The Church in Scotland
Brogan, Denis W.
652 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND By DENIS W. BROGAN IN ODD corners of the papers there appear, at intervals of a month or two, brief paragraphs headed, The Klan in Scotland, or, Irish Menace in...
...Pity it is that of the multitudes who are being swept overboard, few swim to safety on the Rock...
...Church architecture, church decoration, church music are, as a rule, deplorable...
...Under the new system the religious received good and, in many cases, large salaries which went to enrich their respective orders...
...The Irish party was dead, so was the Liberal party to which the Irish vote had been delivered for thirty years...
...They are misleading, but not altogether unfounded...
...In the dread years of the Great Peace, the professional Protestants of Scotland suddenly became aware that more than a tenth of the population was Catholic, that the Roman Church was the biggest of the "denominations" and that while all her competitors were in varying stages of decay, she was growing, absolutely and relatively...
...They had produced artists, Roche and Lavery...
...The effects of the past are not easily removed, however, and the Church in Scotland seems to many to do herself less than justice...
...A thorough reform was undertaken and, among other things, the question of the Catholic schools arose...
...The teachers, the schools, the children have been lifted from poverty to decency, from inferiority to equality...
...An excited minister coined the phrase, "the unholy alliance," and the trick was done: the Third International was merely a branch or a tool of our old friends the Jesuits...
...A Catholic Scotland would, indeed, be a prize...
...any local socialist "education authority" could sweep them away— whereas only Parliament could touch the Catholics...
...it was martyrdom in 1918...
...some "movement" is rising that is to deliver Scotland from a tide of Irish immigration which is sweeping away the landmarks in the country of Bruce and Burns, of Scott—and of Knox...
...now there are the beginnings of a general-system, though it will take years to overcome completely the lack of schools and of qualified teachers...
...The strong ship of Calvinism is being pounded to pieces on the rocks...
...when rich, likely to be Philistine in a way distasteful to the less gaudy Dagon-worship of the Scots bourgeois...
...The second of these charges ceased to matter with the end of the war...
...assimilation had begun...
...Among the proletariat, indeed, a vast change was going on...
...none but Catholics could teach Catholic children, and at least as much religious instruction had to be given as before...
...they were predestined hewers of wood—or rather, builders of railroads and of docks, shovelers of coal in gasworks, carriers of material in shipyards...
...They voted as Irish patriots, but with none of the rewards attendant, in some places, on that role...
...They were the people of Pat McGill's novels...
...How much courage, devotion, and ability the helots and the ex-helots displayed, no outsider can guess—more especially as the exterior was not very prepossessing...
...Fortunately most of the expenses of maintenance were paid for by the central government, which gave "grants" to all schools, public and parochial...
...Secondary education has been created...
...As the second generation grew up, there appeared the rudiments of a bourgeoisie...
...Catholic students in the universities could be counted on the fingers before the war...
...H. G. Wells for refusing to allow the Ministry of Health to disseminate birth-control information, and he dined with Cardinal Bourne...
...In a country which made a fetish of education, of "la carriere onverte aux talents," their education was limited in range and defective in quality...
...Before 1914, the disappearance of the whole Catholic population in Glasgow would have left but the tiniest of gaps in the professions, in public life, in the great producing industries...
...The Catholic press makes no appeal to the unconverted, and little to the critical among the faithful...
...These deficiencies are the more lamentable that the opportunity is so great...
...The immigrants were very poor, for if they had been less poor they could have paid their way to America...
...the Catholic schools simply did without, and so had bad buildings, bad equipment, too few and miserably underpaid teachers...
...They could J The Church is increasing in numbers...
...In, but not of, Scotland was this mass: in the main very poor...
...The reasons are very obvious...
...the Kremlin and the Vatican, plainly, were engaged in a joint raid on the hearths, altars, and pocketbooks of the orthodox...
...The few who essayed it had to bear the double suspicion of being traitors to Church and country...
...and they had produced athletes...
...In the city of Glasgow, a fifth of the population was Irish, their political machinery was perfect and not 1 percent of the police force was Hibernian...
...The outcry against subsidizing Rome was the louder because, incredible as it seems, many ministers believed the teaching orders gave their surplus to the regular clergy...
...the rewards went there also...
...The triumph of the Reformation was less complete and much slower than is generally recognized, but by the end of the eighteenth century, the Faith was extinct outside the Highlands and a few isolated areas like "the Enzie" of Banff...
...The text below is always vague...
...One illustration will suffice...
...It was with horror the realization dawned that it actually gave Catholics a privileged position...
...So the Irish voted Labour or any way the individuals pleased, the floodgates were open, and for the first time, the Catholics in Scotland could enter politics on something like even terms...
...A second material disadvantage arose from their religion...
...The great Highland emigration to Canada weakened the remnants, and, despite their disproportionately large contribution to the clergy, the Scottish Catholics of old stock are a small minority among the laity...
...In a country where education is a fetish, Catholics have been and still are inferior to their neighbors...
