Bishops’ bad move

I write on behalf of the council of the Scottish Catholic Historical Association (SCHA) to add our objections to the splitting of the Scottish Catholic Archives, and the dispersal of this national collection from the nation’s capital, which houses its other major national archive collections. We have written in protest to the Scottish bishops on this matter, but in vain.

There has been no academic or archival case made for this move, and especially for the splitting of the archive’s pre- and post-1878 material, which suggests a very strange understanding of what is “historical”.

There are three main issues: the unnecessary and unsound splitting of the archive; the unnecessary movement of a national collection away from its proximity to the other national collections; and finally the determined and unconsultative way in which the move has been effected.

The Archives have been treated as the private possession of the bishops. The prime users of the archives have not been consulted. When historians (including some of Scotland’s most senior historians) have protested they have been lectured, as recently, by “spokesmen” as if they were children.

In his recent press release, Archbishop Conti declared, grandly, that “the whole Catholic community” is grateful for the move. As the chairman of the SCHA; and, moreover, as a practising member of that Catholic community, I would like to underline that this is very far from being the case.

Historians, both Catholic and non-Catholic, as well as Catholics who are not professional historians, are angered by the splitting of the archives, and the way in which it has been done.

It would behove the bishops, and the Scottish Catholic Heritage Commission under whose auspices the move has been allowed to go ahead, to pause and rethink.

(Prof) Thomas Owen Clancy

Scottish Catholic Historical Association

University Gardens

Glasgow