66: The shadow is only a passing thing. There's this light and hope and beauty that is forever beyond its reach.

Episode 66 David describes a startling experience one Christmas day at Mass that showed him 'the abundance and realness of God's love.' Since serving a prison sentence, it is the charity, beauty and kindness of prisoners for each other that reminds him to 'choose to be a better man every day.' Prison radicalised him, David says. He now campaigns for change in a criminal justice system where he experienced 'moral rot ... cruelty and harm.'

A new episode, a different conversation, every Wednesday!
Email me: theresa@KindsofCatholic.co.uk
Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky and X/Twitter Give me a follow @KindsofCatholic
Find the transcript: https://kindsofcatholic.buzzsprout.com

The podcast is kindly supported by the Passionists of St Patrick's Province, Ireland & Britain and by CAFOD.

Music: Greenleaves from Audionautix.com

Transcript

 You're listening to All Kinds of Catholic with me, Theresa Alessandro. My conversations with different Catholics will give you glimpses into some of the ways we're living our faith today. Pope Francis used the image of a caravan for our travelling together on a sometimes chaotic journey. And Pope Leo, quoting Saint Augustine, reminds us, Let us live well and the times will be good. We are the times. I hope you'll feel encouraged and affirmed, and maybe challenged now and then. I am too in these conversations. And if you're enjoying them, it helps if you rate and review on the platform where you're listening. Thank you.

Listeners, thanks for joining the podcast today. I'm joined by David. We're gonna talk about a range of things. Let's see where the conversation takes us. Welcome, David. 

Hi. How are you doing? 

So we were talking before, David. You said that although you are technically a cradle Catholic, that your faith was not something that you embraced until you had a moment in 2017 that changed things, and that was very timely as it turned out. So tell us a bit about that then. 

So yeah. So I've been agnostic for much of my life, certainly since my teenage years. And I suppose I'd always said, Oh, if I was given enough evidence to believe, that I’d believe- but I've just never seen anything that's convinced me. I did go to Mass on Christmas day because my grandmother always went. And then after she died, I carried on doing that in memory of her. And it was Christmas day of 2017 and I went to Mass. And for years and years, I'd gone to Mass on those occasions, but I would never receive communion because it felt completely wrong. You know,  I thought, I don't believe, so I can't do this. That would not be okay. I suppose in my life at the time, actually, things were pretty good. You know, I was working in banking in London. I had my own firm. Life had been generally very good. There were lots of exciting things happening. I had a very nice life in material terms. And I remember sitting there on the pew and sort of as everyone was going up to the front. I just had this thought, Gosh. You know, this is just like, it's not for me. I don't deserve this. And this moment of thinking just very, very kind of deeply that I just didn't - I wasn't worthy of communion, which was an unusual thought for me to have at this time. I was very, very kind of prideful in lots of ways, the stereotypical investment banker. I was having this very kind of reflective moment. And then I just  - it was as though I was, I suppose, sort of filled with and actually physically picked up by this kind of overwhelming power and love. And it felt like I was, like a marionette. You know, I was sort of stood up as if I was being walked up. I didn't really feel I had any choice of the matter. But yeah. So I went to the front, and I received communion for the first time in, God, decades. And I just sort of went back and sat down, and I just felt absolutely overwhelmed with the power and presence of God. You know, I was crying and, sort of almost crying and laughing at the same time. I suppose in that few moments, I feel I was just absolutely and completely shown the abundance and realness of God's love and God's existence. And I often say I don't - it's almost not a matter of faith for me in some ways now because it was just, it's sort of such a clear message. You know, I'd always had, Well, if I'm shown, I’ll believe. Well, okay. But He showed me, and I don't really have a choice. It was sort of there. And what was interesting is, so in 2014, I was in conversations with a private equity firm about setting up a new business, and I did something really, really stupid and dishonest in those conversations. And I lied to them about the fees I generated historically from clients. And then when we got closer to doing the deal, they asked me to substantiate those claims, and I made a fake schedule of fees which I gave them. And that was incredibly stupid and dishonest, and also it was a crime. You know, I committed a fraud doing that. Years later, we had actually bought that private equity firm out, and I thought it had all gone away. Although part of me had spent every day since I did that terrible thing looking over my shoulder and waiting for something to happen. But as it turned out, just a few weeks later, so in January 2018, I got a letter through the post from the police saying they wanted to invite me in for a voluntary interview under caution to talk about something. It didn't even say what it was about. I knew straight away, this is what it must be. That began a really difficult period of my life. So it took a few months before the interview was arranged. I think it was the Spring of 2018 that I went for my interview, and I confessed. I said everything I'd done. Then it took about another six months before I was charged, so that was in 2018. And then it was 2019 when I finally got to go to the Crown Court and enter a guilty plea. And it took almost another year before I was sentenced. So I was sentenced in early February, on the 6th February 2020. I got a prison sentence. I got 45 months in prison. All through that time and during my prison sentence, I think things were really tough, you know, and some of the toughest times were before I was sentenced. And I came at one point really, really close to taking my own life. I think I probably would have had it not been for the fact that I'd come back to God and had that gift from Him. And there were lots of times over those years after Christmas 2017 particularly when I absolutely needed to know that God was there. And I think had I not had that, I'm just not sure I would have survived those years. I think there's something I find very interesting in that timing. But when I had this sort of experience of being brought back to faith or brought to faith, I thought everything was fine in my life. But actually, it was exactly what I needed it as it turns out.

