It’s a sunny day at Langar Airfield near Nottingham and the sky is perfect powder-blue with a few fluffy clouds: the kind of day when leaping out of a plane at 13,000 feet could be almost – dare I say it? – inviting. The two men who are about to make their maiden jumps, though, are looking suitably terrified – which, explains instructor Ally Milne, is just as it should be. ‘If they’re not scared,’ he says, zipping himself into his bright yellow, appropriately named jumpsuit, ‘there’s something wrong with them.’
The novice jumpers are easing themselves into their kit for the descent too: both are going to jump today strapped to instructors in what are known in the trade as tandem skydives. Jumpsuits, trainers, harness – all the essentials. But there’s another item of clothing these guys have to put on before they board the plane. Out of his pocket, one of them produces a dog collar and slips it inside his shirt. ‘Hey,’ says Ally, jovially. ‘Are you vicars? We’ll have to say a quick prayer on the way down.’
Fathers James Mealy and Peter Norton certainly will be saying a prayer as the plane door opens and they bale out. They’re not vicars, they’re Catholic priests, both from the Birmingham Archdiocese – and they’re jumping to raise money for the Johnson Fund which provides assistance to elderly and infirm priests in the archdiocese. For both of them, though, the jump has been looked-forward-to rather than dreaded: Father James says he remembers his father doing a parachute jump twenty-five years ago to raise money for the Little Sisters of the Poor, and he vowed then that he’d follow in his footsteps one day. ‘It looked great fun,’ he says. ‘I’ve always wanted to give it a go.’ Father Peter, meanwhile, is a keen motor-biker who admits to being a bit of a thrill-seeker. ‘When I heard they were asking priests to parachute jump to raise funds I thought: why not?’ he says. ‘I like things that require a bit of adrenalin.’
Both Father Peter and Father James feel it’s important for priests to witness to the fact that, behind the dog collars, they’re ordinary guys who are more than happy to do their bit to raise funds for their brother-priests who need assistance – plus, you get the feeling that they’re both looking forward to being the heroes of the hour next Sunday after Mass. ‘My parishioners keep telling me how brave I am,’ says Father Peter. ‘Either that, or they tell me I’m completely mad. But they’re all praying for me, anyway.’
Both priests are happy, too, that their jump is helping to raise the profile of the priesthood generally; they feel, as most young priests do, that it’s harder than ever to be a Catholic in a dog collar these days. ‘There’s so much anti-religious feeling out there that it feels really different to be someone who’s looking very obviously part of the Church,’ says Father James. ‘Sometimes you feel like someone from another planet – but we’ve got to stick up for the faith, we’ve got to be a witness to what we believe in.’
What’s more, he says, while it might be a difficult time to be a Catholic priest, it’s also an extremely exciting one. ‘I’m absolutely certain that God is working through the Holy Spirit to re-create and bring about a new age in the Church,’ he says. ‘There’s no doubt that these are challenging times, but I feel constantly honoured and humbled that God has chosen me to serve him in this way. It really moves me.’
Unusually in these times, Father James entered seminary – St Mary’s College, Oscott, in his case – aged just eighteen (he’s now thirty-two). ‘Various people thought it was much too young – my mother certainly thought that,’ he says. ‘And a lot of my colleagues were much older than me and had had other careers first. But I’d wanted to be a priest since the age of about four: I thought, why wait? Why not give the whole of my life to God, since I’m so sure it’s the right thing to do. Why hang around?’
He was ordained six years ago, and is now parish priest of St Joseph’s in Wolverhampton. ‘I’ve never for a minute regretted my path in life,’ he says, honestly. ‘Of course there are times when it’s difficult and it’s lonely – celibacy isn’t always easy, but ultimately with a family you have to put their needs first. Being a priest means I can put my parishioners and the people who need me first: I may not have children, but as a priest I can look after thousands of children, and some of them are grown-ups. It means you’re free to be there for people when they need you.
‘One of the things about being a priest is that you never do know what’s around the corner – I often think that when I make plans, God laughs at me! There are a lot of difficult moments, because you’re called to be with people through dark hours and tough times, but it’s a great privilege to walk alongside them at those points.’
Father Peter, like Father James, trained for the priesthood at Oscott – but he joined the seminary later, at the age of twenty-five, after a career in retail and, before that, work in a factory. ‘As a child I’d served at Mass in my parish, but when I got older I stopped going for a while,’ he says. ‘Then one Sunday evening I thought I’d go back, just to see whether it held any answers for me, to see whether I felt I was missing anything. And as soon as the Mass started, I became very deeply aware of the presence of God, and I knew I wanted to learn more about God, and about the Church.’
He sought advice from a priest, who got him to concentrate on his prayer life. ‘That was so important, because having a life rooted in God and prayer and the Gospels is vital,’ he says. He was ordained in 2006 at the age of thirty-one, and is currently assistant priest at St Dunstan’s in King’s Heath in Birmingham.
‘It’s a wonderful job,’ he says. ‘There are so many moments that you’d only expect to see once or twice in a lifetime, and as a priest you see them all the time. They’re profound, special times, and it’s a real privilege to share them with people – I’m talking about baptisms and marriages and even difficult moments like deaths and funerals.
‘I can’t imagine another job that comes close to being as fulfilling as this one.’
By now it’s time to get onto the plane and head up into the sky: twenty minutes and a fair amount of adrenalin later, they’ve hurtled safely back to earth. Both Father Peter and Father James are immediate converts to the skydiving cause: no sooner are they safely back on solid ground than they’re working out how it might be possible to jump again another time. ‘It was brilliant, absolutely amazing,’ says Father James, heading off the airfield after his textbook landing. ‘I’ll definitely be preaching about this on Sunday.’
