Funeral Mass for Father John Fitzsimmons

I was beginning to fear not for Fr. John’s death but for his life. In February, he suffered an acute episode that left him critically ill. Since then he had been largely immobile and unresponsive, and it was pitiful to behold. John’s life was dynamic: talking, interacting, communicating, reading, writing and travelling. I think we all knew that such a reduced condition would be prison for him, and, as I prayed at his bedside, I could not bear to think of the anguish he might be suffering.

But God recognised that John had had enough and mercifully called him to himself on Saturday 17^th May. We pray that now John is in conversation again with his Mum and Dad, with Mary and the saints and with the Lord himself. From the cross, Jesus prayed, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” Today we sadly but with great hope commend Fr. John to the goodness and mercy of the Lord he believed in all his days and whom he served as a priest of the Diocese of Paisley for the last 45 years.

John was a big man and big personality. He was likeable, and loveable, and exuded a palpable aura of confident and warm charm. John was a born communicator. He spoke, he conversed, he recounted. He was intelligent, lively, witty, engaging, good company, fun to be with. People were the better for encountering John. God had endowed him with great humanity and many gifts, and we give thanks for that.

He sat beside me at our last annual Clergy Dinner on Shrove Tuesday. He was in visibly fragile health. He did not have to be there. Everyone would have understood had he not been there. But he wanted to be with the priests, and that already tells you a lot about how he understood his own identity and his place among the priests of this diocese. He entertained me on all his favourite topics, the Church, politics, the universe and its entire contents, especially football and horses! He entertained me, but with less verve than of old, and it seemed then that his powers were diminishing. Although typically he did tell me that during the Second Vatican Council, he used to take his mid-morning café latte with a certain Fr. Josef Ratzinger, even then a distinguished theologian. Se non e’ vero, e’ ben trovato, as the Italians would say. If it’s not true, it’s a good story! - A flash of the big John who had brightened all our lives. 

Talking of stories, over the years, John became an experienced religious broadcaster both on radio and TV. In his later days he brought warmth to many people by hosting a Sunday morning request programme for BBC Scotland. With his talents, he should have been presenting Newsnight, but then he would have told you that himself! Perhaps if it had not been just a hobby for him, who knows what dizzy heights he hay have reached as a broadcaster. We are grateful to men and women of the media here today to remember John with us before God 

With such a talent for words, it was no wonder that his service to the Church centred on the Word of God. The Bible was his area of greatest expertise, and, having completed his biblical studies in Rome and Jerusalem, it was this that led him to take up an early appointment in 1967 to St. Peter’s College where he taught Scripture. He was a much-loved and admired professor and priest in the seminary. In other teaching and speaking contexts, his audiences appreciated and respected him for his biblical knowledge and insights, and loved him for his personality, warmth and humour. And John loved them right back! 

Wishing to acknowledge his considerable talents, the Bishops appointed him Rector of the Pontifical Scots College Rome in 1986. John accepted the appointment with relish. We are grateful to the present Rector of the Scots College, former Rectors, and former seminary colleagues for being present today. We acknowledge John’s contribution to priestly formation in the post-Vatican II era, which remains a primary priority for the Catholic Church in Scotland today. We acknowledge his service to the Word of God both in teaching, preaching and lecturing. His life and work stands as a permanent reminder that the Word of God is central to the renewal of the Catholic Church intended by the Second Vatican Council, and which is still underway.  

That same Word of God consoles and enlightens us today. St. Paul expresses it for us: “We believe that Jesus died and rose again, and that it will be the same for those who died in Jesus: God will bring them with him.” This is our confident hope today for John. 

John’s expertise in Sacred Scripture led him almost seamlessly into the world of liturgy and worship, of which the Scriptures are an essential and integral part. This was an exciting world in the post-Vatican II Church, involving conferences and meetings in far off places, which John loved and loved even more to talk about. He seemed to be on first-name terms with the most influential English-language movers and shakers of Catholic liturgy and worship. He was immensely gratified by his 20 year involvement in what is known to this day as ICEL (the International Commission for English in the Liturgy) and was honoured to be Chairman of ICEL’s Advisory Committee.  

 To hear John talk, this was a world of bottomless budgets, club-class travel, first class hotels, expense-account meals, wonderful conversations with the brightest minds (including, of course, John’s), and ecclesiastical politics and intrigue in which the enemy was always shadowy reactionary curial figures in Rome. John loved all that stuff, talked about it endlessly and entertained us all hugely.  

