Participants looked at ongoing causes of division, explored sources and features of commonality and set hearts and minds toward re-energising the ecumenical cause through resolutely pushing thinking outside the box to new levels.

On each day, delegates also divided into three thematic areas of focus – exploring intra and inter-church issues; second, exploring inter-faith issues and, finally looking at issues pertaining to the relations between faith communities and the wider world in which they must live out their faith.

They received further nourishment from ‘Soul Food’ sessions, as well as from visiting the most sacred and special sites of Assisi and sharing “rich stories and specifically focused wisdom  from a wonderful array of scholars and practitioners from around the globe”.

Those from Scotland taking part  included:

• Mark Godin, a minister of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, who has a PhD from the University of Glasgow. He works on theology and literature, worship and interfaith issues. He has been an honorary research fellow at the Swedish Theological Institute, Jerusalem; he is a locum minister in Scotland and an honorary research associate at the University of Glasgow’s Centre for Literature, Theology and the Arts.
• Mario I. Aguilar, Professor of Religion & Politics and Director of the Centre for the Study of Religion & Politics at the University of St. Andrews. He is an oblate of the Camaldolese Benedictines and a hermit in Anstruther. He has explored the Christian and Buddhist traditions in Contemplating God, Changing the World (2008), Thomas Merton: Contemplation and Political Action (2011) and Church, Liberation and World Religions (2012).

It will consider the Good Society, a project run by CTBI, which seeks to stimulate debate on the nature of what a ‘good society’ is.

The project is developing case studies to showcase what the churches are already doing.

It is to be looking at 10 places across Britain and Ireland, including the Gorbals and Fraserburgh in Scotland.

As part of the Get Britain Reading programme, recently launched by ITV show Daybreak, the Salvation Army has been collecting books to distribute to the local community.

St Patrick’s Primary School, Anderston, Glasgow was among the beneficiaries of the programme, as well as another local school and two nurseries in the area, between them receiving more than 800 books from the Glasgow City Centre Corps of The Salvation Army.

Susan O’Donnell, St Patrick’s headteacher, said she was ‘delighted’ that the school can now fill the shelves of its new library with an ‘exciting collection of fabulous books.’

Salvation Army Corps Officers Matt and Sarah Butler said there has been a ‘tremendous response’ to the Get Britain Reading collection and that they are ‘delighted to be able to encourage the children of this inner city area in their reading.’

• Full story at the Scottish Catholic Observer.

This initiative, promoted in the Archdiocese of Glasgow for more than 30 years, has given churches a form of service which enables them to look back together at their roots in the worship of the people of Israel.

The service this year was originally taken from Kevin Mayhew’s publication Focus on Holy Week, but it has been adapted this way and that ever since.

• A full report is available on the website of St Leo the Great parish church.

'The Martyrdom of St John Ogilvie' by Peter Howson

St Aloysius’ parish in Glasgow is served by the Jesuits and it marked the feast with a Vespers of St John led by Archbishop Mario Conti and the St Mungo Singers.

In a series of interviews (link below) Mgr Gerry Fitzpatrick spoke to …

• Fr Peter Griffiths, the parish priest at St Aloysius,  about the celebration there to mark the feast – primarily a lunch-time Mass and Vespers on the vigil.
• Stephen Callaghan, Director of the Archdiocesan Arts Initiative and the author of a new play on St John Ogilvie premiered on 10^th March in the University of Glasgow Chapel.  Stephen explained how he was motivated to write his play.
• Maureen Coyle, a Notre Dame Sister who enjoys being a parishioner at the parish of St Jude and St John Ogilvie, who she talked about the parish’s Novena and celebrations in honour of St John Ogilvie.
• Noel Donnelly, a musician and Biblical scholar who wrote a hymn for the children to help them understand what St John Ogilvie was all about.

A Vespers leaflet and a soundfile containing the interviews can be accessed  at the St Mungo Singers website.

Jolomo (John Lowrie Morrison), who will paint 'Jesus is raised from the dead'.

The Archdiocese of Glasgow Arts Project (AGAP) said a record number of artists have signed up to take part in the annual art exhibition which takes places during Lentfest.  The festival, which began as a pilot in 2007, has been hugely successful in attracting the participation of a wide range of supporters.  Lentfest 2012 boasts a strong line-up with artists such as Peter Howson, Jolomo (John Lowrie Morrison), Anne Devine, Sandy Moffat and Richard Demarco joining the ranks alongside regular participants like Sarah T. Bookless, Brendan Berry and David T. Collins.

Lentfest Director, Stephen Callaghan explained: “The popularity of the exhibition topic illustrates the timelessness of Biblical subject matter and the diversity of the artists will no doubt ensure a wide range of interpretations.  We’ve never had so many artists take part and not all of them are Christian so it will be interesting to see what they come up with.

The Stations of the Cross and Resurrection are a set of 28 images which are traditionally used in the Catholic Church to reflect upon the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  “The “Via Crucis” (Way of the Cross) is better known, but there is evidence of a tradition called the ‘Via Lucis’ (Way of Light), which takes us up to the Descent of the Holy Spirit and this deserves our attention too because the Christian story does not end with suffering and death but with hope and enlightenment.”

Archbishop Mario Conti, the festival’s patron, added: “I am delighted that we have the support of the University of Glasgow Chaplaincy for this exhibition and I hope that many will take advantage of the opportunity to visit the exhibition during Lent and use it as a means of reflection and prayer.”

