It isn't often that 70,000 people gather together in a public park to affirm their faith, to share in community and to celebrate the Christian Gospel story in praise and a public act of worship. The exuberance and festive atmosphere, tempered by a cold wind in bright sunshine, bore witness to the place of Christian faith and experience in the lives of many thousands of Scottish Roman Catholics.
Earlier yesterday morning I listened to a discussion on Radio Scotland about the persecution and discrimination against the Scottish Catholic community in the earlier years of the 20th Century. Scottish historian, Tom Devine, put such discrimination in its context, and it wasn't a context Scottish folk, or the Church of Scotland, should be proud of. Then we moved inevitably to what is now referred to as Scotland's enduring shame, the sectarian undercurrent that remains a dangerous and toxic undertow in Scottish life.
Before writing more, let me tell you a story of a young Lanarkshire Baptist, who around 1970 was at night school doing O level English, in an evening class. The class was made up of him, and five nuns from the Sisters of Charity Convent. He had never encountered a nun in person before. Eighteen months previously he hadn't even been in a church before! I remember still, trying to explain my conversion, and that I was a Baptist, and wanted to be a minister – and the smiles and nodding heads. All I ever received from those Sisters was affirmation, welcome, encouragement and the quiet gentleness of those who lived up to the name of their order. I received charity – that old fashioned word for love that combines goodwill and conferred worth, supportive friendship, laughter and a common struggle with Shakespeare, Keats, and practical criticism. I don't remember specific conversations – I do remember looking forward to being there, and very early on discovering that loving and serving Jesus is a substantial enough foundation for fellowship across Christian traditions – habit wearing nuns and me with a denim jacket, very long hair, jeans and yes, high heeled boots! These five sisters encouraged and supported me through a hard year and never once called in question the reality and importance of my personal Christian experience. I wish I'd kept in touch with them, and if they are still around I wish them all blessing.
That is only one, though a deeply significant encounter, that has taught me always to assume friendship, to embrace rather than exclude, to respect difference and look for common ground with other people of faith. And to look with critical eye on the limited horizons, spiritual deficits, and theological distinctives of my own tradition as a Baptist. So the whole sectarian thing, with its latent hatred, chronic prejudice and acid-like social corrosiveness, I find a profound offense to the Gospel of Jesus, and to my own spirituality.
So an occasion when 70,000 Scottish Catholic people celebrate Mass in the presence of the Pope, and singing the praise of God in Christ in the power of the Spirit, I see as an historic act of witness in a culture where mass crowds are usually drawn together for events of far lesser import for human flourishing.
So when a 106 year old Catholic woman from Rutherglen speaks of the humbling privilege of being there with her great grandson; or two cowboy hat wearing women call themselves come-back Catholics and act as if that was actually a good and a life changing thing; or several children are blessed by an 83 year old man whose gentle hand proffered blessing expresses the Church's genuine attitude to its children; or when newly composed music is learned, practised and sung in worship in the open air of our largest city; or when the Gospel is read in public and Benedict speaks with carefully balanced encouragement and warning about the moral, intellectual and economic tendencies of British society, and urges a revitalising of faith and lived Christian values; when all that happens, and more, then the significance of yesterday's Bellahouston event is best understood on several levels.
As a social event it enabled a broad strand of Scottish religious tradition to give public voice to the core values of Roman Catholic faith. In doing so we witnessed freedom of religious expression, an affirmation that such faith and freedom are essential to a healthy society.
As a spiritual occasion, a large number of Roman Catholic people were strengthened in their faith, affirmed in their shared understanding of the Gospel, and given an opportunity to make pilgrimage together in shared worship and celebration.
As an ecumenical occasion, my own view is quite straightforward. Such a gathering indicates there are deep wells of devotion that still hold reserves of refreshing water in Scottish Catholic experience. And as Christianity in Western Europe, and in Scotland, is increasingly marginalised by the "aggressive secularism" that so concerns Pope Benedict XVI, there are important rapprochements and conversations that should be taking place across the traditions of the Christian church. Not an ecumenicity of institutional merger, or theological convergence – true ecumenism is not about dissolving diversity into uniformity. But a recognition that in building the economy (oekumene) of the Kingdom of God, co-operative fellowship, mutual supportiveness, respectful listening, humble learning, confident witnessing, arise not out of organisational fusion, but from a shared loyalty to God in Christ. Benedict talked of the importance of freedom and tolerance in any society which contains diverse faith communities. Equally necessary is freedom and tolerance between faith communities, and where possible co-operative friendship and mutual supportiveness.
I know. Maybe you need to be an 18 year old red hot freshly minted evangelical Baptist, encountering five Sisters of Charity whose patience and tolerance and love for Jesus were so unarguably obvious and so unsectarian in spirit, to write this kind of stuff decades later. Maybe so. In which case I gladly pay tribute to five sisters who, along with many others since, within and beyond Catholic and Baptist circles, have taught me much of what I know of generosity of mind, hospitality of heart and receptiveness of spirit. Through such experiential lenses I watched the Bellahouston celebration, and rejoiced that Christ was proclaimed.