Chapter 24. The Fourth R

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It must have been disappointing for Mr. Byfield to have to write once again in my report card that I still didn’t understand the concepts presented in his religious studies course.

After all, I was a B student and was displaying an interest in religion not typical of a teenager. I was composing music for a folk mass that would be performed later that year at St. John’s Cathedral. My heart seemed to be in the right place even if my head wasn’t. His comments in my Grade 11 report card recognized this apparent contradiction.

At Christmas he wrote:

'He has always had difficulty with any abstract idea, being himself eminently practical and down to earth. Consequently, he has derived next to nothing from this highly abstract course.'

At Easter, after awarding me a mark of 51 for the second time, he could only add:

'Abstract ideas simply fail to penetrate. It's not through a lack of effort.'

It was through the religious studies program that the school hoped to teach stu­dents to reason and develop a belief in God. The school’s founders were of the opinion that once the former was accomplished the latter would follow. One of the best-known exponents of that view was C.S. Lewis whose books were the basis of all the school’s religious studies courses.

Formal instruction took place during morning chapel or during the two class periods set aside each week. In­formal instruction could happen at any time – during the reading of a Charles Dickens novel, after someone’s watch had been stolen, or out on a snowshoe run.

I remember very little about the content of the courses I took over the years, and only slightly more about what was said or read in morning chapel.

The material covered in religious studies courses fell into three areas, each with an introductory and advanced level: apologetics, ethics, and theology. Apologetics was about Chris­tian truths and included the arguments for and against a belief in God.

Ethics was concerned with the Christian views on right and wrong and included a section on the seven sins and seven virtues.

Theology dealt with the doctrine of Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) and the way it related to being a Christian. C.S. Lewis’ book Mere Christianity figured prominently in all three areas; his books, Miracles, The Great Divorce, and Screwtape Letters, to a lesser extent.

Mr. Byfield taught introductory apologetics to us in Grade 8. It was during that year that my apparent inability to deal with abstract ideas first came to light. My marks in both religious studies and English literature dropped nearly 20 percent between Christmas and Easter. The slide prompted a letter of concern from the headmaster to my parents.

He observed that in both subjects I was required to understand abstract ideas and that my mind did not “run in this direction nearly as efficiently as it does when dealing with more tangible things.” He was of the opinion this would change with maturity.

While I may have had difficulty with abstract ideas I do remember the book that was read to us that year during morn­ing chapel – The Valley of the River Kwai. It was the story of British soldiers whose faith helped them survive the hor­ror of a Japanese prison camp during the Second World War.

I also recall being read Dorothy Sayers’s radio plays about the crucifixion during the days leading up to Easter.

In Grade 9, while taking introductory ethics from Mr. Thompson, my comprehension problem for some reason shifted from the intangible to the tangible. After writing in my Christmas report card in his characteristically humorous way that I had a ‘good grasp of evil,’ Mr. Thompson was obliged to qualify his praise at Easter.

`Richard wrote an exam which demonstrated two things: an in­complete knowledge of the factual material, and an extremely good insight into its implications. I was disappointed with the former and extremely pleased at the second.' 

My memories of the course are few, though I do recall much chuckling during discussions on the sins of the flesh – gluttony, lust, covetous­ness, and sloth. Our amusement during discussions on gluttony was rather encouraged by Mr. Thompson who often joked about his own shortcomings in that department.

That year a country-wide debate raged in the Anglican Church following the release of Pierre Berton’s damning assess­ment of the church in the book entitled The Comfortable Pew. Mr. Byfield im­mediately came to the defense of Christianity, if not the Anglican Church, first going head to head with Berton on CBC­ TV’s This Hour Has Seven Days, then writing a response entitled Just Think, Mr. Berton, A Little Harder.

I know I didn’t read either book at the time and only did so while researching this book. But as I recall it was not a debate that figured in the school’s religious in­struction that year. Perhaps there was a reluctance to require students to read a book written by one of the masters.

Judging from Mr. Wiens’s comments in my Grade 10 report card, I apparently had little difficulty with the material contained in the theology course he was teaching us. In all three reports, he said much the same thing:

'A good report. He takes a lively interest in the subject. His questions are good ones.'

Again I have no recollection of the material studied. What did make an impact that year was the book The Cross and the Switchblade by David Wilkerson and the fact the Dean of the cathedral preached a sermon on the hit parade tune the Eve of Destruction.

While I was surrounded by masters who had given up good salaries and comfortable lives to further the work of God, Wilkerson’s story about doing something similar made much more impact. But then life in a boys’ school was pretty tame compared to the slums of New York City where Wilkerson set about to convert drug addicts and street gang members.

