Apostle to the Hebrides: Blessed Dermot Duggan CM: Anthony MacIsaac writes about the Vincentian missionary M. Dermot Duggan who successfully evangelised some of the Hebridean chieftains and its people - and all in the very teeth of the reformation.

St Hildegard Von Bingen: Teutonic Prophetess: writes about one of her favourite Saints on the run-up to the feast of this Doctor of the Church.

The Life of William Charlton: Stephen Watt recounts his memories, and contributions of Catholic philosopher and mentor William Charlton who died last year. Although he may not be very well known beyond philosophical circles, his example has something to teach us all.

Other articles you might have missed from August

The Battle of Warsaw: Fr Christopher Doig on a momentous day in Polish history.

Lammas to Assumption: Just in case you wanted to spend a little more time reflecting on our Blessed Ladies Assumption, Ian Campbell has penned a short reflection.

Already in September we have passed the Feast of St Giles on the 1st September- a French hermit who had nothing to do with Edinburgh but was popular in France of the Norman period and hence that influence translated to Scotland. But this month also sees one of Scotland’s most significant Saints celebrated - St Ninian on the 16th September. Evidence from recent research and archaeology shows Whithorn did indeed have a Christian presence from the 4th and 5th centuries and that added with other evidence points to the real existence of St Ninian in either the early or later dating. The day before, the 15th, is an important day for the Diocese of Paisley (and football fans) with the feast of St Mirrin - Bishop John Keenan speaks to St Mirrin FC about the Saint. St Adomnan, the great biographer of St Columba and important figure in his own right is remembered on the 23rd September.

September also remembers St Lolan 22nd, St Barr/Finbarr (which the Isle of Barra took its name from) on the 25th and St Machan of Lennoxtown 28th.

Get Involved

Would you like to be involved in one of Scotland’s few Catholic magazines? Have you got some hidden or visible gifts in writing, recording, graphics? Maybe you would like to help publicise the Coracle throughout Scotland? If so please get in touch. Previous experience is not a must.

About

St Moluag’s Coracle is an online Catholic magazine focused on and about faith in Scotland today. We have two aims; bringing you writing that will build and inform your faith and secondly, to bring to light Scotland’s hidden Catholic history.

Our writers come from all walks of life, some are Religious or in the Priesthood. Most are lay people with excellent knowledge and insight.

St Moluag’s Coracle was begun in a kitchen in Nairn by Eric Hanna; with the help of Dominican Sisters, Bishops and the many wonderful and talented writers who have contributed to making this magazine a thoughtful and thought-provoking place for Catholic writing in Scotland.

St Moluag’s Coracle is part of the registered Scottish charity and apostolate Mary’s Well. In addition to publishing this magazine, Mary’s Well also oversees the Association of King James VII and II - a group dedicated to promoting the Cause of this Servant of God. Please find out more here, or email admin@kingjamesviiandii.org. We also put on retreats from time-to-time which we publicise here as well.

SC050978 | E: maryswellscotland@gmail.com | editor_stmoluagscoracle@proton.me

The monk known as Volmar worked by St Hildegard’s side for much of his life transcribing her visions. Her central work ‘Scivias’ is an illustrated collection of 26 visions, the original medieval manuscript was lost during WWII, but faithful copies were made throughout the centuries. As well as recording her visions, St Hildegard also wrote one of the first known morality plays, scientific texts and composed music. She is one of the first known female composers along with Byzantine abbess Kassia. Contrary to the idea that women were oppressed by the Church, it is the Church here that gave these women the freedom to write and compose and subsequently kept their work and memories alive. St Hildegard gained renewed popularity in the 20^th Century mostly within the New Age movement due to her mysticism and writings about natural healing, particularly those where she describes the use of plants, metals and precious stones. This New Age interest is attributed to de-frocked Dominican friar Matthew Fox who became a New Age evangelical preacher later in life. Although it is wonderful that St Hildegard has affected so many people across centuries and world-views and continues to inspire people across many creative disciplines, it is disheartening to see her devout character moulded to fit a current agenda, many alluding to secret love interests and battles with the ‘patriarchy’, such as an opera by Sarah Kirkland Snider and a film by German film-maker Margarethe von Trotta both centred on a fictional romance fantasy between Hildegard and another Sister, which seems all the more offensive that those within the ‘feminist’ world are more interested in her sexuality and relationships with the men in her life than her actual tangible achievements such as building a convent, authoring multiple publications, developing her own language and remarkable musical compositions still performed today. ‘A feather on the breath of God’ was released in 1982 by British vocal ensemble Gothic Voices and consists of the music composed by Hildegard Von Bingen, around the same time the German early music ensemble Sequentia also released recordings of St Hildegard’s compositions, this lead to increased interest in both medieval music and St Hildegard, the music was even sampled by rave musicians and thus St Hildegard’s reputation continues among unlikely sub cultures.

St Hildegard experienced visions from childhood but only ever spoke of them later in life, from her writing it seems that she felt as if she would not be believed or that what she had to say would not be well received. She described in clear detail how her visions came to her: “...I did not perceive in dreams, or sleep, or delirium, or by the eyes of the body, or by the ears of the outer self, or in hidden places; but I received them while awake and seeing with a pure mind and the eyes and ears of the inner self…”. In a separate entry, she describes how her soul “rises up high into the vault of heaven and into changing sky and spreads itself out…” (see figure 1), she describes how she sees the things she describes as if reflecting in water. ‘Scivias’ is structured in 3 books, the first focuses on ‘The Creator and Creation’ reflecting on Hildegard’s vision of God, the Fall, the nature of the Cosmos and the choir of Angels. The second focuses on ‘The Redeemer and Redemption’ and reflects on the nature of the Trinity and the Church as the bride of Christ. The third book mostly focuses on a symbolic building which represents salvation history as well as each structural element corresponding to the virtues and doctrines of the faith.

Vision of the Universe

Hildegard’s visions are not only illustrated beautifully in the artwork of ‘Scivias’ but also within the poetry of the Antiphons and Sequence’s she wrote for her compositions. In ‘O ignis Spiritus Paracliti’ we continue to see through Hildegard’s eyes: “O boldest path / penetrating into all places / oh high and on earth / and in every abyss / you fit and gather all together.” In Hildegard’s writing and her music, she often uses imagery of irrepressible, virile nature to describe God’s power, she calls this ‘Viriditas’, meaning ‘greenness’ and ‘growth’; one responsorial song ‘to the Virgins’ proclaims “Oh noblest greenness, who have your roots in the sun… / you are held around by the embraces of the divine mysteries / you glow red like the dawn…. It is akin to the language of the Canticle of the Sun by St Francis Assisi, who was born only a few years after St Hildegard’s death whereby he praises God for ‘Brother Fire’ and ‘Sister Water’.

Vision of the Choir of Angels

In the introduction to Fiona Maddock’s biography of Hildegard Von Bingen she describes how in the March of 1852, a handful of people gathered around a casket in the church of Eibingen, believed to contain the remains of a woman who died nearly 700 years before. The remains had been moved around the country, including once to Cologne during the 30 Years War, had survived wars and pillaging and were now back home on the banks of the Rhine. When the casket was opened, the parish priest found nearly 60 bones within a violet silk shroud including the skull in a silk hood with a parchment with gothic lettering that read: Caput Sancte Hildegardis (Head of the blessed Hildegard). Additionally, there was a pocket sewn into a skullcap with strands of gold-grey hair, parts of a black and brown habit and the remains of mummified vital organs within boxes. These remains are now in a reliquary at Eibingen in Germany and the central destination for pilgrims.

By

Lucy also wrote about St Hildegard as part of last years Advent series on the O Antiphons- please have a look below.

Statue of Bl Dermot Duggan in St Mary’s Bornish, blessed by Bishop Brian McGee in 2025.

Readers will find that the Coracle has published various articles on the particularities of Catholicism in the Outer Hebrides, and some also on the personalities who were involved. We previously mentioned, in the piece dedicated to Fr. Douglas Macmillan, the articles concerning such luminaries as Fr. Allan McDonald and Fr. George Rigg.

One of the only places in the British Isles to have survived the Reformation was the Isle of South Uist, alongside the smaller islands to its south. To be precise – Barra, Berneray, Vatersay, Mingulay, Pabbay, Sandray, Fuday, Hellisay, Fuiay, Gighay, and Eriskay. Since all of these islands were so isolated, they also preserved a Catholicism which was somewhat indigenous to the region. This Catholicism has been described as part of the wider phenomenon of “Celtic Christianity”, although the term is notoriously difficult to define, and is fraught with controversy.

The Reformation, and the Counter-Reformation which followed it, would likely have swept most of these traditions away. Only the isolation of the Hebrides protected their Celtic culture from such an eventuality. That being said, the Reformation did cause a chronic shortage of Priests to the region, and there were some efforts to reach these islands through time. The Catholic Faith had become dangerously fragile in this context, and whole generations of people were uncatechised.

St. Vincent de Paul (1581-1660) was notable in that he took an interest in places where the Catholic Faith was most endangered, from his flourishing Congregation of the Mission in Paris. Inspired into action and given financial aid by such figures as Marie-Madeleine de Vignerot, the niece of Cardinal Richelieu, he sent missionaries to regions as varied as Madagascar, North Africa, and the Western Highlands and Islands of Scotland.

One of these missionaries was M. Dermot Duggan CM^[1], who had been born in Co. Tipperary and who knew the Gaelic language. Born in 1620, he entered the Congregation of the Mission on the 26^th August 1645, after he had been Ordained a Priest. He went to Paris in 1648, before being sent to Scotland in 1651.

We see that Duggan began by converting the Chiefs in the region, including Glengarry and Clanranald. In a letter to St. Vincent de Paul, dated the 28^th October 1652, Duggan writes:

“God graced us, upon our arrival in Scotland, to cooperate in the conversion of the father of M. de Glengarry. He was an old man aged 90 years, raised in heresy since his youth. We instructed him and reconciled him to the Church during a great illness, which soon led to the grave, after he had nevertheless received the Sacraments and testified a true regret for having lived so long in error, and an unspeakable joy that he would die Catholic. I reconciled also many of his domestics and some of his friends, though quite secretly.”

This initial conversion near the outset of Duggan’s mission was an extraordinary success, and refers to the son of “Old Glengarry”. Both the old Chief and this son were called Donald MacDonnell. Old Glengarry had been Chief for some 70 years, and died aged 102 in 1645. Due to advanced age, his son had missed his chance to govern, and it was therefore the grandson Aeneas MacDonnell who held power. We may notice that Donald was born in 1562, if he met Duggan in 1652, which was only two years after the Scottish Reformation. This makes his conversion to the faith in which his father had been born quite meaningful, bringing the story of the Reformation back full circle to the old Catholic Faith, all in one lifetime.

Later in the same letter, Duggan writes about his experience with Clanranald (John MacDonald, 13^th Chief of Clanranald) and on the Isle of South Uist more generally:

“I travelled to the Hebridean islands, there where God, in His Merciful Omnipotence, worked wonders beyond all hope. He had so well disposed their hearts, that M. de Clanronald, lord of a good part of the Isle of Uist, converted with his wife, the young lord his son, and all their family, and all the gentlemen, their subjects and their families. I worked also with the people of this island and passed to those of Egga and Canna, where God converted eight to nine hundred people […] I found thirty or forty people aged 70, 80 or 100 years and more^[2], who had not received Holy Baptism ; I instructed them and baptised them, and a little time after they were dead ; and without doubt they pray now before God for those who procured them such a great good.”

The conversion of John MacDonald was another great grace for the mission, and assured continued support from Clanranald going forward. However, his son Donald MacDonald, who became 14^th Chief and who was converted by Duggan, later gained a terribly evil reputation. He came to be known as “Black Donald of the Cuckoo”, since he would shoot innocent tenants from the walls of Castle Tioram, with his gun which was named the “Cuckoo”. One of the darkest events recorded about him was his hanging of a poor old woman for stealing his snuff.

Certain stories suggest he sold his soul to the devil. Folklore thus recounts how he came to be haunted by a black toad, following him everywhere like an evil familiar, and which eventually sat near his deathbed on the Isle of Canna. As he lay dying, whistling could be heard, which seemed to herald his damnation, and a very tall figure could be seen approaching his abode. Some versions of the story recount that a brave widow’s son was in the room with Donald. When the Chief tried to get up feverishly, to meet the figure, the young man forced him back onto his sickbed. This occurred on three successive times, at which point that the tall figure was unable to physically claim Donald’s soul. All the other people nearby had since fled upon sight of this tall apparition – who was none other than the devil. Eventually, it departed towards the Isle of Rùm, walking over the sea, the widow’s son having saved the Chief. So it was that Donald finally praised God, and he died in relative peace, reconciled to the Church, in the year 1686. We might wonder whether Duggan was interceding for him, and whether the grace of the Sacraments that had been received at the Vincentian’s hands finally won him over to God at the very end, despite a life of great sin. Of course, the historical details of such stories allude us, and are unverifiable.

Perhaps the historical uncertainty, and dramatic content of the story, shouldn’t really bother us. In South Uist, and the wider region, storytelling has always been a significant part of the culture. It is through storytelling that cultural knowledge is transmitted. This can refer to historical events which affected the whole community, and which ought to be remembered. Donald’s reputation asides, it is interesting to realise that Dermot Duggan has become an undying part of the story.

