Scottish Catholic Observer

By Kevin McKenna

BEFORE the recent Liturgical changes were being introduced I had not been as diligent in my Catholic duties as perhaps I ought to have been. I repent.

Inevitably though, my relaxed approach to Mass attendance soon led to some uncomfortable moments. On one occasion I mumbled some responses that I realised were hopelessly out of date and then tried to correct them halfway through, resulting in a noise that may have led those in proximity to conclude that I’d taken the cornflakes with vodka that morning. My companion, a person much more constant in his Sunday worship, mocked me. “Part-time Catholic, you’re just a part-time Catholic,” he whispered in the style of a football chant.

And so, it was with a sense of eagerness and a renewed sense of optimism that I welcomed the news that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith wants to prepare us all for a Year of Faith. This will run from October 11 2012 to November 24 2013. What an opportunity, I though, to recalibrate my faith and set it on a more… how can I put it… a more solid foundation instead of allowing it to be swayed by the vagaries of Sky Sports programme-scheduling and Celtic away games on a Sunday.

Indeed Pope Benedict XVI wants this period to be characterised by conversion and a re-kindling of the Faith ‘so that all members of the Church can become credible witnesses of truth.’ Thus, I am assuming the Holy Father wants to challenge us not only to renew our own Faith but seek ways of evangelising others.

Yet, even though ‘evangelism’ is an ineluctable part of our duties as Christians it is an activity with which I have had a long and often regrettable relationship. While a student and for a reason that continues to escape me, I fell under the influence of a group of very lovely people who were members of a charismatic prayer group.

My normal companions were those who, like me, felt that a couple of beers and Bacardi chasers at lunchtime helped one’s understanding of the causes and effects of the Russian Revolutions. It was either them or people who were moved by the plight of the South West African people or those in assorted turbulent Latin-American republics. So when I fell among these gentle charismatics it wasn’t really a meeting of minds.

My new Christian friends had a terrifying habit of standing up together in the middle of the canteen and saying a very public grace before their meals. In this way they sought to bear witness to their faith in a crucible of godlessness and sin.

On the first occasion I attempted this I felt as though I was participating in a cruel and bizarre initiation ceremony for the police force or the freemasonic brotherhood.

I had no problem with saying my prayers in public, just so long as everyone else was too. And among the serried ranks of the godless and the sinful whose eyes were burrowing into my back were most of my ‘old’ friends.

Gradually, my attendance at this lunchtime ritual became patchy as I convinced myself that there were more effective ways at evangelism. Licensed premises and nightclubs were full of sinners and as such provided many more varied ways to reach out and spread the word to my recusant brethren, I easily convinced myself. My biblical authority for frequenting these premises was the Wedding Feast of Cana. Any saviour who uses a wedding party and alcohol to reveal his true nature is my kind of saviour, I would tell my carousing chums. It wasn’t exactly Billy Graham or St Francis of Assisi, but I thought I was bringing heathens to the Lord.

Unfortunately, my Christian friends had a weakness for the empty blandishments of sharp-suited US evangelists. At one point in the late 1980s and early 1990s Glasgow’s carbon footprint must have been a gigantic 11 and a half or thereabouts as it seemed that every US college boy preacher with a new bible and a sharp line in folksy, homespun and bespoke Pentecostalism would find a home and hospitality at seemingly endless charismatic conferences. Each was dressed like a chat-show host and they painted the world in only two colours: black and white.

The worst was an impostor called John Wimber who fleeced dozens of my gullible and decent friends for £40 which bought them a leather-bound brochure of boiled down, simplistic and dangerous mince about judgment and damnation. His party trick was to convince vulnerable souls that the Holy Spirit was upon them and that they had to collapse and weep like girls at a Robbie Williams concert. He was a false prophet of the most sinister kind.

You see, the problem is that most of my friends continue to be drawn from the damned ranks of non-believers. I pray for every one of them and feel confident that their essential goodness and integrity will give them a fighting chance on the last day.

When they ask me why I still believe I’ll be happy to rely on the authentic and old fashioned Scottish Catholic Faith of my fathers, re-enforced by 2000 years of scripture and tradition and not the flailing apostasy of dead-eyed folksy evangelists offering a cut-out-and-keep Jesus.

Praise the Lord, by the way.