Scottish Catholic Observer

IN this age lacking in social friendship, our first task is that of building community—these are words from our Holy Father Pope Francis that offer a huge challenge to us all.

Yet the response could lie in something as simple as a pint and a game of dominos.

For example, does your local parish have an affiliated or nearby social club and if so, when was the last time you popped in for a pint or a game of pool?

Likewise, might we ask the regulars in our social clubs, ‘when was the last time you called into the side chapel, lit a candle and offered up a wee prayer?’

Regrettably, the days of assuming that everyone who is a member of a Catholic Social club is a practicing Catholic are long gone.

These days, many such clubs are a reflection of wider society with a mix of practising, lapsed and non-Catholics, unless they are Knights or Hibs halls or Polish clubs.

Truthfully, this is how it should be and judging from the various ones I’ve visited, our Catholic social clubs have been places of wider hospitality and friendship which have been open to all for many years now.

Otherwise they would long since have closed like so many traditional working men’s clubs up and down the country.

Though if you look you’ll still find lots of hardworking, honest committee people of good will freely volunteering their time, doing good work in social clubs every night of the week.

It would be a huge mistake to dismiss such places as dens where old men go to drink and play dominoes unrelated to the reality of parish life. No offences to the many ‘Jack and Victors’ who rightly enjoy a drink and game of dominoes in a social club, but they have much more to offer than that.

Such institutions have always had an important role to play with regards to the wider application of Catholic social thought. Local fraternities, boys guilds and civic institutions embody a sort of basic self-government; this is the very essence of the Catholic idea of subsidiarity. A well run community space like a social club should represent all that is good about a local area, whether it be run by a church, a sports club or a community group.

Another essential element of a decent social club is its ability to be a space where we may encounter solidarity between young and old, laity and clerical, rich and poor.

Even Karl Marx recognised the importance of such places when he noted that the revolution would never happen among the Catholics of Cologne, because the factory bosses drank the same beer in the same beer halls as their workers.

They should also be places where we can encounter a genuine personalism which emphasises the uniqueness of God and every human person. For example, my local parish social club provides evening activities for nearby elderly residents and people with learning difficulties who would otherwise be socially isolated.

As a consequence, they give a central role to the dignity of the human person, acknowledging that people exist in relation to each other and it is always these relations which are required to achieve the common good.

In other words, we are always dependent on one another. This is why social clubs and community centres are so vital, because they help people come together to develop real relationships.

Unfortunately, it would be unrealistic to pretend that there are never any problems inside our social clubs. We can’t deny that many of the people who drink in our social clubs are disconnected from the Church.

This disconnect is particularly apparent among young working class men. Why are the same sturdy men who were once the very backbone of our Church now seeking fellowship elsewhere? And it’s not just the lads in our social clubs who no longer feel bound by any sense of belonging to the Church.

We’ve all heard the horror stories about christening parties and even First Holy Communions turning all too boozy and even occasionally devolving into ‘full-scale rammies’.

Any change will only come through the building of a reciprocal relationship between both lapsed and observant Catholics.

We cannot really call the wider community of cultural Catholic back towards true Christian discipleship through making judgments or demands. Rather we are required to make our parishes more welcoming by rejecting our little cliques, opening up our hearts and reclaiming our own tradition and our own unified identity as Catholics first and foremost.

However, the desire to reconcile ordinary men back to the faith should not be seen as misogyny or denigrating the vital role which women now rightly play in the liturgical and daily life of our parishes. Any fears which such men might have about entering a Church which they perceive as feminised will not be resolved by embracing a return to some kind of Victorian muscular Christianity.

All Catholics, both male and female, are called to solidarity and universalism which predates any modern notions of inclusiveness and diversity.

Therefore, to all those who find themselves on the fringes of the Church, to all those who feel unworthy, we must say come back home to Christ. The belonging we all seek awaits us at the altar in the Eucharist.

Regardless of who we are, we are all the beloved sons and daughters of God.

Ours is a God of infinite mercy and boundless compassion, he is looking for us whoever and wherever we are.

And if we in turn are seeking God and are looking for role models then we can look to any number of patron saints from Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati to Blessed Franz Jägerstätter who, in his youth, gained a reputation for being a wild lad.

He was a miner who later became a sacristan at his parish before being executed by the Nazis and later declared a martyr.

Closer to home, how about the example of someone like the upstanding gentleman Tommy Burns?

Tommy was simply regarded as a decent and honest man whose faith was rooted in a special devotion to Our Lady.

Finally, building community is always difficult as it requires us all to leave our comfort zones behind and enter into the messy work of human relationships, yet what always endures is the promise of friendship.

As St Maximilian Kolbe tells us: “God sends us friends to be our firm support in the whirlpool of struggle.

“In the company of friends we will find strength to attain our sublime ideal.”

Let us all seek this friendship in Christ today, even in our social clubs.