Indeed, the success of Duggan’s mission continued to affect this same Clanranald lineage which would later produce, just over a century later, such figures as Flora MacDonald (1722-1790) and Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair. It would anchor the Catholic Faith that later served the Jacobites so well, and which left behind an enduring legacy, one which is still with us today. Even in the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in 1878, many of the key leaders in that process were descendants of Clanranald: Bishop Hugh MacDonald (1699-1773), Bishop Hugh MacDonald (1841-1898), Archbishop Angus MacDonald (1844-1900), and Bishop Aeneas Chisholm (1836-1918). Even Bishop Roderick Wright (1940-2005) is a latter-day descendant! We have Dermot Duggan to thank for all of this, in a roundabout way, and it may well have been another story entirely if he hadn’t been sent by St. Vincent de Paul. We may conclude with one further extract, from Duggan’s 2^nd letter to St. Vincent, dated to April 1654:

“We are infinitely obliged to without ceasing thank the Divine bounty for so many blessings that He was pleased to pour upon our little works. […] Among those who received Holy Communion, there were found five who God showed to not be in the disposition that they must have, because having stuck out their tongues to receive the Blessed Host, they could not withdraw their tongues ; there were three who remained in this state until we took back the Blessed Host […] God chose to allow these extraordinary effects to give to the other Christians of this land a greater fear […] We also saw many wonderful things operated through the virtue of Holy Water […] We baptised a great number of children and even adults of 30, 40, 60, 80 years and more, being assured that they had never been baptised, among them there were found those who, being troubled and vexed by ghosts and evil spirits, were entirely delivered, after they had received Baptism, such that they never saw these again.”

This extract highlights a miraculous side to Duggan’s missionary work and confirms that his ministry was supported by “signs and wonders”. However, he was soon worn down by it all, and he died on the 17^th May 1657 in South Uist, after only a few years of very fruitful mission. He had been preparing to visit Pabbay. Although he expressed elsewhere in his letters the desire to go to North Uist, and to help evangelise the people there, this was never to be. North Uist remains Protestant to this day. St. Vincent de Paul received news of his death on the 31^st October 1657, the Eve of All Saints’. We find the following extract from the writings of St. Vincent de Paul, dated to All Saint’s Day (1^st November 1657):

“I read a letter yesterday, touching on our good dead M. Duiguin, through which I am informed that his death moved everyone to tears, seeing that they lost their good father (they held him to be so) ; and the old and the young, all were in tears ; he was their father, having begotten them to Jesus Christ. This can give some subject of esteem firstly to our Company, seeing this ; but what we must make of these of these intimations, is to say, as soon as we see and hear this: “To You alone, Lord, the glory! To You, my God, all the glory!””

It seems to be providential that St. Vincent received this news on the Eve of All Saints’ and wrote these words on the Feast of All Saints’ itself. Indeed, probably unknown to St. Vincent, it was only soon after his death that the people of South Uist began to venerate Dermot as a Saint. A chapel seems to have been built in his honour, in the sacred land of Howmore, where the Clanranald Chiefs were buried, and his body was plausibly transferred there from an initial burial site in Cladh Ard an Dugain. This latter site’s name simply translates as “High Graveyard of Duggan”. Fr. Michael MacDonald helped provide some of these details, and he also noted that there are some Holy Wells associated with him on the island. Short of excavating his likely burial site at Howmore, in the chapel dedicated to him, we have no Relics of the man. Original copies of Duggan’s letters were also lost in a fire that devastated the Vincentian archives. What we do have is a statue of Duggan, blessed by Bishop Brian McGee on the Feast of the Transfiguration (6^th August 2025), and erected within St. Mary’s Church at Bornish. Prayer cards invoking his intercession were also produced at the time.

If he was indeed acclaimed a Saint in South Uist, and if this cultus seems to have continued for some time – traditions among those in Nova Scotia continued to remember miracles that he had wrought among their ancestors – it seems that we might take Duggan’s status quite seriously. The dedication of a Church to his name, the Holy Wells associated with him, and the recognition of his heroic virtues by the Vincentians themselves : all of this seems to attest to his likely sanctity. Since his cultus was localised to the regions where he missioned, he could only potentially be considered as a Blessed, under the current rules surrounding Canonisation.

It is, in any case, quite a thought that veneration to this early Vincentian missionary may even have preceded the death of St. Vincent de Paul. Might Bl. Dermot Duggan CM be the first Vincentian to have been venerated as a Saint? He died in 1657, and Vincent died in 1660, so it certainly seems possible.

Bl. Dermot Duggan, pray for us!

Anthony MacIsaac

^[1] Vincentians were always given the title of Monsieur, rather than that of Father, as a sign of humility.

^[2] As with Glengarry, it seems extraordinary that Duggan was baptising centenarians in this time period, people who would have certainly been born around a decade before the Scottish Reformation. For such people, they were likely born into some form of Catholicism (Duggan’s doubt about their Baptism is interesting) and this mission allowed them to die as Catholics.

Bibilography

Louis Abelly, La Vie du venerable serviteur de Dieu Vincent de Paul, 1. II, chap. 1, sect. XI, 1er éd., p. 202-204.

Dom Odo Blundell,The Catholic Highlands of Scotland. Vol. 2. The Western Highlands and Islands, 1917.

Angus MacLellan, Dòmhnall Dubh na Cuthaig, Recorded by Calum Iain MacLean, School of Scottish Studies Archive, SA1960.011.A3. Available at Tobar an Dualchais: tobarandualchais.co.uk [Accessed 22^nd August 2026].

Authors Note

Anthony MacIsaac – the author descends from Clanranald (specifically from Allan MacDonald, the 9^th Chief), his entire paternal family having deep links to South Uist and the wider Hebrides. For most of his theological studies, he was lodged with the Congregation of the Mission in Paris.

Grateful thanks to M. Jérôme Delsinne CM, who made archival materials available for the writing of this article. Thanks also to Fr. Michael MacDonald, and to Bishop Brian McGee, for their input on the same subject.

Translations from the French are the author’s own, and the particular extracts from Duggan’s letters chosen by him for the purposes of this article.

William (‘Willie’) Charlton who died on 5 September 2025 was a Catholic philosopher with strong Scottish connections. As well as teaching Latin at the University of Glasgow at the beginning of his career, he returned to Scotland to teach philosophy at the University of Edinburgh from 1988 to his retiral in 1994. Although he died a year ago, I was shocked to learn only recently of his death. I have only been able to find one obituary online celebrating his life [1] and, although I’ve no doubt there have been other tributes which I have missed, his life and work deserve to be celebrated in St Moluag’s Coracle as part of the intellectual and cultural depth in Scottish Catholicism which we exist to explore. For more personal reasons, I recall him with affection and gratitude as my PhD supervisor in the 1990s.

Willie was born in York on 23 April 1935. After Ampleforth College (open scholar, 1948-53), he attended New College, Oxford as an open scholar (1955-9: first class in Classical Moderations, 1957; first class in literae humaniores, 1959; MA, 1963). After a period of teaching Latin in the University of Glasgow, he returned to New College for a BPhil in philosophy (1961-3). He taught at Trinity College Dublin from 1963 to 1968, initially as junior lecturer, then as lecturer in mental and moral science. He was then lecturer and subsequently senior lecturer in philosophy at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (1968-88). From 1988 to his retirement in 1994, he was senior lecturer in philosophy at the University of Edinburgh (Head of Humanities Planning Unit and Chairman, Department of Philosophy, 1991-4). He was visiting professor to the Universities of Bucharest and Cluj in 1991. He published many books on metaphysics, philosophy of mind, ethics, religion, and aesthetics, as well as translations of ancient Greek philosophical texts, and over eighty articles in philosophical journals.

Much of Willie’s contribution to the subject has developed from a concern with classical philosophy and, in particular, with the traditional problems of metaphysics. As he says, ‘I never open Plato without being surprised by new proofs of his originality and acuteness, and my own answers to the traditional questions were nearly all developed in efforts to make sense of the dark conclusions of Aristotle’ [2]. Perhaps the best overview of his concerns is provided in The Analytic Ambition (1991), which, although described as ‘an introduction to philosophy’, is rather an exercise in philosophy. As such, it does not rest content with a survey of possible positions, but rather advances original arguments in a number of areas: the worthwhileness of the analytical, Anglo-American tradition in philosophy is demonstrated by applying it. Arguing that the central problems of philosophy are concerned with the relationship between the dimensions of reality, language and thought, he contrasts his own position with a widely held alternative viewpoint: ‘Insofar as the aim of metaphysics were achieved it would enable us to know precisely what there is in the world’ [3]. Rejecting this position, he argues instead, ‘Different forms of expression correspond to and reflect (sometimes insincerely or deceptively) different ways in which things enter into thought; and to describe how things do enter into thought is to say how we think they enter into reality’ [4]. In providing an account of these relationships, ‘The philosopher attains truth in the way Michelangelo attains truth about the human figure, not in the way in which a spy attains truth about a country’s military preparations’ [5]. Put roughly, his is an approach which puts the emphasis on how we describe the world, rather than on what we describe.

In his later work, The Physical, the Natural and the Supernatural (1998) he develops some of these themes by arguing that the development of our way of talking about matter and mind has been infelicitous, losing the possibility of a conception of the natural which would make sense of hopes for a supernatural life. (This book also contains some interesting experiments in reviving the presentation of philosophical arguments in the form of dialogue.)

Willie’s philosophy, both in his written work and in his teaching, demonstrated his understanding of the subject as a civilised art. Bringing together the influences of classical philosophy, the emphasis on the creative power of language in modern analytical philosophy and his Catholicism, his work is valuable, not so much for the presentation of any radical theories, but for an elegant and frequently original engagement with central issues within the subject. It’s often dangerous to read off any strong connections between the ideas of academics and their lives, but my own personal experience of his supervision as his PhD student tends to reinforce for me this passing on of philosophy or perhaps more exactly a cultured wisdom as one of his main characteristics. His wide intellectual and artistic interests were coupled with both a rigorous exploration of the philosophical aspects of these areas as well as an extraordinary generosity in sharing his time with students in social settings. I frequently met with him at his homes, first in Edinburgh and then in Northumberland, sometimes on my own, but just as often with my wife and children. To pick at random one strong memory, one of my earliest meetings with him took place after a family meal at his Northumberland home, accompanied by his wife Anne, and his daughter, Tessa, where, rather than the simple praise of an utterly delightful meal, the precise strengths and weaknesses of the cooking were analysed with a forensic exactness with a view to future improvement. (I have since tried this with my own family with rather unfortunate results: it requires a combination of affection, tact and intellectual clarity that the Charltons possessed and we don’t.) Over the years, I often dined with him where he would also sing the praises of Brillat-Savarin’s, The Physiology of Taste as a philosophical work. This might sound all rather fine but all rather precious, but I never felt it to be that, even though it left me with my low tastes and almost pathological introversion rather floundering at times. Instead, I thought then and now that it was a perfect attempt to pass on a resistance to a failure within modern academic philosophy which Mary Midgley, a friend from his Newcastle University days, described thus:

None of these [great] philosophers … had any experience of living with women or children, which is, after all, quite an important aspect of human life. I wrote…drawing attention to this statistic and asking whether it might not account for a certain over-abstractness, a certain remoteness from life, in the European philosophical tradition. [6]

To see a Catholic intellectual and his family just living with the ordinary everyday things of life, and yet bringing a depth to them in that ordinary living profoundly influenced me. [7] When I told Willie that I was converting to Catholicism and that he and Anne had been an important part of that process of conversion, he was rather horrified at the thought that he might have unduly influenced me. He hadn’t, indeed, we rarely discussed religion directly, but he was one of those people I have met over the years who have modelled a way of living and thinking that manages to be both profoundly human and yet to live that humanity very deeply indeed. That was influential.

References:

[1] Frank Charlton, ‘William Charlton (1935–2025)’, Memorial minutes 2025, American Philosophical Association [available online at https://www.apaonline.org/page/memorial_minutes2025 , accessed 3 September 2026]. Apart from my personal memories of him, I have relied on this obituary by his son, together with a biographical entry which I wrote for the Dictionary of Twentieth Century British Philosophers, Thoemmes Continuum, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2005.

[2] ‘Orientations: William Charlton’, p. 108 in in Philosophical Writings, no 1 (January 1996), pp. 107-108.

[3] The Analytic Ambition, p. 15, (Oxford, 1991).

[4] The Analytic Ambition, p. 21, (Oxford, 1991).

[5] The Analytic Ambition, p. 12, (Oxford, 1991).

[6] From Midgley’s The Owl of Minerva, quoted in Ellie Robson, 2025, ‘So many unmarried men’, Aeon, [available online https://aeon.co/essays/for-mary-midgley-philosophy-must-be-entangled-in-daily-life , accessed 3 September 2026]

[7] That this ‘ordinary living’ included some profound personal tragedies can be seen in his son’s obituary referenced in [1] above. A reminder, if one were needed, that a human life, however blessed, remains one conducted in a vale of tears.

Select bibliography (focusing on works directly related to Christianity):

The Christian Response to Industrial Capitalism, Sheed and Ward, 1986. (With Tatiana Mallinson and Robert Oakeshott)

Philosophy and Christian Belief, Sheed and Ward, 1988.

The Physical, the Natural and the Supernatural, Sheed and Ward, 1998.

Being Reasonable about Religion, Routledge, 2017.

God, Death and Religious Teaching, Ethics Press, 2023.

