the swag
1

NCP CONTACTS
Chairman:
Eugene McKinnon
PO Box 42,
Donald VIC 3480
Ph: (03) 5497 1112 chairman@ncp.catholic.org.au
Secretary:
Patrick Lim secretary@ncp.catholic.org.au
Treasurer:
John Maher
Unit 1, 14 O’Connor St
Tugun QLD 4224
M: 0428 462 210 treasurer@ncp.catholic.org.au
Committee:
Rev William E Burt SVD
PO Box 1614,
Preston South VIC 3072
Ph: (03) 9480 3398 committee2@ncp.catholic.org.au
Executive Officer:
Ms Sally Heath sally.heath@ncp.catholic.org.au
Committee:
Rev Stephen Byrnes
30 Corton St
The Gap QLD 4061
M: 0411 716 604 committee1@ncp.catholic.org.au
Swag Co-Editor
Peter Maher
109 Lennox St
Newtown NSW 2042
Ph: (02) 9557 3197 editor@theswag.org.au
Administrative Officer:
Mrs Christine Moore christine.moore@ncp.catholic.org.au
Swag Co-Editor
Hal Ranger
PO Box 7062,
Toowoomba MC QLD 4352
Ph: (07) 4637 1500 editor@theswag.org.au
About the NCP
The National Council of Priests of Australia, founded in 1970 in the spirit of Vatican
II, is a voluntary association of bishops, priests and deacons. It is committed to the fraternity and further education of clergy and to representing all clergy in the public forum. The NCP is acknowledged by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference.
The Swag is published quarterly (March, June, September & December) by the
National Council of Priests of Australia as a service to Catholic clergy of Australia, and through them to the Church and the wider community.
Non members and interested lay people are most welcome to subscribe.
Annual subscription for either the print edition OR access to the online version –
(4 editions – calendar year) – $33.00 (inc GST).
Pro-rata subscription for the print edition - $8.25 (inc GST) per edition.
Please contact the NCP National Office for all subscriptions.
The views expressed in The Swag are not necessarily those of the NCP executive, the editors or NCP staff.
Copyright © National Council of Priests of Australia.
This magazine is copyright. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
PO Box 295 Belmont VIC 3216
P: (03) 5244 3680
F: (03) 5244 4762
Email: national.office@ncp.catholic.org.au
Skype: ncpnationaloffice www.nationalcouncilofpriests.com.au
www.theswag.org.au
www.catholicdirectory.com.au
INDEX
NCP Contacts .......................................... 2
From the NCP Chairman ........................ 3
Editorials ...............................................4-5
Letters to the Editor ..............................6-8
NEWS
Australian News ..................................8-11
World News ......................................12-13
FEATURES
A reflection on the morale of priests ....... 14
Don’t let anyone tell you the
Council didn’t change much ..........15-17
Brasilia 2012! ......................................... 17
Opening a window ................................. 18
Priests At Prayer ..................................... 19
The good that comes from outside
the Church ........................................ 20
A Priests’ Trade Union? .......................... 21
A Response to Clergy Sexual Abuse ........ 22
Left Right Out Rite ..........................23-25
Silver Jubilee Reflection .......................... 26
International Church Renewal
- we can make it happen! ..................... 27
A Missionary of friendship and faith
in China and Burma ........................... 28
Remembering the Impact of Vatican II ... 29
No more secrets .................................30-31
An (unrelated to anything) little reflection
on Grace ............................................... 31
Falling into Grace ................................... 32
YCS – Children in Detention –
Steps to Freedom ................................ 32
Who is My Neighbour? .......................... 33
Talking about the truth ......................... 34
When I am Strong, I am Weak ............... 35
REGULARS
National Association of Deacons ............ 36
Returned to the Father ......................37-39
Book Reviews ....................................39-42
FRONT COVER: iStock photo 20800486
ALL SUBMISSIONS TO:
E: editor@theswag.org.au
ALL ADVERTISING ENQUIRIES:
E: national.office@ncp.catholic.org.au
DESIGN AND PRINT:
Adams Print www.adamsprint.com.au
2 summer 2012

FROM THE NCP CHAIRMAN
Greetings my brothers priests.
It is my pleasure once more to share with you some of my own feelings and thoughts, as I come to the end of my term as chairman of the NCP. I’ve been privileged to make contact and meet with so many of my brother priests and bishops throughout
Australia over the past six years. Many among you have added to my appreciation of what it means to be a Catholic priest.
We are a diverse and unique body of people with varying energies, hopes and fears.
Recently, I enjoyed a story about baseball great Joe Garagiola. He once stepped to the plate when his turn came to bat.
Before assuming his stance, fervent Roman
Catholic Joe took his bat and made the sign of the cross in the dirt in front of the home plate. Catcher Yogi Berra, also a devout Catholic, walked over and erased
Garagiola’s cross. Turning to the astonished batter, Berra smiled and said, “Let’s let God watch this inning.”
If I was God (and thank goodness I’m not),
I think I would have wanted to simply watch the inning.
I likewise appreciate the story about an old Quaker who stood during the church meeting and told his fellow friends about a young man who was not a Quaker and who lived an undisciplined life. One day this young man invited a pious Quaker friend to go sailing. A sudden storm came up and the wild young man was drowned. Having made his point, the old Quaker sat down.
Silence returned to the meeting until the old man once again arose. This time he said, “Friends, for the honor of the truth,
I think I ought to add that the Quaker also drowned.”
And if I was God (and again, thank goodness I’m not), I think I would have felt sadness for both losses. Neither was a greater tragedy than the other.
I know that religious piety can be a wondrous and beautiful thing, but I am disturbed by the prominent role religions have historically played in wars and brutality over the ages. If I imagine a god so small as to favor those who think like me, worship like me and act like me, then
I know very little of life and less of faith. I can’t help but think this world would be in better shape if the gods most of us believed in were a little bigger.
Maybe this is one of our greatest challenges, to keep allowing God to be God and not to be caught up in trying to limit God to some formula or code that suits our concept of life.
Everyday of our lives we think of some situation we wish we had handled differently. Perhaps we left a parish we now miss, disciplined someone needlessly, or responded without thought to a friend.
We have so many examples of our own shortcomings, but hopefully these don’t build an image of a God who can be manipulated or coerced onto our tram tracks.
Let’s not waste time by hanging on to what can’t be changed. We all know what we would have liked to have changed in our past behavior or actions, as individuals and as a church. The State Inquiries and the
Royal Commission will impact on us with great force - and rightly so! Like the rest of society there is much for which we have to answer.
However, we can take charge of the present and decide where we go from here and how we respond into the future. That’s all we need to remember when we decide how to behave in the present. We won’t be ashamed in the future, if we take charge of our present.
One of my AA friends, Bob, says it in these words, “Today is a new beginning.
Whatever happened in my past need not control what I do with today. Today is mine to be proud of. Having loosened our grip on the past, we are free to reach for the future.”
As I conclude, I realise many have gone before me as members and executive of the NCP, all in their own way adding to our history. One of the more recent developments has been the interest the laity has shown in our aspirations and work. The Swag is eagerly received and keenly read by a growing number of people. They tell me that much of our material is also where their hearts and faith dwell.
I thank my fellow executive - Stephen
Byrnes, Bill Burt, John Maher and Patrick
Lim - for their friendship and support.
Thanks to the editors of The Swag , Peter
Maher and Hal Ranger, who continue to produce a fine magazine.
Thanks to Sally Heath and Christine
Moore at headquarters. Their dedication and ability give heart and soul to our
NCP, and in both of them we are blessed.
May the spirit of another Christmas give all of us new energy and faith for the
New Year.
God’s Blessings.
Maria Robinson
All memberships will be due for renewal in March 2013.
Your prompt payment will ensure you continue to receive your copy of
The Swag and other member benefits.

EDITORIALS
CO-EDITOR
As I write this editorial contribution - and, even more so, as you read it - Christmas is just around the corner. That invites us, in the midst of all the advertising, parties and
(often) the manipulation of the “Christmas
Season”, to reflect anew on what we are really celebrating.
If I (and each of us) am going to be faithful to the God who became incarnate in Jesus, then it must be, above all else, in the reality of down-to-earth life, in the language of and connected with the particular situations in which we live. The things of God – faithfulness, unconditional love, forgiveness, truth, service, the promise of new life … have to be embodied in each of us and in our communities.
Central to our faith as Christians is the belief that the wonderful, all-powerful mysterious
God of all ages, “The Other”, is totally present in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
This is not pretence nor window-dressing, not a figure of speech, not just a nice way of speaking. We believe that God is not only the creator of our human nature, and of each of us who share it, but that in the person of
Jesus God embraced our human nature and made it His own. God became one of us!
He was conceived and carried for nine months in His mother’s womb. He was born and was dependent on mother’s breast and father’s protection and care. He grew up in a country town, tested His independence as a young adolescent in the Temple, worked as a carpenter and was part of village life.
We have to keep the incarnation happening!
How easy is it to compromise this – even to nullify this – if we get caught up in splendid vestments and clothes, privileged living, in the separated safety and security of a remote sanctuary and sacristy. How contradictory to incarnation if we operate from outside the lives of ordinary people among whom we live! How contradictory to incarnation if we use language that is complicated, and confusing and unintelligible.
His three years of ministry beyond Nazareth took him among many country and fishing folk in Galilee and occasionally to the capital city. Some welcomed Him, many accepted
Him, some criticized and condemned Him.
The official “God-people” virtually organized
His death and He died crucified between two convicted criminals and abandoned by all save His mother and a few friends.
Jesus was not just a human person in a
“general sense”. In Him God became a particular individual human being connected in time and place and culture to particular situations. In Jesus God is not, nor is God meant to be, distant!
Jesus is God among us, embracing the ordinary realities of particular place and particular culture, identifying with a particular world and era to challenge, renew and serve it. He acts from within, not from outside or on top!
Our task, challenge and privilege is to do likewise: in our place at this time, among these people, in their kind of language.
One size (one language, one style, one embodiment…) does not fit all.
We have to keep the incarnation happening!
That’s what we celebrate and embrace again each Christmas!
Closing date for letters & articles
Please email all submissions for consideration to editor@theswag.org.au
Articles - 700 words Major
Features - 1,400 words
We will publish an updated list of hospitality houses on the NCP Website early in 2013. If you can offer hospitality to travelling clergy please send the following details to the National Office (contact details at the top of page 2 of this edition).
• Your name and contact details
• Specify exactly what you can offer (eg bed and breakfast or bed only etc)
4 summer 2012

EDITORIALS
CO-EDITOR
Recently I visited the Jesuit community at the University of San Francisco. This marvellous building overlooking the
Golden Gate Bridge and Pacific Heights was the venue for a meal with a couple of priests involved in ministry to gay and lesbian Catholics in San Francisco at Holy
Redeemer in the Castro. I enjoyed telling them the stories of my work in this field in Newtown in Sydney. It was interesting to swap stories about young, and not so young, Catholics who are lesbian, gay and bisexual and the struggles they have to be accepted in the church. It is not so much that parish communities exclude them or vilify them but a general sense that they need to stay invisible. We did share a few stories where discrimination still happens such as where parishes refuse to baptise gay couples’ children. It is still a policy of don’t ask, don’t tell in some parishes.
We reflected upon the fact that the greatest single reason for suicide among young people from religious families is rejection on the basis of sexual orientation. This is an enormous challenge for the church because we must take responsibility for the language we use in our teaching that must seem like a personal insult to them, and more dangerously, to their relationship with their parents if they happen to follow a reasonable implication that either the child is the cause of difficulties or they are bad parents. When they realise that neither of these is true, sadly, they can be tempted to say that if their child is not “good enough” for the church than neither are they and both parents and child leave the church.
As we looked out upon the city so well known as the home of the hetero and homo sexual revolution, and the murder of the first homosexual supervisor in
San Francisco, Harvey Milk and Mayor
Moscone by the Catholic supervisor,
Dan White, we hoped our ministries were some kind of protection against sad outcomes of discrimination and the way secular and Catholic understandings of homo-sexuality are sometimes framed in the common discourse.
Earlier that day, visiting the de Young museum nearby I came across a piece by Susie Silook, a Yupik woman from
Alaska, called Looking Inside Myself
(2002). This piece (see picture) reminded me of the talk that evening, as we recalled the sacredness of each person’s story as we shared them.
Our stories are what make us vulnerable just as surely as they make us authentic.
What patterns of history, life and ingenuity do we find inside when we dare to be ourselves and name that inner truth as gift from God?
While in Seattle on this trip I visited
Mike Ryan, pastor at St James Cathedral
Seattle. We talked about the next
Assembly of the Association of US
Catholic Priests which will be held at
Seattle University June 23-27, 2013.
Mike was at the first Assembly in Tampa this year and was very impressed with the speakers and the hopes of the new association. It is small but they were very encouraged by the attendance of 200 priests and hope for 400 at the assembly in 2013 in Seattle. If you are planning a trip to the USA next year, I can assure you this is a wonderful part of the US and combining the Assembly and a tour of the Pacific North West could make a marvellous journey of spirit and life.
Details will be on their website soon: www.uscatholicpriests.org
This web application is designed for use on all mobile devices. Travellers can either enter the suburb and state and get the physical address for the church or use the
GPS/Google maps to find the nearest church/es. If there is no specific address for a particular church, the contact details for the parent parish are given. the swag
5

