Missions, Bishops and the Little Way
This week Jane Coll writes about St Fergus, Eileen Campbell on her journal for Catholic Teachers; and we profile the work of the Sion Community. Our lesser spotted Saint is, St Machar. Welcome!
At the age of 12, I moved up to High School. This involved a change from a six pupil, one teacher primary school in a remote crofting community on the West coast to a 1,000 pupil comprehensive in the central belt. I was different in many ways, an obvious one being my accent. As there is a similarity between my native accent and that of Southern Ireland, I was often mistaken for an Irish incomer. This irritated me, never having left my native soil, especially as the question was usually phrased ‘What part of Ireland do you come from?’ rather than the more acceptable ‘Are you Irish?’. There is an assumption throughout Scotland that any Roman Catholic Scot must be of Irish descent within a few generations. While this is true for many, it ignores those pockets of Scotland bypassed by the Reformation whose faith can be traced back to 1st century missionaries from Ireland rather than the effects of famine and the industrial revolution.
I now live in Caithness, where the Reformation wiped out all traces of Catholicism – or so people assume. An official Catholic presence only returned with the herring fishing of the 19th century. Yet there are some lingering memories and traditions from the earliest days of Christianity in the North. One well-known story involves the patron saint of the county town of Wick, St Fergus (6th or 7th century). Fergus is a Pictish name, although he seems to have spent some time in Ireland. He is associated with Strathearn, then Caithness, then Buchan. His name was honoured through the centuries and a statue of him survived into post-Reformation times. When a zealous minister destroyed the statue in 1613, the citizens of Wick were so incensed that they threw him into the river and left him to drown. A replacement effigy was placed in what was the Sinclair aisle of the old church of St Fergus. After many years in the local museum, it now has pride of place in the current St Fergus Church, Wick. The Church of Scotland in Halkirk was also named after him.
A companion of Fergus was Modan, who is associated with an ancient chapel site, now covered by a mausoleum, at Freswick on the coast north of Wick. This site was greatly venerated and the local custom of praying at the ruins while going round it on their knees took several generations of disapproval from the local ministers before it died out. St John’s Loch at Dunnet, 20 miles to the east of Wick, also had an early chapel site and a tradition of people going round it praying for cures – this time on Midsummer morning.
Another companion of Fergus, Drostan, has several sites dedicated to him in the county. Canisbay church is still active and the current building, parts of which date back to the 15th century, is near the site of an ancient chapel dedicated to Drostan. On the other side of the county is a graveyard that was still in use within living memory, also dedicated to Drostan. The walls of the graveyard contain the original baptismal font.
The third companion, Colm, is less well known. There is a site on Dunnet Links, now covered by sand dunes, associated with him. Another graveyard, nearer the centre of the county at Dirlot, is usually attributed to Columba but I suspect that the original dedication was to Colm and modern recorders, not familiar with the Celtic saints, assumed that this was a corruption of the much better-known name of Columba. This graveyard was also in use until comparatively recently.
It seems that chapel sites and graveyards retain their sense of being sacred places regardless of whichever denomination is in charge at any one time.
Jane Coll | Caithness
Industrialisation and Migration: Jane Coll describes how Catholic workers migrating to Caithness as the area industrialised effected Catholicism in that region. Wherever you are in Scotland you will find similar parallels.
A Teachers Pilgrimage: Eileen Campbell, a Religous Education teacher from Glasgow, has created a wonderful prayer journal for Catholic Teachers inspired by the Pilgrimage of the Relics of St Therese of Lisieux throughout Scotland last year. Here, she talks about why she wrote it.
Castration, Fashion Advice and the Proper use of an Ass: I write about three take-aways from Deuteronomy that have the upmost relevance to us today.
Saint Machar, Feast Day - 13th November
In this new section we will be profiling Catholic Apostolates and people who are making a difference in Scotland and the rest of the UK today.
