by Arthur McLay

I do have faith. Help the little faith I have.

Mark 9, 25

In a previous contribution to this journal I reflected on the 75th birthday of the Newman Association as a U.K. wide vehicle for a ’cultural and intellectual apostolate’. Here, however, in what will be seen as a more personal essay, drawing on family papers, I wish to sketch more of its history within the ’local’ scene.

Consider the context at the beginning of 1944: World War has been raging for more than four years; the Catholic community in the West of Scotland, with its strong Irish roots, is, following the changes wrought by the 1918 Education Act only beginning to be fully accepted; religious discrimination, though diminishing, remains; the Church and its hierarchy are profoundly concerned about Marxist ideology and related militant atheism.

In the immediately preceding years, Glasgow graduates, some recently enrolled members of the Newman Association, newly formed in 1942, had been meeting informally to discuss matters of faith. However, the first documented origins of the Glasgow Circle, from 1944-1947, can be traced, to an unremarkable 20 x 13 cm hard back notebook in which the first entry is dated 27.1.44. This records a meeting of nine persons, including my father, Joseph McLay (at that time employed in the Technical Department of Rolls Royce Aero Division) and one of my uncles on my mother’s side, Dr Edward Duffy (a pathologist). My father was elected chairman and Mr Joseph McNally, secretary. Discussion centred on a future programme of meetings. Subsequent meetings, held every Thursday, covered a wide variety of topics, some addressed by local members, others by distinguished visitors or members of the clergy, local or otherwise. A flavour of this variety is evident in the following:

Arthur McLay is a retired pathologist