A brief history of the struggle to reopen St Joseph’s Church

This resume is an extract from the weekly St Joseph’s Church bulletin dated Sunday 13^th August 2006

and was compiled by Paul McLaughlin

More than 2,000 days have passed since the closure of our church, days that have often dawned with hope and dimmed with despair. Days filled with frustration. But, 2,000 or 20,000 days, the fight to maintain traditional, Catholic worship at St Joseph’s goes on until we achieve our aim.

The story of Diocesan wrong-doing at St Joseph’s is well known to all the people of the steps, but, at this milestone in our struggle, it is worth remembering just how wrong our pastoral leaders have been, and continue to be, in Sailortown.

Way back in 2000, rumours of a sell-off of our church resounded round the dock. These were subsequently denied – on oath – by Fr David White. However, a leading Belfast publican was set to sign a contract of sale for St Joseph’s, a building described by Fr White as “Falling down as a result of rotting foundations, confirmed by a structural report commissioned by the Diocese”.

Campaigners asked for sight of this report in order to clarify the situation and were assured by the Reverend White that it did exist, but that we couldn’t see it. Alarm bells started to ring. Why would a shrew businessman want to convert a crumbling building? Why couldn’t we see the damning report? Time was to explain everything. Of course, there had not been a structural survey of the building –good or bad. It was all in Davy’s head – put there by the Diocesan Building Committee which saw pound signs where it should have been looking for the sign for the cross. The saga of the structural survey dragged on and the Diocese saw potential buyers of St Joseph’s back away quickly as our campaign gained momentum and drew public attention to “a difficult situation in dockland”. Campaigners met with the Bishop and his usual suspects and Monsignor McCaughan, his first lieutenant, said that he “had dozens of churches to close in Down and Connor when the St Joseph’s thing was settled”. The ground rules had been set firmly. D & C was determined to sell off our church and adamant that it “would never again be used for worship”.

They would never tell us why. They would never discuss the problem in public, they just wanted us to go away, have Sunday Mass on a Tuesday in a Stella Maris oratory that had closed four years previously. These are clever chaps at Lisbreen [name of the local bishop’s palace]. Not!

The sinister silence remained the policy of a diocese that had got it wrong. Our “betters” keen to snap up the small fortune of dockland real estate – had thought that no one cared about a wee chapel in a Belfast backwater. And, sadly for them, when that fallacy was rectified, they did not have the courage to admit their mistake. Rather, they compounded it by trying to buy a structural report that would condemn the church and by establishing a Preservation Society to whitewash their efforts.

The St Joseph’s Preservation Society met with representatives of our people over an eight month period in what proved to be constructive discussions. Their outcome paved the way for a St Joseph’s what would become a school of music and still provide facilities for worship for its faith community. Both parties agreed, in principle, a proposal that was put to the Bishop. His response, incredible for a leading Catholic churchman was: “There can be ecumenical worship at St Joseph’s, but it will never again be used for Catholic worship”.

Not even the Preservation Trust could get its collective head around that one and it promptly withdrew in disarray. Its Chairman, a decent clergyman, told us that he could not understand “how a Catholic Bishop could block Catholic worship while allowing that of other faiths” in a Catholic Church. The Diocese, eager to play down any further discussion went into retreat. Silence ,total silence. Not even the earlier sniping at campaigners as “malcontents and Communists”. Just keep you heads down lads and say nothing.

We publicized this situation through two sit-ins at St Joseph’s and the public and press response to our case has been overwhelmingly successful. The world and his wife know that the people of our church are committed to it and committed to compromise. We called on the Diocese to hand St Joseph’s over to the city of Belfast to be used as some form of civic centre for the good of all the people – with the rider that worship would be facilitated. Our call fell on deaf ears.

We lobbied politicians, civil servants and statutory agencies and forced the Environment Heritage Service to slap a repair order against the Diocese. This is a legal obligation for the owners of the building to make the necessary repairs to this listed church. We still await the bite of the conservation watchdog’s teeth as the 2,000^th day has gone by.

The story of St Joseph’s is a daily story of a Church that does not care about ordinary Catholics, a Church that wants to make a fast buck at our expense, a Church that flouts the law at every opportunity, while prohibiting priests from following their consciences and ministering to the people of Sailortown.

It is a story of corporate greed that has no place in our faith, a story of old clergymen who have lost touch with the laity and of young clergymen

whose ambition has overtaken their vocation. But, it is a story of a humble people ,a vibrant faith community and a dedicated group of campaigners that is fighting to rebuild the housing in the district, to take back its spiritual home and to spread the word that the people really do own the churches.

None of these attributes will win friends among an elite clergy that wants to downsize and realize “ITS” assets, but they will, and do, frighten the white collar men into silence at every turn.

2,000 days have passed since the closure of our church, but, just in case our Diocesan leaders have forgotten, we have nearly 50,000 days of traditional worship at St Joseph’s behind us, as well as a faith that refuses to go under the hammer at any price.