LIKE FATHER LIKE SON

I met Fred for the first time in 1945. He described himself as a man  "who called a spade a spade". Indeed he did just that.  Sometimes he got into rows as a result, s mall rows that never amounted to much. A Belfast man - from the Grosvenor Road - he had been to India for a couple of years working with missionaries.  He saw living and working conditions in some parts of  missionary India  and even so he decided to come back home.  He was not one to walk away from  other people's misery so  perhaps he may have  thought missionary ways were not entirely suitable either for the people or for himself - and being a man who called a spade a spade he may have said so.  And religious orders can take just so much of that.  Anyway he came back to Belfast.

I met him in Maynooth where he was a church student three years ahead of me.  Fair haired,  bolt upright, when he wore a hat it looked like it was  put on  with a spirit level.   He kept rules - for him as for  the rest of us rules were necessary for both ruler-maker and rule-keeper,  otherwise life together could become difficult ;  Fred's rule-keeping was good, his few rows were small and polite and were mostly because, well,  he called a spade a spade. 

After Maynooth  I did not meet him much.  Then one evening in 1969 sitting  in my room,  fourth curate in a city parish in Belfast,  I heard my name called  loudly from the bottom of the stairs.  It was Fred. We talked,  he from the hallway,  I from the top stair. He was angry.  I had never seen him so angry.

Fred ! What's the matter ?

I'll tell you what's  the matter - They've appointed me to curate to this parish ......

Congratulations ...

And I've been in to see the Parish Priest and told him I'll be nothing of the kind.

But Fred,  this is a good place, people are good,  kind, ..

I did not realise then that Fred might have reason for not wanting to minister in Belfast, any part of it.  It was not about people.  It was about place.  And time.

" I have been too compliant all my life and now I'm not going to be compliant any more, I'm going to call a spade a spade".  We stood in the hall because Fred refused to sit down.  He was going to go into the Parish Priest's house again. He agreed  this is a good place to be, the people are good,  I always had welcome and  kindness in it,  he would find the same. He would not hear of it. He left me to see the PP again.

Belfast in 1969 was at the beginning of a chapter of horrors but that was not the reason we could not persuade him to stay.

He announced that if he stayed it would be a strict case of work to rule.  Not a cessation of work but a strict work to rule.  In protest against a system that  moved people around without  choice or even consultation about where they might work best or happiest for people.  And there was something about Belfast........

During the 6 months he was with us he worked to rule.  On his day off he put a notice on the door of his house with a big arrow pointing in the direction of where the rest of us lived so that nobody would be neglected.  

Recently,  after so many years, my colleague Ciarán Cahill and I pieced together  details about Fred.

In 1907  his father  was Detective-Constable Barrett. The Barretts lived on Grosvenor Road. During the 1907 dock strike "blacklegs" were called in by employers to  transport goods in the docks. "Blackleg" drivers were brought in from England to drive  the  steam-driven machines and  whatever vehicles the managers could gather up for transport. The Police were instructed to sit as guards beside each of these drivers.  Already DC Barrett had been officially noticed and disapproved of for working for better pay and conditions for police - their pay was higher than that of the workers but not all that much higher and they could be posted anywhere any time, whether they or their families liked it or not . The Police, led by Barrett, refused  to break the strike  and were suspended. Barrett was suspended and later dismissed.  Fellow RIC in many parts of Ireland combined to make him a Presentation in thanks for his work on  their behalf. Having to leave the police he got a job in a bar. He became a publican.

In August 1969 Fred was doing in the church what his father William Barrett had done in the Police in 1907.Working to rule to get fair play.

Fellow clergy  did not support Fred as the Police supported William in 1907. We should have done. We thought  this was not how we should act. Doctors, nurses, teachers and others  had the same ideal of  waiting for change rather than making it, anything  rather than "industrial" action, but eventually they realised that protective organisation  is necessary for everyone. In the mid-sixties some Catholic priests in Ireland founded a Priests Association. It was not a professional protection union but some hoped it might become that as well as an idealist vocational one. It died through lack of support and refusal of church authorities to negotiate with  it.

But what would have happened had they , as Fred put it, "called a spade a spade",  everyone,  the aggrieved and  the pleased,  to  set everything on the table and talk  about whether,  as we read in the Christian Gospel,  we would  bury our many  talents or  help them find ground in which they would  best flourish?   If we had had due process in which everyone could present and discuss what goes wrong and the genius each individual person has to develop what is good,  put  right what is wrong or unfair,  perhaps the Catholic Church's brothers and sisters - and children  - could have been spared a lot of  unnecessary hurt over our own recent  years.

Things are changing now though. There is more conversation between church authority and church workers,  more  enrichment of  the church by discovering all our talents rather than by curbing any of them.  We understand each other better,  inside church and outside it. 

After his protest  Fred got his ministry in the country.  He and his parishioners celebrated how much they valued each other - calling a spade a spade they  often said so.