Calling it out

 

Calling it out

Old Mr Murphy was what you would call an old-fashioned gentleman. Even after retiring, he would be out in his suit, clean shaven and had a smile for everyone. His life, like that of so many Glaswegians, revolved around his family, his local church and his football team. He would stroll down to Celtic Park in all weathers as he had done since he watched Tully and Evans as a boy. He lived in what we used to call a ‘good close’ in a Glasgow tenement building and got on well with his neighbours. One family up his stair were of the orange persuasion but he had the same smile for them as he had for anyone else. All in all, a nicer old fellah you couldn’t meet.

His passing a good few years ago was cause for genuine sadness for all who knew him and his funeral service at the slope roofed, architectural marvel that is the church of Our Lady of Good Council, in Glasgow, was well attended. There were many tears shed as his coffin was blessed at the end of the service and the congregation sang the touching farewell song, ‘receive his soul.’ As I watched his sons and nephews bear the old chap out of the church for his final journey to Dalbeth cemetery, a trip that would of course involve a pause as it passed his beloved Celtic Park, I couldn’t help notice two of the family downstairs had chosen to stand outside the church rather than attend what was in fact a beautiful service.

I spoke to one of the family members who did honour Mr Murphy by attending his funeral and he told me that his siblings ‘beliefs’ meant they wouldn’t set foot in a Catholic church. It struck me as very odd that you can live next to someone for literally decades, like and respect him but not enough to actually attend his funeral and demonstrate some solidarity with a family in obvious pain. It is at its heart an un-Christian thing to do and yet folk who call themselves Christians do it often. Perhaps they were off school the day the teacher told the story of the Good Samaritan.

I was reminded of that story when reading an article in the Scotsman a couple of weeks back which questioned whether it is time Scottish Society actually faced up to the anti-Catholic prejudice which lingers yet in some dark corners. Andrew Smith’s article eviscerates the uncouth behaviour we saw in George Square in mid-May when thousands of Rangers supporters celebrated their team’s title success. It was to be expected that an outpouring of emotion occurred after a near decade of dominance from their rivals, the trauma of liquidation and years of being the butt of jokes. Celtic fans expressed similar joy in 1998 when Wim Jansen’s side won the title in similar circumstances. The difference was though that Celtic fans celebrated long and loud without expressing hatred for anyone’s religious faith. Smith wrote in his article…

‘We in the media have all been enablers in allowing a corrosive sense of entitlement to be brewed with a cocktail of anti-Catholic/anti-Irish bigotry. The concoction percolates into a mindset that now twice inside three months – just ponder that, twice! – has resulted in Glasgow city centre disturbances that have been despicable in scale and nature.  We hear the word “minority” bandied about. The word was, predictably and depressingly, front and centre in an apology of a statement from Rangers that, astonishingly watery and mealy-mouthed, made reference only to “inappropriate behaviour”. In itself, entirely inappropriate. The Ibrox club’s deliberate obfuscation on these fronts is fingers-in-the-ears and hands-over-the-eyes stuff. Of course, the miscreants were a minority. A sizeable minority, though...in a huge fanbase. It is no minority of the 50,000 crowd that were singing the Super Rangers song, with its line about “Fenian bastards”, or The Billy Boys chant, which talks about being “up to our knees in Fenian blood”, when Ibrox was full to the gunwales pre-pandemic.’

Smith’s namesake, Walter, a Rangers legend after two very successful spells at Ibrox said in an interview in 1995, ‘there is a Protestant superiority syndrome around here. You can feel it sometimes.’ For those many decent Protestants who follow their faith with humility and Christian charity, such words are anathema. Didn’t the man who was the inspiration of the Christian faith talk of being humble, loving your enemies and loving your neighbour as yourself?

I spoke on many occasions to a local Church of Scotland Minister, a man who went on to be Moderator of the General Assembly and who is perhaps one of the most decent, Christian people I have ever met. He told me that he arrived in his first parish in Glasgow in the winter of the dreadful Ibrox disaster in 1971. He noticed the casual sectarianism in the community around him and challenged it whenever he could. As Moderator, he met Pope John Paul II and chose to display a picture of him meeting the Pontiff in the entrance of his church. ‘Could I have done that in 1971?’ he asked me before adding, ‘I could have but some would have voted with their feet.’ He also told me that one of his first acts as a Minister was to visit the local Catholic church and ask the local Priest to walk with him around the community in a visual act of unity.

 

Good men like that Minister remind us that anyone who claims to be a Christian yet holds hatred in their hearts isn’t actually living up to their faith. How many of those involved in the drunken goings on in George Square a few weeks back would have been at church that week? This is little to do with religion and everything to do with tribalism and the bonds that come from having someone to hate. Andrew Smith also said in his article….

‘There is a faction of Rangers’ fanbase – Protestant and unionist in hue – that is motivated by hate, pure and simple. Hatred of a closest rival, Celtic, because that club has roots and a culture firmly Irish Catholic, and republican. Ahead of Rangers’ admirable on-field renaissance, that rival had been lording it for so long in the game. Moreover, these fans have the ultimate slag for their Rangers counterparts with the new club/old club teasing, a consequence of malfeasance by previous owners of the Ibrox institution that has created desperate insecurities over sense of history. All of these elements underpinned what has exploded into the public domain in recent times. As so often happens in such situations, these insecurities allowed for the fomenting of a bogus sense of victimhood, Rangers falsely presenting themselves as the oppressed. In these situations, so often the believed oppressed actually become the oppressors.’

I have been heartened by Scottish society’s response to the events in George Square in May. Many of us have scolded the hypocrisy of the political classes for castigating racism and Islamophobia while turning a deaf ear and blind eye to the expressions of anti-Catholic rhetoric in our streets. Imagine for a moment the outpouring of rage in society if thousands sang about being ‘up to their knees in Jewish blood.’ Why then was it deemed unremarkable when ‘Fenians’ were the target? It’s time to change, time to challenge this nonsense and build a better country than the one we saw in the grubby, uncouth goings on in Glasgow in mid-May. Good people of all faiths and none have a stake in building that better society so that our children and grandchildren can live in a land where we are all the People. 

As Edmund Burke once said, ‘the only thing necessary for evil to thrive is for good people to do nothing.’ That is no longer an option. Time to call it out and make the change.