...It is no wonder that the ministers began to look under their beds—and that they found there Papist and Bolshevist in "unholy alliance...
...They came to a country with its own proletariat which could work as hard, was better trained and drank less—or, rather, showed it less...
...The old double allegiance in politics has ceased to be a serious- problem since the Irish Treaty...
...Most of the secondary schools and many of the primary schools were staffed by religious, brothers and nuns...
...That situation has changed and is changing rapidly...
...It was from these roots that the new Church in Scotland sprung...
...Not unnaturally, the heirs of Knox are annoyed and declare, with much pulpit thumping, "There ought to be a law about it...
...Formerly there were a few good but small and comparatively expensive schools...
...To Americans this must seem rather like Alice in Blunderland, but in Scotland it had an appearance of plausibility...
...The public-house, the pawnshop, were open if not very dignified ways to comparative opulence...
...One ef653 feet of the war had been to disorganize the Scottish educational system...
...652 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND By DENIS W. BROGAN IN ODD corners of the papers there appear, at intervals of a month or two, brief paragraphs headed, The Klan in Scotland, or, Irish Menace in Scotland...
...The bourgeoisie, terrified by the revolutionary-menace of the Clyde, were called on to reflect that there where the Russian taint was deepest, a quarter of the population was Papist...
...Scotland offered them few of the opportunities of America...
...The great provision trade with Ireland in cattle, butter, eggs, etc., lifted others out of poverty, but it was so intimately connected with Ireland that it hardly affected the general life of the Irish-Scotch or the attitude of the Scottish public...
...To the average Scot, however, the Irish were to be ignored and, if possible, forgotten, and the effort was fairly successful...
...Their votes were disposed of in Dublin or London...
...The Act said not a word about Protestant teaching in the schools...
...They had votes, but with a religious loyalty they voted as "the party" wanted...
...The shorter catechism and the King James Bible only existed on sufferance...
...To rear a family and show a respectable front to the world on $500 a year was mortification in 1914...
...it is not winning Scotland to the Faith...
...they run into hundreds now...
...Many there were who said (out of Protestant hearing), "If they only knew their business, they could make a far better job of it...
...Apart from the marriage converts, few indeed are won to the fold...
...It was high time...
...With the great industrial development of the Southwest in the nineteenth century came an expanding labor market...
...The bishops were given legal powers to enforce these guarantees...
...This self-satisfaction is the most regrettable result of the situation, but not all shared it...
...The result is easy to summarize...
...The cost of living had soared to the skies, the salaries of teachers, necessarily, stood still...
...It has just discovered that the snake of Popery which it had thought killed had been only Scotched...
...It advertised the Catholics, who were rather pleased to be thought so formidable...
...It was this situation that created the noisy but quite unsubstantial agitation for nobody knew what...
...Ireland, mother of emigrants, was at hand and a tide poured into the Lowlands, chiefly from Ulster...
...To call the paragraphs untrue would be harsh...
...It was passed at a time when public attention was directed elsewhere...
...The public schools were Presbyterian, so a desperately poor population had to provide schools as well as churches...
...When the rhetorical barrage was lifted, nobody had been very much hurt, but quite a number of people had been enlightened—on both sides—to the point of realizing a modus vivendi as a necessity...
...With the Armistice came the awakening...
...When the first Labour government came into office in 1923, the leader of the Scottish Labour party, the leader of the left wing of the whole party and one of the three leading members of the cabinet was the Right Honorable John Wheatley, M. P. Within a few months he was doubly honored...
...These grants were supplemented by local taxes in the case of public schools...
...The next grievance was less substantial but more popular...
...The change is due to circumstances like those indicated, but also to individuals, above all to the late Professor Phillimore, a great scholar, a great gentleman, and a great Catholic...
...Scotland is menaced, that is, the Scotland of Knox is menaced...
...They came from the rain- and wind-swept coasts, from the mountain and bog...
...There was much marrying and giving in marriage, much wastage and much gain...
...He was attacked by Mr...
...The Church in Scotland today, even more than the Church in the United States, is a fruit of Irish immigration...
...The great task of the Catholics of this generation is to put a beacon on it...
...Even politics was barred to them...
...Before the war, it is true, many Catholics had begun to rise in the tradeunion hierarchy, but the transition to Labour politics was very difficult...
...Few had ever owned a good cow or a good plow...
...The effects in the educational field have been revolutionary—and the educational field is a great part of the Scottish landscape...
...they had neither education nor skill...
...The proposals of the government were simple: all the liabilities for schools, teachers, etc., would be taken over, the vested capital in school-buildings amply compensated for, and the fullest securities given for the religious character and training of teachers...
...In two fields alone had Catholics won fame...
...The last legal grievances have gone, we have come out of the Catacombs...
...The Education Act of 1918 was the first bomb which awakened the sleeping Presbyteries...
...Among the casualties of the war was the Irish Nationalist party, and its demise left the Irish in Scotland free for politics on their own hook...
Vol. 5 • April 1927 • No. 24