The twenty-eight artists who will depict the Stations consented to have their names entered into a draw to be allocated their particular subject.  The twenty-ninth artist is sculptress, Kate Robinson, who is working on a three-dimensional reflection on the Crucifixion. This will complement an installation featuring ancient Roman nails, of the type used in the practice of crucifixion, which are housed by the Hunterian Museum at the University of Glasgow, and which will be on display in the exhibition space during the exhibition.

The full list of participating artists and their subjects is available on the AGAP website.

“To be free is to be in love, is to be in the truth of God. The one who loves because made free by the truth of God, is the most revolutionary person on earth.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1932.

Pastor Bonhoeffer in Germany, circa 1930s.

In Lent, which this year runs from Ash Wednesday on February 22 to Holy Saturday on April 7, Christians go on a journey of deepening reflection, prayer and discipline which leads them to the great festival of new life at Easter.

In this year’s Lent study course, devised by Churches Together in Britain and Ireland in partnership with BBC Radio, we are invited to think of this journey as leading towards the true freedom of living in love towards God and others, and what this freedom means for ourselves, our churches, our local communities and our world today.

The theme is taken from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian executed in 1945 for his part in the resistance to Hitler, whose thoughts continue to challenge us on what it means to have faith and to be the church in a dangerous world. In 1944 while in prison he wrote a poem Stations on the Way to Freedom. The ‘stations’ he highlighted are: discipline, action, suffering and death.

The course does not involve studying Bonhoeffer as such but simply taking some cues from him, and each week asking what ‘freedom’ means for us in our context today. Bible studies will be an important part of the material.

• Full details and resources can be found at the CTBI website.

'Let Justice Prevail' by Hanna Cheriyan Varghese (1938-2009)

This year the World Day of Prayer is on Friday 2nd March and will focus on women in Malaysia with the theme Let Justice Prevail. Women account for nearly half of Malaysia’s population of 28.7 million. There are around 6.8 million non-Muslim women.

More and more women are working full time. Many of them have children and find it hard to balance the demands of their domestic and professional lives. And women who are full-time mothers can sometimes question their vocation. Whatever their circumstances, many face emotional pressure and need spiritual guidance.

Music, Powerpoint presentations, publicity materials and other resources are available on the World Day of Prayer Scotland website..

The Scottish Bible Society is supporting a multi-year Bible engagement and literacy project to help women to develop strong spiritual foundations and healthy families based on the teachings of God’s Word.

• Find out more at World Day of

Prayer Scotland and the Scottish Bible Society.

During the meetings stewards will work in the areas of worship, conference room, documentation, press office, sound, and other administrative and support tasks.

The Central Committee of the World Council of Churches meets every 18 months to monitor and set directions to the Council’s work. The meeting brings together about 150 church representatives, advisers and observers from WCC member churches and associated organizations worldwide. Twenty-five stewards will help to make this event happen.

Before the meetings, stewards follow an ecumenical learning programme which exposes them to the key issues of the ecumenical movement worldwide. The last phase of the stewards programme, following the meeting, focuses on designing ecumenical projects which stewards will implement back home.

Being a steward means hard work, but it is also a unique ecumenical experience of togetherness with young people from different churches, countries and cultures.

Applicants are invited to send in the completed application form to the WCC youth desk no later than 15 March 2012.

More information on the WCC stewards programme

Download the information brochure (pdf, 400  KB)

Download the application form as pdf (150 KB) or as MS Word document (80 KB)

I have been honoured by being invited to give the first in what is intended to become a series of lectures on the eve of St Mungo’s Feast. The series is to carry the name: ‘The Molendinar Lectures’. The Molendinar, of course, as every Glaswegian knows, or ought to know, is the stream or burn, now for the most part culverted, on the north west grassy banks of which a Christian settlement was established before the sixth century, having the typical topography of an ecclesiastical site – a hillock by running water. This burn continues to make its hidden journey into the Clyde by Glasgow Green.

I have entitled this lecture, put together at rather short notice, as the ‘Tale of two Cathedrals’. What I have to offer is a pot-pourri of information which has this Christian settlement, particularly the Church that for more than 700 years is built upon it, as a sort of visual aid. Of course I don’t need to illustrate it here with an overhead projector, since St Mungo’s Cathedral is well known to all of us and is one of the great ornaments of our city.

I may tease you with the mention of a second Cathedral and you wouldn’t have to try terribly hard to guess that it is St Andrew’s on the Clyde, because I don’t want to limit myself to an architectural or historical survey of one building only, but rather to broaden my canvas so that theological and sociological colours merge even into etymological ones, and all can be added to this pot-pourri to give it the sort of description that so often one finds on a bottle of wine with reference to taste. Though with a pot-pourri my metaphor has to do with the nose and not the tongue! Mind you etymology would suggest that the tongue is likely to be the instrument more interested than the nose in what I have to say!

Of course, I am teasing you, and I will tease you further by saying that really my title should be: “Two Cathedrals and one Church” – though not three buildings; the bright ones among you will already have got my meaning even before I look at the etymology of these words.

Let me come to the point: The word “church,” is from old English. It has its etymological root in the Greek word “kyrios” which means Lord. We are familiar of course with that word from the Kyrie Eleison which survived even within the Latin Mass, when, not for the last time, the Church, taking into account the language of the people, changed its liturgical tongue in this case from Greek to Latin. Our word “church” survives from the Greek “kuriakon” the Lord’s House, rather as the Italian word “duomo” survives from the Latin “Domus Dei,” the House of God.