Roman Catholicism in Scotland (Scottish Gaelic: An Eaglais Chaitligeach), overseen by the Scottish Bishops' Conference, is part of the worldwide Catholic Church, the Christian Church in full communion with the Pope, currently Pope Benedict XVI. After being firmly established in Scotland for a millennium, Catholicism was outlawed following the Scottish Reformation in 1560. Catholic Emancipation in 1793 helped Roman Catholicism regain civil rights. In 1878, the hierarchy was formally restored.[1] Through this turmoil, several pockets in Scotland retained a significant pre-Reformation Catholic population, such as parts of Banffshire, the Hebrides, and more northern parts of the Scottish Highlands.
In 1716, for example, Bishop John Geddes established Scalan seminary in the Highlands. Geddes was a well-known figure in the Edinburgh of the Enlightenment period. When Robert Burns wrote to a correspondent that "the first [that is, finest] cleric character I ever saw was a Roman Catholick," he was referring to Bishop Geddes.[2] Scottish Gaeldom has been both Catholic and Protestant in modern times. A number of Scottish Gaelic areas are mainly Roman Catholic, including Barra, South Uist and Moidart. The poet and novelist Angus Peter Campbell writes frequently about Catholicism in his work. See also "Religion of the Yellow Stick"
In the 2001 census about 16% of the population of Scotland described themselves as being Roman Catholic, compared with 42% affiliated to the Church of Scotland.[3] Many Scottish Catholics are the descendants of Irish immigrants and Highland migrants who moved to Scotland's cities and towns during the 19th century, when there was a potato famine in Ireland, and older Scottish Highland minorities. However, there are significant numbers of Italian, Lithuanian[4] and Polish ancestry, with more recent Polish immigrants again boosting the numbers of continental Europeans in Scotland. Owing to immigration (overwhelmingly white European), today there are about 850,000 Catholics in a country of 5.1 million, [5] however the church has not been immune from the general decline in churchgoing: between 1994 and 2002 Roman Catholic attendance in Scotland declined 19%, to just over 200,000.[6]
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Christianity probably came to parts of southern Scotland around the 2nd century, when the religion was established in Roman Britain generally. According to tradition, however, Scottish Christianity got its start with the mission of the Cumbrian Saint Ninian in the 4th century. According to his hagiography, Ninian was a Briton who studied in Rome and became the first Catholic bishop to visit Scotland when he was sent to the Hen Ogledd, the Brythonic area of northern England and southern Scotland. Around 397 he established Scotland's first church, the Candida Casa in Whithorn, which became his centre of operations. Later, he went north to begin evangelizing the Picts.
According to the Vitae Niniani, Ninian saw his journey to Rome as a calling:
Over the next few centuries Christianity waned in parts of Scotland, particularly among the Picts. Saint Patrick speaks of "Apostate Picts" in his mid-5th-century Letter to Coroticus; the fact that he describes them as apostate indicates that Christianity had lost any foothold it had gained among them.[7] Then in 563 the expatriate Irish monk Columba settled on the island of Iona with twelve companions, and started a monastery there. Columba's monastery became one of Britain's most important religious sites, and was instrumental in converting the Picts and in providing the church with an institutional structure after the end of Roman rule in Britain and the Anglo-Saxon invasion reduced contact between Britain and the continent. In the following years monks from Iona established monasteries throughout Scotland, Britain, and continental Europe, including the important priory Lindisfarne in Northumberland. Iona monks also converted the Orkney and Shetland islands in the pre-Norse period, and this is reflected in the papar names, and commemorations such as North Ronaldsay (actually a corruption of "Rinansey" - St Ninian's Island). Early Christian settlements in Scotland are commemorated by Kil- names (e.g. Kilmarnock).
The faith was firmly established by the 6th and 7th centuries. The relationship between the Church in Scotland and the Papacy is that of a "Special daughter of the holy See". The Scottish Catholic Celtic Church had marked liturgical and ecclesiological differences from the rest of Western Christendom, being monastically led. Some of these were resolved at the end of the 7th century following the Synod of Whitby and St Columba's withdrawal to Iona, however, in the ecclessiastical reforms of the 11th century that the Scottish Church became an integral part of the Catholic communion.
That remained the picture until the Scottish Reformation in the early 16th century, when the Church in Scotland broke with the papacy, and adopted a Calvinist confession. At that point the celebration of the Catholic Mass was outlawed. When Mary, Queen of Scots, returned from France to rule, she found herself as a Catholic in a largely Protestant state and Protestant court. However, some few thousand indigenous Scottish Catholics remained mainly in a small strip from the north-east coast to the Western Isles. Significant strongholds included Moidart, Morar, South Uist and Barra. However some Scottish Lairds and land owners remained Roman Catholic and some converted such as Saint John Ogilvie, (1569–1615), who went on to be ordained a priest in 1610, later being hanged for proselytism in Glasgow.
The aftermath of the failed Jacobite risings in 1715 and 1745 further damaged the Catholic cause in Scotland and it was not until Catholic Emancipation in 1793 that Roman Catholicism began to regain civil respectability.
During the 19th century, Irish immigration substantially boosted the number of Scottish Roman Catholics, especially in the west. Italian, Polish, and Lithuanian immigrants have also boosted the numbers of Roman Catholics in Scotland.
