I Went to Mass for the Free Biscuits – and Found a Home Instead

Because if I’m going to be on my knees, I’d rather it be in a heated pew than down an alley off South Street.

“I saw you at Mass yesterday morning,” the Sallies dinner lady said to me with a smile, offering a kind of approval that I would usually only expect from my grandmother. 

“Oh, yes — it was a bit loud, what with all the crying babies and everything,” I stammered, not quite brave enough to admit my historical agnosticism, having long since outgrown the edgy atheist phase of my early teens. “I went to the Student Mass as well; it was a little quieter.”

I’d been caught off-guard. I’d won over most of the hall catering staff over the past year, but the older ladies had always been immune to my charms. Yet here I was, suddenly in their good graces, and all it took was going to church.

I was raised by fairly irreligious parents and had, in my late teens, embraced my mother’s Jewish side, displaying a sort of half-hearted, pick-and-choose cafeteria approach to Judaism — a devotion that evaporated whenever pork sausages and bacon appeared on the Sallies’ breakfast menu. When my parents asked me what exactly there was to do in St Andrews, I shrugged and quite honestly answered, “Golf, go to class, go to church?” Their surprise was understandable.

But really, there’s nothing else to do here.

St Andrews mirrors a wider trend seen across the UK; while older generations are quietly exiting the pews, Gen-Z seems to be sneaking back in. I noticed once I’d hopped between a few services — students weren’t just crammed into the 5pm Student Mass, they were spilling over into the 11am Family Mass, then back again for Sunday dinners and midweek talks. The only question is: Why?

At first, I thought it was pure boredom — that, and the Toastie Bar, a modern-day Feeding of the 5,000 organised by the St Andrews Baptist Church, offering 50p toasties to students on Friday nights. While the Baptists have their own proselytization efforts, the Catholic community here offers a different temptation: a ready-made social life.

Suddenly, I found myself swimming amongst a sea of Catholics — in Sallies, in town, and not just on Sundays. After first year, when you’re no longer living on top of all your friends in halls, maintaining those friendships becomes trickier. Mass solved that problem — it gave us a standing weekly appointment. No back and forth of frantic texts and missed meetings; simply, “See you at St James.”

Church occupies an unorthodox position in St Andrews. Naturally, many attend for religious devotion and genuine spiritual connection, others for the meditative quiet, yet a large segment go primarily for the social side. Mass happens twice a day and acts as good a meeting point as Pret. An hour of shared devotion quite easily evolves into pub crawls, study sessions, or grabbing lunch together.

The Catholic Society knows its market. Their weekly Sunday dinners offer comfortable prices and are cleverly timed for students in catered halls who are left to fend for themselves on weekends. The fare is (usually) good — from smoky Texan brisket to chewy Icelandic Hangikjöt — the company like-minded, and the conversation decidedly more centered on gossip than divinity.

In an age of declining ‘third spaces,’ the Catholic community fills a vacuum. For those unwilling to risk the venereal infections of Club 601, or those bored stiff of the many identical coffee shops in town, church becomes the best remaining option.

When I told my parents I was considering converting out of boredom, I wasn’t entirely joking.

And yes, the community is absurdly welcoming. Teas, coffees, and enough biscuits to wreck your macros for weeks are bestowed upon you the moment you linger too long at the end of Mass.

Still, I wonder what poor Father Patrick makes of it all. He must often deal with a student congregation that are far more interested in gossiping and sneaking flirtatious glances at each other than his sermons. But maybe that’s the point. If Mass is the excuse that gets you through the door, it’s the community that keeps you coming back.

The Lord may work in mysterious ways, but in St Andrews, He sometimes works through custard creams, the cute girl three pews ahead, and the sheer monotony of student life.

Illustration by Sarah Knight