Then there would be a three year gap before the next time. And we were prepared for them in church at Sunday school, not at school.That would explain why EBD doesn't mention Catholic sacraments -they would have been conferred before the girls arrived, and why they didn't have lessons in such. I am not so conversant with Anglican sacraments.

The dependance on the availability of a Bishop, and the practices that arose out of that - isn't that because England is a country where Catholics are in the minority? ie would that be true for EBD, as her books were set in Switzerland and Austria where there would be more bishops with less area to cover and therefore more availability to perform office etc.

Edit: is there Sunday school for Catholics?!

#38: Author: Kate, Location: Ireland

Posted: Sun Sep 02, 2007 5:50 pm
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Róisín wrote:

MaryR wrote:

Not necessarily. In my local school, confirmation is only done every two years for that reason. And when my mum was in school, confirmation was every three years, the same as Mary R.

#39: Author: Alison H, Location: Manchester

Posted: Sun Sep 02, 2007 7:50 pm
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The Oberland, although it's got a higher Catholic population now than it had in the 1950s because of demographic changes, was mainly Protestant in EBD's time, so possibly whichever Catholic diocese the Gornetz Platz came under would have been quite large in terms of area.

I'd like to have seen Frieda confirmed, with her great-uncle officiating, though, in one of the early Tyrol books! The poor girl never seemed to get many "storylines" and she's such a lovely character!

#40: Author: Caroline, Location: Manchester

Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2007 9:01 am
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One CS event that springs to mind, after reading everyone's views on this subject, is the time we see the Robin learning her Catechism on a Sunday - I think this is at the Sonnalpe, and she is, what ten? Let me see if I can find the passage in question... Ah yes - Exploits:

Quote:

Even the Robin snuggled up to Joey with her catechism, and when she knew the questions she had to learn, the elder girl heard them for her.

To me, this suggests EBD sees such things as out-of-school activities.

I mean, studying for confirmation / being confirmed is hardly relevant to a school story, in and of itself, is it? I think any significant emphasis on the religious side of things would probably have put me (and a lot of readers) off the books. Oh, a certain amount of religion - being a Christian, School Prayers, asking for devine help in a crisis etc. - is to be expected in your typical golden age school story, but any more than that risks coming over as pious and off putting - the kind of stuff you find in those terribly worthy school stories published by e.g. the religious tract society.... (And EBD did write one or two of those - they are quite different from the CS).

The only other serious mention of the catechism I can find comes when the staff are discussing Polly's patchy eduction in Jo Returns:

Quote:

‘That, also, is good. [said Mademoiselle] 'She can work with Five A, and—and “keep her end up” as you say. She had special lessons with Monsieur le Curé, whom she begged to teach her when she had lessons in her catechism from him.’

Although, Peggy uses it as a punishment in Peggy:

Quote:

“I understand,” [Peggy] said, “that you have been using —er—Regency language. As this period seems to interest you, we thought it a pity you shouldn’t—shouldn’t carry the thing out properly,”—Peggy only just stopped herself from saying, ‘Going the whole hog’; but she felt that even the most innocent slang was best avoided just then— “so we have decided that for the whole week-end you are to behave as if you were schoolgirls at that period. I’m sorry we can’t arrange for you to wear the same kind of clothes; but we can see that you take the kind of walks they used to have, and the same kind of occupations. For instance,” Peggy went on blandly, “to-morrow in the afternoon, you are to occupy yourselves by learning the catechism—part of it.”

#41: Author: KB, Location: Melbourne, Australia

Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2007 11:53 am
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There are two more interesting points about the catechism, at least in my book. The first is that, apart from the mention in Peggy, it is mentioned in books that would have been written about the time that EBD was considering converting to Catholicism (they were published in 1933, '34 and '36). The other interesting issue is that it does not appear in EBD's non-Chalet books, at least of those for which we have the transcripts. Other books from the similar period as those that Caroline mentioned are Carnation of the Upper Fourth, Elizabeth the Gallant (published in 1935) and Monica Turns Up Trumps.

Not sure I can draw any conclusions, but they seem rather interesting points to me... Confused

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