They that Wait on the Lord: An Uncharted Journey by Neal Carlin
(Columba Press, €19.99/£15.70)
Fr Neal Carlin calls this account of his career as a pastor “an uncharted journey”. Well, he has certainly passed through stormy waters, both personal and historical, with the Ulster troubles as a background, but it became clear enough to him that, though he might have thought his life’s work as a journey without maps, there was someone else, in whose hands he was, who guided him.
This year he celebrated a half century in the priesthood.
Over that time, again and again his efforts were aided and sustained by unexpected turns, unlooked for gifts, surprising friendships. His book is in effect the story of the Columba Community of prayer and reconciliation.
This is a small, basic Christian community of a kind which has been favoured by Pope Francis. It received its canonical acceptance in the Derry diocese in 1995, but the way there had been a long one.
Though Ulster-born he was ordained for Motherwell in Scotland, but after working there went back to Derry where he worked in the diocese and with the charismatic movement.
This came to a very sudden end when he was told by his bishop in Scotland that Bishop Edward Daly in Derry had asked for him to be recalled. No explanation of this was ever forthcoming.
Power
Later he encountered Archbishop Ó Fiaich and found him far more understanding and prepared “to wait upon the Lord” as Neal Carlin himself did. He muses in places on the power of individual parish priests and bishops, which seems not to be always exercised benevolently. But the idea of “waiting upon the Lord and His will” is what drives Carlin and inspired the Columba Community.
In his account of his childhood one moment stands out. His mother, an important influence, told him that she had never believed in limbo, but had never told the priest that. This reinforces the impression that what Catholics actually believe is often far removed from what the Church says or thinks they believe. Though reared in the 1950s, he did not favour the rigourism of the day. For, as he writes: “We either transform our wounded state or we transmit it so that others also suffer.” Neal Carlin has, all his life, chosen the first way.
“It is quite an odyssey, but at the end the final landfall is still in doubt”
Aside from Columba House, which was set up in 1980 as a place of prayer, healing and reconciliation, he went on to found St Anthony’s retreat centre, White Oaks Rehabilitation Centre, and the Celtic Prayer Garden in Donegal
It is quite an odyssey, but at the end the final landfall is still in doubt. What, he muses, is the future: where are we going? He sees a future in which the small Christian community would work with the parish to renew the Church by calling on all the available skills.
We can see that small communities work; it is the parish which has grown too large, too isolated from the society around it, and in the great urban areas too anonymous: that is the problem. Amalgamating parishes is not the answer.
Making them smaller, making them the small Christian community would be better. And as for the pastors, as Neal Carlin found, when they are really needed, they will emerge.
To understand our past and see a glimpse of the future, this warmly human book is very well worth reading.