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Liturgy News, June 2012, published the text of a letter from Pope Benedict to the
Conference of Germany’s bishops, asking them to, in the words over the Cup, say for many, not for all. The most obvious thing to remark about the letter is the humility of his approach to them.
However, I’m not sure his arguments are right. I should preface my remarks by saying that I like the saying “many”, meaning
“more than many”. It calls to mind Jesus’ words in Mark 10:45, ‘The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve; and to give his life as a ransom for many.’ This is, incidentally the first time that the Son of
Man of Daniel 7, and the Servant of Yahveh of Isaiah 52:13 - 53:12 are identified as one and the same. But, of course there’s the danger that many will be misunderstood as not all.
The root cause of the problem is that neither Aramaic nor Hebrew has a plural word for all. Whether either has a word for all in the singular, as in all the earth proclaim the Lord, I don’t have a clue. My
Hebrews is as flaky as yours.
Pope Benedict began his argument by saying that, at the time the Mass went into the vernacular, there was agreement among exegetes that the many of Isaiah 53, of Mark
10, and in Jesus’ giving us the Eucharist, means all. But, Benedict went on, that agreement has since broken down. I have to say that no investigation on my part has found this to be the case. I don’t know where Benedict has got this notion.
Be that as it may, Benedict makes it clear that other scripture passages state clearly that Jesus died for us all, that God’s salvific purpose in Jesus reaches out to the whole human race. There is no doubting it. He points to three passages in particular:
Romans 8:32, 2Corinthians 5:14 and
1Timothy 2:6. But the third of these passages indicates clearly that its author saw the danger that ‘for many’ could be misunderstood.
Servant song, both in Hebrew (rabiim), where it has no other choice, and in the
Greek of the Septuagint (polloi) has many, not all. Why has the author changed it from many to all. He saw a danger. As George T
Montague in his commentary on Timothy
& Titus (in the Catholic Commentary on
Sacred Scripture) expressed it, Paul would certainly have known that Jesus’ giving of himself as a ransom for many, as in the fourth Servant song and in Mark 10:45, was not restrictive, but there is the danger that his Hellenistic readers, unaware of the thought world of the Semites, would read it as restrictive: many means not all.
Consequently, 1Timothy 2: 6 spells out ‘He gave himself as a ransom for all.’
I heard one defender of ‘many’ in the USA say it provides us with a ready-made homily, in which we explain that many means all.
That’s of course silly. If many means all, save the confusion and say all. But there can be a greater danger than that. I heard a Sydneysider - not a priest, I think, - telling us that
Holy Mother Church says many to remind us that, though salvation is offered to all, not all will be saved. How the bloody hell does he know that?
Patrick J Flanagan
The new translation of the Missal may or may not be a better translation. But upon trying to celebrate the Mass, I realise that maybe for me – it highlights that it is the
Latin original where the fault may lie. I think it is an attitude that the Latin original seems to express that causes me some concern. I want just to take one section or phrase even.
1Timothy 2:6 says ‘He (Jesus) gave himself as a ransom for all.’ There can be know doubt that the author is referring back to the fourth Servant song of Isaiah 52-53.
Not only does he say that Jesus gave himself on behalf of (huper) us all. But he also says that he gave himself as a ransom ‘in place of (anti) us all.’ He uses a composite word antilutron, and this is the only place this word is found in the New Testament.
Lutron means ransom. The coupling of it with anti - in place of - has to hark back to the fourth Servant song. But the fourth
The old translation said ‘my brothers and sisters, to prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries, let us call to mind our sins’. The new translation says ‘brethren
(brothers and sisters), let us acknowledge our sins, and so prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries’. Even the old translation was a bit of a problem for me but this newer one causes me more concern.
Once again I am reminded of an event that happened at a catechist gathering at a particular church when at one point the coordinator invited those receiving certificates to come – and here she looked down – pondered – before saying to come to this fence – meaning of course the altar rails. And like one of those light bulb moments, it reflects their true purpose and not covered up with family church terms like communion or altar rails. But rather as it was a device to keep the ‘unholy’ away from the ‘holy’. They could not even approach with bare feet this sacred space.
I have just read today’s introductory phrase for the introductory psalm said each morning in the office “Come let adore the
Lord, for He is our God.” This is how we prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries by firstly remembering he is our
God whose great love has saved us from our sins. Not by firstly focusing on us and our sins, faults or failings. If one might say this is the purpose of the entrance hymn and introductory rite to remind us we are coming in thanksgiving to our God then we have already prepared ourselves, and maybe it should the next part should say –
“continuing in our celebrations of the sacred mysteries we now call to mind our sins.”
But here in the new translation it seems once again to concentrate on us rather than God’s love, that like in some countries today we still need to remind others of our lowliness and their greatness so that they can be tricked into listening to us. As in I am only a worm but you are God, so please have mercy on me. You are all powerful but I am a sinner – like we are buttering up God, as if he needs buttering up so to behave as God and not as a tyrant.
The previous translation of this phrase, in one sense reminds us we were preparing to celebrate the sacred mysteries – now we call to mind our sins. It is still a bit of a ‘but’ but in a gentler way. The second seems to want to create the barrier. To put the fence back as it were, it does not seem to draw you closer but to drive you away.
I was reflecting about Zechariah’s experience as priest. It was his turn to enter the Holy of Holies. He has a rope tied around him in case he died, as no one else was allowed to enter. It only would happen maybe once in his lifetime. The barrier or veil was now firmly drawn around this ark that had once been among the people and David had danced naked before.
But when Jesus died and the temple veil was torn, I think He was saying that He did not want to be in the set apart in the Holy of Holies, he wanted as God walked with
Adam and Eve to be with and among his people. Yes sin had kept them apart but now we were not His servants but His friends.
He called us so. Yes unworthy friends in an
6 summer 2012

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR unequal friendship but the title comes not from our presumption but from his loving choice.
He had already showed that we had a false image of God as king when he was born in a manger. He had already showed us we had a false image of leadership when he brought forward the child, when he said
– “this must never happen among you” and finally, when he washed the feet of his disciples at the Last Supper.
With the tearing of the veil, I think he was showing that a false image of worship
– one that was based on some gradual hierarchy so eventually only the few and only occasionally were privileged to get close to him and the rest were left outside.
Hence I liked the atmosphere of Vatican
II that seems to open the churches and remove the fences. Imagine if such a barrier had been set up around the foot of the cross and people stopped from getting too close. Imagine Mary’s reaction to guards preventing such an approach.
Name given but withheld on request
As one who has long read, admired, and often been inspired by the writings of Fr
Timothy Radcliffe OP, it was enlightening but also saddening to read his two lectures to the recent NCP Convention in the
Spring edition of The Swag .
In his first address - Breathing, he summarised accurately, the current position of the church and its challenges, with the knowledge, clarity and intellect, for which he is so well known and respected. Few could take issue with any of his analysis and conclusions. The difficulties arise from his proposed solutions put forward in the second address - Becoming a leaf. These solutions are superb – in theory. Trouble is, they do not address the reality of either the church as a spiritual family or the church as a worldly political institution, both of which the church is.
There are numerous issues which could be raised from this address, but this letter will address just three: Institutional Church,
Self Marginalization and Openness to opposing views.
Institutional Church: Fr Timothy denies there is an “institutional church” - (“so let’s stop talking about the official church”) -
This is a denial of political reality. Yet he insists, “in his experience, it is possible to insist on proper process.” As the Provincial of a major order like the Dominicans I have no doubt he has been able to insist on some proper process when dealing with the CDF.
That in itself is only a recognition of the political power of both parties. I doubt that would be the experience of any diocesan priest when being confronted by his bishop on any matter of disputation, and from my experience, it is most certainly not the position of any in the laity.
Self Marginalization: Consequently there is in practice, such a thing as an institutional church which operates like any worldly political body. Hence those who have tried to have their voices heard and failed, have not “self marginalised” themselves, but have been silenced and pushed to the margins by a repressive authoritarian hierarchy, which just happens to hold power, and refuses to even discuss any issue which may be at variance with its official position.
Openness to opposing views: It seems that the greatest opposition to differing views comes from those who fear any change and support the status quo. Fr Timothy is correct when he says their views must be respected. However do they have the right - (enforced by the bishops) - to deny the views of those who see their church differently? There is no possibility of a plural and diverse church while such power structures remain, that reinforce this reality.
I am not aware of any serious progressive thinkers in the church who deny the right of pre Vatican II or similarly conservative catholics, to retain their liturgy, devotions or other practices they see as essential to their faith. It is apparent however that such people who currently hold power in the institution are determined that the only way to be church is their way – one size fits all eg. the currently enforced new liturgy.
Hence we are unlikely to have any serious open dialogue until this corruption of power is challenged and changed.
While no one could disagree with the goal of living Trinitarian lives (both priests and laity), being heralds of the Kingdom and exercising tolerance with those of differing views, surely we are called to do more, when faced with an institution that does not even abide by the most basic rules of civil behaviour such as refusing to even acknowledge receipt of correspondence from those with differing views. To deny and avoid confrontation with this corrupt use of power within the institutional church, only promotes the continuance of these power structures, which continue to see the destruction of church as we know it.
Perhaps the only way to effect change against this abuse of power is for those of us remaining – clerics and laity alike - is to follow the example of Jesus in his righteous anger, throwing out the traders in the
Temple. His anger was directed, not against the traders, but against the Temple Priests for allowing and profiting from corruption.
This action was certainly the catalyst for his execution, and the ultimate example of how radical we are required to become if we claim to be His true followers.
Fr Timothy’s conclusion that change will eventually come from the grassroots, may well be correct, if the current power structures are not changed. It is unlikely however that such renewal will have anything to do with the official church, but will more likely come from individuals operating in small groups in their homes
(like the early church), who have tired of trying to be an active part of a church that demonstrates in practice, despite opposing rhetoric, that it does not want them. Such people who seek, for themselves and their children, a knowledge and experience of the loving Jesus, will not expect to find Him in a closed, frightened, bullying institution that seeks a “smaller, purer, theologically correct church” and one that fails to see and hear the Spirit, in the People of God.
Peter J Keightley
The on-going Craig Thompson case has led me, as a priest of the Toowoomba Diocese, to a pondering or two. Many an Australian citizen, regardless of their opinions about
Craig Thompson’s alleged actions, have argued that the man is entitled to natural justice. Such is the Australian way. My pondering is to how the Australian bishops might view this in the light of their collective silence about natural justice in the Bishop Bill Morris dismissal case. A number of Australian barristers have said in their professional opinion Bishop Morris was not afforded natural justice in his dismissal.
Should this pondering be allowed musing space in my heart?
If so, why so?
Jeff Scully the swag
7

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
I would like to thank Eugene McKinnon for his honesty, openness and willingness in the message he wrote in the latest issue of The Swag . As an alcoholic who has been sober for twenty-three years, thanks to God and AA, I appreciate the courage it took to compose such a straight-forward sharing. Alcoholism is a disease that needs to be discussed in clerical circles. I have often said at AA meetings that it is a disease I would not wish on my worst enemy, but I find that many priests still think of it only as a moral failing or lack of discipline and therefore never address the need for a worthwhile treatment of the disease.
On another note, I wonder if many priests in Australia have had an experience similar to the one I had during my three month home leave in the States. I caught up with many of the younger and middle-aged people that I had married and/or baptised during the
30 years that I ministered in the States.
I was saddened by the number of people who said they have decided to join the Episcopalian (Anglican) Church.
It had something to do with the new translation of the Mass; they found the prayers there more understandable and attractive. But then they would add that in terms of attitudes towards homosexuals, married clergy, women priests (and women in general) they found the Episcopalian Church more
Christ-like than the Roman Church. I was saddened both because I could not disagree with them but also because I didn’t know how to share with them the richness they were giving up without seeming to attack another tradition. I still pray for and weep over my friends who have found the need to walk a different path.
The Romans seem to take delight in advancing the numbers of Anglicans/
Episcopalians who have joined the
Roman Church; I am glad that the
Anglicans/Episcopalians have never felt the same need to count up the number of Catholic priests who joined them so that they could be married and still serve as priests (including some of my close friends) and the number of lay
Catholics who have joined them because of their willingness to treat women with dignity (even letting them become bishops), their greater openness to those in a second marriage, the homosexuals, and the poor women who had made the painful decision to have an abortion.
Larry Nemer SVD
8 summer 2012
AUSTRALIAN NEWS
Catholics for Renewal met with Archbishop
Denis Hart in June 2012 to discuss the possibility of the Australian Catholics
Bishops Conference calling a National
Synod sometime in 2015. Their letter to
Archbishop Hart noted that this would be an important step in Starting afresh from
Christ through listening to the People of
God, encouraging communion with the bishops and clergy and promoting the coresponsibility urged by Pope Benedict XVI in his address to the 2009 Synod of the
Diocese of Rome: “It is necessary to improve pastoral structures in such a way that the coresponsibility of all the members of the People of God in their entirety is promoted.”
In his letter of response dated 29 August
2012, Archbishop Hart wrote: “The
Permanent Committee does not consider that a Plenary Council is opportune at this time.”
Australia with an accompanying common desire to contribute their voices to the deliberations of their leaders. We believe that these changing circumstances make our proposals very timely.”
They requested Archbishop Hart refer their proposals for Diocesan and National
Synods to the full conference (November meeting) as part of that discussion, in the light of both the radically changed circumstances and the need “to improve pastoral structures in such a way that the coresponsibility of all the members of the People of God in their entirety is promoted.”
This surely is the right time for the bishops of Australia to listen to the People of the Church.
Catholics for Renewal, while disappointed with the response, noted
“the times are changing rapidly for the Church in Australia, particularly in light of the recent announcement of a national Royal Commission on
Child Abuse. The Royal Commission announcement, following closely the initial hearings of the Victorian
Parliamentary Inquiry on child abuse, has caused much soul searching amongst Catholics throughout
A website to support Safar Ali Fahimi from deportation has been set up. You can sign a petition at http://tinyurl.com/9b9et3a and many other Afghan asylum seekers to danger in Afganistan.The Afghan government cannot provide safety for asylum seekers returned to any area of
Afghanistan, including Kabul. “My name is Safar Ali Fahimi. I am a
Hazara asylum seeker from Jaghori district in Ghazni province in Afghanistan. There have been frequent massacres of Hazara people in Ghazni.I have a wife and three children. Since I was 10 years old, I worked in farming, construction and brickmaking before working as a smithy for an NGO. I fled Afghanistan because I was on a Taliban death list.
I found out from my neighbour that I was on the death list when he was stopped at a
Taliban roadblock and shown a photograph of me. The Taliban were showing a photo of me to the driver of every car, saying that
I was wanted because I was working for an
NGO which was supported by foreigners.
Please sign this petition asking the
Australian government not to deport me
There are more than 200 asylum seekers facing deportation to danger in
Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Iran. Our cases were never fairly assessed in the first place, otherwise we would have been recognised as refugees.”

