Scottish Catholic Observer

“There are indeed those who are indifferent to any religion; there are those who take a stronger viewpoint and are working evermore confidently to destroy the Christian message in our lands,” he told parishioners. “We must be alert to what is going on; we must realise the obligations on us not only to live the Christian message ourselves but to hand it on to others.”

History in the making

Our Holy Redeemer was the first permanent Catholic parish to be established in Stornoway post-Reformation and—to mark its golden jubilee—the cardinal and Bishop Toal celebrated Mass on the feast of St Columba alongside Fr Roddy Johnston, parish priest, former priests of the parish and many clergy from across Argyll and the Isles Diocese. Prior to the Mass, the clergymen toured the island together.

While last week’s visit was the first by a cardinal to the island, Cardinal Keith O’Brien himself is no stranger to the Isle of Lewis.

“It is a joy for me being back here with you again following on my apostolate as Apostolic administrator between the years of 1996 and 1999,” he said in his homily at the jubilee Mass.

“Today we celebrate the golden jubilee of the building of the first permanent church in Stornoway since the Protestant Reformation—but 50 years is but a short time when compared to the approximately 1500-year history of Christianity here in the Western Isles.”

Stornoway Airport in the morning of Thursday June 9 and took part in a number of pastoral and social engagements throughout the day, including a visit to the island’s 5000-year-old Calanais (Callanish) Stones with Bishop Toal and Fr Johnston.

The centrepiece of the golden jubilee events was, however, the  Mass with Our Holy Redeemer’s parishioners in the evening. The Mass was celebrated at Stornoway’s beautiful new church building, which was solemnly consecrated by Bishop Emeritus Ian Murray in May 2007. The previous church building had been destroyed in a fire in November 2004.

Reformation

As well as speaking of the history of Christianity in the Western Isles in his homily at the jubilee Mass, Cardinal O’Brien highlighted the affect the Reformation had had on the islands of Lewis and Harris.

“One might ask why the Reformation was particularly successful in Lewis and Harris,” the cardinal said. “It might simply be that it was easier for the Reformers to reach those islands rather than South Uist and Barra, which were geographically further away and, consequently, were not affected by the Reformation in the same way as those islands which were geographically nearer to Scotland.”

While reflecting on the establishment of Stornoway’s first post-Reformation Catholic parish in 1961, the cardinal spoke about the recent history of the Church in Lewis and Harris.

The building that housed the first church in Stornoway, served by Jesuit Fr Ryland Whitaker, had been a canteen facility at Stornoway Airport during the Second World War before becoming the printing works and offices of the local newspaper. It did, however, as the cardinal noted, serve the congregation of 50 very well. The congregation had grown to 300 by the time the first church building proper of Our Holy Redeemer was dedicated in 1991, a building that would serve the Stornoway community until the fire of 1994.

Past and future

The cardinal said that, looking back at the brief history of the church, ‘we might ask just where are we now and where should we be going from here?’

Cardinal Keith O’Brien told parishioners: “Gathered here today thanking God for those 50 years—and also thanking him for those 1500 years of Christianity here in these islands—I ask you all to pray to God in thanksgiving for the gift of the Christian faith, which was handed on in these places by our predecessors in the faith of those great saints of old. However, I would ask you to do more than thank God. I ask you again to examine your consciences and would call on all Christians of goodwill to do exactly the same.

“May our celebrations of the 50th anniversary of a permanent church in this place inspire us with some of the zeal which came to these places through the activities of those early saintly apostles to our country.”

-        [email protected]

-        Pic: Paul McSherry