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Today’s banner:
Girl on the bridge,
The Mound, Sutherland,
by Islay McLeod
While viewing a video clip of the last tram to run in Glasgow, I was reminded of the sunny afternoon circa 1941, when one of them killed a neighbour’s little boy on the Govan road. The irony of it was that the victim’s father also worked on the ‘cawrs’ or buses. Using the tramcar and the tramlines as a metaphor for my own life, I would like to share with you ‘stops’ on my journey, and how the tracks did not quite go in a straight line.
Born on the 15th of April 1931, at 5 Harmony Row, I was baptised a few days later in St Anthony’s Chapel, across the street.
I was born under the shadow of a Fairfield’s crane,
And the sound of a freighter’s horn
Was the very first sound I heard
On the morning I was born.
(‘The Shipyard Apprentice’ – Archie Fisher)
But as I sat on my tramcar heading in a straight line towards an apprenticeship, more than likely, in one of the shipyards, someone switched the lines, and I found myself on a small farm on Ireland’s scenic west coast. Sailings had resumed between Scotland and Eire, as it was then called, and my father, who was from that area, sent me to his sister in Enniscrone, County Sligo. The five years on that farm were to be the happiest of my life.
Then in 1950, the tramlines changed direction once again, and I began 10 long years of study to become a priest, being ordained in June of 1960, and sent to a parish in central London, where I was chaplain to the Royal Free Hospital, near King’s Cross, and Catholic Stage Guild chaplain to Sadler’s Wells opera, situated 200 yards up the street from the church. Canon law prohibited the clergy from attending operas. But now in my new position, I was able to attend dress rehearsals and sit in the canteen with the singers and musicians.
At a ‘stop’ in 1966, I got off the tramcar and waited for the next one to come along. I didn’t care what its destination was, as long as it took me in a different direction to the previous one I had spent six years travelling on.
The one that did come along took me in different directions as someone kept on switching the ‘points’. I eventually ended up as the sales director of a printing company, one of whose founding directors was Bill Brown, Scotland and Tottenham Hotspur goalkeeper. Oh, yes, I married an attractive beautician from the Elizabeth Arden Salon, after Rome had granted me a dispensation. We have three grown-up children.
My one great sadness after leaving my ministry was to experience the hostility I met with from the society of which I was a member, and had given it a high profile in London. Individual priests were helpful, but the provincial superior carried out the instructions as laid down by the founder of the Pallottine Fathers: ‘Members are to have nothing to do with priests who have left the society for a woman’. I didn’t leave for a particular woman, but I was still ostracised by the society.
In my early years a layman, I would have gladly given my services and experience to a parish. One priest did suggest I did readings at mass, but he never followed through on that. Now when the church is in deep crisis, there are many married priests, younger than me, who would willingly offer their help in parishes, as deacons at least. But Vatican policy has yet to catch up with the attitude of people in the pews.
I can see a situation developing in Britain and Ireland akin to that of an area outside Lyon in France, where one priest is responsible for nine parishes. Even in London, my own former parish is now twinned with an adjacent parish. And where there were once six priests between the two parishes, there is now just one.
I do carry on a sort of ministry on Facebook and in the press, defending the Christian faith. I have Richard Dawkins in my sights, but waiting for the correct moment to ask him a few interesting questions. But how much more could I have done some years ago?
Martin Gordon has written and published an autobiography ’No Love Here – A Priest’s Journey’. It is available on Amazon and in a Kindle version or from the website: authormartingordon.com
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