The Triennial National Conference for
Pastors and Pastoral Associates will be held
5-7 February 2013 at the Hilton Hotel,
Victoria Square, Adelaide.
The theme for the Conference, An Echo in their Hearts , is taken from the Preface of the Vatican II Document, Gaudium et Spes .
Rev Dr Philip Marshall VG, PhD of the
Archdiocese of Adelaide and Dr Deb Organ,
DMin, Master of Social Work, USA, will be the keynote speakers.
Information and registration is available from Jill Gallio - Phone (08) 8210 8138 or www.adelaide.catholic.org.au
AUSTRALIAN NEWS
We welcome Ian McGinnity back as chairman and our new committee members, Wayne Bendotti
(Diocese of Bunbury) and Jim Clarke (Archdiocese of
Melbourne). Ian, Wayne and Jim will each bring their own gifts and experiences to the roles and will serve on the committee for the next three years (1 January
2013 – 31 December 2015). We look forward to welcoming them to the annual face to face meeting to be held at the National Office, Belmont, 4-7
February.
Sincere thanks to retiring committee members -
Eugene McKinnon, Stephen Byrnes and Patrick Lim.
If you have something you would like discussed at the face to face meeting please email - chairman@ncp.catholic.org.au
It is also at this face to face meeting that the committee will decide what agenda items they will take to their meeting with the Bishops Commission for Church Ministry, Thursday 21 February.
Top to bottom, Ian McGinnity,Wayne Bendotti and
Jim Clarke.
The calling of the Royal Commission into child sexual abuse has brought hope to many victims as they see a new opportunity for truth, healing and justice in this very difficult matter. It is seen by many as a chance for the victim’s stories to be told and respected.
Pat Power, retired auxiliary bishop of
Canberra & Goulburn, noted in the
November issue of Eureka Street that
“whatever form the Royal Commission takes, opportunity will be given to those who have suffered abuse to be heard and taken seriously, in such a way that not only will their own individual case be dealt with, but systems can be put in place to afford children greater protection in the future”.
“These are painful times to be a Catholic, but if we are humble enough to admit that at times we have got it wrong, sometimes horribly wrong, then there is the opportunity to make reparation and to do all we can to ensure the same mistakes are not repeated” he said.
He also said: “Unless women and married people are made part of the governance of the Church, there will continue to be a lack of balance and reality in its teaching, especially around sexuality. I include homosexuality in that critique.”
Bishop Power concluded: “Opening the
Second Vatican Council 50 years ago, Pope
John XXIII called on those within the
Church to ‘read the signs of the times’ so as to bring the light of the Gospel on to every aspect of the life of the Church. My hope is that the Royal Commission can become for the Catholic Church a true instrument of grace and healing.”
Four men who have completed their studies at Corpus Christi Seminary, Andrew
McCarter, Benneth Osuagwu, Jerome
Santamaria and Kevin Williams, were ordained together with former Anglican clergymen and members of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross, Neil
Fryer, James Grant, Christopher Seton and
Ramsay Williams at St Patrick’s Cathedral on 8 September 2012.
Archbishop Hart noted in his homily that these men “will work among all of us and bring our people to God. I want to thank Fr Entwistle for his assurance that the priests ordained for the Ordinariate will be working among us in the
Ordinariate Church, but also in parish and other circumstances throughout the Archdiocese... In unity of spirit we recognise those who have accompanied them to this moment, their families; Diane, the wife of James Grant; parishioners of these men, some of whom are joining the Ordinariate.” the swag
9

AUSTRALIAN NEWS
La Salle College Marrickville, he joined the Passionists and completed his HSC at St Leo’s College Wahroonga in 1973.
He professed first vows in 1976 and was ordained on 28th November 1981 at Marrickville.
Australian Passionist Provincial Joachim
Rego CP was elected last week as the new
Superior General of the Passionists during the congregation’s 46th General Chapter in Rome. His election becomes doubly significant this year as Passionists celebrate their 125th year in Australia.
Joachim was born in Rangoon, Burma and as a teenager, migrated with his family to Australia. After a couple of years at De
Joachim worked for 18 years in Papua
New Guinea, as Regional Vicar, Novice
Master, Formator and was President of the
Conference of Major Superiors of PNG and the Solomon Islands. He also worked as Novice Master in the Indian Vicariate of the Passionist Congregation. After working on the Parish of St Brigid’s Marrickville, he was elected as Provincial Superior in 2007, and re-elected at the Provincial Chapter in 2011.
Joachim is the eldest son of George &
Celina Rego of Marrickville and his brother, Aloysius Rego ODC is the
Regional Vicar of the Discalced Carmelite
Friars of the Australia-Oceania Region. A liturgical reception for Fr Joachim will be held at St Brigid’s Marrickville.
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Dr José Ramos-
Horta, former president and prime minister of Timor-Leste, is a patron of PALMS
Australia - the Australian Catholic Global
Volunteering organization, a volunteer support organisation working for the past
51 years in partnerships in 39 different countries and especially in Timor-Leste. Ramos-
Horta spoke at the PALMS fundraising and inaugural
Solidarity Awards dinner on 16 October at Dolten
House, Jones Street
Wharf, Sydney.
He noted that the main issues still facing the new nation are children’s literacy and malnutrition, health and infrastructure such as water and electricity. However he claimed there is a great improvement of prospects in these areas with the various partnerships with governments,
NGO’s, churches and civil society. As these continue to grow, things will turn around. He spoke optimistically about
10 summer 2012 the electricity program he hopes will be completed next year and the use of fibre optic cable in many areas of Timor-
Leste within five years to bring better education services to children and better opportunities for connectivity in a wide range of social and economic endeavours.
Ramos-Horta lamented the high early drop out rate of children from school, but said that with help, the government was on track to make significant improvements in the welfare of the people of Timor-Leste.
The Columban Mission Society E-News
(25/09/2012) reported that Fr Kevin
O’Neill SSC was elected Superior
General of the Missionary Society of St
Columban on 20 September 2012 at the
Columban General Assembly held in
Los Angeles.
Kevin, one of six children, was born in
Geelong on 23 November 1962. His twin brother Peter is also a Columban priest and his sister Kate is a religious sister of Our Lady of the Missions
Congregation and is their province leader in the Philippines.
Kevin was educated at Our Lady’s
Primary School, Manifold Heights,
Geelong, and St Joseph’s College,
Geelong. He studied chemical engineering at RMIT University before entering St Columban’s Seminary,
Turramurra, NSW, in 1984 and was ordained in 1992 by Bishop Peter
Connors in his home parish of
Manifold Heights.
Kevin said the article: “I am both humbled and honoured to be called forth by my fellow Columban missionaries to lead for the next six years. Our world is still in need of missionaries who cross boundaries of country, culture and religion. Our commitment to interculturality, interfaith dialogue, solidarity with the poor and the exploited earth is a participation in the Mission of God.
Our proclamation of the gospel of Jesus challenges us to build communities of peace. While continuing to work in all the countries where there are Columban missionaries we have decided to strengthen our presence in China and our engagement in
Christian-Muslim dialogue.”

AUSTRALIAN NEWS
Thomas, son of Rudolphis Francis Cruice, from Terror’s Creek and Ellen Josephine Maher from Brisbane, was the youngest of a family of six- three brothers and two sisters. Thomas grew up on a farm in Dayboro and attended the local primary school. In 1931 Tom, having completed his secondary education went to Galong to study and was professed as a
Redemptorist. He was ordained in Ballarat on 2 February 1934 by Bishop Gleeson.
Galong was to have a special place in Tom’s life. He went there to teach and was later appointed the director. Tom’s life-long interest in formation and vocations began there and he was later appointed Prefect of Students in Ballarat. Tom’s love of learning took him to the United States where he graduated from the American Association of Marriage and
Family Therapists. Tom also attended Iona College and the Blanton-Peale Institute.
On returning to Australia, Thomas wrote: “I see my contribution in helping confreres face our present crisis (1982!) and to realise our basic apostolate - the renewal of our spiritual life…We have reached a stage where we must face dying if we are to rise again.”
It was this guiding principle that inspired Tom to work with Redemptorists in the province and many parts of Asia and beyond. Even at 100 Tom often says: “There’s a lot I could still do in Galong and with the students in Kew…why am I just sitting here!”
Tom, you never just sat anywhere and your confreres and family look forward to what you are still to accomplish in your second century! Congratulations and thankyou!
Australian Fr Geoffrey Schneider SJ, has been declared the world’s oldest working teacher by The Guinness World
Records, reports The Independent Catholic News . Fr Schneider, who has been a teacher and chaplain at Sydney’s
St Aloysius’ College’s Junior School for 47 years said he has no intention of retiring, as he approaches his 100th birthday in December. He has taught at schools in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, shaping the intellects and values of leading figures of Australian government, business, academia and sport, including Tony Abbott. Retirement doesn’t appeal to him. Why retire, he said, “So I can read the paper every morning and then forget what’s in it?”
Heartiest congratulations Fr Schneider!
13 young men from Sydney’s Seminary of the Good Shepherd recently spent three weeks in outback Australia visiting the dioceses of Port Pirie and Broome, the Sydney Archdiocesan website reported on 18 September. The website reports that the experience
“has deepened their faith, expanded their horizons and given them invaluable insight into the day to day lives of priests who minister to parishes across vast distances and sparsely populated areas.”
“The program is proving a great success and has mutual benefits for our seminarians and for the parishes where they spend time,” says
Father Anthony Percy, Rector at the Seminary of the
Good Shepherd.
Dominic Nguyen, who went to Derby this year and Hay last year said: “Both certainly opened my eyes to many things I had not considered before and I have gained an enormous respect and appreciation for country people and the often difficult and challenging work priests do in these areas.” It was his first time to visit Aboriginal communities. “This changed my understanding of Indigenous people and the richness of their culture. I was a stranger to the communities, but although the people were a little reserved because of this, they were nevertheless welcoming and friendly,” he said.
Picture shows Christopher Saunders, the Bishop of Broome, with six Sydney seminarians.
the swag
11

WORLD NEWS
Terese Mee reflected on her blog on the situation regarding members of ordained
Priests and the absence of younger people from Mass in Ireland.
doing works of mercy traditionally associated with the Church. There’s that young fellow, for instance, let’s call him
She says that the Church’s fundamental problem is not the shortage of priests available to provide Sunday Mass. Instead she says “the real problem is the virtual absence from Sunday celebration of Catholics of the three younger generations”.
The core problem is the exodus.
Where there’s a problem, the appropriate response is to begin by investigating the causes. This problem has so far not been investigated. Instead, the Church leadership has been attributing the causes to a tranche of -isms.
Mee reflects on young people who have opted out of the Church but nonetheless
Eric, respectfully balanced on his haunches while engaging with a presumably homeless man seated by the railings of Halfpenny
Bridge, beaker in front of him on the ground. Eric is listening attentively while the man, let’s call him Frank, is talking. As I pass by, in a hurry to get to church.
Though still Catholic, they have opted out of Sunday Mass and other church activities for dedicated life in community. We need at the very least to move around among them, listen to, observe them in action and then ask ourselves a few questions...
In sharp contrast to Catholic
Church culture, the culture of these groups, in their attitude of total respect for each person without distinction of gender or sexual orientation, walk of life or religious affiliation, is a community based culture.
( CathNews 28/10/2012 - reprinted with permission.)
Six non-European Roman Catholic prelates will join the Vatican’s College of Cardinals in November in a move which may affect the election of the future pope, reports AFP on Yahoo7.
The college, the elite body that advises the pontiff and elects his successor upon his death, is currently heavily weighted in favour of Europe.
described as someone “who really takes care of people… He’s so simple and generous, and there’s no class structure when he deals with people; everyone is equal in his eyes”.
Pope Benedict said he would be appointing cardinals from the United States, Lebanon,
India, Nigeria, Colombia and the
Philippines in a surprise consistory, the second to be held this year, on November
24.The new cardinals will be the American
James Michael Harvey, Lebanon’s Bechara
Boutros al-Rahi, India’s Baselios Cleemis
Thottunkal, Nigeria’s John Onaiyekan,
Colombia’s Ruben Salazar Gomez and
Filipino Luis Antonio Tagle.
Vatican watchers had not expected there to be another consistory until next year and the surprise announcement sparked concern that the 85-year-old pontiff’s health may be worse than thought. The consistory follows the death of several cardinals in recent months and will bring the number of those eligible to vote back up to the maximum of 120.
The Cardinal-designate of Manila, Luis
Antonio Tagle is just 55 years old. He is
Collin Nunis commented that the Patriarch
Bechara al-Rahi (Lebanon) and Mar
Baselios Cleemis Thonttukal (India) are
Catholic bishops, but not of the Roman
Rite, nor from the Latin Church. Patriarch
Bechara is the Maronite Patriarch of
Antioch, whereas Mar Baselios is the Major
Archbishop of the Syro-Malankara Catholic
Church in India. ( CathNews 24/10/2012 – reprinted with permission.)
The Tablet is available to NCP Members for the greatly reduced rate of $AUD139.00.
Also offered is a combined package deal for The Tablet and The Pastoral Review - $AUD200.00.
New Subscribers
Send your complete contact details to the NCP National Office.
• Credit Card details (Visa or MasterCard) and be sure to include the
expiry date and name on the card. The reference on your credit card
statement will be “Dovetail Services”
• Cheque (Payable to The Tablet NOT NCP) - $139.00
Existing Subscribers
There appears to be a four week turn around for all subscription processing (from The Tablet’s end), so as soon as you receive notification that your current subscription is due to expire, forward your payment (as per above) to the NCP National Office. summer 2012

