Scottish Catholic Observer

Last week I got a cryptic email from the editor of the Observer to say that they had received a package addressed to me and he would attach it to the first husky bound for the snow line.

It duly arrived the other day and, since I have enemies, let’s just say I didn’t tear straight into it. First of all, I got Jasmine to have a sniff about, to ensure I wasn’t being passed contraband in some elaborate sting operation; then I got Sandra to give it a shake and check for any suspect wiring.

Once I was sure that all was well with the parcel, I finally entered the room and gingerly unsealed it around the edges. To my surprise, several packs of pants cascaded onto the kitchen table. It was then I realised that some kind soul had read about the ‘Smalls for All’ appeal and had made this generous donation.

I would like to express my sincere thanks to the anonymous lingerie benefactor: may God bless you for being so thoughtful and carrying the thought through to action. The appeal, which ended last Sunday, met with a fantastic response from the locals, as well as this long-distance donor.

It just goes to show that people do actually read this column and take note of it (and not just Cathy from Paisley who phones for regular Jasmine updates).

I hope there will be similar levels of interest and support when I launch future charity campaigns ‘Gin for All’ and PINOT (‘Priests In Need of Tokens’).

The October week break meant a slightly lighter schedule in the absence of schools, but there were plenty of other things to make up for it.

Our St Peregrine Novena concluded, as always, with Mass and the Anointing of the Sick. This is always a lovely way to round off this beautiful prayer of intercession and I like to remind those coming to be anointed that this unction is another facet of the anointing they received in Baptism.

Just as they were made a member of Christ, the anointed one, so we remember that he is also the suffering servant.

Being joined to Christ in Baptism is a joining in the totality of his life, including the experience of pain and rejection, so as to share fully in his risen and glorified life.

I’m very grateful to all those who have come here faithfully each week—and equally to those who have dipped in and out—for adding their prayers to those of the wider parish.

I know that, among those present, are those suffering from cancers and serious illness. By the same token, there are those who come to act as proxy for a loved one who cannot be there. It’s a lovely expression of the Church at its best.

I had Baptisms both on Saturday and Sunday: although I try not to, sometimes shift patterns of parents and Godparents mean that you have to be a little flexible. Monday was also a busy enough morning, starting with an in-service day talk in the high school, followed by Mass in St Joseph’s and a Requiem Mass for Mrs Farmer in St Mary’s next door.

Although her home parish was the mother church of Greenock, Sheila had been frequenting St Joseph’s for the past couple of years.

Her family could park beside the access ramp and get her into a pew in the space of more or less ten feet, which is what you want if you’re lugging an oxygen tank with you.

While others would have been put off by ordeal, she was not. Until her very last weeks, she was a constant presence in the front row, her daughters and grandchildren filling up the rest of the pew (and occasionally the pew behind). They don’t make them like Sheila any more.

The theme of my talk to the high school teachers was one of the development themes of the day, namely nurture. Back in my day, we didn’t speak so much about nurture—or at least not so explicitly. But nowadays all schools have to take account of that dimension of their provision.

This is due, in part at least, to the fact that a climate of nurture is absent in some of the backgrounds in which our children and young people are growing up.

My point was that nurture in the Catholic has to have two elements. There is, of course, the aspect of instilling virtues and inculcating a sense of responsibility. But there is another sense in which basic human needs coincide with theology. In fact, I say human, but I began talking about baby rhesus monkeys.

In the early 1960s, the psychologist Harry Harlow carried out what has since become one of the best-known experiments in the history of developmental psychology.

Putting it briefly, he used two wire frames in the vague shape of a monkey; one of these contained a bottle which dispensed milk to a group of baby monkeys, the other Harlow covered in a soft fur-like material with an approximation of adult monkey features.

He noted that the babies only spent as much time with the milk dispenser frame as was necessary for a feed.

The other times, especially when they were afraid, they clung to the ‘mother frame,’ even though it had no milk to offer them.

Harlow concluded that there was a deep-seated need for comfort in these babies, as well as for milk, and that an understanding of nurture and attachment had to take account of both.

While we cannot really provide the ‘contact comfort’ which our children need (and, in that respect, we are not so very different from the monkeys in Harlow’s study), Catholic schools should try to ensure that their approach to nurture involves a conscious awareness of the God who comforts us like a mother (cf. Isaiah 66:13) as well as trains us like a father.

I reminded the teachers of an anecdote—which I hope isn’t apocryphal—about the fearful wee boy who couldn’t sleep and kept pestering his folks to let him clamber into their bed. When repeatedly told that God was always with him, wrapping him up in his love, he protested, ‘But tonight I need God with skin on.’

That is what we understand by the word ‘incarnation’: to paraphrase the first verses of John’s Gospel, ‘the Word put skin on and lived among us.’

The radical novelty of Christianity is that our God becomes as we are in all things but sin, and is warm to the touch.

Of course, incarnation is a Christmas word: perhaps it’s the arrival of Christmas displays in the shops (not to mention the parish stall) which has prompted these seasonal thoughts.

It might also have something to do with my attending a meeting at Cappielow, home of the illustrious Greenock Morton, to be updated on the work of the Inverclyde Christian Initiative.

Attentive readers of the column may remember mention of the Street Pastors scheme which has been running in the town as a ministry to clubbers and carousers in the wee small hours.

The same group have just launched Rail Pastors, hopefully providing a reassuring presence on the later weekend trains, when things can get a little rowdy.

I’ve asked if they could also provide a Taxi Pastor for the Sunday morning pensioners’ pick-up, as some of the drivers have been complaining about empty bottles being strewn about the footwells of their vehicles (on both the outgoing and return journeys).

One of the projects we have been asked to support is Carols at Cappielow on Monday December 18: this carol service has been running for a couple of years now and grows in popularity each Christmas.

It would be good to see a large turnout of St Joseph’s folk, as well as the Morton players themselves. Incidentally, I’ve been asked to compere the Ardgowan Hospice carol concert the night before, so I’ll be well and truly in the swing of things for Christmas. And, before ‘Concerned of Coatbridge’ fires up the laptop to write in, I know it will still be Advent. But it’s still nice to join with other Christians to hail the approach of the God with skin on.