The Church of St Thomas on Dunsford hill Exeter Devon.  Here we attended mass     every sunday and formed the choir.  The choir consisted of Miss Browning on the pedal organ Dominic, Teresa, Angelo, my future wife Monica Thomas, Teresa    Hayward and her cousin and myself.  I am not shy to say that we were good, and       we loved our Latin Mass and the Hymns and Motets.

The Church of the Sacred Heart South Street Exeter. 

Here Dominic and I learnt  how to become Altar Boys and obtain the coveted Guild of St Stephen medal.

AUNTY MINA AND BEING CATHOLIC…………

Edmund Forte First Holy Communion Certificate.       May 31st 1945.                     The Feast of Corpus Christie.                                Signed by: Father Pederick  We were   dressed in our best    clothes white shirts red   ties Blue sashes and    highly polished shoes,       the girls were pretty too.

During  the war my Mother had become ill with tuberculosis, her life was in real danger from this   disease for a long time. In the beginning she was        sent to a sanatorium in Heavitree, Exeter. We were      not allowed to visit her, and we ourselves had to   undergo tests to ensure that we had not contracted         the disease. After a short stay at home she was sent to recuperate at Blackmoor farm near the village of Whitestone in the beautiful Devonshire countryside. However My Father was working every day and night      to raise the money for special treatments for My            Mother, and to maintain us as well. His perseverance        at work and his smoking took a toll on his health,            and for this he eventually paid the ultimate price. 

The care of Teresa Angelo and I was an important issue for our family as a whole.  After much debate, my Grandmother, `Pacifica`, made the decision, the    consequences of which was to have a profound affect on me and my Aunty Mina        for the rest of my life. Against her better judgement, and natural inclination.             Aunty Mina was coerced into being responsible for our care in Mums absence.         She resisted at first, and caused much upset in the Family, but the family was too strong for her, and so, never one to disobey her Mother, she did as she was told,       and had to accept the responsibility for our care in the short term.  Aunty Mina           battled valiantly, for the next five or six years, against the wishes of the Devil,             (who wanted to make me his own), to make us into her Ideal of respectability, well behaved children, who would not disgrace her.  Aunty Mina wanted us to become devoted Catholics, just like herself.  Accepting all the teachings of the Church            without question.

Aunty Mina had not married. I remember fun being made        about a few men who were interested in her. Photographs,          and early memories of her, bring to mind, a pleasant looking young woman, with rather wild frizzy hair. Her many friends called her “flossy” with affection. Aunty Mina had a strong independent nature, she liked deciding things for herself.          Having so many brothers, made her very competitive. Aunty remained single and free, and quickly found with the money        she made, that she could be secure. She also found that                having the money meant having the Power. Having Money          made others in the Family envious and jealous. She                  discovered, money was what people really respected.

Caring for us Placed a huge burden on her,        and frustrated         her ambitions to making more money. Aunty  Mina, like all        good Catholic         girls of her time, was devoted to   the church, and often sought the company of the Nuns who had taught her as a child. It was her most sincere and profound love of the Church and god, and her innate sense of duty that enabled Auntie Mina get through the ordeals involved in caring for us.

The way things were arranged, we had no chance of doing anything interesting with our lives. To me it seemed, as a child, that everything that I was interested in was a Sin.
The Catholic community in Exeter was not a large one. However through the enthusiasm of the parish Priest,  Fr Thomas Barney, the congregation was a devoted and obedient one. The whole emphasis of being a Catholic was, that those of us      who embraced the one true faith, took on the mantle of being the only followers of Christ that God would recognise on Judgement Day. We were told, Any other          religion than ours was not a true religion. And because they were not Catholics,           they would rot in hell. Unless of course, they asked god's forgiveness for being `Pagans`. Embraced the one true Faith, Repented, In which case arrangements for          a free pass into Heaven could be made.
These arrangements were similar to hire purchase. Payments were made by saying Novenas, attending Mass, being charitable, saying hundreds of Rosaries, and being   nice to the priest.

Being Auntie's kind of Catholic, bound us deeply to the rules      of the church, which according to her, meant walking about       with beatific smiles of innocence and inane happiness on our faces, and love in our hearts for all mankind.   Auntie Mina         took great delight in taking (dragging) us to Mass each Sunday morning, and then, to test our faith,  Stations of the Cross and Benediction in the evening. This was followed by bedtime prayers. I shall never forget Kneeling on the cold fireplace in     our bedroom saying our bedtime prayers. Sometimes I wished  something nasty would happen to Auntie Mina. But it never       did. And anyway I always felt guilty about such wishes afterwards.
Dominic and I shared a bedroom, and we had to say our bedtime prayers out loud,     or Auntie Mina would make us start again. Sometimes, to get her `jollies`, she would say that we had not said our prayers, and despite our protestations of innocence, she would go into her bedroom and open her wardrobe and get a cane to hit us, after thrashing us she would send us to bed crying. After a lot of  being beaten and a lot       of crying, Dominic said we weren’t allowed to cry anymore, and we would resist         being beaten. We should not give in by showing any signs of weakness.  I suppose there was a real danger of having our spirits broken, but Dominic struck a valiant          pose, and being impressed, I followed his lead.  We did not cry after that, at least         not in her presence. She noticed this, and sometimes tried really hard to make us      cry, testing us to the limit. But we never gave in to her in this way again.

On several occasions, when I had really been very, very, naughty , she would  take me to the Sacristy at The Sacred        Heart to see Canon Tobin.  Canon Tobin was a softy, he did         not have it in his nature to be hard. The Canon would be given orders by Aunty Mina, to “sort me out”. However, out of desperation I had become rather sly and devious. And so I usually managed to beat her at her own game. When Canon Tobin started to lecture and question me, I would simply lift        my shirt and show him the marks on my back from my latest beating, and he would    go silent and make me get dressed, and mutter to himself.   I was learning  how to       be manipulative. He understood perfectly the problems facing the family as a whole, in caring for us children.

But he had no answers to offer Auntie Mina other than to pray for guidance from the good Lord. He would tell me to try and be good,   for her sake, and for Gods sake, and for Petes sake. We’d say a    couple of embarrassing prayers, and then I would be sent on my         way, Confessed, Penanced, Forgiven and Free.  Everyday we would have Catechism at school and I could not make out why,  if Jesus said bring all the children to me, he missed me?
Auntie Mina would drag me home gloating, as if she had won the war. Associating religion with pain and unkindness, led me easily in becoming disenchanted with her kind of Religion. Auntie Mina enrolled Dominic and I to become Alter Servers. This  was just what we wanted, apart from the saturday morning pictures the only theatre that we had for our precocious talents was on Sundays at Mass.
My Father had said to me, Edmund I know how difficult it is for you to say your       prayers, ( he had noticed) So do what I do, Offer your every days work and all your deeds up to God as your special prayer, if your deeds are good, God will know.         I have done this ever since. I am not sure God has been too pleased with some of my offerings, but I have done my best.  Eventually, to Dominics disgust I began to enjoy   the easy and best bits of Catholicism and left the hard bits for others to enjoy.