WORLD NEWS
Devett O’Brien has identified clericalism as a significant discussion point at the
Synod currently taking place in Rome and is blogging on behalf of the International
Young Catholic Students of which he is Secretary General. O’Brien attended
Saturday’s meeting of journalists with
Cardinal George Pell, who made some surprising comments about what he called the “problem” of clericalism.
Almost all leaders of Catholic hospitals are now lay, most of our School Principals are lay people ... We take it for granted now that they’re almost all lay and many are women. I hope [clericalism] is not too much of a problem in Australia... I know in other parts of the Catholic world they take a different view and reserve more of those roles for priests. Cardinal Pell said lay
Catholics need to take a leading role in the
New Evangelisation because its challenge is mainly in the secular sphere. O’Brien comments that “bishops and priests need to place their trust in the communities of young people who are evangelising their world.” He titles an earlier post
Clericalism - the Greatest Obstacle to
New Evangelisation.
During their most recent free discussion time, the Synod of Bishops began a discussion of what potential obstacles lay in the path of the New Evangelisation. The concern that topped a list may be seen by many as an unexpected acknowledgement:
Clericalism. In a refreshing sign there was widespread agreement on the emerging theme that “rank and status too often prevent the message being heard.”
However O’Brien notes that this view is not unanimous. Some observers pointed out that the group conspicuously absent from this consensus about the danger of Clericalism was the Bishops from
North America. This assumes a particular importance given the prominence of
American Bishops in this Synod, especially
Cardinal Wuerl and Cardinal Dolan.
National Catholic Reporter (2/11/2012) reported that 17 October marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of Albino Luciani, the man who would become John Paul I, the “Smiling Pope” of just 33 days in 1978. On the day of the anniversary, an official positio , or
“position paper,” was filed in the Vatican to support his sainthood cause, writes John Allen. (Article is available on NCR Online )
One value of the events marking the centenary, therefore, is that they can help recover the “real” John Paul I, as opposed to misconceptions and hypothetical reconstructions that have flowered over the last 35 years.
John Paul I’s 33-day papacy was the 10th shortest of all time, and the briefest since Leo XI’s in the early 17th century. Yet the ferment shows he only needed a month to leave a deep mark on the Catholic imagination.
In part, that’s because he seemed exactly what most Catholics pray their leaders will be: warm, compassionate, genuinely happy to be with ordinary people, a man of obvious faith who didn’t wear his piety on his sleeve or take himself too seriously.
He pioneered the simplification of the papacy by dropping the royal “we,” declining coronation with the papal tiara and discontinuing use of the sedia gestatoria , or portable throne.
In part, too, fascination with John Paul I endures because he’s the great counter-factual of recent Catholic history: “What might have been had he lived?” His papacy is for Catholics what the Kennedy administration has always been for Americans, a sort of Rorschach test allowing people to project their own hopes and dreams.
In particular, the remembrances we’ve heard during the last month seem to debunk four persistent myths:
• The “smiling pope” was goodhearted but weak, out of his depth in the Machiavellian environment of the Vatican.
• John Paul I was a closet radical who would have taken the church in a dramatically different direction than the two popes who followed him.
• John Paul I did not die of natural causes, but rather fell victim to a complex assassination plot.
• Although a breath of fresh air after the dour final years of Pope
Paul VI, John Paul I’s reign was too short to have anything substantive to offer the church of the 21st century, especially with regard to its top internal priority, new evangelisation.
The Seoul archdiocese has launched online confirmation classes in which faithful can prepare for the sacrament in just two days, reports ucanews.com 29/10/12.
The archdiocese’s Catholic Cyber Pastoral Office began offering the classes last week to make preparation for the sacrament easier and more convenient. Usually, confirmation classes take at least five weeks. Comprising
10 hour-long lectures, the class requires each person to take a test after each lecture. A person can watch up to five lectures and take five tests in a day. Armed with a certificate and with a little liturgy training, people can then be confirmed in their parish.
the swag
13

FEATURES
BY JOHN RYAN
John Ryan, priest of Sandhurst Diocese, suggests priests might need to find resources that help in maintaining pastoral practice.
After many years in priestly renewal work with priests he has experience and wisdom to share. Reprinted with permission from
CathNews , 17 October 2012.
The Swag is the quarterly publication of the
National Council of Priests. I have been conscious of the reflection in its pages of a damaged morale among Australian priests.
Morale is always a delicate issue, and it easily gives rise to controversy, even conflict. Subsequently, the temptation is to shut up , and put one’s head back into the sand.
Clearly, I am prepared to accept a degree of depression within our ranks at the moment because
I believe we are living within a depressive environment.
I am aware that I have entered a
“war zone” with many of my brother priests, who will reject my assessment and claim great joy and satisfaction in their present situation. To those men, I would say it is great that you have a satisfying and productive life, but please understand that what nourishes you is not working for all your colleagues.
Depression situates itself amidst many emotions, often with roots in anger and guilt, with anger being an especially common contributor in men. These emotions can lie repressed in the sub, or unconscious psyche and yet express themselves in many enervating, even destructive symptoms including stress, negativity and unreality. I believe that many of the experiences giving rise to anger amongst priests are being well recorded within the pages of The Swag .
Without diverting to detail, the current priest crisis comes largely from commissioning men to do a task without giving them adequate tools or resources.
It is important to stress that we are not first of all engaged in a search for smart answers, or for finding one way of doing things as against another.
First of all, we are called to live in community and communion, knowing that all we will ever have to offer is a few loaves and a couple of fish. This is to be offered in fellowship, humility, and gratitude, with a prayer for His blessing before we dare put them forward confidently but tentatively to feed the hunger of our world.
If what we did successfully yesterday is no longer working, then we need to do something different today. Cast your nets from the other side, knowing that life is not about this or that but rather about communion built on love and what flows from that.
This communion built on love is prepared for thorough relationships that flow from humble, open and honest conversation or dialogue, concerning our individual and corporate life experiences shared in the spirit of the Gospel.
While we priests experience varying degrees of contact with one another within our presbyterates, I think the quality of lifegiving relationships within our ecclesial ranks is poor largely because of a dearth of open and honest communication.
It seems to me that our institutional concern for orthodoxy gets between us and hinders the call on us all to seek to “do the truth in love”. Our primary vocation is to love one another as we are loved and to be one as Jesus and the Father are one. Indeed without love can truth be done at all?
The late Cardinal Carlo Martini offered a valuable insight when he described the way the Italian psyche impacts on what is well described as Vatican Theology.
He told of their obsession with the bella figura and their concern that things always look right. This results in propagating an often dangerously unreal idealism. While they know it won’t work literally, it nevertheless fulfils their demand for a compelling image.
The Italian mindset will not worry unduly about “infringements” until someone disturbs that spotless image with a complaint, Then the question quickly moves to engage with other dynamics and employ power to bring things back to order.
With power comes the fear which abhors dialogue. This is the greatest threat to love.
It has been well said that there is nothing more dangerous in human affairs than giving power to frightened men rather than those who are motivated by love.
I have often experienced this in the Church.
The message is to keep the pressure on not try to justify the unjustifiable, or be overcome by an idealism that exceeds the limits of healthy human possibility. Be strong, imaginative and honest, and seek alternative practical strategies when present approaches are failing, as I believe Bishop
Bill Morris attempted to do.
Of course, this will require a supporting community or what might be called a critical mass of individuals to stand together. I think we can count on this amongst the Australian priests, if not amongst our Bishops, and this is in no small way due to the perseverance of the National
Council of Priests over the years.
One final word, and a necessary condition for any fruitful outcome, is that we must aim always to do the truth in love, and always act graciously, even though we may feel overwhelmed by the challenge.
14 summer 2012

FEATURES
BY ROBERT BLAIR KAISER
Robert Blair Kaiser, Time Magazine correspondent at the Second Vatican Council, gives the 2012 Tablet Lecture on 11 October 2012. Reprinted from The Tablet ,
13 October 2012
These days, both wings in the Church are saying the Council was a failure. The left wing is saying the Council didn’t go far enough. The right wing is saying it went too far.
and he hadn’t. So Time ran with my reporting, on this No More Crusades story, and on a good many other initiatives the
Pope was starting to make.
clericalism, juridicism and triumphalism.
Some of the best Council speeches were now calling for a Church that believed
God was at work in all men and women, in individuals as well as in humankind as a whole, a Church that wanted us to be all that we could be - in this life as well as in the next.
I do not believe the Council was a failure.
It has already changed the way we live - and think - as Catholics. I believe the charter that was written at Vatican II is the only thing that will save the Church, the people-of-God Church, not the hierarchical Church.
I had a peculiar vantage point on Vatican
II. I was Time magazine’s man the Council, sent there in part because I had spent 10 years in the Jesuits and because I was one of the few reporters on earth who could speak fluent Latin, the official language of the Council. So, here I am in mid-August
1962, chatting with Pope John XXIII’s secretary, Loris Capovilla, at the papal summer residence, Castel Gondolfo. All of a sudden here comes John XXIII bouncing up the marble hallway. ‘Why,’ he says, arms outstretched, ‘What a wonderful surprise!’
Of course, it wasn’t a surprise at all. It was all prearranged by Time magazine’s friend in New York, Cardinal Francis Spellman, arranged that way so the Pope wouldn’t be breaking tradition.
I thought I might have a few mostly chatty minutes with the Pope, and then make my move to leave. But no. The Pope grabbed my elbow and said he had some things he wanted to tell me. He was at last ready to tell the world (and he chose to do it through Time magazine) that he did not intend his Council to be a strictly churchy event, but a worldly event designed to bring people together, people of all faiths, even the so-called godless Communists.
His predecessors, Pius XI and Pius XII had mounted crusades against communism.
As an historian, Papa Roncalli knew what a disaster the Crusades had been. Now, he said that, in a world that was armed with megaton nuclear warheads, the time had come to say, ‘No more crusades.’ In fact, he didn’t want the Council to launch condemnations of any anything or anyone.
Time magazine’s foreign editor Henry
Grunwald didn’t want to believe my report, but what could he do? This Rome correspondent had talked with the Pope
Grunwald had to admit: ‘We’ve got to watch this Roncalli pope. What’s this word aggiornamento? What is that all about?’
I had to admit: aggiornamento was a pretty bold word for the pope to use, in Roma aeterna, where nothing ever changed.
How do you bring a Church that never changes ‘up to date’? The top cardinal in
Rome, Alfredo Ottaviani, the pro-prefect of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, could not conceive of any of the changes that the word aggiornamento implied, and
I soon found out from theologians like
Yves Congar, Jean Danielou, Karl Rahner, and Edward Schillebeeckx (all of whom had been silenced before Vatican II for their ‘radical thinking’) that Ottaviani was doing almost everything he could to put roadblocks in the way of Council’s major change-projects. And why wouldn’t he?
His coat of arms said it all: Semper Idem.
Always the same.
How would the Council bring things up to date? Early on, this wasn’t too clear to anyone, not even perhaps to the Pope himself. He was a modest man who used to end jokes with his secretary with the punch line, ‘I’m not infallible, you know!’
But he had an intuition: that 2,500 bishops encouraged to speak freely in a kind of parliament of bishops would figure it out.
They did this very quickly. After a monthlong debate on whether the Church should scrap its traditional Latin Mass for the vernacular, the Council Fathers voted 2200 to 200 in favour of the language of the people. It was our first clue: that Vatican II was trying to re-create a people’s Church.
Up to now, the bishops had been part of the ecclesia docens, the teaching Church, while the rest of us were the ecclesia discens, the learning Church. Here at the
Council, the bishops all became part of the learning Church. Hobnobbing with theologians like Congar, Danielou, Chenu,
Schillebeckx, they began to start speaking of the Church in new ways, promising to create a new kind of Church, a people’s
Church, not a Church that was making itself less and less relevant with its excessive
As the Council opened, I sought out
America’s most famed Catholic preacher,
Bishop Fulton Sheen (he was staying at the
Excelsior, the most pricey hotel on the Via
Veneto), to ask him about his hopes for the
Council. He turned down my request by denying the very humanity of the Council itself. ‘It will be all about the Holy Spirit,’ he said. ‘He will tell us what to say and do.’
Bishop Sheen didn’t tell me how I should go about interviewing the Holy Spirit.
I went on to interview everyone else I could find, often in 18-hour-days, and, much to my surprise, I was getting stories about the Council into the magazine almost every week. And then at the end of the Council’s first session, the Macmillan
Publishing Company in the U.S. and Tom
Burns of Burns, Oates and Washburn asked me to do a book on that first session of the Council. Time’s editors gave me six weeks off to do it. I went off to the Rome headquarters of the Society of the Divine
Word and wrote pretty much around the clock (with a couple of hours home for lunch every day). The Observer serialised the book, installments on page one every
Sunday for four Sundays in a row in August
1963. And when the book came out, first in London and Dublin, it shot to number one on the bestseller list.
In the book, I used an extended metaphor, imagining the Church as the barque of
Peter, a boat that had been in port for too many centuries, its bottom so encrusted with barnacles that it couldn’t even sail.
Now, by calling a Council, I said that Pope
John had figuratively launched that vessel out on to the seas of the world.
Pope Paul VI liked the image so much that he got one of his American monsignor friends who lived in Rome to ask me for permission to have my book translated into
Italian and published for the benefit of the
Italian bishops who didn’t quite understand the Council was trying to create a new kind of Church, one less concerned with its own power, one more at the service of humankind.
My barque-of-Peter image underlined what was different about Vatican II. For all the
Continued page 16 the swag
15