On August 15th the Poles celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Warsaw, arguably one of the most decisive battles in recent history. It is a significant battle as Poland had only recently been reunited after being wiped off the map for around a hundred years; it was rising again as a nation, now comprised of three partitions, three cultures, three systems of law. How could such a nation be so prepared to take on the looming threat of Bolshevism and decisively stop it from spreading into Western Europe?

The Polish spirit was hard to crush – impossible, actually! - and she has shown this many times throughout her history. Not only did they have a determined people keen to die for their nation, they they had strong generals who were the organized minds behind the battle-plan, but also the Church played a huge role in mobilizing the nation before battle. They called the faithful to fast and pray during this time; the bishops entrusted the nation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Archbishop of Warsaw wrote to every parish priest threatening them with suspension if they deserted their posts; they were to remain strong in faith with their parishioners.

So then, we can see that Poland prepared herself on three levels for the upcoming fight, a battle of survival, a battle of civilization. We could say that the Polish armies represent the body of the nation, the military leaders – the mind; and the Church – the soul or spirit, obviously.

All of her powers were stirred and mobilized, ready to fight the ferocious foes in red. Yet, on a human level this was not enough to hold back the red devil of the East as they were significantly outnumbered. Something more was needed – help from heaven! And it came.

It has been told that during the battle the Bolsheviks saw Our Lady appear above the city and, in trembling, they fled at the sight.

If we consider this moment of Polish history as a reflection of the human condition and the journey of the soul towards heaven, it all becomes clear. Through sin, we experience a kind of partition, a disintegration of the self. We are left fragmented and wounded. God wants to heal us through his all-powerful grace, to reunite us and make us whole again. On a human level, it’s not possible as there are stronger forces than ourselves out there and only with God’s grace can we be victorious.

The battle of all battles has been won by Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, whose saving grace makes all things possible! But in order to see the glory, the victory, the power and the splendour of this Battle of our redemption, we must turn to the Mother of God, whom we now honour as assumed into heaven, now sitting at her Son’s right hand.

Our Blessed Mother is marked by the death and resurrection of her Son Jesus in her Immaculate Conception, in her Divine Motherhood, in her perpetual Virginity and in the Assumption of her body and soul into heaven. In the Creed we say Jesus was “born of the Virgin Mary,” which means he took on her pure flesh and redeemed it, thus giving her a special place in heaven at the end of her earthly pilgrimage.

Her unique and singular vocation as the Mother of God puts her in direct opposition with Satan, the father of lies who, as the book of Revelation tells us, is at war with her offspring. She is not indifferent to this, however, and as her role of spiritual mother takes on a universal dimension post-Assumption, she is praying incessantly for all her children and will not stop until they reach heaven. She even appears at times to scare off the enemy. It was said that at the Battle of Warsaw she was only visible to the invading enemy. So it is in our own lives: Our Lady places herself in between us and the devil and puts him to flight, even though we don’t see her; her presence is felt and she is actively present in our lives. She is the all-holy one, that is, full of grace; her cup is overflowing and so desires to share her holiness with us. She is our shield, our refuge and our hope of victory!

At some point or another we will all face our own spiritual Battle of Warsaw although it’s really an ongoing one and only ends when we depart from this life. It is a long haul and requires a good strategy. We must engage with all our powers and faculties – body, mind and soul – and though they may fail at times, small defeats will not end in our demise as long as we give our Yes to God and constantly go back to Him. She knows that our wine will run out but she will be prompting her Son to do something. She may even come herself like she did at the Battle of Warsaw.

The best battle-plan we can have is to entrust ourselves to the Blessed Virgin Mary who is the greatest strategist; she knows the way to heaven and so we should cling to her, learn from her, and wait for her help when the battle seems to be going the other way.

She is, as Lumen Gentium, 68 says, “a sign of sure hope and solace to the people of God during its sojourn on earth.”

“We fly to Thy Protection, O Holy Mother of God!”

Fr Chris Doig

(First published in this magazine in 2024)

Image from: https://przystanekhistoria.pl/pa2/tematy/english-content/72770,Battle-of-Warsaw-1920.html

The 1^st August is the start of autumn in the Celtic calendar. It’s called Lughnasadh in Gaelic and Lammas in English. It was originally the feast of Lugh, a god associated with the light and sun, and people used to climb hills at this season. That still happens at Croagh Patrick in Ireland. It has a cone-shaped summit of white quartzite which glitters in the sun. St Patrick is said to have fasted there for 40 days and since the fifth century there has been a church at the top. Pilgrims still climb to it, some barefoot, in the weeks leading up to the feast of the Assumption on 15^th August.

Lammas comes from ‘Loaf Mass’ when a loaf, baked from the first grain harvested that summer, was offered in thanksgiving in the church. Some Anglican churches have revived the custom. The word for autumn in German is ‘Herbst’ which is close to ‘Hairst’ in Scots, and both words also mean harvest.

To me this fits: some time in late July/ early August there’s usually a break in the weather and after the rain or wind the full heat of high summer has gone. The light subtly changes too which I noticed this year when I first stepped out into the garden on the morning of 23^rd July and looked up at the sky.

I think this has something to do with being halfway between the summer solstice on 21^st June and the autumn equinox on 21^st September. The exact midpoint is either the 6^th or 7^th August. The 6^th is the Feast of the Transfiguration, when, according to the Gospel of Matthew, ‘Jesus took with him Peter and James, and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light.’ So let’s look at the 15^th August.

It’s the greatest feast of Mary, Mother of God, which Catholics call the Assumption and the Orthodox the Dormition, when it is believed she died and her body was taken up to heaven rather than being left to decay on earth. It was only in 1950 that Pope Pius XII made belief in the Assumption obligatory for Catholics, which attracted a lot of criticism at the time- but it is a fact that no one has ever claimed to have bodily relics of Mary, and the feast has been celebrated by the Church since the fourth century. The Italians call it ‘Ferragosto’ meaning ‘the feast of August’., in a month with several other big feasts. It’s a time often marked by thunderstorms and high summer turns into late summer. It’s around now that I usually notice the swifts all suddenly disappear as they start their journey back to Africa. It has always been a sad moment because, for me, their high-pitched screams are the sound of summer. But this year I haven’t seen any in Portobello, although I did hear some one evening early. Perhaps this weekend, if I’m lucky, I’ll hear some passing through.

The first reading at the Mass for the Assumption is taken from the Book of Revelation: ‘A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon beneath her feet, and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was with child and about to give birth, crying aloud in the anguish of her labour.’

From at least the second century, this woman has been identified with Mary, and in medieval art Mary is often surrounded by the rays of the sun, standing on a crescent moon and with the stars round her head as in a painting I saw in Hexham Abbey while on holiday in Northumberland a fortnight ago. Sun and light again. Seeing it helped me persevere with this reflection when I couldn’t get my ideas to gel.

I’m going to finish with a Gaelic poem or prayer for the Assumption collected by Alexander Carmichael (1832-1912) in the Western Isles, and published in the first volume of his Carmina Gadelica, in 1900. This is a slightly modified version of his translation, made with the help of my friend, Déirdre Ní Mhathúna, a great Gaelic scholar:

THE FEAST OF MARY

The feast day of sweet Mary,
Mother of Shepherd of the flocks,
I cut a handful of the new grain,
I dried it gently in the sun,
I rubbed it sharply from the husk
In my own palms.

On Friday I ground it in a quern,
I baked it on the sheepfold,
I toasted it on a platter of rowan,
And I shared it among my people.

I went sunwise round my dwelling,
In the name of (our) Mother Mary,
Who promised to preserve me,
Who did preserve me,
And who will preserve me
in peace, in all deeds,
In truthfulness of heart,

In labour, in love,
In wisdom, in kindliness,

For the sake of Your Passion.

O, Christ of grace
Who until the day of my death
Will never forsake me!
Oh, until the day of my death
Will never forsake me!

CLOSING PRAYER

Let us pray that God will help us recognize as sacred all creation in both time and space. Amen

Ian Campbell

Hexham Abbey, Ogle Chantry, early 15^th century

Compton Mackenzie’s Catholicism and Scotland: For the Nation and for the Greater Glory of God. Luca Fumagalli writes on Compton Mackenzie, who we have previously published an article on, an avowed Scottish Nationalist, author and deeply Catholic. In this work he gives a history of how Catholic Scotland was Protestantized. See here for our other article on him.

Do we still levitate?: In a mid-month article I seek to find the history of the miraculous in Scotland and ask whether we still levitate?

Language of the Bible Part 3: Jack Heitman writes that by looking back through the lens of the Lord’s Table, and specifically through the linguistic and theological weight of the Greek word eucharistia—meaning “thanksgiving”—we discover a startling reality: every loaf baked, offered, or broken in the Old and New Testaments was whispering of Christ all along. This is the final part in his short series on language in the bible, part one and two here.

August Saints

Quite a few in this month of some importance, including St Aidan of Lindisfarne, the Pictish missionary St Erchard whose ministry centred around Banff; St Angus who for those getting married or baptised, would kneel at the stone of Oengus in Perthshire and say: ‘Beannaich Aonghais ann san Aoraidh’. St Angus was either a follower of St Columba or misnamed and was actually St Mochta of Louth - follower of St Patrick and one who had to make a defence of himself due to being from Ireland.

We also have some who are lesser known now but carried important devotions at different times including the Cistercian St Waltheof. St Waltheof is a picture of someone who could have had all the worldly goods and desires of his time (step-son of Scottish King David I), but instead chose the Cistercian way and became known for his humility and kindness. He died in 1159 the Abbot of Melrose Abbey and would become an important focal point for devotions not least because his body had been discovered miraculously preserved in 1171 and then again in 1206 by some curious monks. Jocelyn of Furness would write the vita which would help catapult him to Sainthood and create the conditions for a wider cult.

We also have St Berchan/Barchan which you will find information on in our calendar page for August from but more detail can be found on Omnium Sanctorum Hibernae which lists his feast as August 4th or possibly December 4th - so plenty of time to celebrate!

Just on collections of Saints and their history - we have our own Calendar which we update and amend from time to time but I could not recommend more Omnium Sanctorum Hibernae which has a vast archive of Saints mostly relating to Ireland but with obvious crossover to Scotland.

Get Involved

Would you like to be involved in one of Scotland’s few Catholic magazines? Have you got some hidden or visible gifts in writing, recording, graphics? Maybe you would like to help publicise the Coracle throughout Scotland? If so please get in touch. Previous experience is not a must.

About

St Moluag’s Coracle is an online Catholic magazine focused on and about faith in Scotland today. We have two aims; bringing you writing that will build and inform your faith and secondly, to bring to light Scotland’s hidden Catholic history.

Our writers come from all walks of life, some are Religious or in the Priesthood. Most are lay people with excellent knowledge and insight.

St Moluag’s Coracle was begun by Eric Hanna, with the help of Dominican Sisters, Bishops and the many wonderful and talented writers who have contributed to making this magazine a thoughtful and thought-provoking place for Catholic writing in Scotland.

St Moluag’s Coracle is part of the registered Scottish charity and apostolate Mary’s Well. In addition to publishing this magazine, Mary’s Well also oversees the Association of King James VII and II - a group dedicated to promoting the Cause of this Servant of God. Please find out more here, or email admin@kingjamesviiandii.org. We also put on retreats from time-to-time which we publicise here as well.

SC050978 | E: maryswellscotland@gmail.com | editor_stmoluagscoracle@proton.me

The Language of the Bible series has shown why we can be confident that the major modern translations of the Bible faithfully convey the meaning of the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts, as well as how elaborate themes like ‘trees’ mirror our relationship with God. In this third stop of our journey, we’re taking a deep dive into bread.

Bread, generally speaking, is an exceptionally important narrative element in both the New and Old Testament. Indeed, bread (and the Eucharist therein) is key to understanding Christ’s role in our struggle for physical and spiritual nourishment. Today I’m going to walk through the various ways in which bread is used in the Bible to reflect on human survival, thanksgiving, God’s presence, and, ultimately, eternal life. By looking back through the lens of the Lord’s Table, and specifically through the linguistic and theological weight of the Greek word eucharistia—meaning “thanksgiving”—we discover a startling reality: every loaf baked, offered, or broken in the Old and New Testaments was whispering of Christ all along.

The Bread of Survival and of Thanksgiving

The biblical narrative of bread begins following humanity’s fall from grace in the Garden of Eden. God declares to Adam the new status of the human condition: “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground” (Genesis 3:19).

In the ancient Near East, this harsh reality was only too true. The Hebrew word for bread, lechem, often carries the broader sense of food or sustenance in general. To have bread was to possess life; to lack bread was to face immediate risk of starvation. Bread represented the anxiety of the harvest, the vulnerability to drought, and the unrelenting, cyclic toil of ploughing, planting, harvesting, and threshing. It was the physical manifestation of human frailty.

Yet, precisely because bread was synonymous with life, sharing it became the ultimate, sacred duty of hospitality. In a world defined by scarcity and tribal warfare, offering bread to a stranger was a radical act of peacemaking. When Abraham (Genesis 18:5) welcomes three mysterious divine travellers, his immediate instinct is rooted in this desert code: “let me bring a morsel of bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on.” To break bread with someone often symbolized peace, friendship, and covenant relationships, extending one’s own survival to the guest.

