Dominic, known since his teens as Dom, enjoys telling people that he’s Catholic, or a ‘left-footer’ as he sometimes modestly describes himself. He feels it a distinction that gives him a bit of mystique in the financial services circles in which he moves. Non-Catholics are often mildly interested in his education by monks, his views of the papacy and whether he goes along with all the ‘rules’. But while Dom has lots to say on the matter, the truth is that the devout Catholicism of his upbringing is receding into distant memory, kept alive by a kind of niggling unease on Sunday mornings when he must decide whether or not to go to church. And nowadays, what with work, the children, the weekends in the country, he mostly just doesn’t have time. And that little pang of guilt is generally nothing that a Bloody Mary and a barbecue won’t banish.
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Dom is keen on the aesthetics of Catholicism, what he likes to refer to as the ‘bells and smells.’ His heart soars at a good old-fashioned singalong hymn and some gusting incense. He keeps a dilatory eye on Rome, enjoys watching for the white smoke when a papal election comes around and thinks that whatever you think of the Vatican it puts on a pretty good show; he great approved of Pope Benedict’s red shoes. He calls it going the ‘whole hog.’ Dom and his wife took the children to Sunday Mass at their local church for a few months in the hope that it would secure them places at the Catholic primary school. But in the end, after all that, they went private and were sheepishly relieved to get their Sunday mornings back. What’s more, as he told everyone, Dom didn’t feel his aesthetic needs were catered to by St Anthony’s: all those guitars and microphones and welcoming smiles from a collection of, frankly, odd bods. When Dom is moved to go to Mass, it will be solemn high mass at Brompton Oratory or Westminster Cathedral where you get the whole hog and a half. A good session at the Oratory, as he likes to say, sets him up for the week.