First of all, I think that is really interesting about the timing. God is good.

 Yeah. 

And got in there already. And I'm really interested in what you're saying about how it's somehow not a matter of faith now, having had that experience. That really resonates with me because that's what I think about my faith, that it's not - For some people, they seem to have made a choice, you know, and that they're gonna keep choosing. Whereas for me, I think it's just in my DNA. I don't think I can choose or not choose. I feel like it's not a decision. It's just well, yes. There's God.

And it's interesting, isn't it? But I know some people who have just been - completely believed all their life, never had a moment of doubt. In some ways, I'm, you know, a little bit envious of them. And then you get people who, yeah, seem to sort of make a conscious decision every year, every week, every month to keep renewing that faith. And then somebody who didn't believe for a long time, but then was sort of given this overwhelming demonstration that this is real and you need it, and it's true. It's all true. 

And I think there's something about that. I've had an experience a bit like that myself, a bit like. I think you described well there this sensation that it's - when you said that you felt like a marionette - that it's coming from outside you. 

Oh, totally. Yeah.

It's not you your subconscious tweaking things or anything, but it really does feel like something coming from outside you that's bringing you into this. 

Completely. And it's interesting. It's one of those experiences that's just - . A lot of memory fades, I think, in life. I mean, I'm a writer, so I journal everything, which I think is a really good way of trying to remember stuff. But at the time, I didn't really journal. So a lot of memories, I think, do get blurred. But that one remains just bright and clear. I can remember exactly how the pew felt, exactly what the floor looked like, exactly what it felt like when I looked up, exactly what it felt like to be picked up, and sort of marched to the front. I think, you know, in lots of ways, the most important moment of my life, I suppose. 

So for other people with mental health issues, where faith is important to them, I wonder where - . If you can talk about how having some faith now helped you through those very dark times. What is it that you were hanging on to? 

Yeah. Well, I don't know if it would I say it was a mental health issue or was it that I was feeling, I felt that my life was over. You know, I felt that very much in in material terms. You know, my career was over. My reputation was shredded. I was my late thirties, I thought, Gosh. That's it. How am I ever gonna be able to start again? You know, I'll never be able to come back from this. And I was terrified of going to prison. I think really heartbroken about the shame I felt I'd brought on my family and on myself, and it all felt very overwhelming. But I think what faith, what Catholicism, what God is all about for me is this idea that, first of all, of course, we're all deeply flawed. We're all gonna get it wrong all the time. But I think lots of people probably haven't got it wrong, necessarily as I did in those years. But actually, I think more importantly, once we accept what we've done wrong and decide to change course, we can. That's this the incredible gift of free will is that we are able to choose every day and every moment. I prayed a lot in that time. I guess I just felt that there was a plan, there was some hope. I love Tolkien. I've always loved Tolkien. And there's a particular bit in the third book of Lord of the Rings where Frodo and Sam are in the dark land of Mordor, and it's nighttime. And they've escaped from the Orc's town. They've lost all their kit, and they've hardly got any food, and they've hardly got any water. And they're surrounded by all the noise and smoke and fury of Sauron's armies going to war, and it feels really hopeless. And one night, they're sleeping, and, you know, Sam stays up to keep watch while Frodo sleeps, and he kinda crawls out in all this shadow and smoke. And he sees this tiny light, a star, who's actually Venus, up shining in the sky. And he has this moment of realisation that, as Tolkien puts it, the shadow is only a passing thing and that there's this light and hope and high beauty that's forever beyond its reach. And I think that for me, is at the core of the joy and beauty and hope of faith that I decided actually there is always hope. We've always got a choice, and there is always hope. That is incredibly powerful. And I suppose I went with that belief into prison and actually found it expanded and cemented by the stories of some of the men I met in prison and some of the beauty and the charity and the kindness I saw. 

