Greg Daly
Fr Robert McCabe tells Greg Daly about returning to parish life after 20 years as an army chaplain
Anyone who doubts the damage being done to the fabric of Irish life by the closure of post offices around the country would do well to listen to Navan curate Fr Robert McCabe.
The links between family, school and parish life were strong and fluid when he was growing up in Kinnegad in the 1970s, one of five children to Brian and Angela, he says, adding that his family running the local post office played a key role in making him aware of “the interconnectedness of people”.
“On different days of the week people would be in for their pension, other people would be in for their children’s allowance, people would be sharing their joys and some of their hopes with you as they were arranging presents to family in America or looking forward to hearing from people,” he says. “You would be caught up in the excitement and energy of different people as you were growing up, and you were aware of some of their hopes and some of their worries as well.”
Vocation
A sense of vocation developed in him during his secondary school years when he had, by his own account, “some very good priest teachers in St Finian’s in Mullingar”, with vocations director Fr Brendan Corrigan working to grow vocations at secondary school level.
“I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to go on the missions or to stay at home in Ireland,” Fr Robert says, continuing, “I did have an interest in the Columbans and the SMAs (Society of African Missions), but in the end I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to go to the Far East or to Africa, so I said I’ll stay at home in Ireland and maybe one day I’ll have a chance to visit one of these mission countries.”
He studied in Maynooth from 1987 to 1994, spending his first year as a priest back at St Finian’s in Mullingar, not expecting that within a year he would be appointed as a military chaplain, being sent abroad on a regular basis over the next 20 years.
His first priority as a chaplain was to learn as much as he could about Ireland’s military community, he says. “When I was growing up in Kinnegad, I’d always seen soldiers from Mullingar barracks and Athlone going to the Glen of Imaal or passing by escorting cash. Soldiers’ families would have come into our post office and sent their blue aerogram letters to the Lebanon, so I was slightly aware that soldiers were working in different countries though not aware there was a chaplaincy service for them.”
After two years in Gormanston Camp he went on his first deployment, travelling with the 81st Battalion. “I learned more in Lebanon in a week than I learned in my first year of being at home in a barracks,” he says.
Unsparing in his praise for the soldiers and stressing what a privilege it was to serve them, he says in Lebanon and on subsequent deployments in Kosovo, Liberia, Chad and Syria the big questions facing him were: “How do I build a Christian community in this group of people who are just together for six months? How do I encourage them and nourish them so when they go home to their own Christian community and parish community they can continue that level of commitment and faith?”
His last deployment saw him spending six months in Syria’s Golan Heights, and then just before his time as military chaplain came to an end he was privileged in quite a different way when he was tasked with blessing the grave of Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa in the August 2015 ceremony that launched the State’s year-long centenary commemoration of the Easter Rising.
“That was a chance for me to connect with my primary school teacher who taught me the national anthem, and one of my secondary school teachers who parsed the graveside oration of Pearse,” he says. “I phoned them up the previous day and said ‘turn on the television tomorrow morning – you’ll spot a connection with one of your past pupils’.”
A month later he was sent to tend to a rather different flock in Navan. While in some ways things are the same – he wonders what St Paul would think if he were to step in to the military and civilian Christian communities – in others they could hardly be more different.
“I could look at my congregation in the military community and I knew everybody who was there in church on a Sunday,” he says. “Now I have to create as many opportunities in Navan to meet people, many of whom are living or are working outside the parish,” he says. “How do I work on getting to know as many people as I can, letting them know my experience of faith, how can I support them, and how can I support the Church in building a Christian community as well?”
The nature of that community is much more diverse than that he’d known until just over a year ago. “When you’re preparing people for the sacraments, when you’re accompanying people in grief, the spectrum of my flock has gotten much wider,” he says. “Whereas in Gormanston and overseas I was working with people between the ages of 20 and 55, working in stressful and very responsible situations, now I’ve got the expectant mother right up to the person who is dying in hospital, so my arc of fire has gotten much wider.”
