Dumfries and Galloway church marks 200th milestone

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One of Dumfries and Galloway’s historic Roman Catholic Churches has marked its bicentenary.

A celebratory Mass to commemorate 200 years since the foundation of St Mary’s RC Church in New Abbey – five years before the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 – proved “a joyous and uplifting occasion” and was attended by Christians from different churches including a Church of Scotland minister.

The Bishop of Galloway, Francis Dougan, celebrated Mass with Father Gerald Donnelly of St Andrew’s RC Church in Dumfries and St Columba’s RC in Annan; Father Uchenna Odenigbo, Father Francis Dometiero and Deacon William Hiddleston of St Teresa’s RC Church in Dumfries; with Father Gerry Briody and Father Joseph Tan, Salesians, concelebrating.

In his homily delivered to a fully-packed church – which was designed by celebrated Dumfries architect Walter Newall – the Bishop’s theme was on “building on the past but not dwelling on it” and to “encourage the young and not always complaining to or about them” and also to “go forward with hope”.

It was all the more special for the congregation as, since 2013, there has not been a regular Sunday service there but, periodically, priests come to stay in the house and say Mass for everyone.

Located just within the south-east precinct wall of Sweetheart Abbey, it is also now a wedding venue and groups go there to recharge their energy on retreat.

After Mass, everyone was invited to enjoy refreshments served in the village hall and to browse at old photographs through the decades at St Mary’s, copies of the church registers from Kirkconnell House, and on loan from Dumfries Museum was information about the 700-year-old Breviary used by a monk from Sweetheart Abbey (Abbey of the Dulce Cor) as his prayer book.

On show, too, was an article printed on August 27, 1924, in the Dumfries and Galloway Standard for St Mary’s centenary telling of how it had been opened in 1824 by the Reverend Father Bagnall and explains how important this would have been for the region’s Catholics at the time.

The report shows that 100 years ago the Right Rev. W.F. Brown, Bishop of Pella and Vicar General of Southwark celebrated the centenary mass, and also present in the sanctuary was the Rev. Father Paulinno V.P. of Hawkesyard Priory, Staffordshire, and the then Bishop of Galloway, the Right Rev. J McCarthy D D.

Among those present in the congregation were sponsors the Duchess of Norfolk, the Duke of Norfolk, the Dowager Marchioness of Bute, Lady Rachael Howard, and the younger members of the family; Miss Maxwell Witham, Kirkconnell, Mrs Tayleur, Kirkconnell Lea, Mrs Morgan of Rockhall, Miss McKerlie, Albany.

And from a long sermon, it is interesting to note just how special St Mary’s was to the Catholics when it first opened after a dark time in Scotland’s religious history,

The Bishop of Pella said: “It is not very easy for us in these days of wider tolerance, and of many churches, and priests, and religious houses, both of men and women, in our midst, to realise the greatness of an event such as the building and dedication of this church must have been in
1824.

“Catholics were still, both in England and Scotland, a very small body, mostly gathered round the seats of Catholic families possessing landed estates.

“Any attempt to come out into the open, and make what one may call a demonstration in the religious sense, would have been the signal for active opposition, and perhaps even for outbursts of popular violence such as occurred in Scotland and England when the English Hierarchy was established in 1850.

“To be a Catholic, at all events, a fervent Catholic, meant many disabilities for those in every position of life.

“For men possessing land and titles it meant that they were prevented from taking their position in Parliament, and in the local government of the country; for those in humbler positions it often meant the loss of employment, expulsion from their homes, and petty persecution by their
neighbours.

“In these more spacious days of political and social freedom we are apt to look back upon the work of those who lived in times so different from our own with a kind of compassionate pity for what is sometimes regarded as their want of courage and missionary zeal to propagate the Catholic faith in their surroundings.

“Let us, therefore, honour as we should, those who had the spirit and the courage to lay the foundations and build up the walls of the church and the priests’ house at Newabbey one hundred years ago.”

He also said not to forgot those who built the church and tended to the needs of Catholics “both in 1824 and after” and also “tended” the “little flock which survived the ruin of Sweetheart Abbey after the Protestant Reformation”.
In his speech, he also paid tribute to Kirconnell House which he said, before St Mary’s, had “for so long been the gathering place of the Catholics from round about”.

He also described it as: “Kirkconnell, where the light of faith was never darkened in the rude days of Protestant persecution, where the sanctuary lamp, although perhaps carefully hidden, was always kept burning before the Blessed Sacrament.”

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