Can we talk about prison a little bit? Would that be alright? Not too grim. 

Yeah. Of course. I talk and write about it a lot now. I was so shocked at how bad the prison system is and how it is not just that - a lot of people think about the kind of physical conditions, but you can and do habituate to a crumbling building or bad food or terrible showers. What's much worse and much more insidious about the prison system in this country is this moral rot in the system of the cruelty and the harm built into it, and I think that is very hard. You don't habituate to that. That's the bit that I got very angry about, very radicalised about in prison. So since my release, I've campaigned and spoken and written about prison systems to try to drive some change in it.

It's really good for people to hear because it's true. It's easy to focus on, conditions should be better, and they should, but it's much harder to unravel. You know, people have to listen more carefully if you wanna unravel the dehumanising aspects of the prison environment. 

It's not just the dehumanising bits though those do happen. It's also the sort of moral structure of the prison system is the opposite of what it should be. 

Tell us what that means then.

So almost everyone who goes to prison in this country, including me, is there because we broke society's rules. And mostly people in prison have done something that most people would agree is a thing you shouldn't do. There are, of course, things which we could argue about whether they should be crimes or not, and there are things which we could say - there are miscarriages. Just generally speaking, you know, most people are there because they’ve lied or stolen or hurt someone. And those are, of course, bad things to do. And I think we would hope that a system which tries to work with those people would hopefully teach them that they should be kind to people. They shouldn't steal. They should care for other people. They shouldn't hurt other people. That we should all behave in an honest and upstanding and decent way and treat each other well. But the problem is our prison system does the opposite of that. What I mean by that is actually the rules - I assumes the prison system would be full of rules and structure and order. And actually, it does have those things. The rules, such as they exist, are numerous, but they are incredibly inconsistently enforced and often enforced or not depending on when the person with power likes the person they're interacting with. So instead of rules in prison being an objective standard of just behaviour and appropriate behaviour and how you should act towards each other in this strange community you're in, in fact, what people will learn in prison if they observe the behaviour of the powerful is that rules are a tool used by the powerful to help or harm depending on whether they like the person. And that's exactly the wrong lesson we should be learning. 

Where does that come from? Is that to do with overcrowding and staff just have to resort to a kind of law of the jungle? Or is there something deeper there to do with, I don't know, our society? People just don't, you know, our understanding of morality is eroded and that seeps into the prison environment?