FEATURES other councils of history (20 of them) the Church turned inward on itself. This council was turned out to the world.
Not everyone understood that right away.
Pope John’s Curia didn’t get it--they may have never gotten it. The most curious among you might want to read Yves
Congar’s Journal of the Council, a daily diary of his exhaustive and exhausting work behind the scenes, battling with
Cardinal Ottaviani and his chief aide, the Dutch Jesuit Sebastian. To get ready for the Council, they were crafting a compendium of the faith as enunciated by all the papal encyclicals written since
Pius the Ninth, doing everything they could to make Vatican II into another
Council of Trent.
‘This is all wrong,’ Congar wrote. ‘This is papalist nonsense. It is making the
Council into a textbook manual that will not help bring about the aggiornamento
Pope John XXIII is calling for--a recreation of what the faith was in its primitive beginnings. To rediscover the beauty of that faith, we have to take a deeper look at Sacred Scripture, and study the Fathers of the Church. And only then will the Council speak to the world in language it can understand.’
Reading Congar’s accounts now, I realise my reports in Time and my book on the first session reflected only dimly what a fierce battle was going on. The Observer had a poster for my series that appeared in all the tube stations of London. It screamed out the headline The Plot
To Thwart Pope John . Read Congar and you will see that headline was an understatement.
Why am I telling you these stories?
Because I want you to be aware during the coming year of efforts to dumb the
Council down, of efforts to convince you that the Council didn’t change the
Church very much. I think it did, and after you recall what kind of Church we lived in before Vatican II, I think you will agree with me, and rejoice with me and be glad for what the Council did do, irreversibly, I hope.
The Council changed the way we thought about God, about ourselves, about our spouses, our Protestant cousins, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and Jews, even the way we thought about the Russians. When a handful of bishops kept pushing for conciliar condemnation of Communism, John XXIII kept insisting that that kind of talk would only blow up the world. Pope John and his Council made some preliminary moves that helped end the Cold War. For
16 summer 2012 this, the editors of Time made John XXIII the Man of the Year.
Before the Council, we thought only
Protestants read the Bible. After the
Council, we’ve seen a new Catholic appreciation of the Scriptures; they’ve been given a more prominent place at Mass; and in many parishes, we have groups gathering every week for Bible study.
Before the Council, we took pride in knowing that we were the only people on earth who could expect salvation, according to the centuries-long mantra, ‘There is no salvation outside the Church.’
- of a triumphal Church that had all the answers, lording it over humankind.
The Jews? The Council reversed the Church’s long-standing anti-Semitism. Until the
Council, Catholics believed that, if Jews didn’t convert to Catholicism, there was something wrong with them. The Council
Fathers took another look at that idea and decided that Jews were still living their ancient covenant with God. We decided there was nothing wrong with the Jews; they became our brothers and sisters.
Before the Council, we thought we were miserable sinners when we were being nothing but human. After the Council, we had a new view of ourselves. We learned to put a greater importance on finding and following Jesus as ‘the way’ (as opposed to what we said in the Creed. It didn’t matter so much what we said. What mattered was what we did: helping to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and find shelter for the homeless. That’s what made us followers of Jesus.
Before the Council, we identified ‘salvation’ as ‘getting to heaven.’ After the Council, we knew that we had a duty to bring justice and peace to the world in our own contemporary society, understanding in a new way the words that Jesus gave us when he taught us to pray, ‘thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’
By the end, among the most influential figures at the Council, we encountered two humble souls, one a woman, Dorothy
Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker movement, who wasn’t allowed to speak to the assembled bishops at Vatican II (no woman was), and a bird-like figure, Dom
Helder Camara, the archbishop of Recife, in Brazil. Both of them went around
Rome telling individual bishops and those who were putting together the Council’s crowning document, Gaudium et Spes: please don’t forget the poor.
Before the Council, we were told we were excommunicated if we set foot in a
Protestant Church. After the Council
(where Protestant observers were welcomed, given seats of honor, and spoken of no longer as Protestants, but as ‘separated brethren’), we stopped fighting the
Methodists and the Presbyterians and conspired with them in the fight for justice and peace and marched with them to Selma.
The Council did not forget the poor, and the statement out of Rome in October
2011 allying the Church with the world’s have-nots only proves that even the current powers-that-be in the Church (still so unaccountable in so many other ways) get it. I will quote Gaudium et Spes: “The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ.”
Before the Council, we were sin-obsessed. It was even a sin to eat a hamburger on Friday night after the game. After the Council, we had a new sense of sin. We didn’t hurt
God when we sinned. We sinned when we hurt somebody else. Or ourselves. After the Council, we had a new holy hopeful view of ourselves, redefining holiness as the famous Trappist monk Thomas Merton did: to be holy is to be human.
After the Council, we began to see there was something good and something great in all religions. And we didn’t think we had all the answers. After Vatican II, we started thinking of ourselves not as ‘the one, true
Church’. We were ‘a pilgrim people’. It was a phrase that summoned up an image of a band of humble travellers on a journey who, though we are subject to rain and snow and high wind and hurricane, to thirst and starvation and pestilence and disease and attack by leopards and locusts, keep on plodding ahead with a hope and a prayer that we will somehow reach our destination.
The image was calculated to counter an old self-concept that hadn’t stood up to scrutiny
Before the Council, we were told we were condemned to hell if we made love to our spouses without at the same time making babies. After the Council, we knew we had a duty (and the God- approved pleasure) to make love even if we could not afford to have another baby.
Before the Council, we thought God spoke directly to the Pope and that he passed the word down the ecclesiastical pyramid to the bishops, then to the priests, then the nuns, and, properly filtered, to us. After the
Council, we learned a new geometry. The
Church wasn’t a pyramid. It was more like a circle, where we are all encouraged to have a voice. We are the Church. We have a right and a duty to speak out about the kind of
Church we want.

Please note that most of these changes did not come about because the Fathers of
Vatican II revamped what we had already professed believing in the Apostles Creed.
They didn’t change our faith, they didn’t come up with a new understanding of God.
Still one God, two natures, three persons.
Only in this sense can I agree with Pope
Benedict XVI when he keeps insisting on something he calls ‘the hermeneutic of continuity.’
I have to agree with him when he says the
Council didn’t come up with anything new. No, no new dogmas. (And thank God for that. The last thing modern, thinking
Catholics want are dogmas of any kind.
‘Dogma’ and ‘dogmatic’ are words that we do not much resonate with. When I think of dogma, I think of the hundreds of anathemas laid down by the Council of
Trent: ‘believe these dogmatic propositions or be damned.’)
When Jesus addressed the multitude on that hillside overlooking the lake, he did not enlighten their minds by reading them the Ten Commondments. He enkindled their hearts by telling what would make them happy.
The Council Fathers did not follow the example of Trent. They followed the example of Jesus. They did not anathematise anyone or anything. They set a new style of thinking about ourselves as followers of the guy who told us how we could have life and have it more abundantly.
We make a mistake if we comb through the sixteen documents of Vatican II and hope to find explicit warrants for the Church we want to see take shape in the future. We can only capture the real, revolutionary meaning of the Council by looking at the new kind of language that permeated all those documents. It was not the kind of legalistic language Cardinal Ottaviani loved. The American Jesuit John W.
O’Malley, author of the most authoritative work on the Council, What Happened at Vatican II, says the Council’s message was hidden in plain sight. Fr O’Malley
FEATURES describes it by contrasting the old language with the old:
...at stake were almost two different visions of Catholicism: from commands to invitations, from laws to ideals, from definition to mystery, from threats to persuasion, from coercion to conscience, from monologue to dialogue, from ruling to service, from withdrawn to integrated, from vertical to horizontal, from exclusion to inclusion, from hostility to friendship, from rivalry to partnership, from suspicion to trust, from static to ongoing, from passive acceptance to active engagement, from fault finding to appreciation, from prescriptive to principled, from behaviour modification to inner appropriation.
Mere words? I do not think so. They underline my thesis - that the Council helped us all be more real, more human and more loving. The Council helped us realise that the world was a good place.
It was good because God made it, and he made it because he loved us and loved the world, too. As should we.
BY FRANK MARRIOTT
Frank Marriott, Spiritual Counsellor for the Oceania Region of Teams and Vicar General and Chancellor for the Diocese of Sandhurst, reflects on his recent trip to Brasilia for the international gathering of Teams - Equipes Notre-Dame.
The 2012 College of Teams met in Brasilia from the 17-21 July. The College is like the Cabinet of Teams – and comprises the
Leading Couple and Spiritual Counsellors of all the World Regions of Teams. Faye and Kevin Noonan from Canberra and I made up the Oceania Delegation.
A series of Papers were presented; Cardinal
Dom Pedro Scherer, Archbishop of San
Paulo, gave an overview on the Brasil
Church; workshops in the principal language groups were held and discussion on the strengths and weaknesses of Teams were held.
Currently Teams is represented in over 50 countries with world-wide membership of
130,000 people and is known in some areas by its French name Equipes Notre-Dame.
The second week saw Brasilia invaded by 7,800 members of Teams and 50
Nationalities were presented to the
Assembly – a little like the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games and feeding the 8,000 each dinner time was quite a feat. The Syrian Delegation received a bigger applause than even the Brasilians and those present were deeply moved by the joint witness of the Lebanese and
Syrian delegates who decided that they must be present to say thanks for the gift of Teams in their lives!
Timothy Radcliffe OP, the keynote speaker (hot off a plane from the NCP
Warrnambool Convention) offered reflections to kick start each day and
DVD presentations gave us a glimpse of the spread of Teams and the initiatives being taken to highlight the gift of marriage. We broke into discussion groups based on language and our group had people from England, Ireland,
India, Trinidad and Tobago, Malawi,
Brasil, Romania, United States and
Australia. Experiences shared. Challenges presented. Difficulties experienced. The world, old and new! First and Third are all experiencing in one form or another, the questions raised by the young, the gay, the married communities. What are healthy relationships? How should they be regulated? What roles are expected?
For me, the insight that stuck was the importance of the “sit down” - the time encouraged by Teams for husband and wife to set all things aside and simply share, talk, discuss. Maybe it can be done over the dishes, but it seemed to me that experience suggested, leave all that aside, frequently find a quiet spot, and face one another.
Highlighted yet again in our TV oriented and mobile world was the family meal - without distraction.
In the Diocese of Sandhurst, Teams has been very much part of Diocesan fabric since the 1970s. There are some
30 Teams in the Diocese (and room for more). Christine and John Haddrick from St Patrick’s in Wangaratta are our representatives on the Oceania Team. Joe
Taylor PP at Shepparton, has been highly involved since the 1970’s. There are many other experienced leaders.
One great memory is illustrated by the accompanying photo. The nations were asked to send a photo of their cathedral.
Our Leading Couple chose the Sacred
Heart Cathedral, Bendigo. Imagine my surprise and delight when on the day
8,000 people assembled before the great
Brasilia Cathedral for the public act of
Witness to Marriage and there in the field was the great picture of Sacred Heart
Cathedral, Bendigo!
I am grateful for the opportunity to have attended this XI international gathering.
It represented a timely reminder to the world that marriage is a positive good and a source of spiritual strength for the human race.

FEATURES
18 summer 2012
BY JOHN BOSMAN MSC
John Bosman MSC was in Rome during the Second Vatican Council and offers this wonderfully poetic account of things as they unfolded in the MSC house in Rome.
Fifty years ago John XXIII opened a window.
You and I know that opening a window, be it in a bus, office, bedroom or church is no small matter. Reactions usually are immediate, varied and passionate.
The Spirit still hovers over the void and the waters. She moves, shapes and shakes, feeds and buffets and whispers. The Spirit identifies with voids, waters and chaos, thus breathing life into our wobbling earth. Thus in refracted droplets rainbows break into the colourful song of embraced horizons. A whole universe pulses in rhythmic dance.
I recall the excitement of the city of Rome in the early sixties when stubborn patterns and attitudes of ‘unchange’ were named, challenged and irretrievably reversed. New documents on the Liturgy were drafted and accepted, new text books were written in the Roman Universities. All of us, bishops and students, professors and locals felt the urgent thrust and irrepressible throbbing of our hearts for connection and togetherness into unexplored depths.
In the Council hall Cushing’s offer to have a simultaneous translation system installed was rejected. I was amazed that electronic (computerized) counting of votes was accepted. I felt shock and foreboding fear when power play and last minute manoeuvring almost torpedoed the final vote on The Constitution of the Church in the Modern World , the torpedo being the infamous Nota Praevia .
Seven missionary bishops stayed with us at our international house of studies. Bishops and students left the house at the same time in the morning at 7.45am, they by bus to St Peter’s, and we on foot to the
Gregorian University. Sometimes I sneaked into the bishops’ bus and once past the first row of guards was able to attend the daily Eucharist. Understandably, but also incongruously we were told at the end of the Eucharist: “Exeant omnes auditores”
(Let those who listen get out).
I made the voting date of the Decree on
Religious Freedom appropriately memorable for myself in this way. I gave Bishop Virgil
Copas 9 of the 12 copies he had asked me to duplicate. Then I calmed and charmed a security guard by waving my three copies saying that the secretary Bishop of the
Papuan New Guinea Conference needed them. He let me go up into the stands, and
I reached out to the bishop, handed him the remaining pages with a smile and a wink.
My heart still relishes the enthusiasm with which the bishops lived and worked. They grew into a new awareness of what it meant to listen and speak for themselves, for their people and future generations. At first they stuttered in their expressions of the shard-sharp needs of their people, but grew confident and eloquent in voicing them to sedentary, ossified, curial ears.
They relaxed with us. As a group they gave us a TV set. One of them played tennis with us and played again the week after feeling stiff and sore. When the bishops did not wear their soutanes into the city, we followed suit.
Cardinal Suenens summarised the Council as an experience and call to co-responsibility.
I knew that to include neighbours, friends, superiors, bishops, Pope and even God.
Paul VI’s first Encyclical Ecclesiam Suam called for dialogue. To listen, speak and live in and through others. He himself denounced the hostility and rancour of the Lateran Professors who attacked the
Professors at the Biblicum. That must never, never, never happen again, he said ( Mai, mai, mai piu ). His words were passionate and clear. On the eve of his escape to the
Holy Land, he curtailed the ‘powers’ of
Cardinals: after the age of 80 they were no longer able to participate in conclaves, he cut their trains (of the Cappa Magna), he abolished the kissing of rings and did away the Tiara and the Sedia Gestatoria.
We came to know ourselves to be a people on the move, journeying towards the ultimate Mystery through savouring justice, truth, peace and love.
We were full of hope, touched by the present moment, the freshness of Christmas.
Now, 50 years after the Council, I am slower in movement and less inclined to rush into action or judgment. I resonate with that saying of Jesus when he sent his disciples on their mission: “be innocent as doves and cunning as snakes” (Matt 10/16).
That speaks to me of the stillness needed to honour individual beauty and the gift of togetherness.