The Sion Community
Go into the whole world and proclaim the good news! The good news is that God is a loving Father who invites us to Heaven; Jesus died on the cross so that our sins could be forgiven; and the Holy Spirit longs to dwell within us, to help us live our Christian lives on Earth. The Sion Catholic Community for Evangelism has been proclaiming this since 1985 across Scotland and the rest of the British Isles. An Irish priest working in England, Fr Pat Lynch, felt inspired to gather a team of three married couples and a religious sister to run parish missions: inviting parishioners to consider this Good News through fresh eyes, repenting of anything which would keep them away from God, and committing themselves to the mission of the Church.
From those small beginnings, Sion Community grew in the 1990s to include a team of young adults running school missions. The Sisters of Mercy made property available as a residential centre to host retreats and community gatherings in Brentwood, Essex. Parish and school missions help Catholics reconnect with these basic truths of our faith; residential weekends provide a strong opportunity for young people to grow as disciples. Sion Community mainly works with Catholics to help them become confident Catholics – for if we’re not confident about these things ourselves, what hope have we of sharing them with the rest of the world?
My first experience of Sion Community came in 2006, when I was a newly-ordained deacon on the path to priesthood. My bishop gave me permission to spend three months with Sion Community. In that time I learned some powerful drama for street mission, experienced door-to-door home visiting, and built deep bonds with younger and older Catholics who are passionate about their faith. In 2017, when changed parish duties allowed me to commit to Sion Community’s annual summer gathering, I became an Associate Member. At the end of 2018, my bishop give me permission to work full time with Sion Community for three years.
Our founder, Fr Pat, moved to Ireland in the year 2000, founding a sister organisation, Céilí Community; we share training events each year. I spent the week leading up to St Patrick’s Day in 2019 assisting with an Irish mission; each night was well attended, despite reports of the ‘decline of the Catholic faith’ in the Emerald Isle. Later in the year I preached parish missions in Merthyr Tydfil (taking me to my native Wales), and Erskine – since its foundation, Sion Community has brought mission to many Scottish schools and parishes. We seek not to ‘run a mission’ for a parish, but to encourage each parish we serve become a ‘parish in mission’, continuing the work of inviting the never-churched, and welcoming back lost Catholics, after our team has departed.
2020 posed a particular challenge to our work. Our freedom to go places and meet people was cut off at Easter, as the whole of Europe was plunged into lockdown. Nevertheless, Sion Community is always creative. We reinvented ourselves as digital ministers, broadcasting daily Mass from our formation house in Coventry for more than 100 days. We also produced online weekends for 11-14 year olds, for families, and for training evangelists in Lithuania!
During the current academic year, we have paused our usual programme of taking gap year missionaries for schools work, and live-in volunteers to welcome people at our residential centre. Our Lord said that a wise person would bring old and new things out of their store house. During the current season when we haven’t been able to go out and do mission, we’ve looked at new possibilities. We will soon be producing Christian greeting cards for sale. In 2021 we will be launching new opportunities for both residential training, and on-line courses, for Catholics who yearn to become more effective at sharing our faith.
Our 13 full-time missionaries are supported by a wide network of Associate Members who gather from time to time and contribute to some of the community’s events; our new digital skills have enabled us to ‘meet’ as a scattered community in ways we’ve never tried before. We are Catholics hungry to help the world discover the joy and beauty of the Catholic Faith and become fully equipped to share what we believe with others. We support a mission called “theASCENT” which mentors 14 to 17-year-olds in their Catholic values. We support a number of families who regularly gather with us for Catholic ‘family Sundays’ with a lively Mass, a shared lunch experience, and age-appropriate faith-building. We offer our own members training in how to work together to share the Good News using music, drama and personal testimony.
If your school or parish would like our team to work with you on sharing the Good News – either through an on-line event, or as public gatherings begin to take place again – or if you are interested in any other aspect of our work – you can find us online. Our website is www.SionCommunity.org.uk and you can see our Mass broadcasts and other recent activities on YouTube at YouTube.com/SionCommunityChannel – we believe that as a visible Christian Community with Jesus at the centre of our lives, we can offer families, parishes and schools a sign of hope through our work, words and witness of life.
God Bless from Eric and the Team