I think it's very easy to focus on and blame staffing levels and resourcing levels. Yes. I think it's harder to be patient and consistent and judicious as a prison officer if there's two of you who have to get 400 men in and out of their cells in thirty minutes to get their lunches. It is harder, of course, and I think absolutely better resourcing would help on the edges. And also the prison system, because of - there were efforts to cut costs, and what they do is they've encouraged a lot of people with long lengths of service to leave, and the system lost a lot of the experience. So you have had that loss of institutional experience. And those things, it would be easier to stay with all that. But I think, actually, if we funded the whole prison system, doubled or tripled staffing numbers, you would still have this cultural issue. Where does that come from is a really interesting question. I think there's a culture within the Ministry of Justice, within collectively as an organisation, and within the broader academic, criminological space which surrounds that, which I think is quite post-Christian and that is where it goes wrong. So it's very compassionate in one sense, and it's very focussed on recognising that lots of people are in prison because they've had terrible lives. And that's true. You know, there are about twenty five percent of people who go to prison have been in care at some point, been harmed horribly. The levels at which people who've been to prison experience childhood sexual or physical abuse are really high. That's true. But I think the problem with the system is, it sort of stops there, and its message is almost, this isn't your fault. This isn't your fault. Therefore, the subtext is you aren't capable of change because if none of it's within your control, then how can you possibly change? There's no effort to be compassioaten. And I think what we need is the system which actually is compassionate, but also says the future is yours to choose. And you are constrained, of course, by your experiences, and not everyone has the same degree of freedom, but you can still make choices each day. The system doesn't really do enough of that or almost any of that second bit. So that's, I think, a big kind of cultural issue. That probably is reflective of the fact that we're in a post-Christian society in lots of ways. And I think, you know, we see the rejections of Christianity in lots of ways, and it's quite interesting. This is a much longer topic. I won't dive into it too much, but I think it's very interesting to see how quickly our society has fallen back to and is falling back to pre Christian models of what justice looks like. Is there actually any forgiveness? Do we have any real sense of absolution, or capacity for accepting that people's lives can change and they can move forward? For example, I think a lot is being lost because we are a post Christian society at the top level. So that aspect. But I think also there's a a specific cultural rot within the Ministry of Justice where like many organisations, it has become about protecting the interests of the organisation and the people within its careers. So there are lots of occasions where corrupt or incompetent managers within the prison service are allowed to move on to another prison, to move to head office, go and get a different job, you know, progress sideways, even get promoted for failure. There's also a culture of protecting one another. And what makes it all more toxic is that happens within a system which, by its nature, is opaque. We don't really know what goes on within prisons because you're not really allowed phones and cameras and things like that. Most people in prison have very little social power and very little capacity to get an audience, to be listened to, during or after their sentences. So we've got this sort of combination of these factors. I'm writing a book about this at the moment called Lawless, which I hope will bring a different quality to the conversation, the debate around this. This is something I'm very interested in this, why is the moral quality of an organisation so broken? And I think it's a hard problem to solve. It's much harder than some new jails and some more staff and a bit more money for literacy courses and all those things - that would help. But I think even if you solved all the material problems, it would still be a bad prison system. 

That's really interesting, David. When I was thinking about our conversation, when I was preparing in my mind, I was thinking that there might be something interesting to talk about different kinds of crime and how the crime you did isn't something that's got a malicious element to it, and I was thinking about malice. But actually, you've made me think about malice and cruelty coming from a different place, coming from the people in power in prisons rather than from the prisoners themselves, which I hadn't really thought through before. It's made me think.  I was also interested, just going back a little bit, when you mentioned about going up to communion on that Christmas day, it was really interesting to me that God didn't wait for you to go to confession and 

Yeah. Which is weird, right? Like, I I definitely should have. 

No. I just mean God's ways are not our ways, and so we get very focussed on the - you have to do this first, and then you can do this nice thing. And, actually, our Lord just walked over all of that. 

I think in that moment, I had a, this is gonna sound Protestant here so it's dangerous. But I think there was a moment when I was sitting there when I think for the first time, it certainly - I actually sat there and accepted how dreadful I was being as a person. And I think that moment of complete vulnerability where I felt entirely unworthy of communion. This is actually, I don't deserve this, I think, was this sort of profound moment of vulnerability where I was making a sort of confession in my heart. 

Right.

I should say that I do, of course, confess in an appropriate way before receiving communion these days. It seemed like it was His choice, and it was not mine at all. 

I was thinking about then people you met inside where you said you met people who had compassion and kindness and charity. And that's the kind of thing you know, I did visit some prisons when I was working at Pact. The thing that really amazed me was the immense kindness that prisoners had for each other in that environment. It was not what I was expecting in some ways. So tell us a bit more about that because I'm imagining that not all of that was, again, people receiving sacraments in the chapel and doing things by the book. I'm guessing some of that was people who, you know, you really wouldn't think were faithful Christians but nevertheless showed that they understood the values of Christianity much more than others. 

