Paisley Diocese – A Sign of Peace and Reconciliation

 

‘Let us pray for each other, let us pray together that the Lord will grant us unity and help the world so that it may believe.’ Pope Benedict XVI

It has been said that the during the 19^th century, the women of Gweedore in County Donegal used to wear brightly coloured Paisley shawls to Sunday Mass. It is believed that these beautiful Paisley shawls were brought back from Paisley by Irish textile workers returning to Donegal. Contemporary Traditional Latin Mass enthusiasts might be surprised to learn that the women of Gweedore also wore Paisley pattern handkerchiefs as head coverings, rather than Spanish lace mantilla veils.

This quirky little historical fact points to a long standing and well established, two-way movement of people between the counties in the north of Ireland and Paisley, over many centuries. 

Indeed, in 1812 Fr William Rattray of St. Mirin’s records that almost 73% of all marriages in Paisley were Irish born couples, mostly coming from Antrim, Donegal, Derry and Tyrone. By the 1830s, 60% of Paisley’s exploding population of textile industry workers, were immigrants.   

Even my own parish of St Ninians’s was established by families evicted from Gweedore in the 1880s, these folks strongly associated with Irish Land League and the famous Fr McFadden, ‘the Fighting Priest of Gweedore’, establishing their own branch of the Land League here in Gourock.       

Of course, much of this is history is very well known, it is no secret that most of our industrial central belt parishes and dioceses were re-established by Irish workers after the penal laws had been rescinded.

So much so, that during the 19^th century there was even some consideration given to the idea of Irish Catholics in Scotland coming under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Armagh, rather than the restored Scottish Catholic hierarchy, following the final lifting of the last remaining restrictions upon Catholics in Britain.  

What is perhaps less well known is the fact that a number of Lowlands Scots ‘Planters’ in the North East of Ireland, the people who would become known as the Ulster Scots, were Scottish Catholics from Paisley.

According to scholars of this period, the most striking concentration of Scots Catholics in Ulster was on the estates of the Hamilton family of Paisley, in Strabane, County Tyrone. The majority of Scottish colonists arriving in Ulster after 1610 were mainly Presbyterians but a sizeable minority were Catholic Lowlanders fleeing persecution in Scotland and settling on estates of Scots Catholic planters, including Catholics from all levels of society from the Hamilton family’s estates in Paisley and surrounding areas. (Maybe the descendants of all those Paisley Catholics in Tyrone today should come under the authority of our Bishop of Paisley?) I am joking of course but the Hamilton family did hold numerous titles at various times, including Lords of Paisley, Barons of Strabane and Earls of Abercorn.

As such, today you can walk down from Abercorn Square to the nearby Immaculate Conception Church in Strabane and similarly stroll down Abercorn Street to St. Mirin’s Cathedral in Paisley.

Indeed, the cultural links between Paisley and Ulster are many, from those Irish Catholics and Ulster Scots Presbyterian Radicals who came together during the ‘Year of The French’ in 1798 and their close association with the Paisley Radicals of 1820. To the aforementioned linen and weaving industries, which shaped both communities.    

But what does all this history mean for us today? Well, older readers might recall the late firebrand Rev. Ian Paisley’s references his Paisley ancestors and his Scottish mother in 2008 when he was the First Minister of Northern Ireland during a meeting with the Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond in Edinburgh. Ian Paisley would often mention his Scots heritage as a sort of bridge building gesture between his deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness and Alex Salmond, as if the Revered Paisley had a foot in both Scottish and Irish streams. 

Perhaps Paisley Diocese’s unique history also provides us with some kind of similar unique insight or role in Scots-Irish / Protestant-Catholic peace-making and reconciliation in our own communities today, much like Dr Paisley during the hopeful years following the Good Friday Agreement?

Maybe the Catholic community of Paisley’s cultural identity, which is shared with both Gaels and Ulster folk alike, gives us something in common with all parties?  Does the story of displaced Ulster Catholics and Lowland Scots, possibly cause us to have empathy with all displaced and persecuted refugees today?  

