Casuistry

It is half-term. 'The boys are in the porch again', our Lay Reader Lillian told me before Mass began yesterday. 'They're not supposed to be, are they?' 'No, they're not', I confirmed, and then we listened to the rain pouring down outside the church, pummelling the garden where the raised beds had only just been planted with new shrubs and swilling round the pavement. Neither of us had the heart to tell them to go out into that. 'I'll tell them they can stay until it eases off', Lillian went on, 'Not that it helps that we keep making exceptions for this and that'. 

I thought about my strictures banning certain young individuals from the vicinity of the church due to the disruptions they bring in their wake. How could an exception be made without making it? 'Once mass is over I will go out the back way', I concluded,  'So I will neither have seen them nor spoken to them. I won't even know whether they're there.'

Lillian gave me a look.