Yes. And I had a very strange time in prison actually because I arrived there in the February 2020, and I kept a journal all the time I was there. And I think it was the day after I arrived that the first Brits had been flown back from China to get away from what was being called Chinese coronavirus. So seven or eight weeks later, lockdown happened. Lockdown in prison was incredibly severe. All religious services stopped. So I think that the next time after lockdown I got to go to Mass was a couple of weeks after Easter 2021. So it's over a year. That was a strange time. I was lucky that I got asked to write something for the Tablet earlier this year for their Lenten series, and they said, Could you write about a book that's helped you pray? I said, I'd like to write about the Catholic Truth Society, you know, the little tiny book of prayers. Yeah. It's fourteen months or something, fifteen months where I didn't get to go to Mass, so I would read the Order of Mass to myself just as a way of reminding myself of what I was longing for. But, you know, that first communion after that long wait felt incredible as well. That felt like, you know, really an incredible blessing. To come back to your question, there's so many examples of prisoners being incredibly kind to each other. In Wandsworth Prison, which is the first prison I was in, there was a very old Greek man, and he was incredibly frail and very ill, and so frail that he couldn't shower himself. And each day, his neighbour would help him to the shower and help wash him. And the guy who was helping him was forties, late forties. And every day, he would help this man shower and clean himself and help him back to a cell afterwards. You know, to see him in this place where we'd all lost almost everything. You know, we'd lost our freedom. We'd lost all kind of our worldly possessions. We're all in these grey tracks suits issued by the prison. You know, no one's got any the luxuries of life. You know, there's no kind of holidays or fancy TVs or any of that sort of stuff. To see this absolute act of love and charity being performed graciously and for no reward was just incredible. It was so humbling. That one always really sticks with me. There was also  - Christmas is a very strange time in  prison because it's one of those times where people really miss their families, you know, and this sort of real sense of not being able to be with your kids and another year having passed and a lot of men on longer sentence are, you know, thinking about that. So, you know, five Christmases I've missed, six Christmases, seven, ten. The kids are nearly grown up, and having missed all that time is a difficult thing. And at Christmas time, you know, there'd be some men who had money to spend on biscuits and cakes and things and order mince pies around Christmas. And some wouldn't have any. And again, there would be these just acts of kindness of people just sharing things, going to the cells of the men who had nothing and giving them some mince pies, giving them something to help them feel a bit more cheery. There's a real -I think there's profoundly Christian charity in that. These moments, which for me almost echoed the feeding of the 5,000 where you see this tiny amount of food that somehow gets spread out so everyone gets a bit of cake even if we have to split the mince pie up five ways just felt really uplifting to see that human capacity for love and charity and kindness and generosity in this terrible place. It's just so moving. What I've taken away from that, like anyone, I fall short and it's always happened, but I know I'm a much more patient man since prison. I don't seem to be as bothered by the small stuff. You know, there was a time where I'd get cross if someone was walking slowly in front of me, or I'd get cross if someone was driving slowly. That's gone now. I suppose when I think about how good people can be and how kind people can be when they've got almost nothing, it's a very powerful reminder that we can and should be as good as we can when we have much. I think it's very easy actually to be distracted by all the material stuff. You know, one of the things I think was actually really good about prisoner in a strange way was not having a phone. Obviously, I missed not being able to talk to my loved ones all the time, but actually without those distractions, I had to spend a lot of time. I read, I wrote, and I also had to spend time thinking and kind of reflecting on how I'd behaved in my life. That I'd committed one crime as fraud, but also in my business career, and I think in my personal life, I'd not behaved in a particularly good or ethical way. I spent a lot of time reflecting on that, and I think there's something to be said for that as a space. I think it allowed me to really reflect on the kind of man I'd been and decide that I was gonna be a different man then see this beauty and kindness around me and have that as a reminder. Actually, I could choose to be a better man every day. 

The way you describe that there, I think that's what we hope for out of prison, isn't it? That people get a chance to reflect and just make different choices - as we say in the lingo. That is what we hope for, but the environment doesn't isn't really set up for that to happen for everyone. 

