Niall Coll likes to say how, had things been even slightly different he wouldn’t be where he is today. This outrageous statement of the obvious is made only partly tongue in cheek because Niall’s experience has entailed many liminal choices, some of them made by others on his behalf.
He comes from the village of St Johnston, which is nearer the city of Derry or Strabane than Letterkenny or Donegal Town. He likes to point out the proximity of places on an opposite hill or across the border, which, again, had things been different… Who knows?
This matters in how he reads the world around him. Niall is very conscious of living at a time between times, as it were. He is old enough to remember a country and a society that was a lot more confident in its faith. And he has been a priest and a bishop as we look for signs of renewal in answer to the prayers and ministry of many who have kept the faith and who have tried to pass it on at home and beyond, if only by example.
His studies were in Ireland and abroad and his ministry has taken him around the country. He has been a teacher, a school chaplain, a curate and a parish priest in a number of parishes. He has had a hand in the formation of priests in seminary in Carlow and in the training of teachers in Sligo and Belfast. He has been an editor and an author. In all of these commitments he has worked in a number of dioceses north and south, east and west.
Little wonder then that the quality of liminality seems to be a feature in him, standing at thresholds, so to speak, coming and going, busy, intelligent and focused.
He can be provocative too. He likes to ask dangerous questions, which one can either allow to slip by or detonate in the middle of a conversation. He knows, because history is one of his principal interests, that the period when we may imagine we were more confident in our faith was also characterised by complacency. He sometimes remarks that for all our control of religious education, there does not appear to have been much of a dividend.
The combination of liminality and being communicative gives an impression of someone working a room, moving between groups, enquiring, prompting. Whether as an academic or a writer, in preaching or in ordinary conversation, Niall wants to start something. In light of his experience with students and parishioners, he may appreciate better than most that people who care about their faith are eager to talk. Perhaps this is where synodality will see us come into our own.