FEATURES
BY ERIC HODGENS
Eric Hodgens is a priest of the Archdiocese of Melbourne, now retired from full-time ministry after fifty years. He continues to read and reflect, and share the fruits of that.
Prayer gets a lot of lip service but what it means is more elusive? Calls to prayer often imply an odd image of an interventionist God who will choose to arrange outcomes capriciously. Pious statements that our prayers go out to someone experiencing difficulties are usually statements of solidarity rather than communications with God.
As children we learnt our prayer formulas well: The Our Father, the Hail Mary, the act of contrition. Morning and evening recitation of the formulas was a regular part of many family routines. All very simple as was the image of the God to whom they were addressed.
The seminary brought us to heavier-duty prayer: much more liturgical prayer;
Mass, the Divine Office, Benediction and the occasional Holy Hour before the
Blessed Sacrament, grace before and after meals, communally recited prayers and individually chosen devotions such as visits to the Blessed Sacrament and Stations of the Cross. Each day also had scheduled an examination of conscience and a half hour of spiritual reading. Weekly confession was routine. We had a monthly “Day of
Recollection” and an annual silent weeklong retreat. Programmed prayer.
From the outset we had a half hour of mental prayer scheduled in the chapel before Mass every day. We called it meditation. At Corpus Christi College our
Jesuit teachers introduced us to the Ignatian method of meditation. Other seminaries had different methods. The half hour was sacrosanct – but to what effect?
Over recent years I have asked dozens of priests who studied at secular and religious seminaries what they remember being taught about prayer in the seminary.
The most frequent answer was: not much.
Asked what they did during morning meditation, the most frequent answer was: doze. Various forms of prayer dotted the seminary day but it seems to have remained a cloudy area for many students who had to work it out for themselves.
Generations of priests graduating from
20th century seminaries were instructed to continue the seminary practices when they moved on to pastoral life. Many found this a very arid program, did their best and then gave up or developed a new approach. Those who kept most rigidly to this routine showed little development in spiritual maturity. By sticking to the routine, they may have felt they had done the right thing, but were dull.
The liturgical changes which flowed from
Vatican II transformed the prayer life of many priests. The new lectionary extended the scripture texts they read day by day and preached from. The homily called for an opening up of the meaning of the texts and an application of that meaning to everyday life. Preparing homilies entailed a deepening of Christian insight and an integration of that insight into the real issues of pastoral life. Belief grew out of action, not the other way round.
This led some to study the scriptures more extensively. Historical critical studies showed how the scriptures developed, and when? Following the time line of the evolution of the New Testament led to insights into how the Christology of the early believers changed and developed and, consequently, how their understanding and imagining of God had grown. Ongoing development of faith developed by reflection has been central to Christian life from its beginning and is still happening.
Increased focus on the gospels heightened a sense that Jesus was the human face of God. But this is only one facet of the mystery that is God – and limited at that. Meanwhile the catechism image of God as creator and provider of the universe has become problematic in the light of Darwin and the Big Bang. The difficulty of believing in such a God is a major stumbling block for the younger generation that is abandoning the Church.
Seminary theological studies had introduced a broader array of images of
God - God as mystery – the ultimate reality; the God of the mystics; the
God you can better describe by what
It is NOT rather than what It IS. This is good grounding because the new pastoral and cultural context is calling for a new articulation of belief in God.
And this work is already being done by contemporary scholars in, scripture, history, anthropology and especially
Christology and soteriology. Hence the importance of the Ray Browns, Roger
Haights, Elizabeth Johnsons and
Philip Kennedys.
Prayer is not an end in itself. Its purpose is to enliven and nourish faith in God. This calls for development of mind as well as heart.
Maybe those who as observant seminarians found prayer a problem are now its best exponents because their journey of mind and heart has brought them to a deeper appreciation of the mystery of God.
Bursaries are offered to members (financial for 5 + years as per NCP policy) to assist with further study in Australia or overseas.
Application forms are available at nationalcouncilofpriests.com.au or by contacting the National Office. Applications close 31 December 2012.
the swag
19

FEATURES
BY NOEL CONNOLLY SSC
Noel Connolly SSC is a member of the Strathfield Columban Community, Sydney, and a lecturer in Missiology at both the
Broken Bay Institute and the Catholic Institute of Sydney. He asks an important question about the nature of evangelisation as bishops from around the world meet for the XXIII Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, on the theme The
New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith . It was first published on 24 September, 2012 on CathNews .
One thing that concerns me about many people who talk about “New Evangelisation” is that they talk almost exclusively about what the Church has to give and rarely about what it might have to learn.
I hear almost nothing positive about “the world”. We seem to be back to pre-Vatican II
Missiology when we were “battling paganism” or preaching to people ignorant of God.
As a young Columban seminarian each
Columban’s Day I sang with enthusiasm our
Columban song, founded in the Trinity. Mission begins in the Father’s boundless love creating and sustaining the world. The three persons of the Trinity love the world and are constantly creating, healing, reconciling, transforming and uniting the world.
Jesus too was consumed with a sense of mission. Although he was intensely conscious of the power of evil he could also see goodness breaking through and preached that the Kingdom of God was near at hand
[Mk. 1:15]. The Kingdom of God was Jesus’ central message his dream for the world.
I was committed and prepared to give my life to such a crusade. With the grace of God, I have given my life to mission but I have given up the crusading image. I find it dangerous.
As Cardinal Hume said after the Synod on the Family, “I saw in a dream a vision. It was a vision of the Church. I saw a fortress, strong and upstanding. Every stranger approaching seemed to those who defended it to be an enemy to be repelled; from that fortress the voices of those outside could not be heard.” Crusaders are not good listeners and necessarily have an excessively negative opinion of the “enemy”.
The Church’s mission is to be a sacrament of the Kingdom.
The Kingdom embraces all creation but is especially embodied in the church, “its initial budding forth”. However, the church is not the Kingdom but its seed and sign. Or as John Paul II said in Redemptoris Missio, “The Church is effectively and concretely at the service of the Kingdom.” But it “remains incomplete unless it is related to the Kingdom of Christ present in the Church and straining towards eschatological fullness.” [RM #20]
Undoubtedly there is a lot of evil in the world. As a partly human construct it is ambiguous containing both evil and suffering and opportunities to meet God. But, if we are to be better evangelisers when we must both proclaim boldly and humbly seek out
God’s presence around us. This attitude is also more likely to gain us a better hearing.
Most people listen more willingly to people who appreciate them and are learning along with them.
It is also theologically correct. A major discovery at Vatican II was that mission is
We are compelled to preach Jesus. We must also build Christian communities everywhere to keep alive the memory of Jesus and reveal God’s coming reign. However, the primary aim of mission is not the extension of the Church, important as that is, but the revelation of God’s love and the realisation of
God’s plan for the world.
The Church exists for the sake of God’s
Kingdom which is breaking into our world in many places including far beyond the boundaries of the institutional church. God is especially active wherever people strive for justice, peace, freedom and reconciliation between peoples, religions and with the environment. Our task is not only to proclaim but to seek out, discover, encourage, celebrate and build on the Spirit’s presence and activity in the world.
The Church does not have to do all the good in the world. Presumably much of the
“Kingdom good” done today will be done by people outside the Church. We need to be discerning enough to recognise goodness wherever we find it and humble enough to rejoice in and build on it. We are most missionary when we move out to discover what God is doing around us. Then we will be a more authentic and convincing sign of God’s hopes for the world and more convincing.
20 summer 2012

FEATURES
BY FRANK O’DEA
Frank O’Dea, parish priest of Star of the Sea, Cleveland, invites members of the NCP to consider the possibilities of becoming a union affiliated with the
Australian Secular Trade Union Movement. An interesting challenge!
I am a Brisbane secular priest who has worked in the parishes of the Archdiocese for some forty five years. I have enjoyed my years of pastoral work and the friendship between parishioners and myself engendered over these years in seven different parishes.
But as I am in the twilight of my pastoral life, I worry about the pastoral care of our parishioners going into the future, as the numbers of parishioners keep growing but the priests are fewer and older.
I would like to make a practical suggestion that might help in discussing the pastoral possibility into the future.
I would suggest that the National Council of Priests make itself also a Trade Union affiliated to the Australian Secular Trade
Union Movement.
Please don’t stop reading.
This is not being impractical or disloyal.
In Rerum Novarum, the first Catholic
Social Encyclical in 1891, Pope Leo XIII supported the setting up of trade unions to enable individual workers to come together as a large group in order to negotiate better working conditions with their more powerful employers.
So Trade Unions have been seen as legitimate by the Catholic Church for almost 120 years and helpful to the workers.
In Australia we have a strong tradition of unions speaking up for workers, and that there has been cooperation between the
Australian Catholic Church and the Union
Movement. Cardinal Moran in Sydney supported the Unions in the great strike in the 1890’s.
In the 1940’s and 1950’s Bob Santamaria with the support of the Australian bishops, encouraged Catholic laymen to join him in combating the increasing influence of the communists in the Australian Unions.
So in Australian Catholic Church history there has been a strong interplay between the Catholic Church and the Union
Movement. This would be another interplay.
Canon Law, at the moment, forbids the priests from joining a trade union or a political party. But in 1919, just two years after the first edition of the Book of Canon
Law, Dom Luizi Sturzo, a Sicilian priest, formed the “Popular Party” in Italy with the acceptance of the church authority at the time. It went on to be very successful to be the last political party to challenge the dictatorship of Mussolini until dissolved in 1926. Therefore, the Church does make exceptions to Canon Law.
As priests, particularly secular priests, we are very independent, almost mavericks and strongly influential in our parishes but we are often very timid in standing up to
Church Authority or authorities.
In the 1890’s, there were many shearers scattered through country areas of
Australia. They were itinerants with nothing much in common. They seemed to be an impossible group to get together.
But a Shearers union was formed under the initiative of William Spence and eventually evolved into the powerful Australian
Workers Union.
So, independent priests might be able also to come together into a capable union.
Why should we make such a move to form a secular trade union?
The priest leaders of the National Council of Priests have shown themselves to have the support and trust of a large body of the priests of Australia. I would ask that they might be also the leaders of a secular Trade
Union of Priests.
After all, the Catholic Church in Australia allows Catholic teachers, their union.
As priests we have rights in Church law.
But I believe if the NCP was a secular union, it would have additional rights, protection and sanctions to negotiate with
Church Authorities.
I think that there are a number of issues, priests, at the grassroots, would like to discuss with authorities in an open, honest way without unfair, unjust repercussions.
I believe the Australian secular society does this in a better way with good sanctions in place. Opposing positions can be put forward with greater openness. It would be helpful to avail ourselves of these opportunities.
It would be helpful to the NCP to be able to do this on behalf of the Australian
Priests. This would enable greater grassroots input from the priests of Australia. These are good and loyal men of the Church whose greater influence in our Australian
Catholic Church can only be a good thing.
I put my suggestion forward to the members of the NCP for their consideration and discussion.
the swag
21

FEATURES
BY ADRIAN MCINERNEY
Adrian McInerney, PP, St Alipius Ballarat East, Victoria, considers an appropriate response in the face of the reality of the abuse by clergy. How can we find words to meet the present crisis without re-traumatising and re-offending the victims?
The announcement of a parliamentary
Inquiry into sexual abuse in organizations in Victoria has led to this attempt to put some order into until now random thoughts about how best to respond to accusations made against the Church. I acknowledge that the Inquiry is directed to the Church as one organization among many to be investigated in Victoria.
But the Church attracts my immediate attention because I belong to it and because initial indications are that the media will be intent on focusing on the Church. I must acknowledge that I am undoubtedly influenced by the fact that for reasons sometimes fair and sometimes unjust, St
Alipius Parish, in which I am currently parish priest, draws a great deal of media attention.
As of the time of writing, I am not sure just how the Inquiry is proceeding, but whatever its methodology, one thing of which I am convinced is that from the point of view of Church, being defensive will not be the answer. Claims, however accurate, that paedophilia is no more common in the Church than in the rest of society will carry no weight in the face of accusations by those who have been abused so hideously by members of the clergy and religious. Surely we do not have to wait for the results of the Inquiry before we make and honest and heartfelt acknowledgement that, not only have people been abused, but that mistakes have been made in answering the accusations and needs of those who have been abused.
My response can only be a faith response.
How am I as a Christian, and specifically a
Catholic Christian, called to respond? Can
I, as some would claim, excuse myself with the argument that “it is not my fault”, “I have not sexually abused anyone”, “I have no need to say sorry”? I added the specific
“Catholic” because I believe that one of the things which distinguishes Catholicism is its understanding of Church as sacrament.
The symbolic nature of sacramentality does allow us to speak and act in the name of and on behalf of another.
Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians
(12/12-26) uses the image of the body to describe our relationship to each other in the Church and reminds us in verse 13 that ”If the foot should say ‘Because I am not a hand I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less part of the body.” (v15) In the same way, being able to say that we have not perpetrated these actions does not excuse us from addressing the issue or from being compassionate to those who have suffered. “If one member suffers, all suffer together” (v26) Our own experience tells us that if one part of the body is infected then the whole body is affected. The image of the body prevents us from taking a “we/them” attitude.
One of the greatest sufferings for those still in the church may well be to admit, that having been so betrayed by people whom they trusted, victims of sexual abuse are now unable to trust anyone in authority, even those who may feel compassion for them. Our best intentions may be spurned and if that is so, we can do no more than to accept it as the reality and understand it.
Somehow or other, we need to understand that lack of trust and accept it as the reality.
I began with a statement that denial must be avoided. One opposite of denial is acceptance and that, it seems to me, is our appropriate response. Non acceptance in a defeatist mode, but in a very active one, an acceptance in the manner of
Jesus who, like the suffering servant of Isaiah, took our sins upon Himself.
The Passion of Jesus offers us a model of how we might act, for surely we will be stripped of our garments of pride and power and position. We will be mocked and treated with scorn. We will have crowns not of our own making or choosing, but of thorny accusations pressed into us. We will have to carry the weight of the cross of truth on our shoulders. Our shame will be public and even passers by will deride us. We will have to “die” to past perceptions in order to rise to a new humility, a new compassion and a new awareness of what it means to be church.
There is no resurrection without the crucifixion, no rising without a prior dying.
Distasteful and disgraceful as it may be, our church is stained, but we cannot pick and choose. It is also a treasure and in order to possess the treasure and appreciate it we need to ‘buy the field’, as in Matt 13:44.
For many of us this will be a difficult task, one which touches our hearts, our core as Catholics, our very being and selfunderstanding as the baptised.
It may help to hear the call of the poet
David Whyte, the call to take that necessary first step, without which no other step can be fruitful - the call to start ‘close in’.
( Start Close In by David Whyte from River
Flow - Many Rivers Press 2007)
We may not wish to take the first step, but it is necessary. The other thing which is necessary about that step is that it be in the right direction, the direction which leads us back unerringly to the Word Made Flesh and the true kin-dom of God.
22 summer 2012

