Scottish Catholic Observer

Fr Neal Carlin hasn’t lived in Scotland since the 1970s, yet, when he visited the Pauline book store in Glasgow earlier this month to sign the book that tells the story of his life it was full of old friends keen to meet him again. The author of They That Wait on the Lord: An Uncharted Journey celebrated his golden jubilee as a priest earlier this year, and it is clear throughout he has always had the ability to connect with people. Derry born, he was ordained for Motherwell Diocese and spent a number of years in Scotland before returning to his native Ireland.

The founder of the Columba Community, he has seen that grow to encompass four centres—Columba House of Prayer and Reconciliation in Derry, St Anthony’s Retreat Centre, White Oaks Rehabilitation Centre, and IOSAS Visitor’s Centre, Celtic Peace Garden and Sanctuary, all situated just across the border in County Donegal.

Challenges

Despite the constancy of his message of peace and reconciliation, his life as a priest has not been without its challenges. Fr Carlin had to wait 17 years for official recognition from the local Irish Church for the Columba Community.

He also visited Long Kesh Prison twice a week for nearly six years during The Troubles, offering Sunday Eucharist and developing prayer groups in the H Blocks.

Joined by members of the Columba Community, he prayed in Columba House with many thousands of people who suffered during those troubled times, and developed a ministry of healing for the sick.

An all-night prayer vigil for discernment on the way forward in 1986, led to the Community being given an old farmhouse across the border in Donegal, which became a haven for many ex-prisoners and young men hunted out of Belfast and Derry after allegations of anti-social behaviour.

In 2001, the community then opened the White Oaks Rehabilitation Centre for the treatment of alcohol and drug addictions, gambling and other addictions, after much reflection and prayer by the Columba Community.

There are clearly plenty of stories for Fr Carlin to tell, but in writing the book he found in some ways it only told half the tale.

“In some ways words don’t get it across, what really happened,” he told the SCO. “There’s always so much more to it that you can’t get across but, looking back, you do think well maybe I played my own small part in the bigger story of salvation.”

Concern for youth

His experience working with drug addicts also leaves him concerns for young people. “I think you do see a lot of arrested development among young men today,” he said. “There are many causes, the lack of physical exercise, over indulgence in the act of physical affection which results in immaturity. In the country we would talk about the father teaching the son to plow, these old traditions that imbue a man with purpose have fallen by the wayside.”

He also believes money has corrupted our ability to tell right from wrong.

“There’s an Irish newspaper columnist, Eamon McCann, a good man, but he wrote recently that cannabis should be legalised because half the businessmen in town were smoking it. Well I could give a damn about businessman, that doesn’t make it okay.

“We see the damage it does to the young people, how they get totally paranoid from heavy use of the hash. Just because you’ve got an Armani suit on, doesn’t make it alright.”

Hand of God

Rallying against the corrupting influence of power has been a hallmark of Fr Carlin’s ministry.

“I wanted very much to speak out after Bloody Sunday, and after the investigations into it,” he said. “I even spoke to Tom Winning about it, and he said leave it to the hierarchy but it was hard not to speak when you knew young guys, innocent guys who had died and those involved were exonerated.

Throughout his life, however, he sees the hand of God working.

“If you look at the big picture, like with the rehab centre I think thousands of people have been helped.”

Noting that more than 15,000 people have completed the centre’s 30-day residential programme, he estimated that when at least four other members of the family who have been influenced by the person’s addiction were added to this figure, some 75,000 people have found help through that work,

“The gratitude and joy is palpable,” he said. “To see husbands and wives, with their children, back together again and to hear them speaking of their lives now like a resurrection from the dead, is most encouraging.”

New Church model

Key to the book is his promotion of a new model for the daily Church.

“I think I have stumbled into a providential model of Church that does work,” he said.

One concern for him is the many parish priests that now live alone in large houses.

“Virtue is unity and sin is division,” he said “People need other people, very few of us are called to be a hermit. I visited my old parish in Burnbank, and where there used to be three priests, now there’s only one. That’s hard.”

He also believes how we use Church property could change.

“We tend to discern a pragmatic viewpoint, if there’s a property empty, the instinct is to sell it,” he said. “But is that what the spirit is telling us to do? There are many people who need housing, could we not give the house to the poor? Who would live close to the Church, and build a community of love.”

He believes greater involvement of the laity and a diffusion of responsibly from the clergy is vital if the Church is to flourish.

“I think the future of the Church has to involve a lot more retreats, contemplation and reflection, not in a belly button gazing way,” he said. “But in a way that really helps people experience the reality of a world full of strife.

“But I always come back to prayer. There’s one in the Oratory back home. Sometimes in a lonely cell in the presence of my God, I stand alone and listen. In the silence of my heart I can hear his will when I listen. Despairing people come to me; they seem to think that I will know the answers. They tell me I am wise. I answer that nothing can deceive me if I stand alone and silently listen, for I am but a servant in the presence of my king when I listen. Sometimes in a lonely cell in the presence of my God, I stand alone and listen. There’s always hope if there’s prayer.”

—Hugh McLoughlin reviews They That Wait on the Lord: An Uncharted Journey on page 14 of this week’s SCO, in parishes rom Friday Nov 21.