The Eucharist takes this ancient symbol of human sweat, anxiety, and survival and radically reclaims it through the power of eucharistia. Crucially, Luke 22:19 records that Jesus took the bread, and “when he had given thanks [eucharistēsas], he broke it and gave it to them.” By offering thanksgiving over the very item that embodied the curse of Adam’s sweat, Christ flips the narrative of human struggle. In the Eucharist, the baseline survival of the ancient world is elevated into supernatural life, and, furthermore, the hospitality of sharing bread reaches its zenith: at the altar, God does not merely welcome us to His table as fragile guests; He offers His very self as the feast, binding humanity to the divine nature in an eternal covenant of peace.

From the Table to the Altar

As the biblical story progresses, the transformation of bread begins in the midnight haste of the Exodus. Fleeing the bondage of Egypt, the Israelites are commanded to pack their dough before it can rise. The resulting unleavened bread, or matzah, became a key pillar in Jewish tradition, where its sustenance emphasizes haste and remembrance of the past. On the other hand, yeast, or leaven, subsequently becomes a biblical metaphor, often (though not always) symbolizing sin, corruption, or false teaching.

Once the Tabernacle is constructed in the wilderness, bread is placed before the Lord in the Holy Place. Instructed by divine decree, the priests place twelve permanent loaves of baked grain upon a table of pure gold, directly opposite the Menorah in the Holy Place. This was the Lechem haPanim, literally the “Bread of the Face,” commonly translated as the Showbread or the Bread of the Presence (Leviticus 24:5–8). Replaced every single Sabbath and consumed exclusively by the Aaronic priesthood, these twelve loaves stood as a visual anchor of God’s perpetual covenant with the twelve tribes of Israel. It was a tangible sign that God desired to dwell among His people and share a continuous, peaceful meal with them.

Without the Eucharist, these ancient liturgical rituals remain beautiful but incomplete shadows of ancient history. Just as the ancient matzah marked a definitive rescue from physical slavery, the Eucharistic bread delivers the human soul from the ultimate spiritual bondage of sin and death.

To fully understand this connection, one must look to an ancient Israelite sacrificial practice known as the Todah—the Hebrew word for “Thanksgiving Offering.” The Todah was a voluntary sacrifice offered by a person who had been miraculously delivered from mortal danger, such as illness, imprisonment, or the perils of the sea. It consisted of an animal sacrifice accompanied by an offering of both leavened and unleavened bread. The worshipper, their family, and the priest would then consume this bread and meat together in a festive meal of celebration.

When the ancient Jewish scholars translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek (the Septuagint), they translated this specific thanksgiving sacrifice, the Todah, frequently using the root word eucharistia. Rabbinic (Leviticus Rabbah 9:7) tradition even holds a prophetic maxim: “In the Messianic age, all sacrifices will cease, except the sacrifice of Thanksgiving (Todah), which will never cease.”

Catholics have traditionally understood that, when Christ institutes the Eucharist, He is establishing the ultimate Todah. He replaces the symbolic, static Showbread of the Temple with His literal, living flesh. The “Bread of the Face” is no longer hidden away behind a heavy sanctuary veil, restricted to a select Levitical elite. Rather, the living Presence becomes accessible to all, transforming an ancient ritual shadow into an intimate, breathing reality.

The Bread of Immortality

The climax of the biblical narrative bridges the physical and the spiritual through spectacular displays of divine provision. As the Israelites wander through the barren, unforgiving Sinai desert, they find themselves entirely devoid of agricultural options. They can no longer till the ground or eat bread by the sweat of their brow. In response to their desperation, God intervenes directly, raining down a mysterious, miraculous, flaky substance from the sky each morning. The people called it manna, a name traditionally understood to derive from their question, ‘What is it?’.

This wilderness bread carried strict divine parameters: it could not be hoarded, stored, or monetized. If an Israelite tried to stockpile it out of greed or anxiety for the future, it bred worms and rotted by nightfall. It had to be gathered fresh daily. This was a deliberate feature designed by God to radically restructure the psychological architecture of a slave mentality. As Deuteronomy 8:3 summarizes, God fed them with manna “that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” It taught humanity that true security is not found in the hoarding of earthly resources, but in daily, unwavering reliance on the faithfulness of the Creator.

Centuries later, this wilderness motif erupts back into view on the shores of Galilee. Confronted by a massive, starving crowd of thousands, Jesus echoes the divine benevolence of the Old Testament. Taking just five humble barley loaves and two fish from a young boy, He multiplies the resources to feed the multitudes, leaving twelve baskets of fragments leftover (John 6:11–12).

John’s Gospel carefully highlights the miracle through the lens of thanksgiving: “Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks [eucharistēsas], he distributed them” (John 6:11). The next day, the crowds track Jesus down, demanding more free physical food, explicitly invoking the memory of the wilderness manna. It is here that Jesus throws open the doors to the deepest spiritual reality of the universe. He explicitly contrasts Himself with the miracle of Exodus: “Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven... This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world” (John 6:49–51).

The trajectory of the entire Bible nears its peak in this revelation, capped off by the words spoken at the Last Supper: “This is my body, which is given for you” (Luke 22:19). The Eucharist is the key that translates temporal, physical food into what the early Church Father Ignatius of Antioch famously called “the medicine of immortality.”

Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread

The three great historical movements of bread across the biblical canvas—the bread of earthly survival, the bread of sacrificial ritual, and the bread of miraculous heavenly provision—converge with flawless symmetry at the altar.

The bread of the earth sustains our fragile, mortal bodies; the bread of the altar shapes our holy identity as a rescued people; the bread of the Eucharist saves our eternal souls. Every single time the Church gathers to break bread and offer the eucharistia, the boundaries of time collapse. The sweat of Adam is redeemed, the Exodus is realized, and the heavenly manna falls fresh. Bread is transfigured into the real presence of the Creator of the universe, offering Himself to satisfy, once and for all, the deep and aching hunger of the human heart.

By Jack Heitman

Image: By Jonathunder - Own work, GFDL 1.2, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15433168

Compton Mackenzie wrote Catholicism and Scotland at the end of the years that saw him personally committed to the cause of Scottish nationalism. The book, published by Routledge in 1936, is a brief history of Scotland from the Catholic perspective, with an apologetic tone. Its primary objective is to debunk the false myths spread by Protestant historiography and to restore the dignity of the protagonists who made a troubled nation great.

At times, Catholicism and Scotland errs on the side of excessive brevity, resulting in gaps, especially when dealing with Scottish history from the 18th to the 20th century. The overall impression is that its author worked a bit too hastily, relying on a relatively limited number of sources. Likewise, the overuse of lengthy quotations disrupts the reading flow and feels a bit too much like a ploy to increase the page count. Mackenzie, after all, as his monumental bibliography attests, was accustomed to editorial ventures that focused more on quick sales than on quality.

Nevertheless, the book, in addition to boasting an overall enjoyable style, remains an instructive read, especially if one understands it as an invitation to rediscover Scotland’s true religious and cultural roots. It’s no coincidence that the author, whenever he has the opportunity, reiterates one of his fundamental assumptions: that the country’s progressive Protestantization coincided with its Anglicization, with all the resulting misfortunes. And this begins with John Knox himself:

“It would hardly be too much to suggest that it was he who first presented England to the Scotsman as the promised land of Canaan, flowing with milk and honey.”

Furthermore, and on this Mackenzie has no doubt;

“ …if he could have had his way with the Established Church over the border he would have been content to achieve the Reformation in Scotland by the absorption of his country into England.”

Among the writer’s favourite targets is Walter Scott, who, in his view, is one of the most guilty of distorting Scottish history, a consequence of his profound ignorance of Catholicism. For example, he completely failed to grasp how widespread progress in the Middle Ages depended on the civilising mission of the Church, supported by the rulers, or how supernatural phenomena, whether they actually occurred or not, reveal at least profound truths (such as when, before the defeat of Flodden, St. John is said to have appeared to James IV, advising him against invading England).

The polemical tone of Catholicism and Scotland emerges from the very first pages dealing with Celtic Christianity. According to the author, modern Presbyterianism’s claim to be the religious body closest in spirit to Saint Columba and his monks is simply absurd, as are also the claims of the Reformists who advertised their action as an attempt to eliminate all external influences from the Scottish Church. Celtic Christianity, although historical circumstances long kept it marginalized from the rest of Catholicism, was intimately Roman, so much so that Saint Columbanus’s famous letter to Pope Boniface IV clearly acknowledges the pontiff’s supremacy. Even Naiton, king of the Picts, struck by the words of the Gospel of Saint Matthew, “Tu es Petrus et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam“, wanted to place his kingdom under the protection of the chief of the apostles. Saint Peter likely remained the patron saint of Scotland until the arrival of the relics of Saint Andrew, saved from Norman raids.

Figures such as Saint Margaret, though of Saxon blood, later made a fundamental contribution to the consolidation of the kingdom, reorganizing the clergy and making its inhabitants aware of their belonging to a nation. Those who blame her for the extinction of Gaelic in the Lowlands fail to realize that without her tireless work, Scotland would hardly have survived and would never have had rulers like Alexander I and David I, who succeeded in banishing all English influence from the country’s dioceses. A close identification was thus created between the subjects and their king; this, in Mackenzie’s opinion, is also the reason why twentieth-century Irish nationalism is so vibrant compared to Scottish nationalism, which lacks a significant point of reference.

“During the 13th century,” considered by the author to be the greatest in the nation’s history, “Scotland marched in step with that sublime procession of the Middle Ages toward eternity, and the century of peace with England was the outward sign of that accord.” Then, thanks also to the influence of the Catholic faith, it was as if the various parts of the country had fused into a well-balanced whole. Legend has it that King Alexander III befriended Saint Dominic in Paris; also living at the time was the Doctor Subtilis, Duns Scotus, Scotland’s most important theologian.

With England’s subjugation and the theft of the Stone of Destiny, it was the Church, in the form of Robert Wishart, Bishop of Glasgow, who took the reins of the nationalist cause. His stance inspired Wallace, Andrew de Moray, and Bruce himself, giving the fight for freedom the character of a true crusade. After the victory, however, both the nation and the Church emerged profoundly weakened, but thanks to the loyalty of the five James’s who succeeded to the throne, the Church continued to be a point of reference. Meanwhile, the Archbishop of St. Andrews was recognized by the Pope as Primate of Scotland, and attempts were made in vain to initiate important ecclesiastical reforms, which were thwarted by noble factions, perpetually vying for power. Abuses and unrest continued, and so, with the advent of the Protestant Revolution, Scotland, like the rest of Catholicism, found itself unprepared to face the storm that was breaking over it.

Regardless of one’s opinions on the so-called Reformation, Mackenzie emphasizes that most Scots now “recognize that the motives of the chief actors were greed and ambition, the methods violence and treachery, the deciding factors English money and English pikes.” Cardinal David Beaton, yet another great patriot in a country teeming with traitors, found himself at the head of the Scottish resistance to Henry VIII’s aggression, and after him, it fell to Mary of Guise and Mary Stuart to do everything possible to keep Scotland Catholic and independent. Lurking in the shadows was Knox, of whom Mackenzie offers a merciless portrait, calling him a coward and a weakling, a ruthless profiteer like Elizabeth, “a queen who lacked at once the essential bodily and mental characteristics of womanhood.” The Reformation was thus implemented in Scotland in a manner not unlike the Bolshevik revolution, imposing the will of a minority on the entire nation. Churches were destroyed, and zeal for the Word of God gave rise to widespread fanaticism, of which the witch-hunts were perhaps the most execrable manifestation.

The creation of the Established Kirk effectively transformed Scotland into a mission land. Religious were forced to leave the country, which the new leaders attempted to make Protestant through persecution and penal laws. Only in some areas of the Highlands and Islands was it possible to maintain the Catholic faith. Although Propaganda Fide took too long to realize the gravity of the situation, seminaries were built abroad to train priests, and many, including the Jesuit John Ogilvie, voluntarily chose the path of martyrdom in order to bring the comfort of the Eucharist to their compatriots.

During the reign of James VI and I of England, divisions began among Protestants themselves, with the clash between Episcopalians and Presbyterians being one of the contributing factors to the Civil War. Cromwell further humiliated Scotland by imposing his will with an iron fist, and Catholics were only able to find respite during the brief reign of the last Stuart monarch. After the Glorious Revolution, persecution resumed, and attempts at opposition were futile, including the courageous but unsuccessful effort of Prince Charles Edward. Had victory been achieved, all of Gaelic Scotland would likely have reverted to Catholicism within a few years, which is the reason why Mackenzie writes that “much more than just an earthly kingdom was lost at Culloden.”

Fortunately, as the decades passed, despite terrible events such as the Highland Clearances, the pressure on Scottish Catholics gradually eased, aided by the large influx of immigrants from Ireland and the inexorable decline of Protestantism. Emancipation was granted in the early 19th century, and in 1878 Pope Leo XIII re-established the country’s hierarchy, replacing the old system of apostolic vicars.

The epilogue of Catholicism and Scotland focuses on current events, and in particular, the author indulges in an interesting reflection on the relationship between the recent nationalist revival and Catholicism, recognizing the limits of an independence movement that values ​​only political freedom, without concern for ensuring effective cultural and religious unity in Scotland. “Fortunately for his peace of mind,” Mackenzie concludes, “the Scottish Catholic knows that he can do his country no richer service than to devote all his energy, all his emotion, all his eloquence to upholding and spreading what he believes to be the only Truth that can guide man safely towards his immortal destiny.” After all, “no country’s independence is worth winning unless it be won for the dedication of it to the greater glory of God.”