I think ideally, prison would be a space where people get an opportunity to work out why they're there. In almost every case, something's gone wrong in your life if you're in prison, probably down to choices you've made and, potentially down to things that happened when you were younger in your life. And I think if people don't figure out why they're in prison, how on earth would they be able to not come back to prison? And I think this is where often the discourse around prison as a system gets stuck in this binary in this country, and we want justice in prison to be tough or soft. I don't think the prison system I want would be soft because I think facing up to your choices and who you've been, the harm you've done to other people is a really hard thing to do. After my release, I've done lots of things in and around prisons. I've been a prison inspector. I write about prisons. I was lucky enough to go to Nottingham last year to review this play called Punch for the Spectator. And this is a play based on a true story of a guy called Jacob, Jacob Dunne, who,as a young man in Nottingham, was out drinking, threw a punch at another man. The guy fell down, and he died. And Jacob, after his sentence, was invited to participate in a thing called restorative justice. As a process it's about trying to understand the harm that you've done and for the people who you've harmed to understand why. And this culminates for him with him meeting the parents of the man he killed. You know, the idea that this is something soft or easy is crazy. To actually sit in a room with the parents of someone you killed and talk to them and see their pain and have to recognise that you're the cause of that pain is an incredibly difficult thing. That takes immeasurable strength. And yet we code that as soft. We somehow think locking someone in a cell for twenty two or twenty three hours a day. So they've got nothing to do but stare at daytime TV and perhaps get addicted to drugs and just try to be half comatose to pass the time. Well, that's not particularly tough or particularly soft. It's just destructive. Wasteful of human life, wasteful of human potential, wasteful if one cares about it, it's wasteful financially. You know, we spend £50,000 a year per cell locking people up in an environment where nothing good really happens, and they have a great opportunity to understand why they're there or to change. A system we should seek to create needs to kinda step beyond that binary and actually say, We want to really challenge people. Because to learn that you're responsible for your choices and to face the consequence to your choices and decide every day to live differently is a is a tough thing. Right?

 Yeah. Very hard.

We all struggle with our tendency to sin, our tendency to fall short, and to get things wrong, and to lose our temper, and to get angry, and to be inconsiderate and selfish. That's what being a person is. Right? As a society, we have to try to focus on how do we try to get better at that?

That's really interesting. Thank you, David. Yeah. Because some people might think exactly, that you're calling for something easier. But it's actually a harder course, like you say, to face up to take responsibility for ourselves. Just as we work towards the end, would you just maybe bring us up to date a little bit with how you're living your faith now? What are the things that are important to you now that nourish your faith in your life now? 

Regular Mass is a huge part of it, and I think that's what I appreciate a lot more now. Prayer has become a huge part of my life. If you told me ten years ago that you'll pray three or four times a day and absolutely mean every word, and that when you ask for things, God will just go, yep, there you go. Not necessarily what we expect, but it's always given. I’d have laughed. And my prayers are very often very conversational. I find often in the car is quite a nice time to pray. On my own in the car, I can talk out loud and just grapple with stuff. I'm married with a young daughter, and it's obviously an incredible, beautiful time of life to have a toddler charging her, but also children throw this hand grenade into relationships, don't they? And they kind of shake everything up, and I think there's always that kind of grappling with my role as a husband, my role as a father, and my role as someone who has to work and provide. I find prayer really helpful. Other time I pray a lot actually is when I'm running. Maybe it's about moving forward while praying that I find particularly helpful. Another thing, particularly during prison, but I kept it up after this, the rosary. My very good friend gave me her grandmother's rosary to take with me into prison, and that was a real treasure. You're not really allowed jewellery, but you'd be allowed to keep a rosary. And that's a really big one for me as well. 

That will resonate with listeners, I know. We're gonna end the conversation there, David, although there's a lot more we could talk about. But thank you for spending some time. It's been really interesting hearing your experiences and your honesty about the things you've done, which none of us can cast a stone. And how you've grown through those experiences and how you're trying to make a difference in the criminal justice system now. And also what prayer means to you and your experience of being in the presence of God, which I think is different from many of the other stories that we've had on the podcast so far. So I think that will be really interesting for people to hear about and see what connects for them. So thank you. 

Thanks very much. 

Thanks so much for joining me on All Kinds of Catholic this time. I hope today's conversation has resonated with you. A new episode is released each Wednesday. Follow All Kinds of Catholic on the usual podcast platforms. Rate and review to help others find it. And follow our X, Twitter, and Facebook accounts, @kindsofCatholic. You can comment on episodes and be part of the dialogue there. You can also text me if you're listening to the podcast on your phone, although I won't be able to reply to those texts. Until the next time.