Honesty in Laughter

Ian Dunn, Editor of Scottish Catholic, reflects on a meeting with the Moderator, the St Margaret’s Declaration and suggests the true fruits of ecumenism may be learning to laugh at each other.

AS a journalist and a Catholic, I think a lot about truth.

So when I interviewed the new Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland I felt I had to be honest.

“Moderator, ‘’ I said. “There is a divide between us. And though it may be difficult, I feel I have to mention it so I can conduct this interview in a spirit of transparency.

“You are a fan of Partick Thistle and I follow Clyde.”

He had the good grace to laugh.

I was not, in fact, interviewing him about lower league football but rather the signing of the St Margaret’s Declaration, the historic affirmation of the lasting friendship between the Church of Scotland and Catholics in Scotland. There have been some questions over exactly what the declaration will mean practically but one I was struck by is that theological differences and difficult pasts can seem smaller when we can laugh together.

Certainly the Rt Rev Dr Iain Greenshields was one of the more good-humoured interviewees I have encountered.

He was also refreshingly open. He bluntly stated that we live ‘in a Scotland that’s very, very secular and that will make the next 20 years very challenging’ for Christians of all stripes.

This, he believes, means one of the biggest challenges for the Kirk is aligned with the wider culture or not.

“Do we try to fit in with the wider position of society in all things?” he mused. ”Or is the church a counter culture within society that speaks of a different way? We’ve got to be very, very careful that we don’t just buy into the direction that the culture leads us without thinking very clearly about the direction that Jesus leads us.”

He was even open to a fairly radical change of the Kirk’s structure, stating ‘one of the Church of Scotland’s weaknesses is we don’t have a go to person, like you have an Archbishop who can just state the Catholic Church’s position’.

“Maybe the Kirk needs to think very seriously about having somebody of that ilk,” he suggested. ”Perhaps not the Moderator, as that’s an ambassadorial role, whereas maybe you want someone who is helping run things from the centre.”

Refreshingly frank, and that openness is undoubtedly something we Catholics can learn from. The history, the tradition, and the majesty of the Catholic Church are all things I love. But they can occasionally lead us to be a wee bit caught up in ourselves.

Case in point, one of the big stories in my world at the moment is ‘will the Pope resign?’ He’s not in the best of health, hence the sad cancellation of the peace pilgrimage to South Sudan with the Moderator and the Archbishop of Canterbury. So there are periodic suggestions he might follow the example of his predecessor Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and step down from the Chair of Peter.

The most recent flurry of speculation, made front pages all over the world, sparked a dozen social media meltdowns, and began when it was announced that in August the Pope will visit the Cathedral associated with a 13th century Pope who also resigned, and where Pope Benedict had portentously laid a stole before he resigned.

I’m not saying there’s nothing in this, but I’m confident that in the time it took me to write that sentence a Presbyterian would have resigned, collected their watch, and made it out to the golf course.

We could do with some of that frankness in the Catholic Church, as we undertake the Synod of Synodality.

The wordy title disguises a vast worldwide consultation of every Catholic on how the Church should change.

The initial encounters have been bruising at times, and the good relations we currently enjoy with the Kirk are occasionally in stark contrast to how we Catholics view each other.

It is clear that the St Margaret’s Declaration heralds no great theological breakthrough that will propel us towards Christian unity. That is as far away as ever.

But given our past, praying, working and laughing together is a thing worth celebrating and hard won. For the St Margaret’s Declaration is an act of recognition, not of inspiration. The friendship is there already. It was built in villages and towns all over Scotland by Catholics and Presbyterians who no longer wanted to live in the past.

I talk to Catholics of all sorts, all the time. And even those who will talk at length about the deep strain of anti-Catholicism in Scotland and how that continues to the present day are clear that the Church of Scotland is not the problem.

That’s not to say there isn’t the occasional joke, I’m partial to one myself.

Last year I commissioned Professor Ian Bradley, no stranger to these pages, to write for one of the early editions of the Scottish Catholic. The first non-Catholic to write for us, I believe. The time from my inquiry to him filing a 1000-word piece was less than 12 hours. Many of my regular contributors heard barbed comments about learning from a Calvinist work ethic in the days that followed and I make no apology for it!

And that should go both ways.

Several years ago, in a previous life, I was involved in wrangling a photo shoot, featuring a smorgasbord of Scottish religious leaders. We were all set up outside Holyrood, a lovely summer’s evening, everyone was on time. Except for the Catholic representative, an Archbishop, who was late. And then he was quite late. And then he was really quite embarrassingly late, which was aggravating to the then Moderator, who had somewhere to be and started to suggest we do the photo without the bishop. Mustering all my charm, I appealed to the sense of Christian solidarity, his empathy for the challenged, and his commitment to the cause.

“This,” he replied archly. “Is why we needed the reformation!”

Thankfully the missing Archbishop ambled into sight at just that moment.

“… we live ‘in a Scotland that’s very, very secular and that will make the next 20 years very challenging’ for Christians of all stripes

The Moderator was a total pro for the pictures and all was well.

And If I didn’t find it hilarious at the time, I’ve wrung plenty of laughs out of the story in the years since.

I believe there is honesty in laughter.

That then would be the hope for the St Margaret’s Declaration, that is an acknowledgement of a true friendship, and a truly Scottish friendship where we can be honest with one other, honest enough to occasionally joke.

If all that is too jolly for you, the Moderator is right. The next twenty years are likely to be difficult for Scottish Christians of all denominations. We are few and getting fewer. What we have to say increasingly falls on deaf ears. Do not take this as a declaration of despair.

Religious revivals happen and we are in the miracles business. Still the road ahead will be hard and lonely. If we do not laugh, we may weep.

Ian Dunn is the founder and Editor of the Scottish Catholic, Scotland’s only national Catholic publication, a bi-weekly magazine launched in September 2021.