BY KEVIN F BURKE
Kevin Burke, Parish Priest of Our Lady Help of Christians, Eltham offers an analysis of the struggle for power and influence in the church today as expressed in the outcome of the new translation of the missal.
I write essentially as a pastor of forty two years of pastoral experience that includes visiting five hundred households each year, working very closely with key parish leaders, leadership role in Marriage Encounter weekends as well as initiating and organising the first “Antioch” weekends, Evenings for Engaged programs and Choice young adults’ weekend programs in Melbourne.
I’ve also kept up contact with many former parishioners, some of whom are “hanging on to the church by the skin of their teeth”. For these and many other people, the problems associated with the new translation of the Missal are another constant reminder that their beloved Church’s leaders are increasingly losing the plot.
for changes to be made. Caring pastors are rightly disappointed that Vox Clara didn’t prepare a draft to test the people’s response.
Instead the changes to Mass prayers have been arbitrarily imposed without consultation.
The articles by the above four mentioned
Church leaders and even the Pope are tortuous, tedious and technical treatises, trying terribly hard to justify the many changes in the translation of the new
Missal. They perform more contortions, somersaults, triple twists and backflips than a dual Olympian diver/gymnast!
They deserve points for “having a go” at justifying the reactionary changes such as:
I have read numerous articles by our episcopal brothers, Peter Elliott, George
Pell, Denis Hart and Mark Coleridge as they justify the need for and the quality of the new translation of the Missal.
They are presently trying to convince us that the Mass text that we faithfully used for about forty years was inadequate in so many ways. I credit them with enough intelligence and human wisdom not to take several decades to form their judgements. I credit them with enough sincerity and pastoral concern for their people and the overall welfare of the Church to be motivated to have expressed their convictions and beliefs to the responsible authorities at the Vatican.
So please brothers, at least share with us, your colleagues in the priesthood, the concerns you obviously had thirty and forty years ago so that we can benefit from the continuity and consistency of your principles and beliefs.
Otherwise, does that mean that far from going against the tide and expressing their sincerely held convictions to the Vatican for the good of the universal Church, they followed the principle of going with the prevailing orthodoxy? What if the next Pope is a reformer or even a moderate, will they be caught with their pontifical pants down?
It seems that the higher our brothers work their way up the ecclesiastical pole, the more submissive they become and the less they listen to their people.
Over these forty years I can’t recall parishioners ever questioning the quality of the prayers we used for Mass nor can I recall articles by liturgists or theologians pushing
• “And with your Spirit” for “And also with you”
• “I” rather than “we” believe in God and “consubstantial” in the Profession of Faith
• “chalice” for “cup”
• “many” for “all” in the words of consecration
• “my soul shall be healed” for “I will be healed”
There are also frequent references to having to earn or merit grace and salvation. These are a contradiction in terms.
They give reasons such as being motivated by political correctness, being pressured by the questioning and unstable times, making rough rather than literal translations, bleaching out traditional Catholic teaching on mercy, sin and redemption and translations not sufficiently solemn and sacred in tone. I read the piece Pope
Benedict wrote on the “many” for the “all” in the words of consecration – very erudite and profound, but it failed the common sense test.
As they valiantly attempt to defend the indefensible they sound like politicians who are driven by ideological obsessions to make a disastrous decision (Iraq war) and then they make fools of themselves as they go chasing reasons to justify their warped judgement. Often their reasons are contradictory, alarmist and superficial, heavily coated with spin and P. R. as
FEATURES they play on people’s fears, anxieties and insecurities. Ideology quickly descends into idiotology.
If the Vatican could be considered as having a collective conscience, how would they be feeling now? In 1983, the Bishops of the
English-speaking countries appointed to the I.C.E.L. committee, a group of eminent and respected professionals, experts in the disciplines of liturgy, linguistics, scripture, theology and music, who spent fifteen years to come up with a new translation of the
Missal. No doubt the Vatican knew about this so one could reasonably presume that the process had their blessing. Then the fruit of their fifteen year labour of love was approved by a wide margin by every
Episcopal conference in English-speaking countries. You’d think that the Vatican would be delighted and say: “Well done team – you’ve provided a great service for the Church”. But no! They said: “Thanks, but no thanks”. They had other plans.
They are ideologues, driven by reactionary pre-occupations.
We’ve ended up with the farcical situation of Vatican officials, whose first language is not English, having the final say on our English translation. There are enough differences between the style of English spoken by British, North American and
Australian people. It’s even more difficult for people to be the final arbiter upon a language which is not their natural tongue.
Surely the previous arrangement of the
English speaking Bishops’ Conferences appointing a group of experts, whose first language was English, was much better.
No doubt there were some issues of substance such as inclusive language, but
I accept the considered judgment of an experienced Australian liturgist that it was all about a power struggle between the
Vatican and Bishops from English-speaking countries. Tension and conflict developed during the 1990s and the Congregation for Divine Worship published Liturgiam
Authenticam on 20/3/2001 – this represented the final takeover by the
Vatican. They showed no interest in dialogue, consultation or negotiation; they wanted to demonstrate, once and for all, who was in control rather than being concerned about having the best possible vehicle for all of us to worship, celebrate and praise our God.
How insulting and belittling to those
I.C.E.L. members who spent fifteen years of their lives, contributing their time, expertise and faith commitment!
Most of us are familiar with the old Latin saying, “lex orandi, lex credendi” i.e. “the rule of prayer is the rule of faith”. Up
Continued page 24

FEATURES until now I believed that the Vatican and our Church leaders had a responsibility to avoid division and confusion and to discourage heretical beliefs. Apparently not!
The second Eucharistic prayer now has us praying for mercy that “we may merit to be co-heirs to eternal life.” It’s scandalous in the Year of Grace to be told that we have to earn or merit the Lord’s free and unconditional gift of His Love. The Collect for the feast of “The Exaltation of the Holy
Cross” prays that “we, who have known His mystery on earth, may merit the grace of
His redemption in heaven.” Surely linking merit - as widely understood in the English language - with the idea of grace as pure gift
- is an inherent contradiction.
The Vox Clara group have managed to crack the quadrella jackpot. On any objective, rational assessment of motive, process, outcome and P.R., you couldn’t give them any more than three out of ten on any of these four criteria. They’ve put themselves in an impossible situation.
Here’s how I see it:
• Motive: ideological rather than holistic and integrated – anxious, alarmist judgement driven by reactionary vision.
• Process: very restricted and elitist, crucial stakeholders of priest celebrants and people worshippers ignored, no sense of working collaboratively.
• Outcome: check the familiar litany of complaints and criticism.
Sadly, there are more examples of doctrinally dubious statements in the new translation, not to mention the many poorly expressed prayers that are so difficult to pray and proclaim in an intelligible way.
The criterion seems to be that if you can find a more complicated, a more pious sounding or a more unwieldy word or phrase, they’ll take it anytime over a basic, understandable one.
• P.R: no rational attempt to explain the need for change, no sense of pastoral sensitivities, arbitrarily imposed from above.
The malevolent motive, pathetic process, outrageous outcome and poor P.R. add up to huge havoc and sad strategy.
I have yet to hear a rational explanation as to why there’s such an obsessive insistence on transliterating Latin words into English and translating Latin expressions word for word, and retaining its grammar and syntax, to produce unidiomatic if not unintelligible
English. The Church fathers didn’t do this when they translated the Nicene Creed from
Greek into Latin in the fourth century. They were more enlightened, and attempted to render the meaning in words that people could understand. I haven’t seen any argument that “consubstantial” achieves this in English.
I know it’s a highly competitive field, but apart from the mishandling of the tragic clergy abuse issue, has there been a more ill-judged decision with such widespread and disappointing consequences by the official Church in the past fifty years?
We are given reminders by the week that it’s not only in Denmark that “something is rotten” (apologies to Shakespeare), e.g. the late and beloved Cardinal Martini’s damning church critique from the grave and former Sydney priest Mr Chris
Geraghty’s book Dancing with the Devil.
George Pell, who chaired the Vox Clara group that gave us the new translation of the Missal, said on “Q & A” on ABC TV on 19/4/2012 that “God loves everyone except those who turn their back on him through evil acts”. With respect, this is, at the very least, doctrinally deficient. We learnt in primary school that God’s love for us is absolute and unconditional. So we should forget about “excepts”, “buts” &
“onlys” when referring to God’s love.
I realize that we pastors are trapped in an impossible situation, trying to balance our desire to follow the official Church’s directives with responding to the pastoral gifts and needs of our people. With many years of priestly service and Church life, we are often torn between two seemingly opposing forces.
Surely God’s love is very much the heart and soul of our faith and the driving principle of Church life. His love is there for us as a free gift to take in and celebrate. It’s sad that some of our leaders in the Universal Church don’t feel free to simply accept and embrace the love of God, being driven to restrict, modify or qualify the richness, depth and beauty of the Lord’s free gift of His love.
It’s worth trying it out. Its blessings can be renewing, transforming and healing.
• We are faithful servants of the Church in the sense of listening to and cooperating with directives from our leaders – this is what some of our leaders have in mind when they use the term “Universal Church” as if it’s only or virtually just the Vatican and perhaps the hierarchy.
• We are faithful servants of the Church in the sense of listening to and ministering to and with our people, the faithful, the
99% of the People of God.
I recognize that many dedicated pastors cope by putting their heads down and working quietly in their parishes or ministries with varying degrees of acceptance of the party line. My reading on the atmospherics of Church life for the past decade or two is that the Vatican is very successful at bluffing and bulldozing
Bishops to follow the party line without questioning; then most of the Bishops follow their example and do their darndest to bluff and bully we priests into falling into line. Apparently the hierarchy expect us to employ similar strategies to convince our people.
How much longer are we going to endure this intolerable situation? Last year a Bishop reminded me that our ordination promise was to “obey and respect” the Bishop. There are some limits to our promise of obedience and to the legitimate power of Bishops and
I suggest that the “respect” aspect is a two way process. I seem to recall that one of the meanings of the Latin word “obedire” is to listen. The principle of being a listening
Church seems to have disappeared from the vision of Vatican authorities and many
Bishops. Surely no-one would dare to suggest that with all the politicking, the lack of genuine consultation, ideologically driven motivation and the heavy-handed imposition, this whole business of the new translation was a good example of the listening Church in action or an exercise that respected the rights, gifts and needs of the faithful and priest presiders. As Church people, we are called to make good use of our God-given gift to listen. Church leaders have an even greater responsibility to become good listeners. We listen to the voice of God whether as an earthquake, a firestorm or a whisper. We listen to His life-giving spirit. We listen to the mind and heart of our people. We listen to the world with its joys and pain and pleas.
Unlike the confused concept of “earning grace” in the new translation, we do have to work for and earn the respect of our people;
I humbly suggest that Bishops have to work for and earn the respect of their priests, who are their co-workers and front-line men.
Instead of passively submitting to the hierarchy, I urge you, my brothers to take heart from our colleagues in Austria,
Germany and Ireland and to take up ecclesial arms and communicate in any way that we can to our episcopal and Vatican comrades that they don’t own the show and that we, on behalf of ourselves and our people, are no longer prepared to continue to look away and ignore their ideologically driven, authoritarian strategies. It may be some time before the Universal Church comes up with a better translation of
24 summer 2012

