The Right Reverend Joseph Devine
Catholic Bishop of Motherwell who despite his combative image was held in affection by many
THE RIGHT REVEREND JOSEPH DEVINE, the former Roman Catholic Bishop of Motherwell, who has died aged 81, ruled his diocese for 30 years; a forthright and in some senses guileless Glaswegian, he was fearless in condemning what he saw as the errors of the age, and under his leadership Motherwell did not suffer the precipitous decline that marked other dioceses in Scotland and elsewhere.
Joe Devine, as he was always known, was born in Glasgow on August 7 1937 and educated at his local primary school in Kirkintilloch, before transferring to one of the Church’s minor seminaries. He studied for the priesthood at the Scots College in Rome, in those days located in Piazza Barberini, and was ordained priest in Glasgow in 1960.
He continued his studies after ordination and was awarded a doctorate in philosophy by the prestigious Gregorian University. On his return to Scotland, he taught at the seminary, Saint Peter’s College in Cardross, as well as holding several parish appointments and the assistant chaplaincy at Glasgow University.
His intellect and energy marked him out for promotion, and he was consecrated an auxiliary bishop in Glasgow at the early age of 39 in 1977. At 45 he was transferred to Motherwell, which covered Lanarkshire and part of the city of Glasgow, where Catholics made up a quarter of the population.
Devine was robust in the defence of the Catholic faith. As with his mentor, Thomas (later Cardinal) Winning, he deplored the way in which the Labour Party, once the traditional political home of Scotland’s Catholics, had become less and less hospitable to
Catholic beliefs and practices. His three decades in Motherwell were marked by failed attempts at dialogue with Labour and the slow shift of the once monolithic Catholic vote towards, among others, the Scottish National Party.
In 2007 Joe Devine told the BBC that the Labour Party was devoid of all Christian values and that people should not vote for it. The straw that broke the camel’s back was, for him, Labour’s championing of gay rights. Devine did not tread carefully on the question of homosexuality.
In a lecture in 2008, for example, he questioned why representatives of the gay community should be present at official functions to mark Holocaust Memorial Day and thus align themselves with persecuted minority groups – seemingly oblivious to the fact that gay people had perished in some numbers in Hitler’s camps.
The campaigning group Stonewall was swift to condemn him, although the bishop’s lecture had been more nuanced than the negative headlines had suggested. But Devine was not to be put off. When the British government proposed the legalisation of same-sex marriage, he opposed it clearly, in contrast to the woollier messages of some of his fellow bishops.
“No government can rewrite human nature; the family and marriage existed before the state,” he declared. “The institution of marriage should not be corrupted by the transient fashions of society or by malevolent forces seeking to undermine the place of religious faith in society.”
Devine exhibited many other traits associated with Glasgow apart from plain speaking. He was a dedicated Celtic fan, and never missed a match, except those against Motherwell, when his loyalties would have been divided. The most football-mad of all Scottish bishops, he was the one who always presided at the funerals of Catholic footballing heroes.
He also enjoyed a drink, and late in life underwent an operation to rebuild his nose, which had become bulbous and reddened, a condition aggravated by excessive alcohol.
He was dogged with controversy when he decided to demolish the episcopal residence in Motherwell, which was suffering from damp, and move into a spacious house in the village of Bothwell which cost £2,000 a month to rent.
Rumours swirled about a Jacuzzi and other extravagances, but in a lavishly illustrated Hello!-style interview with the Scottish Daily Record, Devine confided: “I am the bishop and I cannot live in a pokey wee flat. I need space to work … I admit £2,000 a month is excessive but I don’t feel guilty about that. Where else am I going to go? This a nice house and it is a very attractive wee place … I could get something cheaper but it might not be nice.”
Addressing the charge of luxury, he said: “I live a very simple life. There is no Jacuzzi or steam room in this house. There is a gymnasium which was left by the owner along with a sunbed, but what would I do with stuff like that?”
Bishop Devine submitted his resignation to Rome when he reached his 75th birthday, in August 2012, in accordance with canon law, but it was not accepted until the following May. By that time the abuse scandal had overtaken many Scottish bishops, and Devine himself had been criticised for failing to take sufficiently rigorous action against abusive priests in the past. However, his retirement, though under something of a cloud, could hardly be characterised as a sacking, as some of his critics portrayed it.
Joe Devine was an old-fashioned Scottish Catholic, formed by his upbringing in sectarian Glasgow. He was regarded with affection by many, and was known to be a man of prayer, often spotted walking about after lunch at conferences with his Rosary beads in his hands.