Catholic women join The UCM for a variety of reasons as meetings provide fellowship and friendship and are a blend of social and spiritual activities.
The UCM meeting, literature and contacts provide ongoing fresh interests. There are opportunities for varied and valuable Catholic action but nothing should be undertaken at the expense of personal family life.
Through unity with other members, many thousands strong, greater influence can be exerted on public affairs that affect marriage and family life.
United in prayer, members never face life’s difficulties alone but are strengthened by the support of fellow members.
News from 2015-2016
We have a very healthy membership at the moment of 28 Members. We meet twice a month, on the 1st and 3rd Tuesday. Our meetings always begin with the UCM Prayers, praying for vocations to the Priesthood and Families.
We have a variety of meetings, some Spiritual. This year we have had Mass with Fr. Michael Carrie at St. Mary’s Lochee, a spiritual evening with Sr. Mary at Kilgraston, Bishop Stephen Robson came to give us a very inspiring talk on how the Catholic Church survived hundreds of years ago, and about migration over the last thousand years. We held a film show of Godspell, with the help of Andrew Mitchell which showed lots of Parishioners acting and singing from the 1980’s. I didn’t attend unfortunately, but I received some very good feed back of the evening. Last week Deacon Len gave us a very inspiring, food for thought talk and discussion, which everyone enjoyed. The evening went very quickly. Next week we have an evening dedicated to Our Lady, Sr Deirdie from Kilgraston is going to join us and meet the Mothers. Sr Deidre replaced Sr. Mary Roe. At the end of May we are visiting Fr Tom for Mass followed by Fish Suppers with him.
We also have fun evenings, Scone Bell ringers came to entertain us, our own member Sylvie Sills gave us a talk and slide show on her recent visit to Burma, giving us some very interesting facts. We celebrated Burns Night by eating delicious Haggis Neeps & Tatties, we read Burns poems and Ian McCann sang beautiful burns songs to us. Together with a few glasses of wine, we had a wonderful evening. We have a great Guest Speaker coming to talk to us in June on Film Stars from the 60’s.
We then have fund raising evenings, mainly in the form of Bingo Teas. This year we have raised £1980. We also received donations from various people for our Lourdes Pilgrim fund, this amounted to £1854.51. We have given £620 to the Bishop for the Student Priesthood Fund, we are sending 2 Pilgrims to Lourdes this year. We sent £380 to National UCM, this gets added to all donations from each Diocese in Scotland, then gets distributed to Various local Charities, Sciaff and Aid to the Church in Need, and also a good donation goes to each Student Priest for their own use.
Our biggest event of the year is our annual BBQ which have become very popular. We invite 9 other Church groups around Perth. Throughout the year , they invite us to their meetings, we invite them all back in one go to our BBQ. The food is cooked beautifully by our special chefs… the SSVP men! We provide excellent entertainment by our own members and Jane McFarlane.
Once a year we attend Carfin for the annual Mass with all UCM of Scotland. We also have a procession of The Rosary around the grounds. Once every 3 years the UCM of Scotland hold the triennial Rally, this was 2 weeks ago in St Andrew’s Cathedral Glasgow, led by Bishop Tartaglia. There is a 2 page spread in the current Catholic Observer detailing the Rally and Mass.
Above all, we are a friendly warm group of Ladies, we pray together, sing together and laugh together, and as some of our spiritual evenings are quite touching.. we even cry together!
We would welcome any new members with open arms.
Rosanna James (secretary)
Members of the Union of Catholic Mothers at St John’s, Perth, celebrated the 70th Anniversary of their foundation. Bishop Stephen Robson celebrated Mass together with Fr Michael Carrie, Diocesan UCM Chaplain, and priests from throughout the diocesan who had served at St John’s, or as UCM chaplain over many years.
National President, Pauline Porter, a member of the Perth branch, describe her pride in the work and prayers of the Mothers over so many years.
In his address, Bishop Stephen praised the Mothers for their dedication and commitment. “Dunkeld Diocese is an area of growth for the UCM, we are pleased especially to enrol five new members here today. The UCM have been the mainstay of many parishes. Its constitution may have needed some tweaking over the years but the concept of Motherhood remains the same.”