Luca Fumagalli

Don’t forget to check out our Calendar of Scottish Saints as well as some of our archive articles from our permanent and guest writers including Kirsten Schouwenaars-Harms who has written extensively on Scottish Catholic history. Or, our American cousin Jack Heitman who likes to write on the stories of the bible and most recently the language of the bible.

Get Involved

Would you like to be involved in one of Scotland’s few Catholic magazines? Have you got some hidden or visible gifts in writing, recording, graphics? Maybe you would like to help publicise the Coracle throughout Scotland? If so please get in touch. Previous experience is not a must.

About

St Moluag’s Coracle is an online Catholic magazine focused on and about faith in Scotland today. We have two aims; bringing you writing that will build and inform your faith and secondly, to bring to light Scotland’s hidden Catholic history.

Our writers come from all walks of life, some are Religious or in the Priesthood. Most are lay people with excellent knowledge and insight.

St Moluag’s Coracle was begun in a kitchen in Nairn by Eric Hanna; with the help of Dominican Sisters, Bishops and the many wonderful and talented writers who have contributed to making this magazine a thoughtful and thought-provoking place for Catholic writing in Scotland.

St Moluag’s Coracle is part of the registered Scottish charity and apostolate Mary’s Well. In addition to publishing this magazine, Mary’s Well also oversees the Association of King James VII and II - a group dedicated to promoting the Cause of this Servant of God. Please find out more here, or email admin@kingjamesviiandii.org. We also put on retreats from time-to-time which we publicise here as well.

SC050978 | E: maryswellscotland@gmail.com | editor_stmoluagscoracle@proton.me

The Catholic Church is replete with miracles like levitation, stigmata, ecstatic trances, visions of Jesus and Mary, bilocation (being in two places at once) and speaking with animals. Saints like St Pio of Petricichino, St Teresa of Avila, St Joseph of Cupertino, St Francis of Assisi and St Phillip Neri to name just a few, all reported such signs - as did their followers and those who in some instances became their enemies. A more recent claim comes in the form of Natuzza Evolo, born in Calabria in 1924 to a poor family, married and had 5 children. In her life-time she spoke with Angels, had communication with Mary who presented herself as thev Immaculate Heart of Mary Refuge of Souls, bilocation, ecstasies and stigmata. Her Cause was opened upon her death in 2018 in Diocese of Mileto-Nicotera-Tropea.

Yet with such a rich tapestry of the miraculous woven into our tradition, both past and present, Scottish Parishes in the main have engineered a faith that appears more sociological, material, and although would carry devotions to the Saints would not necessarily be promoters of their more miraculous feats, let alone teach that it is possible these things can happen today and amongst ordinary folk.The excellent book; They Flew, by Carlos Eire, recounts many of the miraculous stories of Saints seeking to understand the context in which these spiritual experiences could manifest. The book is not so much about proving that St Joseph of Cupertino really did levitate over Pope Urban VIII but that our understanding, and current paradigm of supernatural and natural may not help us explain these events. I would recommend the book to all but it got me thinking about Scotland. Where was the levitating Saints in the convents and monasteries of Scotland? How did the Reformation and subsequent periods of suppression (and renewal) affect the faith in, or appetite for these quite extraordinary events?

As Eire wrote, the early Protestant reformers and the Church would do battle in this realm. Early Protestants took what was is called a cessationist line, in that, the miracles of the New Testament stopped occurring when the last Apostle died – arguing that they were no longer necessary. It was a useful bat to use against the Catholic Church that not only believed in miracles but would promote them as evidence of the Roman Catholic Church being the True Church. But, the enlightenment and this ideological tussle with Protestant apologists would effect how the church investigated and declare the truth of a miracle attributed to someone; with the devil not far away, the Church’s main concern was that neither charlatan nor demonic power could lead its flock astray.

As the modern period dawned and as the reformation took its powerful turn in Scotland, the last reference to any sort of Spiritual experience by a Catholic is of St John Ogilvie – which although does not speak of levitation, does speak of an ecstatic experience. It does not appear we have any other recorded manifestations, which does not mean they did not happen amongst the Catholic communities but as the Monks and Nuns were expelled, the locations in which these sorts of miracles seemed to flourish on the continent disappeared here. Whether in the more far flung communities of the Highland recusants instances of this happened, is unknown to this author. A useful comparison in this regard might be with Spain. It did not suffer from the Reformation greatly and had some of the largest numbers of people claiming these miraculous experiences along with eye-witness accounts. Most experiences seemed to happen in Religious communities so a good starting point at why Scotland seemed to have little known examples of this is that there was no environment in which the sort of devotions, mortifications and holiness that seemed to produce these feats was available. Or indeed for there to be anyone to record such events.

So although it is possible people did indeed levitate, or manifest the Stigmata or have visions we do not appear to have any record of such things happening once Protestantism took root. However, by the 18^th century something was happening within Protestantism itself which began to look like a version of these spiritual experiences. The Wesleyan movements (offshoots of the Methodist founders John and Charles Wesley) would begin to see the growth of a Holiness Movement that emphasised Christian Perfection and would hold large meetings in public which would provide testimony of people falling down under the deep weight of sin, weeping uncontrollably and then the joy of forgiveness. There was the idea of a second work of grace that was separate to someone ‘being saved’. This would eventually feed the idea of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit (which we will get into later). Out of these movements, including the Quakers who emphasised hearing and then speaking Gods prophetic word, came the Great Awakening of the American colonies and Britain in the 18th century, followed by more sustained revivals again in America but also Ulster and Scotland in the 19^th century. As one paper reported:

‘When John Horner came from the Irish Coleraine revival to preach at the Religious Institution Rooms in Glasgow on 24^th July 1859, the congregation began to experience what was happening in Ulster and America. According to The Scottish Guardian scores of people were “in great distress” and “many were seen weeping”.

The miraculous in the form of healing from sickness and speaking in tongues would come to Port Glasgow in 1830. Edward Irving, a Scottish clergymen and eventual founder of the Catholic Apostolic Church (not a Roman Catholic offshoot!) began operating an increasingly successful ministry that in the words of his biographer, Margaret Oliphant, believed:

“...unclaimed and unexercised supernatural endowments, which had died out of use so long, would be restored only at the time of the Second Advent, in the miraculous reign, of which they form a fitting adjunct,” and “that the Holy Ghost ought to be manifested among us all, the same as ever He was in any one of the primitive Churches.

This seemed confirmed when a Port Glasgow woman called Mary Campbell began speaking like the Apostles did after Pentecost. Again Oliphant writing about her:

‘When in the midst of their devotion, the Holy Ghost came with mighty power upon the sick woman as she lay in her weakness, and constrained her to speak at great length, and with superhuman strength, in an unknown tongue, to the astonishment of all who heard, and to her own great edification and enjoyment in God..’

For some this would be the foreshadowing of the Pentecostal movement of the 20^th century and subsequent charismatic movement which the Catholic church itself would go onto embrace. What does appear to be common in all the examples of revival, and the manifestation of the gifts of tongues, healing and other gifts as spoken of by St Paul in Corinthians; was the depth and passion of devotion, the amount of prayer, time at religious meetings and in a community of willing believers. They also believed in the possibility of the supernatural and that it was for all.

There appears to be scant evidence of Scottish Catholic experiences in this regard during the same period. There are possible explanations though. All penal laws in Britain had been revoked by the mid-19th century, and the growing numbers of Irish and Highland Catholics filling the urban areas of Scotland brought with it a boom in church building and growth of religious orders and schools.There was however still a mistrust and prejudice of Catholics, especially the Irish. Their poverty, to many Scottish Protestants seemed to confirm the falsity of their religion. For the Irish in Scotland, and other Scottish Catholics a balance would be walked between embracing all that the 19th century British empire could bring to them, with the drive (mostly by the clergy) to ensure they stayed Catholic and retained Catholic devotional life in a land that had industrialised at a faster rate than even England did. I would suggest this more defensive attitude taken, along with the great social need made the priorities focus on just this.

Another aspect however should be highlighted here. The miraculous in Catholic circles was (and still is) seen as an offshoot of a particularly holy life, one that for many Catholics then as now, would seem out of reach of most of us. How many of us for instance really believe God is calling us to be a St Joseph of Cupertino? As mentioned above the clash with protestantism would change how the Catholic Church dealt with these sorts of cases. To prove ones miracles, one had to be holy and above reproach - otherwise it was fake or demonic. In this environment then, is is it a surprise we do not seem to have instances similar to Mary Campbell let alone bilocation or levitation?

By the 1960’s a new protestant miracle movement would take shape with the advent of charismatic churches in the US. It would come to Britain around the same time and eventually would inspire the Catholic Charismatic renewal. Much like the Holiness movements, the new charismatics would operate in varying sizes of public meeting, would emphasise a second experience and a community that accepted and promoted speaking in tongues, prophecy and other miracles. What was different was the emphasis in holiness would decrease, but a new understanding of empowerment to do mission became the reasoning behind why the gifts were necessary. What also came along with it was a new praxis in how to do church, music, ecclesiology and tied to elements of it - the so called Prosperity gospel. Another notable influence should be mentioned is the Word of Faith movement here. St Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, and the Acts of the Apostles are the scriptural bedrock for belief in all these interconnected movements, including Catholic. Charismatic Church movements would explode into mega churches and church planting networks -so much so that today the ‘Charismatic church’ is globally the fastest growing of any branch of Christianity.

What are Catholics to make of this? For many there is an ascent to the idea of speak in tongues but usually with a not for me thought. There is a strong movement toward the Charismatic in programmes like Divine Renovation, as well as Sycamore and of course Alpha, which has taken onboard many non-denominational protestant frameworks for its thinking on how to do mission and why. The belief appears to be that for the Church to do mission successfully one must be baptised in the Spirit. Yet for all the proliferation of charismatic churches and belief of these gifts, including in the Roman Catholic Church, there is still no room for bilocation, levitation, stigmata or blood miracles of the Eucharist in this new wave of miraculous.

On one hand, should it be a surprise, as these are special graces that are few and far between? Might we then view the modern charismatic turn as a sort of correction, or reaffirmation to the idea that the miraculous is not just for the Religious or those seemingly superhuman in their holiness? Or rather, does it reveal more about what we think of as holy and what it means, and therefore, what we are able to become? Is it shedding a light on our lack of knowledge, and type of environment we are in, to know how to be perfect as our Father in heaven is? I think it is also revealing of how we view the natural and supernatural. God is not constrained by these definitions and divisions of life yet we can thank the enlightenment for constraining us! How can the one who is ‘in all’ be suddenly only around when someone appears thousands of miles away from where their body is? Is Jesus not also there when you make the coffee or do a decade of the rosary? If we think God has given us the gift of service or charity - are those gifts and callings really that different from having prophetic words of knowledge, or gifts of healing St Paul taught the Corinthians about? These gifts have the same author and the same purpose - the building up of the body of Christ, His Church. Therefore, if we can accept these corporeal gifts, why not the miraculous?

So, should we be seeking levitation in today’s modern Scotland? None of the authentic cases of levitation or bilocation were ever sought - only a deeper and deeper abandonment to God. In fact, many of the Saints asked God to stop them. So in that respect, no we should not. But what these Saints do challenge us on is how much do we want to submit to God? How much of ourselves are we willing to spend? If we said Yes to God more, might we one day find ourselves flying?

By Eric Hanna

Image: Saint Teresa of Avila in Ecstasy is a painting by Gerard Seghers

Cormac O’Hara writes on how the hypostatic union (defined as Jesus possessing a divine and human will that were also distinct but inseparable) is not just a term for theologians to bandy around, or for Catholics to simply nod their head at, but to embrace it as part of what we are…and do.

Stephen Watt takes a read through Pope Leo’s new Encyclical - Magnifica Humanitas and draws out some of it’s implications and questions that go right to the heart of what we call Catholic Social teaching. As he notes, with frustration, Catholic Social teaching is more than just a theology of the body or about labour division - but an ongoing encounter between the living and intervening God and His Gospel in human history.

Although we have missed his feast day by a few days, Dr Carly McNamara has contributed a brief survey of St Serf of Culross, well known in Fife and supposedly a very early Saint.

Finally, Dhylan Livani captures the peaks of troughs of being Catholic in rural parishes in Scotland; the blessings and challenges around living outside the larger town and city parishes.

July Saints

Apart from St Serf there is also St Palladius on the 6th July, St Drostan on the 12th (See film here) and St Thenog/Thenew on the 18th - mother of St Kentigern.

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About

St Moluag’s Coracle is an online Catholic magazine focused on and about faith in Scotland today. We have two aims; bringing you writing that will build and inform your faith and secondly, to bring to light Scotland’s hidden Catholic history.

Our writers come from all walks of life, some are Religious or in the Priesthood. Most are lay people with excellent knowledge and insight.

St Moluag’s Coracle was begun in a kitchen in Nairn by Eric Hanna; with the help of Dominican Sisters, Bishops and the many wonderful and talented writers who have contributed to making this magazine a thoughtful and thought-provoking place for Catholic writing in Scotland.

St Moluag’s Coracle is part of the registered Scottish charity and apostolate Mary’s Well. In addition to publishing this magazine, Mary’s Well also oversees the Association of King James VII and II - a group dedicated to promoting the Cause of this Servant of God. Please find out more here, or email admin@kingjamesviiandii.org. We also put on retreats from time-to-time which we publicise here as well.

