Scottish Catholic Observer

Ciao da Roma! Greetings from Rome (again). Scarcely had I unpacked my suitcase than it was time to fill it again for another trip to Rome, this time with the students of St Columba’s High School. As is often the case (pun intended), it was really my big sister Evelyn who did the actual folding and placing, while I helped out in an advisory capacity.

Watching her delicately pack the requisite numbers of shirts, socks and pants took me back to those days—not so long ago—when my Mum and Evelyn would, despite my unconvincing protestations that I was on top of things, swoop in to save me going on holiday with just one outfit. Priests on tour often look as though their sole concession to being away is the shedding of their collar or else they disport themselves in garish combinations of styles harvested from across the decades. Thankfully, the womenfolk of my family have always been keen to ensure I’m presentable.

I like to think I’ve picked up the main sartorial points of holiday packing although, when left unattended, I occasionally go to the extremes of colour coordination. Last year, a holiday photo I posted to Facebook while in Spain prompted various messages to ‘dial down the burgundy’ and comparing my carefully crafted look to that of a superhero whose powers resulted from a brush with a radioactive cranberry.

Prior to my departure for Rome, much of last week was pretty much the regular round of funerals, hospital visits and school-related activities. On the eve of their last day, we celebrated Mass with the departing S6 pupils and their families. I shared the happy news that when I left St Columba’s in 1986 there was a girl band called Bananarama and as they leave St Columba’s in 2017 there is, once again, a girl band called Bananarama, since they announced their decision to get back together again last week (the theme of the homily was continuity, by the way, not just pop trivia).

I have found myself a little distracted of late. I attribute this to a heavy schedule, two brief trips to Rome in rapid succession and an even more disrupted sleep pattern than usual. This last factor is down to allowing Jasmine to sleep on the bed beside me—something I swore I’d never do, incidentally, but she was a bit clingy after being set upon by two dogs up by the golf course, so I relented. The upshot is that she’s in doggy heaven, sighing contentedly throughout the night, while I move closer and closer to the edge of the bed (and madness).

A symptom of my distraction is that I absent-mindedly lifted the parish Death Register and took it to a meeting instead of my diary. One of the hangovers from my life at Glasgow University is that I prefer to use an A4 academic diary for keeping track of my engagements.

It’s certainly harder to lose in the chaos of my desk. But it’s precisely that imposing black hardcover which led to my confusing it with the other big black book which normally sits among my papers. In my experience, meetings are usually bad enough without bringing a Death Register to them.

Speaking of registers, the national Catholic archives are engaged in a great work of digitising parochial registers. Our oldest Baptismal register, dating from the foundation of the parish in the late 1940s and covering the period up to 1981, was recalled for this purpose last week. By a quirk of fate (or providence), given that my first months were spent in St Joseph’s, my own Baptism is recorded there. When I took over as parish priest I wasted no time in looking myself up. I must say that I was little put out to find that there was no mention of my ordination entered in the register (as should have occurred when I became a deacon). How this seismic event in the life of the universal Church came to be overlooked was a cause of some annoyance.

Armed with my best fountain pen and worded in the most pompous Latin I could muster, this glaring omission was rectified—with my appointment as Parochus, or parish priest, added for good measure. It’s not often that doing admin makes me feel good, but I did derive great satisfaction from that.

I remember coming to St Joseph’s back in the day to request a copy of my Baptism certificate as part of my application to seminary. This week I took a trip down memory lane as we took 40 S3 students to visit the Scots College. I must say that I was very lucky in that my years at the college were, almost without exception, happy ones.

Some of my fellow students experienced lengthy bouts of homesickness or struggled with other issues, but I was basically content. Maybe that was because, to some extent, I was going about in my own wee world so that most things passed me by. I reckon that some would say that little has changed and that I still am rattling around in my own wee world. What has changed is the college: thanks to investment in the fabric of the building and the boundless generosity of Scotland’s Catholics, the Scots College is very swish indeed. 30 years ago, when I started in the college, we weren’t allowed home for Christmas, there was only one telephone among the student body and supplies of toilet paper were sometimes erratic.

Seminarians nowadays, with their own phones, high-speed broadband so they can Skype or FaceTime their loved ones at home, and no doubt bountiful supplies of carta igienica, simply don’t know they’re born.

Still, today’s students proved to be very gracious hosts to the kids from St Columba’s and our lot genuinely found the tour of the College to be one of their highlights from the Rome trip.

As we looked forward to this Sunday’s world day of prayer of vocations, it was also good for me to be back in this place which was so bound up with my own path to priesthood. As we took the sun on the college terrazza, I was reminded of that last evening my own year group was together before we headed home for ordination.

Watching the late June sun slip beneath the horizon, I opened a bottle of wine that I’d been given for Christmas in our first year. In that moment of anticipated nostalgia (if such a thing exists), I promised myself that I would keep the wine for my last ever night in Rome—whenever that might be.

When I opened the bottle seven years later, I made a pretentious little toast (as is my wont) to the effect that this wine we were about to share was symbolic of our time in Rome: mature and full bodied. We were all going home to become priests, though I alone would be returning after ordination to complete my studies. But it was important to mark this night, I said. We filled our glasses and drank deep of this special vintage. And you know what? It was absolutely rancid. It took the enamel off our teeth and burned the back of our throats as it went down.

Clearly, this was just a bottle of plonk which a kindly senior student had given to one of the new boys for the purpose of giving a little festive cheer to take the edge off a Christmas spent on the Via Cassia rather than with family.

It really wasn’t meant to be laid down for years, accumulating a layer of dust and the weight of a symbolic value it couldn’t really bear. From that day onwards, I’ve always been a bit wary of getting too carried away with nostalgia and investing mundane things with too much symbolic significance.

Still, as our kids enjoyed a cup of juice on that same terrazza 23 years later, I found myself making a silent toast to the lads in our year—not all of whom are still in ministry.

I hope they’re all happy wherever they may be. They certainly deserved better than that paint stripper I served up as the sun set on Rome and our student days.