Michael KellyMichael Kelly talks to a Lough Derg stalwart about her work with young people
Secondary school teacher Mary McDaid has a novel way to acquaint her students with faith while piquing their business minds. As a teacher at St Joseph’s College in Enniskillen,Co. Fermanagh one of her specialisms is business studies. Mary has a passion for both business and faith and has found an avenue where both interact in the nearby St Patrick’s Purgatory, Lough Derg.
“I teach business studies and one of the modules is to develop a marketing plan for an existing business. I bring my business students to Lough Derg and set them the task of developing a marketing plan for the shrine. It really gets their business brains going,” Mary says. And does the Lough Derg experience catch on with the students? “I bring the boys here every year, and without fail, some of them come back on pilgrimage. I don’t tell them to, I don’t ask them to, but yet some of them feel moved to come back,” she says.
Passionate
Mary’s example is clearly a feature and faith has always played an important part in her life. She started going on pilgrimage to Lough Derg as a teenager and has really never left, spending every summer working on the island. It wouldn’t be every teacher’s way of unwinding after a long academic year. “Some of my colleagues think I’m mad,” Mary laughs. But, she is clear, she cannot imagine her life without Lough Derg. She is passionate about the pilgrimage and the spirituality that permeates the island.
Mary comes from a family where faith was an important part of life growing up. Both of her parents were very involved in the local parish, so her own involvement with the Church seems almost a natural progression.
As a young university student in Galway, Mary deepened her faith through her involvement with the chaplaincy. Daily Mass became a staple of her spiritual journey.
As we talk about faith, Mary demurs slightly: “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a ‘Holy Joe’ by any means”.
Faith is such a personal thing, that people often find it difficult to talk about. It’s a difficulty Mary articulates well. “We’re sometimes frightened of expressing our faith which is an awful pity.
“We’re not good at talking about Jesus, it’s not the way we were brought up,” she says.
Mary is convinced that young people are the key. “There needs to be a shift in our Church culture. I say this to younger people: I ask them not to be afraid of getting involved in their parishes… getting them through the door is what counts”.
Many people grumble about the apparent lack of faith in younger Irish people, but Mary is having none of it.
“My reply is: sorry, I’m not agreeing with you. When people say young people have lost their faith, what they really are saying is that we’re not getting young people to Mass on Sunday.
“Of course Sunday Mass is vitally important, it is intrinsic and we do want young people to come to Mass. But, sometimes a better starting point is how we are living our lives,” she says.
As a teacher for almost 30 years, Mary has quite a bit of authority on younger Catholics. “Young people nowadays are far more in touch with other people, and the need to care for other people than we were as teenagers. They are far more caring and they reach out, they look after each other and they look after the elderly.
“I really don’t buy the claim that the youth have lost their faith, I think young people are so good,” she says.
However, she is acutely aware that many young people do not express faith in a conventional sense. “Young people may not see their good deeds as acting out of their Christianduty, but they are. I really do think they have great faith: you will see it with young people at a time of tragedy. They are there for each other and they turn to God at a time of tragedy.
“Young people have a lot more faith than we sometimes give them credit for. They’re not going through the church doors as often as I’d like, but they’re very aware of the needs of being there for one another – and we need to build on that and ask ourselves why they’re not coming to Mass.”
Mary takes inspiration from Pope Francis in her desire to reach out to younger Catholics.
“That’s what the Pope is asking us: we can’t sit in the empty Church, we have to go out through the doors to the margins.
“I’m not saying the Church has to radically change, because it won’t and it shouldn’t. The beauty of the Church is that it is steady, but you do have to go and meet people where they’re at. If you meet young people like that, they’ll come back,” she believes.
Mary’s upbeat optimism doesn’t just extend to younger Catholics. She is confident that despite the difficulties of recent decades, the Church in Ireland has a bright future.
“I’m confident it will come round. We have to trust in God. One of the powerful things that speaks to me about Lough Derg is at the centre of the station when the pilgrims cling to the cross and that cross of Christ gives them the strength to go.
“Isn’t that a powerful metaphor for the Christian life? If we can only cling to the cross, Christ will see us through.”