I would reply with an emphatic yes to this question, as both our Diocese and Bishop have often been a beacon of peace and reconciliation, working to promote the common good, mutual self-interest and care for our neighbours and strangers. 

Paisley diocese has always been an active advocate for peace-making, social justice and the corporal works of mercy through our Bishop’s work for SCIAF and his solidarity with groups like my own Glasgow Catholic Worker and others engaged in helping refugees.  

Equally, the business of ecumenism and forging good interfaith relations has always been at the heart of Paisley diocese through the leadership and efforts of Mgr. Denis Provost Carlin, Vicar Episcopal for Ecumenism and Interfaith over many years.

These positive ecumenical relations were beautifully captured during the Apostolic Nuncio’s recent visit to Paisley diocese, when his Excellency Archbishop Miguel Maury Buendía visited Paisley Abbey with the Bishops of Scotland. Praying and singing together in the company of ministers from the Church of Scotland.        

Similarly, we have always maintained our venerable closeness with Ireland; For example, back in 2016 St Mirin's Cathedral in Paisley hosted the New Movements Family Life Conference on Christian Family Life in a Changing Society. The guest speaker that day was the wonderful Bishop Brendan Leahy of Limerick and I recall this as a very powerful and special event which I attended on behalf of Glasgow Catholic Worker, along with friends from Neocatechumenal Way, Focolare Movement, Opus Dei, the Community of the Risen Christ and many others.

Our deep emotional connection with Northern Ireland also persists in the fact our Bishop of Paisley John Keenan has his ancestral roots in County Fermanagh, while the parents of former Paisley Diocese priest Brian McGee, now Bishop of Argyll, came from Donegal and Belfast.

Yet, this enduring relationship with Ireland is not all ancient history. Rather, it is a living tradition being kept alive through modern technology by our Bishop John Keenan who leads us in praying the rosary by candlelight via social media at the closing of each day. Very much following the pattern of the traditional Irish Fireside Rosary which was once such an integral part of every evening in our forbearer’s homes, particularly in the northern counties of Ulster.  

For us Catholic Workers, joining with Bishop John for nightly Rosary, is our most vibrant and important expression of our fidelity and faith. Because it is in this prayer we belong to the Body of Christ, in unity with each other as children of God.

Finally, a few weeks back our Bishop of Paisley John Keenan was in Glasgow when his car wouldn’t start due to flat battery. The Bishop was completely stuck until God sent a couple of passing Rangers fans returning from a match at Ibrox, to help Bishop John jump start his car from their car so he could get back home to Paisley. This brief encounter gives us a little glimpse of a country where we each freely express our own identities and beliefs, detached from fear and suspicion, expressed through neighbourliness towards one another.

Similalry, my own Parish Priest Gerard McNellis once recalled a similar exchange with two marchers returning from a parade on the Gourock train. An encounter which ended in a request for prayers from one of the Orangemen.

In his Sunday homily the following day, Fr Gerry linked this encounter back to Pope John Paull II's concept of personalism - the idea that our inherent human dignity as children of God and our ordinary relationships, should be the guiding principal in our daily business, rather than identity, politics our culture.

Interestingly, Fr Gerry's maternal grandfather was also an Ulster Scot Presbyterian from Portrush.

All these little gestures of help, remind us of all those occasions of humanity which have always existed alongside the strife and sectarianism. Like the 1847 famine when Scottish Free Church Ministers protested and took relief action, helping islanders regardless of confession. It also reminded me of the deep respect which Ulster Presbyterian soldiers had for the heroic British army chaplain Fr Willie Doyle during WW1.

Yet despite it now being 2025, this type of Good Samaritan story still seems a little unusual and even surprising, as if both parties remain strangers when in fact they are brothers with much in common, who’ve perhaps simply forgotten it for a while?

As Christy Moore once sang ‘There is no feeling so alone as when the one you’re hurting is your own. There was a badness that had its way, Love was not lost it just got mislaid.’