Seminary Boy by John Cornwell

When John Cornwell was a boy in post-WWII London he was fortunate enough to be chosen for a scholarship to a minor seminary, a boarding school for boys who hoped to become priests. Fortunate, because he felt he had a vocation for the priesthood, because the school, Cotton College, was in the scenic West Midlands, and because despite its austerity, Cotton was a refuge from the turmoil at home.

Cornwell’s father was a laborer handicapped by a nearly useless leg; his mother was a fierce Irish-Catholic matron with a hard hand and sharp tongue. Cornwell ran wild with the boys of his neighborhood and would no doubt have ended up in serious trouble with the law had he not found refuge in his parish church as an altar boy. At Cotton, his intense energy could be poured into religious devotion and academic study. Equally intense were his relationships with the other students and with the priests who taught at the college.

The descriptions of Cotton reminded me so much of the fictional school Hogwarts from the Harry Potter series, without girls of course. The students of Hogwarts dedicate themselves to the pursuit of an unseen world within the material world. Magic spells cast in arcane language create real and powerful effects. Those of greater age and wisdom initiate the young into their way of life, sometimes with good intentions, other times with evil intentions.

And so it was at Cotton. Cornwell labored to master Latin and Greek, read nearly nothing other than religious texts and tracts, and focused his will on gaining access to the mysteries of God. Yet somehow, even in this environment, skepticism still breathed in his ear:

…[I]t began to dawn on me, in a niggling, insistent scruple, that our spiritual lives involved not real feelings for real persons, but invented feelings for imaginary persons. The reflection disturbed me so much that I wondered whether it was not a whispered suggestion of the Devil himself, the Father of Lies. For if we were inventing our joys and our struggles, our light and our darkness, if we were inventing our relationships with Jesus and Mary, were we not therefore dwelling in a world of make-believe?

Cornwell eventually left this world of make-believe, was an agnostic for a time, then turned many years later to a mature spirituality.

Seminary Boy provides insight into the recent scandals in the Catholic Church. John Cornwell has also given us an entertaining and moving memoir of a swiftly passing way of life.