SC050978 | E: maryswellscotland@gmail.com | editor_stmoluagscoracle@proton.me

A country known for its rugged mountains and rolling hills, Scotland has a large amount of terrain that is unsuitable for building. This means that most of the land is uninhabited and makes for a rather sparsely populated nation. It is estimated that around 94% of the country remains unoccupied, and statistics from 2024 show that the population sits at roughly 5.5 million. Living in especially rural, sparsely populated areas can present some challenges such as being far from shops and supermarkets; a lack of public transport; and occupational difficulties. However, there are some positives that can be found in living in rural areas, including more tranquil environments; nature surroundings (with the added bonus of being without visual and noise pollution!); and a much more financially friendly way of life. Both blessings and challenges present themselves in a series of different ways to church parishes in rural environments, and I have interviewed three people with varied roles in parish living: a Sister of St. Cecilia from Elgin; a mission-focused resident at the Craig Lodge Family House of Prayer, Argyll; and someone with a long association to Nunraw Abbey, East Lothian. They all gave me some interesting insights into their experiences in rural parish living, outlining their own, personal takes on some of the peaks and troughs that come with the way of life. Rural parishes don’t always feature in stories that surround evangelisation, so it was important to get an idea of effective ways to spread the Gospel, missionary objectives, and how to propagate the faith outside of a busy location.

Nunraw Abbey

Sancta Maria Abbey (locally known as ‘Nunraw Abbey’) is run by the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance. The monks who have resided there over the years have dedicated themselves to contemplative living since 1946, when the monastery was founded. Nunraw Abbey itself isn’t a parish church, but Mass is celebrated there daily and on Sundays, and throughout the week there are other opportunities for worship, especially Vespers and Compline. I contacted someone with a long association with the Nunraw community, gaining some fascinating knowledge about the foundational days and establishment of the monastery, and about the continuing importance it has for those who worship there.

As I spoke with the local, he highlighted the sense of ‘belonging’ he has felt in the Nunraw Abbey grounds, suggesting that a spiritual home can be found in a contemplative environment away from the hustle and bustle of city living. Growing up within proximity of the monastery also provided many practical experiences, including hands-on work such as milking cows and herding sheep. These experiences were invaluable, as Nunraw was found to be a blessing during periods of hardship. “Later in our teens, my younger brother and I spent our summer holidays helping the monks build their new monastery, along with volunteers from all over the country” he said. This outlines the close-knit dynamic of the Catholic community and provides a closer look at how the community grew and developed, with volunteers giving their time to help build the Abbey over a period of several decades. It was at this time in Nunraw’s history that around sixty Brothers resided in the monastery.

Of the challenges that the rural parishioner met, one was that, not living in the town, he knew few people who actively attended Mass at the parish church, and so, did not feel part of that community. Another challenge was the “shortage of priests”, he states. Continuing, “But it does make a big difference to the soul of a parish”, the parishioner refers to the wider negative impacts on laity that frequent changes in clergy can cause, particularly where continuity and community are already fragile.

During the early 1980s, in the locality, there was an attempt to close a Catholic primary school, which he was at the forefront of trying to protect from closure. Speaking of the situation, the local stated, “Underlying the whole episode it felt like there was an anti-Catholic prejudice that sought to undermine Catholic education”. This highlights the concerns that he had regarding Catholic education in the rural space and serves as an example of a major disadvantage that can be found in a location that doesn’t receive much media coverage.

On the topic of mission objectives, Nunraw Abbey serves as a spiritual space, surrounded by nature, that extends a warm welcome to those drawn to prayer, and the Cistercian vocation of contemplation and hospitality.

“There is no need to go beyond the bounds of the monastery to spread the Gospel, it radiates from here,” the local says. “People come here and are made to feel welcome. They go away and spread the good news”. This encompasses much of what the Abbey values regarding mission, evangelisation, and practical faith. Nunraw Abbey acts as a centre where faith is expressed through prayer, hospitality, community living, and service, offering a rural environment and peaceful atmosphere that can draw people in and send them out again strengthened.

Visit their website here for news, information and some films.

Craig Lodge Family House of Prayer

I spoke to Finley Allen, who is originally from Rutland in the East Midlands. After feeling inspired to go on retreat at Craig Lodge in Argyll, a break from the hustle and bustle of densely populated areas has proven to be fruitful spiritually. Talking to him, I managed to get a real sense of purpose in the way he reflected on his time spent at the Family House of Prayer. We spoke of transience in city environments, with some congregations feeling temporary in highly populated locations because of the coming and going of laity, the positives and the negatives of rural parish living, as well as the importance of missionary work, bearing spiritual witness and evangelisation.

Finley expressed a lot of joy for being a resident of Craig Lodge. He informed me that there are blessings in abundance in rural parish living, and one of them is the “rootedness” that he described, which in particular, refers to the “constants” in the parish who have been loyal churchgoers for decades. This, in turn, creates an authentic “family feel”, and it is invaluable in the growth of one’s faith. Luckily, in the surrounding areas of Craig Lodge, some parish priests have been engrained in their communities for a long time, as opposed to serving in fleeting ministries there. He also describes rural parish life as having more “purity” and “simplicity”, where it is easier for Christian’s to be the salt and light of the world that Christ called us to be. Thus, it is easier to have the positive, spiritual influence on the culture in the locality and beyond, when preserved from broader, city pressures.

For Finley, the blessings of rural parish life seem to outweigh its challenges. However, because of the sparse population, it isn’t as easy to form social connections as it is with the higher numbers found in cities. In densely populated locations, word-of-mouth spreads faster and social media use is much more prominent, which makes Christian events gain traction a lot quicker than they would in a rural location. Sometimes, this can be discouraging, as the parishioners in the local communities would like to see greater numbers. Speaking more on the topic, Finley said, “There is a human element that loves to have a room full of people worshipping the Lord,”. Besides that, he says that it is important for him to cling to the Lord, and remember that he was brought to Craig Lodge for a reason.

The topic of evangelisation is one very close to Finley’s heart. He stated: “The Holy Spirit meets every person at a certain time. The truth is received at an important time on one’s personal journey.” He has gained valuable experience having been on a mission placement for nearly a year, and it is important to him that he bears witness to the locals in the surrounding areas. As Catholics, it is very important to make people aware of Eucharistic Adoration – a practice that places the individual before the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ, whether they have faith or not. This is done in Beauly. As a part of his and the teams evangelisation methods, they promote this devotional hour to encourage people to come and meet Christ where they are. Finley also has experience in sharing the Good News with staff in coffee shops and the local barbers, finding that a lot of curiosity is stirred upon his telling them about his missionary work – this evangelisation is gentle, but can be proven effective. “There’s an invitation to meet Jesus as He is the one knocking the door and the one they’re looking for”, he said, on the topic of sharing the news with strangers. Finley referred to the local churches in his rural environment as “little satellites”, that look to host Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, build friendship, and to love as Christ loves. Paragraph 2126 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church reads: “The Church knows full well that her message is in harmony with the most secret desires of the human heart”, which is one that resonates with Finley the most, as it bonds humanity with what is at the heart of the message of the Gospel.

On the topic of rural, community-based evangelism, there is a group dedicated to mission work in Kilcoy, near Inverness, called ‘Scotland Awakening’. It is a designated space for worship before the Blessed Sacrament and looks to create new disciples in Christ. The Diocese of Aberdeen hold gatherings for people looking to attend.

Visit Craig Lodge's website here.

St. Sylvesters

The Congregation of the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia operates in Elgin, Scotland, which is east of Inverness in the Highlands. The town itself has quite a high population, but it finds itself situated near rural spots that provide for contemplative living spaces. Sister Mary Gianna speaks a lot about the positives of living in Elgin, including how the rural environments around her have borne spiritual fruit. Sr. Gianna also addresses some of the challenges that come with being based in the countryside, away from mega cities, and what the mission objectives of the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia are in Scotland, as well as some evangelisation methods used in the Highlands.

We spoke first about the fruits that come with living in Elgin. “You get to know people… the energy is focused on the one area”, Sr. Gianna said. She highlighted that St. Sylvesters is not far from the countryside, and that people in the parish will make the effort to know you and will welcome you if you’re not a churchgoer there. The parish is close-knit, and with its population contrasting the larger numbers found in city churches, the parish “feels like a family”. Nearby is Pluscarden Abbey, which is inhabited by the Benedictines. The Sisters join them for Mass and prayerful reflection. The Abbey is situated in a very rural environment that makes for a contemplative, monastic lifestyle.

There can be challenges found in rural environments. Sr. Mary Gianna outlines that the Diocese of Aberdeen (which St. Sylvesters is a part of) is the second largest in Europe, and with all parishes being spaced out, connection can be challenging. This makes it hard for fellowship between churches. With the number of parishioners normally being small in rural parishes, Sr. Mary Gianna reflects on her coming to Scotland in 2017: “When we first arrived here, we were to be content with the small – Jesus knew the 12 Apostles would grow”. To grow the parish, the Sisters began youth groups and planted seeds, with them growing as a result. The Sisters don’t have access to all the same resources that a bigger city can offer, but their youth groups have all the essential components that are needed to thrive.

Coming from Nashville, Tennessee, Sr. Mary Gianna reflects a lot on her time spent in Scotland. Two of the many Dominican virtues of the are teaching and faith formation. As schools are generally state-run in Scotland, up in Elgin, the Sisters pursue the faith formation of young people outside of school settings and in groups. As a part of their mission statement, Sr. Gianna says that they were invited to Scotland to evangelise. “It is about being present in a community, living in the religious house and being available,” she continued, “Wearing habits is a reminder that God is with us and God is here. It directs minds to God, to Heaven, to the transcendent.” These words outline that wearing the habit can be a medium through which one serves as a visible witness to the faith, encouraging people to search within and find Christ around them. The Sisters have had opportunities to talk openly about their presence and mission in the local Elgin community. The ‘Be Active, Live Long’ group for over-60s asked the Sisters to talk about their lives; secondary schools in Elgin have asked for them to support religious education by speaking about Christianity; university chaplaincies across Scotland have requested them to give talks; and all of these provide an opportunity to share more about the apostolate of caring for and nurturing the souls around them.

Find our more here about the Sisters.

By Dhylan Livani

St Serf (or Servanus) is a saint venerated in Scotland with a heavy presence especially in Perth, indicated by the spread of place-names associated with him there. His cult spreads into Fife, towards Stirling, and a bit further afield in places such as East Lothian. He is included in the sixteenth-century Aberdeen Breviary, a Scottish breviary created at the direction of King James IV of Scotland, where his feast day is given as the 1st of July.

​Beginning with the Aberdeen Breviary is perhaps the easiest place to start, though you will quickly find that he is not an easy figure to understand. St Serf is noted as a bishop there, and he is claimed to have originated ‘from the race of the Scots’. The Breviary associates St Serf with Palladius, the first bishop sent by Pope Celestine to ‘the Irish believing in Christ’ in the year 432. Miracles of healing and discovering the truth are associated with St Serf in the Breviary, and even resisting questioning by the devil himself and the slaying of a dragon! The only hint we get here of the many threads to untangle is a mention at the end of the entry of ‘another St Serf, an Israelite by race, who at the time of the abbot St Adomnán shone with many miracles in the island of Portmoak; as the deeds done by him are more clearly described in his Life’. A surprise here, perhaps, is the failure to mention Culross or Lochleven as religious sites closely associated with St Serf.

​It seems that multiple versions of the Life of St Serf existed, with some conflicting information arising between them. One version is bound in a manuscript alongside Jocelin of Furness’ Life of St Kentigern and may date to the twelfth century or earlier. This Life focuses on St Serf in west Fife, associates him clearly with the foundation at Culross, and places him chronologically around the beginning of the eighth century, a far cry from the time of and location of Palladius. Even more confoundingly, Jocelin’s Life of St Kentigern makes St Serf a contemporary of St Kentigern, giving him a date around 570, and even naming him St Kentigern’s teacher. St Serf’s Life itself gives yet another temporal association, noting that he asked Adomnán for lands for his familia, his religious followers, and was given lands in Fife between the Ochils and the ‘Hill of the Britons’.

​If we backtrack a moment here and return to the question of St Serf’s familial origins, we have the Aberdeen Breviary associating him with Gaelic culture (through the reference to the Scoti), while an Irish genealogical tract on ‘The Mothers of the Saints’ notes in some places that St Serf’s father was the king of Canaan in Egypt. The Life of St Serf gives his parents as Obeth, king of Canaan, and Alpia, daughter of the king of Arabia. These are very different claims of origin for our saint. We can see more wild claims associated with St Serf by looking at the work of Andrew de Wyntoun.

​Andrew de Wyntoun, prior of St Serf of Lochleven in the early fifteenth century wrote his own history of the saint. In his account, St Serf was elected Pope of Rome after John III (who served as Pope between 561 and 574), while St Serf’s Life only says the see of Rome was vacant when he arrived. We should note that there is no Serf or Servanus, or other similarly named person at this time in the papal lists. In this version of St Serf’s story, he took himself and hundreds of companions by ship to the Firth of Forth, meeting Adomnán at Inchkeith. Wyntoun’s version has the Pictish king Brude giving him the isle of Lochleven rather than Adomnán granting him lands. Both Wyntoun and the Life of St Serf give far more detail about his temptation by the devil than the Aberdeen Breviary does, outlining a series of questions that were answered by the saint. Even the end of St Serf’s life is not free from confusion and disparate stories. St Serf’s Life has his death taking place at Dunning and carried afterwards to Culross, while Wyntoun locates his death at Culross. The Aberdeen Breviary gives no account of his death at all.

