Martin O'Brien
Martin O’Brien talks ecumenics and politics with the president of the Irish Council of Churches, Rev. Dr Donald Watts
It passed virtually unnoticed when it happened back in May, perhaps indicating that the entity that was once called ‘the four main Church leaders’ does not summon the attention it did during the Troubles.
But when the Catholic and Church of Ireland primates and the moderator and president of the Presbyterian and Methodist Churches met formally in May, they were joined by a fifth Church leader – the president of the Irish Council of Churches (ICC).
And from now on the holder of that office, currently Rev Dr Donald Watts, a Presbyterian minister and one time scholar of Johannine eschatology originally from Newcastle, Co. Down, will take his or her place alongside the four others at their regular meetings.
It would be easy but misleading to describe the fifth man as the “new kid on the block” because Donald Watts has been something of an institution in Irish Church circles for many years, having served as Clerk of the General Assembly or de facto chief executive of the Presbyterian Church – the North’s biggest Protestant denomination –from 2003 until June of this year.
He became president of the ICC, a two-year appointment, last April.
Central figure
As clerk, he was a central figure behind the scenes in organising the meetings of the Church leaders and now as president of the Irish Council of Churches has been co-chair with Cardinal Brady of the Irish Inter-Church Meeting (IICM) when the ICC regularly meets a delegation from the Irish Episcopal Conference.
He has deep affection for Cardinal Brady describing him as “a man of deep spirituality who cares greatly for the vulnerable”.
The ICC, founded in 1923 after the Civil War, now comprises 14 churches including the three main Reformed Churches, a host of Orthodox Churches, the Society of Friends and Salvation Army plus other smaller Protestant denominations.
In 1973, with the Troubles raging, the council and the Catholic Church held historic talks at Ballymascanlon which evolved into the IICM.
Dr Watts is described by Bishop Anthony Farquhar, chairman of the Irish Bishops’ Conference’s Council for Ecumenism, as “a person of the utmost integrity who speaks his mind and is courageous in his total commitment to ecumenical understanding and good relations between the Churches”.
That commitment was most famously in evidence at the Palace of Holyrood House in Edinburgh in September 2010 when Dr Watts, as Clerk of the General Assembly, shook hands warmly with Pope Benedict XVI and was seen on “live” TV to enjoy a most pleasant exchange with the Holy Father at a state reception hosted by Queen Elizabeth.
Dr Watts’ action in greeting the Pope in a spirit of Christian friendship and fraternity was in contrast to that of his Moderator, Rev. Norman Hamilton, who refused to meet and shake hands with the Pope during the same state visit.
“Yes, I did think the Pope should be welcomed,” he says.
Talking to Donald Watts, (66) in the offices of the Irish Council of Churches in Belfast, it is hard not to conclude that his wholehearted commitment to good ecumenical relations stems from his upbringing in a devout Presbyterian family in the religiously mixed town of Newcastle in the fifties and early sixties.
“Newcastle had good community relations without going out of its way to be ecumenical,” he recalls. “My best friend was called Seamus, and I couldn’t understand why we couldn’t go to the same school.”
It was a somewhat sheltered upbringing and when he got to Queen’s University to study physics amid the ferment of the People’s Democracy civil rights agitation, he “had to learn what all these differences were about because I hadn’t experienced them”.
A calling
Around his second year, when he was 18, he found the stirrings of a calling to the ministry and “gradually came to the conviction I should offer myself to the Church”.
After graduating in science in 1970 – “it was the beginning of the height of the Troubles” – and “finding Ireland intellectually and almost morally suffocating”, he went to New College, Edinburgh to study theology and read for a doctorate in the theology of John the Evangelist, but always with the intention of returning home.
Although attracted to an academic path, Donald chose the pastoral way and vividly recalls serving as an assistant minster in Ballycastle, Co. Antrim at the time of internment in 1971 and visiting nearby Corrymeela which was caring for a large number of refugees from Belfast.
Posts
That was a fateful summer in personal sense also because, at Corrymeela, he met Fiona – his future wife and mother of their three sons.
After various assistant posts, Dr Watts was called by the congregation of Ballyholme, Bangor on the north Down coast 13 miles from Belfast in 1980 and served there for 21 years until leaving there to take up the top post in Church House.
He says that although there was a perception that largely middle class Ballyholme was remote from the Troubles, this was not actually the case as many police officers and prison staff lived there in relative safety.
“Many police officers from my church were away from their families for long periods policing in troubled areas, and that left their loved ones very worried.”
The final years of Dr Watts’ long stint as Clerk of the General Assembly were especially difficult dominated, as they were, by the collapse of the Presbyterian Mutual Society and the long drawn out and mercifully largely successful attempt to secure compensation for savers.
Looking back on his term, he stresses that although the post is seen as being administrative and managerial – he was responsible for up to 80 staff – he tried to maintain a pastoral approach to the big problems that inevitably landed on his desk.
“I never thought it was just my job to provide a rule book answer, it was my job to be a pastor as well.”
Dr Watts stresses that he sees the ICC and the ICCM “as one” united under the slogan “Churches in Ireland Connecting in Christ” with a common logo although he accepts that “for historical reasons we have got two bodies, not one though some would argue we should have one”.
He says that Ireland “has a good track record in churches working together” and looking ahead to his two years in office emphasises his island-wide brief.
After all the decades when Church relations appeared to be defined by the Northern Ireland Troubles, he stresses “I don’t want my time dominated by Northern questions”.
Engagement
One senses a person anxious to engage with the Irish Government on economic and social issues, and one who would welcome a return to the structured dialogue pioneered by Bertie Ahern in 2007, but with an emphasis “on the churches together engaging with the Government on an agreed agenda” rather than on bi-laterals.
He is disappointed that “structured dialogue with the Churches has gone to sleep” in Dublin.
While he detects no resistance on the part of politicians (either in Dublin or Belfast) to dialogue with the Churches, “they don’t appear to have a priority to talk to us”.
His message to those in power in Ireland is that they must have a policy “which isn’t simply austerity, austerity, austerity… there has to be more to it than that”.
One senses an exasperation with the failure of the two main parties at Stormont to make the executive work effectively.
Speaking personally, he urges the executive to “get on with it” in relation to dealing with the past as “the broad parameters have not changed since Eames/Bradley and [more recently] Richard Haass, though they may need some refining. I don’t believe anybody else is going to come up with anything significantly different.”
Dr Watts says: “I warm to Pope Francis, a man of humility who wants to make the Gospel work in practice in the world but it remains to be seen to what extent he can shake off the curia.”
Donald Watts emphasises that Churches “should be a model for civil society and should not be telling society, and especially political society how to behave if they are not prepared to behave that way themselves”.
It’s the sort of straight talk that has earned him respect down the years.