The Roman Catholic hierarchy was re-established in 1878 at the beginning of his pontificate by Pope Leo XIII. (See Restoration of the Scottish hierarchy) Currently the senior bishop in Scotland is Cardinal Keith Michael Patrick O'Brien, Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh.
This era also saw the emergence of sectarian tensions. In 1923 the Church of Scotland produced a highly-controversial (and since repudiated) report entitled The Menace of the Irish Race to our Scottish Nationality. It accused the Catholic population of subverting Presbyterian values and of causing drunkenness, crime and financial imprudence. John White, one of the leading figures in the Church of Scotland leaders at the time, called for a "racially pure" Scotland, declaring, "Today there is a movement throughout the world towards the rejection of non-native constituents and the crystallization of national life from native elements."[8] Such official attitudes started to wane considerably from the 1930s/40s onwards, especially when the established church leaders learned of what was happening in eugenics-conscious Nazi Germany and of the dangers of a national or folk-church. Germans who were ethnically Slavic or Jewish were not considered "true" Germans or members of the German Volk.[9][10] In 1986 the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland expressly repudiated the sections of the Westminster Confession directly attacking Catholicism. In 1990, both the Church of Scotland and the Catholic Church were founder members of the ecumenical bodies Churches Together in Britain and Ireland and Action of Churches Together in Scotland; relations between church leaders are now very cordial. Unlike the relationship between the churches, some communal tensions still remain.
The association between football and displays of sectarian behaviour by some fans has been a source of embarrassment and concern to the management of certain clubs. The bitter rivalry between Celtic and Rangers in Glasgow, known as the Old Firm, is known worldwide for its sectarian divide between Irish-Catholic Celtic and the Protestant Unionist Rangers. Sectarian tensions can still be very real, though perhaps diminished compared with past decades. Perhaps the greatest psychological breakthrough was when Rangers signed Mo Johnston (a Catholic) in 1989. Celtic, on the other hand have never had a policy of not signing players due to their religion with many of the club's greatest figures being Protestants. The Scottish Parliament has recently legislated against sectarianism, making sectarian-related offences a form of aggravated offence.
The Catholic community in Scotland were once largely working class. In recent years things have changed markedly; many Catholics can be found in the what used to be called the professions and it is now unremarkable for Catholics to be occupying posts in the judiciary or in national politics. In 1999 the Rt Hon Dr John Reid MP became the first Catholic to hold the office of Secretary of State for Scotland. His succession by the Rt Hon Helen Liddell MP in 2001 attracted considerably more media comment that she was the first woman to hold the post rather than the second Catholic. Also notable was the recent appointment of Louise Richardson to the University of St. Andrews as its Principal and Vice-Chancellor. St. Andrews is the third oldest university of the English-speaking world. Richardson, a Catholic, was born in Ireland and is a naturalized United States citizen. She is the first woman to hold that office and first Catholic to hold it since the Reformation.[11]
It is notable that the Catholic Church recognises the separate identities of Scotland and of England and Wales. The Church in Scotland is thus governed by its own hierarchy and Bishops' Conference, not under the control of the English Bishops. In recent years, for example, there have been times when it was especially the Scots Catholic Bishops who took the floor in the United Kingdom to argue for Catholic social and moral teaching. Interestingly, the Presidents of the Bishops' Conferences of England and Wales, Scotland, and Ireland do meet formally to discuss "mutual concerns," though they are separate national entities. "Closer cooperation between the presidents can only help the Church's work," a spokesman noted recently.[12]
There are two archbishops and six bishops in Scotland:
Catholics are a minority in each of Scotland's 32 council areas but in a few parts of the country their numbers rival those of the official Church of Scotland. The most Catholic part of the country is composed of the western Central Belt council areas near Glasgow. In Inverclyde, 38.3% of persons responding to the 2001 Scottish Census reported themselves to be Catholic compared to 40.9% as members of the Church of Scotland. North Lanarkshire also has a large Catholic minority at 36.8% compared to 40.0% in the Church of Scotland. Following in order are West Dunbartonshire (35.8%), Glasgow City (31.7%), Renfrewshire (24.6%), East Dumbartonshire (23.6%), South Lanarkshire (23.6%) and East Renfrewshire (21.7%).
At a smaller geographic scale, one finds that the two most Catholic parts of Scotland are: (1) the southern-most islands of the Western Isles, especially Barra and South Uist, populated by Gaelic-speaking Scots of long-standing; and (2) the eastern suburbs of Glasgow, especially around Coatbridge, populated mostly by the descendants of Irish immigrants.[13]
In recent years the Catholic Church in Scotland has suffered from poor publicity connected to perceived attacks made against secular and liberal values by senior clergy. Joseph Devine, Bishop of Motherwell, came under fire after describing the "gay lobby" as "the opposition" who were responsible for mounting a "a giant conspiracy" to shape public policy.[14] Criticism has also been levelled at perceived intransigence on joint faith schools over threats to withdraw acqueisence if guarantees of separate staff rooms, toilets, gyms, visitor and pupil entrances were not met.[15] In 2003 a Catholic Church spokesman branded sex education as "pornography" and Cardinal O'Brien claimed plans to give sex education to pre-school children amounted to "state-sponsored sexual abuse of minors."[16]
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