​So what are we to make of this saint, whose story is so conflicting? We can be absolutely sure of nearly none of the details of his life. Not his origins, when he lived and who he knew or even where his primary religious foundation was. We would expect there to be some evidence of an early foundation at Culross for it to be mentioned in the Life of St Serf, even if it is from the twelfth century, and indeed there are carved stones there which could be of early Christian date. We do know that a Cistercian monastery was founded at Culross by Malcolm earl of Fife in 1217, but the lack of mention of other Cistercian-associated sites in the Life of St Serf indicates this document was not a backwards looking reference trying to create a history for the new foundation. Alan Macquarrie, a noted historian, indicates the presence of ‘an echo in the exploits of Irish saga-heroes’ in the Life of St Serf, and there is a possibility these eastern origins and associations could be metaphoric references to the Easter Controversy, which saw differences in the calculation of Easter coming to a head in the north of Britain in the seventh century. From here we may look at the text itself to give us some idea of the possible truths that sit at the core of St Serf’s story.

​There appears to be a heavily Gaelic-influenced core of the Life of St Serf, noted in the forms of place-names used, such as ‘Fif’, ‘Culenros’, ‘Atheren’, Cella Dunenensis’ and others being close to their Gaelic forms. Even people’s names, that of Brude f. Dergard, king of the Picts, and Adomnán’s name given as Edaunanus. The foreign origins are likely fanciful invention or meaningful metaphor rather than fact, and we should more likely believe that St Serf was either of Gaelic origin or perhaps Brythonic, which allows for him to have been Pictish. Associations with Palladius can likewise be set aside more easily than those with St Kentigern or Adomnán. He is not mentioned in Bede, but that is not necessarily a glaring mark against him, and we might comfortably associate him somewhere in the eighth or ninth century.

By Dr Carolyn McNamara

Image: “File:West Kirk Culross - geograph.org.uk - 216333.jpg“ by Paul McIlroy is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

One of the major branches of Theology is that which is concerned with the goal of human striving – theological anthropology. In contrast to social anthropology, which takes a horizontal approach to human existence, theological anthropology looks at human existence with both a horizontal and vertical approach. It seeks to account for the role of sin, how it affects human experience, and how we, created in the Image of God (Imago Dei) are called to overcome sin in every aspect of our lives.

Theological anthropological paradigms began with the deification anthropologies of the Church Fathers, particularly St. Irenaeus, who spoke of the soul going through a spiritual “maturation” on its journey to Heaven. However, there is only one way how humans can reach this maturation. By living like Christ and sharing in his life. What this article aims to articulate is how we can look towards the nature of Jesus Christ’s distinct but inseparable divine and human natures as a guide for how to fully live of the Christian life.

The Council of Chalcedon (451 A.D.) decreed that Jesus possessed two natures that were utterly distinct, but inseparable from each other. A divine nature and a human nature – Dyophysitism. Later, the Third Council of Constantinople (680-81 A.D.), defined Jesus as also possessing a divine and human will that were also distinct but inseparable – Dyothelitism. The theological name for this union of the two natures and wills is called “The Hypostatic Union” and this term will be used from here on. Utilising the hypostatic union forms a foundation for an anthropological outlook pertaining to it. However, what must also be explained is the nature of human existence, and why that analogously pertains to the hypostatic union.

Joseph Ratzinger in his Book Jesus of Nazareth provides commentary on the High Priestly prayer of Christ in John chapter 17. More specifically, the nature of the “consecrations” that Jesus speaks of. First Ratzinger writes about how the man Jesus Christ in virtue of his divinity is consecrated to the Father. His mission as redeemer of all is set apart solely for the Father, but his mission is for the good of the whole of humanity. Second, Ratzinger converses about how Christ understands he himself is consecrated and set apart, in virtue of first, the Paternal consecration which was mentioned above, and secondly, that his divinity causes his humanity to become sacred. Then, third, Ratzinger commentates on Christ’s prayer to the Father to consecrate his disciples “in truth”, so that they may have a share in his priesthood, and become priests of God, and “baptise all the nations.” What is notable here is that Ratzinger emphasises the consecrations and the missions are inseparable, but distinct from one another. This is very similar to the Hypostatic Union of Christ, who’s divinity is inseparable but distinct from his humanity.

However, the incarnational analogy gets even more profound when investigating the nature of the consecrated Christian missions. In his book The Spirit of the Liturgy, Joseph Ratzinger looks at the notion of an exitus and a reditus (a coming from and returning to) a principle as undergirding created reality. In this case, God. When Jesus was on Earth, he had undergone a creation, and an exitus, descending to Earth in the hypostatic union. This mission culminated in a reditus – this would be the Ascension into Heaven. Fittingly, his reditus to the Father occurs immediately after he consecrates the missions of the Apostles. “Go and baptise all nations…” (the Apostles’ exitus) “…in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (the Apostles’ reditus). Jesus Christ, as the consecrated Godman for the World, consecrates the missions of the Apostles for the World.

How does this incarnational anthropology apply to us today? For this, we look to the sacraments which are essential to human existence. Joseph Ratzinger (now as Pope Benedict XVI) in Verbum Domini likened the revelation of the Incarnation to the sacraments. How can Jesus Christ be likened to a sacrament? For this, we bring in Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas defines a sacrament as a “sign of a holy thing which makes men holy.” The sacraments are sacred signs which constitute a unity of matter and form. That is, the form consecrates the matter and makes it holy. For example, in the Eucharist, the bread and wine are matter. However, when the priest utters the words of consecration “Take this, all of you…” the words don’t in and of themselves possess any power to transubstantiate, but through God using these words as an instrument, they become the form which sanctifies the matter to create the sacramental sign of God’s grace and makes men holy. Jesus Christ in his hypostatic union possesses an analogous nature to the sacraments. His human nature, the matter, unifies with the form that is his divinity. The Son’s hidden divinity then sanctifies the human actions of Jesus Christ.

This may seem at first a bit confusing. However, the whole argument comes together when we look at the Catechism’s assertion: “The Eucharist is the source and the summit of the Christian life.” The consecrated man, Jesus Christ had a divine mission of an exitus and reditus, which he fulfilled in the matter and form of his hypostatic union, and part of this was instituting the source and summit, the exitus and reditus of the Christian life – the Eucharist. The Eucharist is a visible sign of the unity of material matter and the divine form, which is essential for a valid sacrament. When the Christian comes to the mass, he greets Christ “face-to-face”, which is a common characteristic of friendship with the Divine (cf. Ex. 33:11; 1 Cor 13:12). Through the consecrated Eucharist, their life and mission in turn is also consecrated. This is their source (their exitus). They “go forth” after Mass to carry out their mission, consecrated solely to God, but for the World’s sake – just like Christ’s nature and mission. Through the prompting of grace within the soul, the human nature is elevated. Co-operation with grace means missions arrive at their reditus, their summit, which is also in the Eucharist. By carrying out their Eucharistic missions in a state of grace, the soul fulfils the model of incarnational anthropology. Their interior becomes deified; they become heirs to God’s Kingdom and coheirs with Christ.

Every person is created because God has a mission for them – just like Christ had a mission. However, upon closer analysis, we can see that each essential component of human existence involves an aspect of hypostatic union. Our missions (the matter) are consecrated by Christ (the form) and always entail an exitus and reditus in relation to God like Christ’s mission. However, to live out this incarnational anthropology, and to have our missions consecrated, we must consult the consecrated man himself – Christ. In his human existence on Earth, he had an analogous matter and form, which is fully present in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, the source and the summit, the exitus and reditus. If we treat the Eucharist as our exitus and reditus, we attain the spiritual maturation that Irenaeus spoke of, we achieve friendship with God, completing our reditus. In the next life, we share eternal beatitude with our ultimate source and summit – we share in God’s life.

By Cormac O’Hara

Image: Gebhard Fugel, ‘The Ascension of Our Lord’ (detail), ca. 1893 (photo: Wikimedia Commons)

The publication on 15 May 2026 of the Encyclical Magnifica Humanitas (MH) ‘on safeguarding the human person in the time of Artificial Intelligence’ has been widely welcomed both in Catholic and other circles and has already provoked considerable immediate analysis. The main theme of the Encyclical can be summarised in the contrasting biblical images of the threat of the Tower of Babel, and the promise of the rebuilding of Jerusalem by Nehemiah. The former offers a picture of

…a project conceived without reference to God, supported by a uniformity that eliminated diversity and that chose homogenisation over communion. When a city is built on pride and the claim to self-sufficiency, communication breaks down, languages are confused and people no longer understand each other. (MH 7)

The rebuilding of Jerusalem after its destruction by the Babylonians in 586 BC provides the contrasting promise of a building project that produces unity from diversity:

[Nehemiah] did not impose solutions from above. He convened the families, assigned each of them a section of the wall to rebuild, listened to their concerns, coordinated their efforts and addressed any opposition. […] It is an undertaking with God at the centre, which rebuilds relationships before rebuilding with stones. Thus, ancient Jerusalem rediscovers a common language — not one of uniformity, but one of communion, namely the harmony that arises when all persons assume their own role and recognise that their strength comes from the Lord. (MH 8)

In short, in a time of a new challenge from the technology of AI to human dignity, our response needs to be one which emphasises human relationships under wise leadership, rather than projects imposed by leaders exerting power unresponsive to other human beings and to God.

It’s long been one of my bugbears that Catholic Social Teaching is too often presented simply as a rule book of instructions which came into effect with Leo XIII’s Encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891, rather than the application of the fulness of Catholic theology and philosophy to a particular realm and particular problems. One of the great strengths of MH is its explicit acknowledgement of its incompleteness and tentativeness:

In light of what has been said so far, the Church’s Social Doctrine can be seen more authentically. It is not a handbook of principles and norms to be applied, but a process of shared discernment. It is born from the encounter between the eternal truth of the Gospel and the questions of history. It allows itself to be challenged by the signs of the times, and draws nourishment from the contributions of science, culture and human experience. (MH 27)

I’m going to discuss the Encyclical concentrating on the two themes of human flourishing and wisdom. These should not be taken to exhaust the contents of the Encyclical: one of our responses to AI should be an increased emphasis on the personal and individual, and I can see that this list reflects my own existing philosophical and theological interests. I hope that others will find something of value there, but my main hope would be to encourage readers to do their own thinking about the Encyclical and, more broadly, the issues surrounding AI and the human person.

In the Greek philosophical heritage which underlies much of Catholic thought, the key to ethics is the concept of human flourishing or, in the original Greek, eudaimonia. Our thinking about what we should do is governed by this concept of a flourishing life or human being. Part of human nature is our need to form various communities such as families, villages, workplaces and nations: thinking about our social nature is not an optional extra to thinking about what it is to live well but is an essential part of that reflection. So when there is a major technological and social change, it is to that central idea of the flourishing life that we need to look for our response. That all sounds fine until we start digging into what that deeper good life might be. There, the big problem might well seem to be that, while ordinary modern common sense dismisses God and spiritual values, the Catholic Church is going inevitably to talk about God and more specifically Catholic practices. As an example, MH 229 states:

This avenue [of response to AI] emerges through contemplating God’s plan, living ecclesial unity by partaking of the Eucharist, building a world centred on the common good and praying in union with the Blessed Virgin Mary.

This is something that clearly needs to be said from a Catholic perspective, but which is unlikely to elicit much of an immediate response from a non-Catholic, let alone non-religious public in Scotland. Well, fine. The sort of public discussion that the Encyclical envisages will always involve disagreement and will sometimes end in disagreement. But an unashamed proclamation that, despite all the assumptions of secular materialism, many of us do believe in a supernatural goal for human beings and that this goal is central to a good life is an important contribution to public debate, and one that, even if most will not immediately accept in every detail, many might well find resonates in their own beliefs in spiritual or transcendent values.

Linked to this focus on God in the good life is the emphasis on wisdom.

Let us remain faithful to the truth! Living amid incessant flows of information, opinions and images, we know how easy it can be to influence decisions and preferences through increasingly sophisticated algorithms. […] In this context, it is imperative to cultivate hearts that love the truth, prefer what is right despite the most appealing content and pursue wisdom rather than immediate results. We must always keep before us the truth about God and humanity, just as Christ has revealed them to us […] Fidelity to the truth requires integrating the possibilities offered by technology within a framework marked by wisdom, which is capable of safeguarding both the dignity of each person and the future of our common home. (MH 237)

Wisdom as an intellectual virtue can be contrasted with a mere technical cleverness which emphasises the calculation of effective means to an end without regard to the ultimate value of that end. In particular, the Encyclical emphasises the need to avoid imposing the results of calculation by brute force. Here the discussion of war in this Encyclical takes on a more central place than a mere consideration of the use of AI in modern warfare, important as that is (MH 197-200). War instead becomes part of a wider culture of power (MH 188) which imposes solutions in the manner of Babel rather than of Nehemiah. And as existing Catholic Just War theory can be misused as merely a set of legal hoops to be jumped through to justify war rather than an attempt to find love and wisdom in the most difficult of times (my interpretation of an admittedly brief mention in MH 192), so Catholic Social Teaching in general can be misused as a set of rules to be applied blindly without wisdom and love. It is difficult when reading of the difference between the culture of power and the culture of love to avoid thinking more deeply of the difference between thinking which simply follows the rules (algorithms) and thinking which is directed by the virtues of love and wisdom. And confronting this difference, which is the difference between thinking that merely mimics what it is to be human and thinking that is centred on wisdom which is both the depth of the human being and of God, is an opportunity the challenge of AI gives us: to reverse that shallow image of human beings as calculating machines which is already widely present in the modern world, and to restore our understanding of human beings as partaking in the image of God and particularly of divine wisdom.