A few of us were so impressed with him that in Grade 12 we asked to be allowed to attend a David Wilkerson Youth Crusade at the Winnipeg Auditorium. It was the first time I witnessed an altar call. I didn’t go forward but members of our group did.

As I related in a letter home I had doubts about the motives of the several hundred who responded to the invitation, suspecting curiosity had more to do with the response than sincerity. I also related that afterward several of us went up to the stage and invited him to visit the school. I don’t remember his reply.

The Eve of Destruction was just one of many 1960s hit songs that were a source of concern among the older generation. They worried about the music’s corrupting influence on youth. As I recall the masters didn’t spend much time condemning pop music, opting instead to make it almost impossible for us to hear it by banning radios and record players.

However, the 1966 book Rhythm, Riot and Revolution by American Baptist minister David Noebel was circulated among the senior grades I presume in an attempt to alert us to the dangerous influence, both moral and political, of rock music. Noebel was a firm believer in the theory that pop music was Communist-inspired and funded, designed primarily to undermine the Christian morality and the American way of life. What alarmed him most was the fact that the beat was having a hypnotic effect on listeners and they weren’t even aware of being corrupted.

His book certainly caught my attention because several of my current heroes – Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and John Lennon – were branded as Communists. I didn’t like to think I was an unwitting victim of the conspiracy. The author was short on specifics, but as my letter home on March 5, 1967 records, at one point he provided an analysis of how children’s records were being used to brainwash.

'An example was Michael and the Puppet. It's a lullaby so the kids go to sleep but it's a story about Michael saying to the pup­pet, "You can't walk but I want you to walk. Why didn't you walk? Now I will tell you to walk and you will walk." 

‘This sort of thing is supposed to be effective. What I’m wondering is if singers like Peter, Paul, and Mary and Ian and Sylvia are doing the same thing.‘

The book may have made me a more discriminating listener but I certainly didn’t stop lis­tening to rock music. I ended my letter wondering whether the book would mean that the masters would stop playing wake-up music in the dorms. They didn’t but I remember one album in particular being vetoed. The Beatles new album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was denounced by one master as being “primitive” and “animal” and therefore not acceptable.

The fact that year I was composing music for a folk mass had more to do with my almost reverential admiration for Simon and Garfunkel than any personal conviction. It started with one day coming up with a tune on my guitar for the Lord’s Prayer.

I had been blown away by Simon and Garfunkel’s new album Wednesday Morning 3 A.M., particularly their gorgeous harmonies on Benedictus. There’s little doubt that album inspired the tunes that later emerged.

I presume word of my Lord’s Prayer reached Mr. Byfield or Mr. Thompson – they may have heard me singing it in the dorm – because it wasn’t long before Mr. Thompson and I were sitting down transcribing the notes onto paper. Mr. Thompson thought it would be a good idea to teach the tune to the school’s broken-voice choir which oc­casionally sang at the cathedral.

From that grew the idea of composing music for a folk mass, something very much in fashion at the time. Within a matter of weeks I had come up with tunes for the Kyrie, Sanctus, Benedic­tus, Agnus Dei, Pater Noster (Lord’s Prayer), and Gloria.

As I recall – I haven’t played them since – the rhythms were rather raucous and the melodies were not particularly inspired. The Benedictus, I know was an at­tempt to copy the style of Simon and Garfunkel’s uptempo He Was My Brother.

Even after weeks of practice with the choir I always had the feeling that if I didn’t sing louder than everyone else the whole thing would break down. Nonetheless, our performance of the mass went well.

The school’s annual report that year, The End of the Beginning, provided a rather different account of the mass’s inception and subsequent completion. I guess it made for more amusing reading, especially the part about being ordered by Mr. Thompson to compose a folk mass since I had the only qualification necessary. I could play the guitar.

That was the same year Mr. Byfield taught me religious studies for the second time. Curiously, I don’t remember feeling devas­tated by his rather damning assessment of my intellectual abilities, though it apparently concerned my mother.

In a letter home on February 4 I tried to provide an explanation:

`You wondered what our highly abstract course is in Religious Studies. It's Lewis's book Miracles with many philosophical ideas, so he calls them. From what I've understood we are dealing with two beliefs: naturalism and supernaturalism. I guess I just get a little balled up in all the concepts which go into these ideas. Sometimes it gets interesting and I listen, other times I turn off.'

I have no record of her concern going beyond that. She was no doubt aware of Lewis’s Christian writings – she’d read me his children’s books when I was a child – and that they might pose some difficulty for the adolescent reader.

For some reason, I received no mark in religious studies on my report card at the end of the year. I presume it was because we didn’t write a final, being too occupied with preparations for the departmental exams required for the core subjects.

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