The rising cadre of switched-on priests speak in the same language as that of soap advertisers on television; however, Tom Conroy is something of a latitudinarian on postmodern culture and, while not deigning to purchase a TV set, he likes occasionally to eavesdrop on the absurdities of some of its programmes. He seems to sense, however, that most of the Father Trendies will not be long in the priesthood. And he can sense the deadlock in a society where most of the youth were compelled to emigrate to a life of hard labour in Britain, while large farmers tighten their hold on the land. Between the year of independence in 1922 and 1969, one in every two people born in the country left it. That missing middle generation, which might have refereed the conflict between tradition and modernity, thus achieving an intelligent balance, has gone forever. As Antonio Gramsci remarked of the rural communities in southern Italy – also devastated by emigration – the haemorrhage of a middle generation caused the old to elaborate fantasies of a reactionary conservatism, and the young to submit to a heedless, depthless consumerism.

A certain kind of priest might once have filled the vacuum left by that lost generation with an alternative kind of leadership, but Father Conroy cannot do so. He ministers in the years after ordination to the migrant community in England, fretting ever afterward about the fate of his brother Owen, who died in his twenties leaving two young sons whose names the man of God never knows.

That deficit of knowledge hints at a certain coldness in his character, perhaps even some incapacity for primary experience in the living stream of persons. ‘A true priest is never loved’, wrote Georges Bernanos. However, the quality of this priest’s solitude, though at times almost chilling, can bring out a loving tenderness in others. His loneliness is so deep and invincible as to cause many people to offer him bank notes that he neither needs nor desires. He stores the money up over a lifetime, intending to give it to some worthy recipient but never quite managing to do so. It is as if, like an over-ripe potato, it is forever sprouting pointless and uncontrollable shoots.