Photo above – Shortly before churches were closed and public gatherings restricted, Bishop David McClay led a wreath-laying service at the grave of St Patrick at Down Cathedral in Downpatrick on St Patrick’s Day. Photo by Mark Marlow
Churches have risen to the challenge of coronavirus-enforced closure but have to be more generous and ‘go and look’ for ways to help those in need, the Church of Ireland Bishop of Down and Dromore David McClay tells William Scholes of the Irish News.
Churches have risen to the challenge of coronavirus-enforced closure but have to be more generous and ‘go and look’ for ways to help those in need, the Church of Ireland Bishop of Down and Dromore David McClay tells William Scholes
No one in the congregation in Belfast’s St Anne’s Cathedral on January 25 could have imagined that within two months our normal way of life would be turned so dramatically upside down.
That Saturday, the cathedral was playing host to the consecration of the Reverend David McClay as the Church of Ireland Bishop of Down and Dromore.
Back then – in what already feels like a lifetime ago – Covid-19 was something happening on the other side of the world in a Chinese city most of us had never heard of.
But today we all know about the coronavirus and the deadly reach of its invisible shadow.
Its arrival in Ireland has closed schools and businesses, brought lockdown and isolation and completely transformed the health and social care service.
No facet of life is untouched by the imperative to combat the virus, slow its spread and care for those affected.
Coronavirus has also forced churches to close their doors, meaning that for people of faith this has been an Easter like no other.
Marking Holy Week and celebrating the death and resurrection of Jesus – the high point of the Christian calendar – in traditional ways was impossible.
Churches have responded to the new dispensation by moving online with impressive alacrity, imagination and creativity, while continuing to support the most vulnerable through food banks and other practical means.
The previous 19 years of the new bishop’s service were spent in coalface ministry in the inner-city Belfast parish of Willowfield.
Prior to that, the 60-year-old Ballyshannon native was a curate in Magheralin and rector in Kilkeel.
He says his priorities as bishop include ensuring “that the Scriptures are taught and proclaimed in ways that make God’s word relevant to a postmodern world” and evangelism, “so that the Church effectively reaches people beyond our walls to become disciples of Jesus Christ”.
That outward, open-door approach helps explain why he “instinctively found it really difficult to think about even the possibility of churches having to close” when coronavirus arrived.
“It went against the way I’ve done ‘church’ for 30 years, but it quickly became clear that it was not only what I had to do but it was the right thing to do,” he says.
“I asked clergy to be creative around doing services,” says Bishop McClay, adding that online ‘church services’ should “make sure that the Bible is taught and preached, that there is prayer and some way for people to connect with God in worship”.
“The response has been phenomenal,” he says, echoing comments by other Church leaders, including the Catholic Archbishop of Armagh Eamon Martin who has paid tribute to all those taking advantage of the opportunities offered by the “digital highways”.
“Week by week and daily, there are services and the preaching of the word of God and opportunities for worship going out from our churches,” says Bishop McClay.
St Patrick’s Day, with churches on the cusp of Covid-19 closure, was the last time he was in a large gathering of any sort.
The following Sunday there were “three of us in Down Cathedral”. Now, he is “only going to churches where I can walk to” from his home on the outskirts of east Belfast.
This has included “praying for all the vacant churches in our diocese” from the car park of Knocknagoney parish and recording a sermon in Holywood parish.
For Good Friday he recorded a ‘Tenebrae’ in Knocknagoney, a service that captures the drama of the Passion narrative as 13 candles are lit and extinguished to reflect Christ’s journey to the cross.
Funerals are where the emotional costs of the coronavirus restrictions are perhaps at their highest.
Whether held in a church or at a graveside, public health guidance is that funerals should be attended by only the very smallest handful of socially-distanced mourners.
The Methodist Church has stopped offering church funerals altogether, as have the Catholic dioceses of Down and Connor and Clogher.
Bishop McClay says he is “encouraging clergy to talk it through in a sensitive pastoral way with families, and to try to hold something around the graveside”.
“We haven’t said a blanket ‘no’ to funerals in churches, but actually it’s easier for families and everybody if we can point them to the graveside,” says Bishop McClay.
“We have to think beyond buildings – buildings are probably the least safe place for a mixed group of people.”
Memorial services and what he calls ‘bereavement evenings’ can happen when the current crisis has passed, he hopes.
Bishop McClay believes that prayer and fasting ought to be “normal for Christians” in the midst of the pandemic, but there must also be “more generosity”.
“Christians need to be the most generous people in our society, in how we deal with our employees, for example, and find ways to give,” he says.
“The Church can often ignore need or pretend it’s not there – we need to go and look for it. Families are struggling.”
In these days of lockdown and increased isolation in the face of a deadly threat, many people are asking why God would allow something like Covid-19 to exist.
It’s a very contemporary version of the problem of pain question that has vexed theologians and philosophers for millennia.
“God didn’t cause the coronavirus,” explains Bishop McClay, giving his view.
“We live in a fallen, sinful world where lots of painful things happen. There’s lot of painful things happening right now that are in no way related to coronavirus.
“Where is God? My answer to that is always quite straightforward – God is where he always is.
“God is near to those who cry out to him. The Church and Christian people need to cry out for those who cannot cry out for themselves.”
This is what Easter is really about, he says. “The cross is all about a God who knows us, loves us, cares for us and died for us… but he rose again and defeated coronavirus and sickness and death and hell itself.”
Article courtesy The Irish News and William Scholes
First published April 14, 2020
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