‘Harbour Head’ and Catholic Action

Extract

In Mr. Peter Anson’s pleasant book of reminiscences there are occasional passages about Catholic Action in Britain, usually with special reference to the Apostleship of the Sea, which he helped to found in 1921. In these passages there appears distinctly an uneasiness about the adequacy of the latter’s work in this country, a feeling that it tackles the symptoms of spiritual sickness and not its roots, and the suggestion, by implication at least, that it is in some ways too remote from the people and conditions which it hopes to affect. Mr. Anson himself has changed his mind as to the lines on which the Apostleship of the Sea could best develop; a change illustrated by his withdrawal from all organizing committee work to his present life in the cottage called ‘Harbour Head,’ which has become a flourishing House of Hospitality, for seamen primarily, but also for any service men or local fishers who care to drop in. In his memoirs little is told us about the last five years at ‘Harbour Head ‘; enough to give a rough idea of what is attempted there but, naturally enough, nothing to show how much it has meant to large numbers of men, Catholics and Protestants, British and foreign, brought by war to a north-east Scottish fishing town with only a minute Catholic population, and little to offer in the way of comfort or entertainment to men in port. ‘Harbour Head ‘has become a centre of the Apostleship of the Sea, of a kind which is strikingly kin to Friendship Houses and to the Houses of Hospitality established by the Apostolate of Christ the Worker.