Further reading and notes:

The version of Magnifica Humanitas used above is: https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html (Orthography anglicised in excerpts.)

The Scottish bishops are preparing study materials on the Encyclical which are not yet available. A currently available set of resources online can be found here: https://catholicsocialthought.georgetown.edu/essays/resources-for-magnifica-humanitas-ai-catholic-social-teaching-and-pope-leo-s-new-encyclical

An initial response to the Encyclical by a non-Catholic academic who specialises in the philosophical ethics of AI can be found here:

Setting Out for Ithaka

On the Pressing Duty to Remain Profoundly Human

[T]he key issue is not the use of technology as such, but the vision that underlies it…

Read more

4 months ago · 15 likes · 1 comment · John Tasioulas

I have said more about my understanding of Catholic Social Teaching and its relationship to philosophy in my previous Coracle article here: https://www.stmoluagscoracle.com/p/arguing-about-catholic-social-teaching

By Stephen Watt

(Picture of ‘The Confidence’, dedicated to St. Therese of Lisieux - Pope publishes new Apostolic Exhortation dedicated to St Thérèse of Lisieux - Catholic Bishops’ Conference)

In 2009, England and Wales had the opportunity to venerate the relics of St. Therese, fondly named ‘The Little Flower’. The tour of her relics started in Portsmouth and ended in London, which is meaningful, as these two cities featured on a map of the United Kingdom that a young then-Marie Francoise-Therese Martin drew as a child.[1] It was reported that a whopping two thousand people attended the final Mass dedicated to her at Westminster Cathedral.[2]

(Picture of map hand-drawn by a young St. Therese of Lisieux – provided by St Thérèse’s Scotland map proves relics’ visit ‘fulfils her wish’ - SCO News, 2019)

This map, drawn in pencil, and composed when she was at school, includes a light and impressive sketch of the United Kingdom. Not only that, but a few Scottish cities are also pinpointed like Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen.[3] It is unknown what this map was drawn for, and it is up to the observer’s imagination – but in 2019, it became a part of St. Therese’s mission.

From 30^th August to 20^th September 2019, The Little Flower’s relics were on display for veneration across the country.[4] The tour of her relics ventured to the dioceses of Motherwell; Galloway; Dunkeld, and Argyll and the Isles. Most meaningful were her visits to the archdioceses of St. Andrews & Edinburgh; Glasgow; and the dioceses of Aberdeen and Paisley.[5] The latter four mentioned were all places listed on the map drawn by the Carmelite nun when she was a young girl.

St. Therese of Lisieux’s religious life began at the young age of 15, when she sought to become a cloistered, monastic nun at the Carmelite monastery of Lisieux in France.[6] A priority of St. Therese was evangelisation, and she cared for the souls in every corner of the world. Praying for the salvation of all became her intention.[7] Though she passed away at twenty-four in 1897, she informed her friend who was a Carmelite missionary that she would spiritually intercede from Heaven to save souls in abundance.[8]

Retroactively, her map now becomes a mission statement, as the cities dotted around can be seen as checkpoints on her eternal journey. By her relics being shown on display across Scotland in 2019, it is unknown the blessings that might have came as a result.

[1] ‘Little Flower’ arrives in Garden of England - Catholic Bishops’ Conference

[2] St Thérèse of Lisieux • V&A Blog

[3] St Thérèse’s Scotland map proves relics’ visit ‘fulfils her wish’ - SCO News

[4] Relics of St Thérèse to visit Scotland - Carmelite Nuns in Britain

[5] Relics of Saint Therese of Lisieux arrive in Scotland | ICN

[6] Saint Thérèse of Lisieux

[7] Daniel Acharuparambil, OCD, ‘St. Therese of Lisieux and the Missionary Role of the Contemplatives’, 1996, p. 419

[8] Joan Monahan, ‘St. Therese of Lisieux: Missionary of Love’, 2003, introduction p. ix

A Catechesis on Corpus Christi

Bishop Hugh Gilbert gave a video talk on this important feast. Please click the link here to have a listen.

Scotland’s Saints for June

In this month we have 2 of Scotland’s most consequential - St Columba (9th June) and St Moluag (25th June). We also have St Ternan and St Baithen, both significant in their own way and worth a read on our Calendar page.

We all have our favourite and chosen Saints we ask for intercession from - but do not forget our own Saints who are just as lively and active as your st Pio of Pietrelcina or st Therese of Lisieux. We have an extensive list on this website which we invite you to explore.

Rackwick Bay, one of the most important and recurring places in George Mackay Brown’s work, is a splendid valley located in the north-western part of Hoy, the second largest island of the Orkney. Brown visited it for the first time with some friends in the summer of 1946, during a particularly bleak period in his life, marked by semi-debilitating tuberculosis and days that followed each other with a sense of aimless monotony. He was captivated by it, and no other place would ever have such an intimate impact on him. From that moment on, the bay represented for him a sort of “Tir-nan-Og,” an earthly paradise, an inexhaustible source of inspiration, and a haven of peace and security. His friend, composer Peter Maxwell Davies, also fell in love with Rackwick, even wanting to move there, to a small farmhouse he had renovated.

However, even a wonderful place like that concealed its shadows, of which Brown was perfectly aware: in the mid-19th century, Rackwick had a population of about 150 inhabitants working small crofts, but at the time of his visit, only a handful of them remained, almost completely isolated from the rest of the world (twenty-five years later, there would be only one resident farmer). After all, life in the bay was far from easy, and it was capricious nature that dictated the law. Sometimes there could be unexpected strokes of luck, such as when, before the advent of coastal lighthouses, ships were wrecked, leaving their precious cargo on the beach, but these were still rare occurrences. Even the inhabitants could be the cause of their own misfortunes, as evidenced by the sad story of Betty Corrigall, who committed suicide around 1770 after being impregnated and abandoned by a sailor.

Aside from this, Brown sensed something positive underlying the existential rhythm of the valley’s farmer-fishermen, marked by an endless cycle of “birth, love, labour, death” that had remained unchanged for generations. Moreover, it was by meditating on Rackwick’s tragic fate that he came to develop the idea that it is “Progress” that leads to worsening things, severing the essential bonds that exist between people, the earth, and Heaven. Electric light, improved transportation, and mechanization are therefore, according to Brown, some of the manifestations of that new materialist faith that does nothing but drain the lifeblood from human beings, filling them with comforts and offering them the illusion of inexhaustible happiness. Rackwick has emptied precisely because young people have been driven elsewhere by the opportunities offered by an ever-expanding world, seeking less demanding employment than that of their ancestors. Hence the belief that the artist’s ultimate goal is to constantly remind people of their roots.

The bay appears in several of Brown’s works. For example, a chapter of An Orkney Tapestry (1969) is dedicated to it, and it is the setting for the events described in The Golden Bird (1987). The work that showcases it most, nonetheless, making it in a certain sense the protagonist, is the poetic cycle Fishermen with Ploughs (1971), whose title takes from a line from “Rackwick,” one of the poems of The Storm (1954).

Brown had been working on a series of poems that would tell the story of the valley, between glory and decadence, since the spring of 1965. It was a long and not always easy task, but he was rewarded by the positive response from the public and critics, so much so that a reviewer described him as “one of the consummate masters of poetry in Britain today.” Brown, generally highly self-critical, admitted in his autobiography that Fishermen with Ploughs contained some of his best poems, although in hindsight, the final section left him unsatisfied.

The cycle, dedicated to his friends Ian and Jean MacInnes, is divided into six parts based on interdependent poems that give the story a sequential form rather than a continuous narrative; Brown’s fixation with numbers also plays an important role. The poems, several of which had already been published previously, are characterized by an extraordinary metrical variety, and there are also prose passages. Each of them gains contextual strength from the overall concept thought they still retain a considerable measure of autonomy. Fishermen with Ploughs is also interesting for Brown’s bringing together the long-standing influence of Hopkins, his preoccupations with saga style, and linguistic experiments of the day.

The story begins in the 9th century, when a tribe of fishermen leaves the coast of Norway on a ship to start a new life in Rackwick. Their land is threatened by some evil, simply called “the Dragon,” a term that alludes to famine, pestilence, and war. The first section, “Dragon and Dove,” opens with the poem “Building the Ship,” which describes the construction of the vessel Dove, whose name alludes to the hope of lasting peace: “The bird would unlock the horizon westwards.” The subsequent lyrics recount the desperate struggle of the tribal chief Thorkeld against the Dragon and his inevitable death. His son, Njal, who is destined to abandon fishing for agriculture and to make Gudrun, his wife, “a mother of harvesters”, succeeds him (”The Blind Helmsman to Njal Thorkeldson the New Chief”). The fertile soil of Rackwick is ready to welcome the seed of the new inhabitants, just as the woman is ready to welcome her husband’s seed (women, who generally have a less superficial gaze than men in Brown’s work, are very often allied with reproduction).

The alliterative manner of Old English poetry gives way, in the second part, “Our Lady,” to a greater stylistic variation. The community has found stability, and its inhabitants’ days, though laborious, are made meaningful and happy by faith. In “Station of the Cross,” which Brown himself considers one of the key poems for understanding his writings, a comparison is made between the life of Christ and that of the peasants, while in “The Statue in the Hills,” people recite litanies to the Madonna to invoke her protection. The islanders are closely in tune with the Mother of God, a unifying force in medieval society.

“Hall and Kirk,” the third section, is characterized by concise and cryptic language. It summarises three centuries of history, from the 16th to the 19th, in which the first shadows of “Progress” gather over Rackwick, constituted by Calvinist fanaticism that condemns innocent old women to the stake (“Witch”) and by the arrogance of the powerful who demand increasingly expensive rents (“Taxman”) and services (“Grave Stone”). Brown’s polemic against Protestantism, the religion of the book that has reduced faith to a mere abstraction, forever severing the bond between the people and Christ truly present in the Eucharist, is combined here with his annoyance at all those who disturb the peace of the community, including those who seek to forcibly conscript people to fight wars that have nothing to do with them (”Buonaparte, the Laird, and the Volunteers”).

In the fourth and fifth parts, entitled “Foldings” and “The Stone Hawk” respectively, Rackwick’s decline between the 19th and 20th centuries appears unstoppable, and even the local nobleman laments the onset of poverty (”The Laird”). Work has become too arduous, with the result that the inhabitants eventually “will leave this keening valley” (”Crofter’s Death”). Life spent between land and sea now holds little promise (”Fiddlers at the Wedding”), and a sense of tragedy lingers everywhere (”Twins,” “A Warped Boat,” and “Funeral”). In “Homage to Heddle,” a once-vigorous man is forced by old age to sit and read the Bible, and solidarity among the community seems to have disappeared: “A fish-brimming corn-crammed house / But a hard door” (“Ikey’s Day”). Only “The Scarecrow in the Schoolmaster’s Oats” remains to watch over the fields, almost as if in parody of the crucifixion; tourists with a passion for ornithology overrun the bay (“A Child’s Calendar”), and the ancient religion has been replaced by the modern one of shops and technology (“Roads,” “Butter,” and “The Coward”). As the quality of life improves, depopulation sets in, and in the summer of 1952, following the tragic deaths of two children (“The Drowning Brothers”), its last remaining residents abandon Rackwick. The final poem of the section, “Dead Fires,” offers an image of utter desolation: “The poor and the good fires are all quenched. / Now, cold angel, keep the Valley / From the bedlam and cinders of a Black Pentecost.”

The concluding part, “Return of the Women,” written almost entirely in prose, witnesses the return to Rackwick by boat – called Truelove – of a group of survivors, composed of seven women and six men, after modern civilization has been destroyed by “The Black Flame,” presumably a nuclear holocaust. Technology has been swept away, and the valley’s new inhabitants, led by Saul the Skipper, settle in abandoned crofts, returning to traditional farming methods (there is even a reference to Edwin Muir’s poem “The Horses” when an old, rusty tractor is mentioned). Everything seems to be proceeding smoothly, although the death of a child and the indifference shown to the discovery of the old statue of Our Lady insinuate themselves into the story like sinister omens. Indeed, it won’t be long before Saul, tainted by “Progress,” reveals himself to be a brutal leader, and the others realize, with bitterness, that the land is not bearing fruit. They must therefore devote themselves to fishing, the opposite of what the Norwegian tribe in the first section did eleven centuries earlier.

Fishermen with Ploughs thus has an enigmatic ending: will the people surrender to Saul or rebel and go their own way? The story, as a whole, conveys hope for improvement, recovery at all levels, as a new cycle of ruin and regeneration begins. However, a melancholic atmosphere remains, and the final sentence states that the survivors have “returned, uncaring, into the keeping of the Dragon”.

By Luca Fumagalli

Image from: https://www.northlinkferries.co.uk/orkney-blog/the-story-of-rackwick/