… detachment is negative – it is to be without.

October 28, 2024 – Mother Angelica

When I first went up to university, I discovered that you could attend lectures in any subject and I found myself one afternoon at a large one entitled ‘Issues in Christianity’. The speakers included a well-known atheist, a Jesuit priest, various university lecturers in theology and philosophy and a couple of celebrities. The format was that each had to talk about objections to their own points of view. It was a passionate, humorous and enlightening couple of hours. At the end, the audience was invited to ask questions. A very quiet-looking youth with round spectacles sitting near to me put his hand up unsuccessfully several times. The Jesuit priest, however, had spotted him and invited him to ask his question. He rose to his feet, visibly trembling, and asked: ‘Well, it was just this: what would Jesus have done if the people he helped or healed wouldn’t go away?’ The hitherto talkative panel was silenced. After a few long seconds Fr Ronald, the priest, replied: ‘I suppose he would have had to have become detached to preserve his wider mission, but somehow I cannot visualise that and I’m going to have to think about it.’ Theo, the student, told me afterwards that it was a (well-known) homeless person to whom he had given some loose change in his first week and who thereafter kept pestering him that had prompted his question.

Without my diary becoming Thought for the Day, it is a problem that few of us will not have encountered during our lives. Once you have assisted someone, professionally or socially, there is now a commitment and one in which you may not always have the upper hand. I have thought about Theo’s question many times.

To protect against the hazards of contact with a lay client which may (we are told) affect our professional judgment, we have all kinds of rules and advice. Most of it is both correct and sensible but I wonder sometimes if we do not use this detachment as an excuse for avoiding some of our responsibilities. Last year, I defended a rather vulnerable youth for a very serious crime in which the usual chapter of misunderstandings had occurred between two young men with raging testosterone and two broken bottles. Seth, my client, was emotionally immature but very bright. Our first meeting was a disaster: the age gap combined with a prison which deterred live conferences by starting them at 8am did not produce either of us at our best. The only person who saved the day was my instructing solicitor, May. May and I had not met before, but she clearly had Seth’s complete confidence and seemed to be able to get through to him in a way which I could not.

Time passed and our relationship improved and we found ourselves at court for the trial. Seth was naturally tense, nervous and rather ‘hyper’ so I was pleased that May had turned up on the first day. I was surprised to see her on the second day and, in fact, she came every day over several weeks. Unless the case is a private one, this is almost unheard of nowadays as she would receive no funding for attending. I am not sure that barristers, particularly older ones, enjoy conferences at court in the cells very much but May would go down at every available opportunity and (given the cells were not full at that time) spend a great deal of time with Seth. The security staff, far from being pleased that Seth was calm and cooperative, found this increasingly irritating to the point of making a complaint.

I consulted Callum McLeish, my energetic, inventive but always unflappable junior who has appeared in my diary before with ‘Do you think I should say something?’ He suddenly looked quite angry. ‘What’s the problem?’ he said. ‘It is why the system used to fund court attendance at trial by the legal representative. Whatever the merits of the case, can you imagine how that kid feels down there? He trusts her and he needs to talk about things to her. It’s his way of coping. And she is a decent enough human being to do it instead of hiding behind excuses as to why it wouldn’t be appropriate.’

Back came the memory of that afternoon all those years ago. I found myself hoping that this was the answer to which Fr Ronald had come after due reflection.