Kirstyn Higgins |
Father Bergin has now been at the parish of St. Bride’s for 8 weeks, and has proved a very welcome and valuable member of the pastoral community in both the Church and the school.
I met with him to ask his thoughts on a number of topics including the refugee crisis, Pope Francis and the Catholic Church today.
In this penultimate part, we discussed the refugee crisis, and more traditional elements of the Liturgy.
What is your stance on reintroducing more traditional aspects of the mass, such as concelebrating in Latin?
When I read the Catholic Press, the first thing I always look at is the letters, and I always look for letters especially concerning Liturgy, because I have very strong views about Liturgy.
I was brought up with good Liturgy and I believe that as a priest my first responsibility is to celebrate the Liturgy, the worship of God, and I like it to be done well.
If you were to say to me for example, what is the first characteristic of God, I believe that the first characteristic of God is that God is beauty, and therefore everything we do should reflect the beauty of God, so our Churches, our Liturgy, our singing, everything should be beautiful.
One of the things about the old Latin Liturgy of the past which I remember well because I was an altar server for many years and I was brought up in a boarding school by Salesians, was that we had a wonderful Liturgy and wonderful singing and it made me into the person I am today.
I’ve always tried in the Parishes that I’m in to celebrate good Liturgy. Whatever we should do, we should always do it well. I say to people, you must do it simply – simply the best.
You must do it simply the best, no matter what form of Liturgy we’re given. If Rome or our Bishops says, “I want you to do this,” then we should do it and we should do it well. If the Bishop around here says, “I want two masses a week in Latin,” then we should do it in Latin and we should do it well.
Whatever we do we should do it well, believing that we are enabling people to touch God’s amazing grace and His amazing beauty.
Liturgy is where Heaven and Earth meet, and we have a chance to be touched and to savour and to experience the wonderful God. If it’s a more traditional way of doing it, we should do it beautifully. If it’s the present way of doing it, we should still do it beautifully and do it well.
What should the Diocese of Motherwell and the Church as a whole be doing to aid in the refugee crisis?
There’s a thing in the scriptures that talks about three groups of people who should always be made very welcome; the stranger, the widow and the orphan.Strangers were told to be made welcome because they may be Angels in disguise.
I tend to feel that in the history of our great Nation, we have had past episodes where we have put this very much into practise. We did this in the 1600’s when the Catholic King Louis the 14th expelled the Huguenots from France and many of them were welcomed over here. We welcomed a lot of Spaniards around 1937 after the Civil War. We brought in a lot of Jewish children around 1940 just before the outbreak of the Second World War. We did it in the 1970’s with Ugandan Asians. We’ve had it in the past with Irish and with Jews.
I’m not saying that when they came to this country they found it easy, they didn’t. But I think we were a country that had a reputation for that kind of tolerance and decency that brought people in, and I’d like to think that we can still do that.
Now I appreciate very much that sometimes you can do certain things and then down the line you may actually regret them. I have every admiration for the Germans who are bringing in huge numbers of people.
It is to be hoped that a few years down the line when a couple million people have been brought into the country that there’s not a little backlash to it, and I say that because that sometimes happens.
If it turns out, for instance, in this area of Motherwell that refugees suddenly start to trickle down here, I would hope that the local authorities would do their best, but that we as a Church would hopefully extend a welcoming hand to embrace these people both in our Parishes if necessary, and in our Catholic schools as well, which is two areas where we’re able to do that.
And again, to see it as something to do not only in a scriptural, biblical and religious sense, but also something to do with just humanness and compassion.
Will there be people who take advantage of this? Possibly. But isn’t this one of the things that sometimes happens with virtue, goodness and compassion, that it is occasionally taken advantage of? But does that mean that we shouldn’t still do it? No.
So from a human as well as a religious point of view, I hope that we will extend all that is good, all that is the best in us as people, and who knows what good we will do?
In the final part of Kirstyn’s interview with Father Bergin, the discuss turns to misconceptions of the Church, and Fr Bergin’s memories from his priesthood so far.