In the end the details don’t matter all that much. What matters was the seriousness with which he undertook this work and the lasting contribution he made with his personality, expertise, gifts and talents to the renewal of the Church’s worship and the formulation of her liturgical texts. What matters even more is that the liturgy and especially the Eucharist is the centre of the Church’s life, and John will be so pleased to think that we are here together to offer this Eucharistic sacrifice for the forgiveness of his sins and the happy repose of his soul, something every Catholic needs and wants at the end of his or her life. 

John’s expertise in the Scriptures qualified him for working in the field of Christian unity, another priority in the renewal project of the Second Vatican Council. John served on a number of high-level national and international commissions. He was deeply aware that the common foundation shared by a divided Christianity was the Bible. Faithfulness to the Word of God would be indispensable to the discovery of the unity for which Christ prayed. John was a knowledgeable, charming, impressive, reconciling figure in ecumenical dialogue. That ecumenical work remains a priority for the Church today. Steps forward have been taken through the work of John and his generation, but there is still a far road to travel. We are grateful to Christians of other churches and communities who are with us here today. 

And we should not forget in this context John’s pioneering work with others in dialogue with the Jewish community in the west of Scotland in the interests of greater understanding of shared roots in the Old Testament, in the faith of Abraham and in the Mosaic Covenant. Fr. John would readily agree that, far from being simply a cultural or historical record, the Old Testament continues to shed light on the circumstances of our life and of our death. We can say especially today - at Fr. John’s Funeral Mass - along with the good man Job, “This I know that my Redeemer lives…after my awaking, he will set me close to him, and from my flesh I shall look on God.” We pray that John will be freed from the bonds of death to look upon the face of God. 

I have mentioned the Second Vatican Council a number of times in this address. John was in Rome during the 1^st Session of the Council, which began in late 1962. By the autumn of 1963, the newly ordained Fr. John was a young priest studying Scripture. Along with many others, he was drafted in to help with translating and transcribing duties. These were heady days of reform and renewal. John drank them in and, when he came to back to Scotland, he tried to communicate, promulgate, support and implement the vision of the Council, which by then had ended. He was far from alone in that task, but he was an eloquent champion of the Council’s vision, especially about the place of the Word of God in Catholic life, but also about the liturgy and about Christian Unity.

In some ways, what I am going to say now is part of a bigger and on-going discussion in the Catholic Church. John was possibly one of many of that generation who expected more from the Council than it actually promised. For some that led to a certain disillusionment and frustration. I think we need to interpret some of John’s more disturbing declarations in later life in that context. But to be honest, I think it would be a mistake too hastily to classify our Fr. John as some kind of rebel or dissident. He just does not fit the profile.  For 10 years John worked as a consultor to the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship. He was a priest who respected and obeyed his bishop, and, whatever he may have said, in terms of the faith he professed and lived, he remained firmly in communion with the Bishop of Rome and the College of Bishops. He was really too much of a priest in the traditional mould. There is no doubt that John wanted the best for his beloved Catholic Church. He loved to trail his coat a bit. He may have been something of an enigma but overstating that would be a betrayal of who he really was. The John Fitzsimmons I knew and admired gave his life and his gifts to the Church as a priest and that is what characterises him first, last and always. In his soul he was a Catholic priest, and we commend him to God as a priest. 

In the meantime, the authentic interpretation and implementation of the Second Vatican Council is still a work in progress. No one person has the key to this and certainly not without the guidance of the Church’s pastors and Magisterium. The legacy of Vatican II belongs to the whole Church and will be discerned under the guidance of the Holy Spirit in full ecclesial communion. 

I have mentioned some of the areas in which John served the Church as a priest. In so doing, I must also include his service to parish communities of this diocese as an assistant priest in St. Mary’s Greenock, St Joseph’s, Clarkston, and St. Patrick’s, Greenock;  as parish priest of St. John Bosco’s, Erskine from 1990–2002; and as parish priest emeritus here in St. Ninian’s, Gourock from 2002 until his death. In these parishes, he did everything a priest is called to do. He was greatly appreciated as a loving and compassionate priest with a humanity and a heart as big as himself. In these parishes and communities, John unfailingly preached the mystery of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He interpreted that mystery with great intelligence and insight for himself and for others. He celebrated it in the sacraments. He experienced the cross in his own mind and body as his health began to decline. May he now rest in peace and be admitted to life of the resurrection.  Amen.

 St. Ninian’s, Gourock

21^st May 2008