FEATURES the Missal, but surely we can’t stand by and say and do nothing while they go about imposing a similar process on the
Lectionary. The Word of God deserves better than that.
We may have lost round one brothers. I call upon all priests, who are faithful to the best traditions of our beloved Church and for whom “sensus fidelium” is a lived reality, to speak out and take action so that the sacred and nourishing Word is presented to our people in its most inviting way.
The issue of how the Christian community prays, celebrates and worships is very much at the heart and soul of our priestly ministry. The saddest aspect of this sorry saga is that we are stuck with a translation of such a poor standard that is frustrating and irritating many priest presiders and worshippers.
The response of so many people is interesting, ranging from indifference to confusion to disgust. People are puzzled and frustrated at seeing so many minor, seemingly technical changes such as from
“in the same way” to “in a similar way” at the consecration passage as they ask “why did they bother to make these changes?”
Following the “lex orandi lex credendi” principle, this inferior vehicle for community worship isn’t contributing as effectively as it should to a strengthening and a confirming of our communal faith. We care about our Church, our people deeply and profoundly. Many of us are aching on our own behalf and on behalf of our people. This adds to the depth and intensity of our frustration and disappointment and reinforces the increasingly widespread attitude of many faithful Catholics that the official Church is confused, misguided and out of touch, not only with the world at large (as accurately portrayed by Cardinal Martini), but especially with our worshipping community.
On 14 November, 1962, 2,162 Vatican II fathers voted in favour of the schema for the “Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy”, with only 46 negative votes. The final text was passed overwhelmingly about a year later – 2,147 Bishops voted in favour while four voted against it, i.e. less than one-fifth of 1%.
It’s extraordinary to observe that the type of people representing that very small minority have infiltrated and manoeuvred their way into the highest offices at the Vatican with the result that their reactionary vision and ideological preoccupations have led to our present situation with such a disappointing and poor quality Missal. I’m empowered by the insight of Gamaliel (Acts 5/30) who discouraged organised action against the followers of Jesus, saying “If this movement of theirs is of human origin it will break up of its own accord but if it does in fact come from God, you will not only be unable to destroy them, but you might find yourselves fighting against God”.
It seems that Pope John XXIII referred to people with this mentality in his opening speech to the Council in October 1962: He regrets the fact that he hears people who
“see nothing but a decline of truth and the ruin of the Church in these modern times.
They say that our era, in comparison with past ones, is getting worse and they behave as though they had learned nothing from history which is nonetheless, the teacher of life ... I feel I must disagree with these prophets of doom.” He presents a very different vision to that of “those prophets of doom”, saying that “Divine Providence is leading us to a new order of human relations” and that “The Church is now in your hands.”
Some of our ideologically driven leaders are no doubt celebrating their apparent, short-term success. Fortunately, they can’t control the workings of the dynamic and life-giving Spirit. Like the biblical principle of Wisdom, she is elusive and beyond manipulation. None of us, whatever our title, status or power, whether we’re control freaks, bullies or manipulators, can direct the flow of the Spirit that blows where it will. The appropriate response to the
Spirit is to submit and surrender, not the instinctive Vatican response of the Roman
Empire’s practice of “command and control.”
The reality that is the Spirit and the
Resurrection are our guarantees that the spirit of love expressed through goodness, truth and justice will prevail over the forces of darkness represented by ideology, ambition and extremism.
I can think of no better note to end with than to allow ourselves the privilege and the challenge of being inspired by the call to pastoral renewal by the prophetic
John XXIII:
“We are not here on earth as caretakers of a museum but to cultivate a flourishing garden of life and to prepare for a glorious future.”
The committee will meet at the
National Office in Belmont,
Monday 4 – Thursday 7 February.
We want to hear from you so please, if you have something you want discussed, put it in an email so that it can added to the agenda.
Email all agenda items to chairman@ncp.catholic.org.au or national.office@ncp.catholic.org.au by Friday 18 January.
The committee will also meet with the members of the Bishops
Commission for Church Ministry,
Thursday 21 February at
Mary MacKillop Place, Nth Sydney. the swag
25

FEATURES
BY MARTIN MAUNSELL
Martin Maunsell, a priest of the Archdiocese of Sydney, is currently on loan to the Archdiocese of Canberra &
Goulburn working in the parishes of Boorowa and Binalong.
Here he reflects on his 25 years as a priest working in both city and country parishes.
Not long after arriving at
Boorowa/Binalong
I attended a vocational discernment weekend at Galong where Julian Wellsping
(a good classmate of mine during our seminary days at Manly) asked me: “What is the difference between ministering in a relatively small country parish in comparison to a big, busy Sydney parish?”
At the time I could not give an adequate answer but now after 12 months I think that I can.
The first thing is that there is definitely more opportunity to go out and visit people and get to know them. There is also more time for theological and recreational reading (I have a great love of reading the biographies of people from all walks of life) … a lot more time to be proactive in how I use my time. It was rather strange coming to terms with the reality that at Boorowa the phone and the doorbell hardly ever rang especially from people wanting to book weddings, baptisms and funerals. I well remember at Lane Cove leaving most Monday mornings at 9.30 am and then returning about
7.30 to be faced with about 7 or 8 phone messages, a number of email messages as well as the daily snail mail. Now when I return to Boorowa after three days away each fortnight, there maybe 2 messages, 1 email and about 3 letters. I really do enjoy this side of life now and will definitely miss it when I return to Sydney. Also in a small country parish, I have found it personally important to be involved in the wider community, so the local Rotary Club and their community work as well as Police
Chaplaincy is very much an important part of my time each week.
In my first 11 years of ordained ministry I have been an assistant priest in five Sydney parishes and they have all been different yet also a great experience. I have been blessed to have worked with six good and dedicated priests who have all enriched not just my priestly life, but my life as a whole. I would like to mention who they are as I am sure that many of you here would know at least some of them all if not all of them. I was a deacon under the care of Ken Sergeant, and then I was a curate under John Mc Sweeney,
Pat Hurley, Phil Linder, Bill Hannon and
Terry Bell.
I did have a country appointment before coming to Boorowa. In 1993 Cardinal
Clancy asked me to fill in for six months at the East Tamworth parish. The PP there was the then Fr Gerard Hanna - now the Bishop of Wagga Wagga. Gerard’s capacity for hard work yet at the same time for being calm and focused and being gentle with people was an inspiration. When he was appointed bishop I knew that in this case the powers that be got it exactly right. He was definitely the right choice to lead a rural diocese.
My two appointments as PP began in
1997. The first appointment was to St
Brendan’s, Bankstown and the second to
St Michael’s, Lane Cove. St Brendan’s was a fascinating parish in which to live and work. To be an Anglo Celtic put one very much in the minority - the majority of the people were Vietnamese, Samoan, Italian or Maltese. I remember very well that the
Church was a great place of unity for all of these people and there was very little tension between anyone. I also remember that in the Parish school with an enrolment of around 580 children about 80 had the same surname - Nguyen. After six years I felt that it was time for a change and when the parish of St Michael’s, Lane Cove, was advertised I was encouraged to apply. Most of the parishioners sent their children to the big Catholic schools in the area such as Riverview College, St. Aloysius, Loreto
Kirribilli and Monte St. Angelo. I was constantly in awe of the work ethic of so many parishioners where often both parents worked just to make ends meet and to be able to pay the school fees. One of the things that I look back on with great pride during my time at Lane Cove was working with the great RCIA team. We received 62 adults into the Church over seven
Easter vigils.
After 7.5 years I knew that it was time to move on and perhaps with a sense of divine providence it was advertised in our monthly
Ad Clerum for someone to the Archdiocese of Canberra & Goulburn to help out for 3 years. Without much hesitation I volunteered. When the Archbishop asked me to go to the Parish of Boorowa, like most people from Sydney my first question was; “Where is it?” I want to acknowledge the great work of Greg Beath who in so many ways made Boorowa a very good and viable parish as well providing a great residence.
Over the last 25 years there are a number of observations that I would like to share with you. The first is that I don’t think that there has ever been a day where I have been unhappy being a priest and wanted to do something else. Sometimes it has been difficult and people have hurt and upset me as I am sure that
I have done to others as well.
But each day I genuinely look forward to getting up and going about my work and I consider this a great blessing that God has given me.
The second thing is how important I think it is to remain close to people in their life routines and milestones. This is a constant decision to make and
I am often inspired by what I see. If we don’t stay close to people I think it is then so easy to develop destructive habits that often come from being too lonely.
The third thing is how important it is to keep on leading a balanced life. Time needs to be set aside for regular prayer, physical exercise, constant theological and recreational reading and for me going to the movies and watching plenty of sport - especially the two rugby codes, cricket and tennis.
Finally, I would like to somehow work towards seeing our Church less centralized from Rome and for our bishops to be given a greater say in how they lead their dioceses, especially concerning liturgy. The way that we use our liturgical and scripture texts needs to become more inclusive. I would like to see a greater respect and place for women in our Church. I would also like to see an open discussion on the possibility of a female diaconate. At least this is a vision I have for the next 25 years!
26 summer 2012

FEATURES
BY LISA BARCZYK
Lisa Barczyk, Milwaukee, WI USA, writes about a
FutureChurch project to widen the discussion on ministry to include women.
It was my privilege to attend the NCP convention in Warrnambool in July. Those in attendance gave powerful witness to the call of servant leadership. I came as a representative for FutureChurch, an international renewal organization based in Cleveland Ohio, USA.
The group was founded in 1990 in response to the US Bishops’ decision to substitute communion services for Sunday Mass in parishes without a priest. FutureChurch seeks ways for all of God’s people to be nourished through the outpouring of God’s sacramental love, especially in the Eucharist. We are concerned about the growing shortage of priests in developed nations, as well as the deepening Eucharistic famine in developing ones. We are even more concerned by the lack of response to this rapidly worsening crisis from those in positions of leadership in our Church.
As global renewal efforts move forward, FutureChurch is prepared to partner with Australian Catholics and others world-wide in creating one voice that calls for the opening of dialogue on these important issues. We have long admired the progressivism of Australia’s priests and people and hope you will join us in circulating links to online and downloadable paper postcards in your faith communities.
Limiting the role of women and denying the gift of a married priesthood unnecessarily withholds the Eucharist from the baptized.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Vatican II gave a voice to God’s people and we must now come together and remind our bishops and others in leadership roles that it is time for Vatican II to be fully realized in a living, vibrant Church. Through education of the laity on issues of optional celibacy and women deacons, we can promote discussion at the parish level that will lead to enlightened change at the diocesan level....and from there, who knows? It is incumbent upon us to give voice to the global renewal efforts.
FutureChurch has become an international resource for grassroots renewal initiatives related to the priest shortage and women’s roles in the church. In 2005 we delivered over 35,000 signatures asking for open discussion of mandatory celibacy and women deacons at the International Bishops’ Synod on The Eucharist where we had a prominent media presence. In 2007 we conducted a worldwide postcard initiative geared to the international Bishops’ Synod on the Word. We asked that women biblical scholars to serve as synod experts, for expanded opportunities for women to preach, and for recognition of women’s stories deleted from the lectionary. As a result, the Synod had the most women experts in history, the bishops did discuss opening study of lectionary texts, and a final proposition praised women in the ministry of the Word.
For married priests click here http://tinyurl.com/bx8f4sb For women deacons, click here http://tinyurl.com/aelrgba
Issues facing the church in Australia are very similar to those in other nations. We know that progressive voices in the priesthood are aging and new ordinations are bringing more conservative practices. We face the imposition of contrived “English” in our worship. We decry the silencing of prophetic women and men for saying what we all know to be true. What saves us and gives us hope is the faith that we share - it’s truly about what “we” believe.
We believe that the People of God have the obligation to raise questions and expect dialogue. We believe that all people can be called by God to serve as ordained ministers of the Church. We believe that injustice must be called out and made right. Through these beliefs, we have hope for a more inclusive Church - the kind of Church that Christ intended for us to be.
The website www.futurechurch.org has many resources for education and advocacy on topics important to all Catholics.
Please share this information with active members of your parish communities - it is through empowerment at the local level that real dialogue and understanding can occur at all levels.
We are now conducting an international electronic and paper postcard campaign asking the Vatican to open discussion of married priests and women deacons. We plan to deliver lists of signers to offices in Rome in March, 2013.
If you would like more information or can connect renewalminded Australians to us, please contact Sr. Chris Schenk at chris@futurechurch.org.
This site (www.theswag.org.au) is now a paid subscription site, but is free for NCP Members.
The modest annual subscription fee ($33.00 inc GST) will help us maintain this site and continue to provide a platform for thought provoking articles, not only for Australian clergy, but for the wider Church. the swag
27

FEATURES
BY CYRIL LOVETT SSC
Pat Kenna alerted us to this story of a Columban priest who ministered in many parts of the world with an extraordinary practice of evangelisation and inculturation. He died at age 91 on 10 September this year. The homily given by Cyril Lovett ssc at his funeral Mass is inspiring to read and is reprinted below. You can read full story at: http://tinyurl.com/8vlcrpp
With the death of Michael Healy, that small group of ‘Old China Hands’ is further reduced. They were an extraordinary group, the last of them practically the same age as the Society of St Columban. They worked in a China that had hardly begun to be developed. Communication within China was extremely difficult; communication with home countries depended on the rare letters that brought news that was months out of date. In the main, they lived widely separated from each other and travel to visit a neighbouring Columban often took days.
Those who kept sane and happy were men of prayer, men of rich internal resources, men who were passionate about being called by the Lord to spread his Kingdom.
But, even among this elite ‘band of brothers’ Michael was unique. A big man, a man of great physical strength, we remember him as a happy man of unfailing courtesy, kindness and cheerfulness. Like
Columban, our patron, Michael was twice expelled, from China in 1952, and from
Burma in 1966. Unlike Columban, he had the great grace of revisiting both countries: he visited China 38 years later in 1990, and
Burma 34 years later in 1998.
Michael had a phenomenal memory and this served him well as one of the great
Columban story-tellers. He enjoyed telling stories and would give a delighted chuckle as, in his mind’s eye, he skipped forward to the funny bits. We, the listeners could only guess the cause of his mirth as we waited for the story to continue. Listening to Michael tell a story was like being carried along on a great river of narrative. The challenge for Michael was to resist leading us up each tributary stream to fill in the subplots of the story! All of us have a fund of stories from our time in mission, many of them stories of fellow-Columbans.
Michael had those also, but he had infinitely more stories about the persons with whom he had formed relationships in China, Burma, England, Scotland and
Wales. He had a gift for friendship. Forty, fifty, sixty years later he remembered the precise names of his friends from
earlier days.
Two passages that he relates in his book
“Other Days” illustrate how his gift for friendship was reciprocated in the most difficult of circumstances. In 1952, when he was being expelled from the town of
Nanzun, most of the population were forced to gather at the pier waiting for the river steamer that would take him away. In the vast throng, Michael noticed a group of Christians standing together. He looked up to Heaven with a reassuring smile, then bravely raised his hand and blessed them.
The Christians with even greater bravery publicly made the sign of the cross. Then, as the steamer arrived, Michael’s lay helper, named James, managed to get through the armed escort, approached with a smile and publicly shook his hand. Michael wrote, “To thousands watching it spoke volumes. In effect it said ‘I was the closest to the priest. This is what I think of these accusations.’ And I thought of Kipling’s words ‘999 will flinch from the pain and the shame and the laughter, but the thousandth man will stand your friend to the gallows and even after’.
The second passage comes from his departure in 1966 from Pangpau up near the Chinese border in Burma. “Next morning,” he writes, “men young and old, mothers carrying babes and children escorted me out of the village and over the hills in the lovely Kachin custom of accompanying one departing. It was like the exodus. The French have a saying ‘Each time we say goodbye we die a little’. I certainly died a bit on that December day.
Pangpau had not been an easy assignment.
Leaving it should have been easy. It wasn’t.
I was leaving a people I had come to know and love. I admired their simplicity, courage and loyalty. Only when I had pleaded for a third time that they should return to their villages did they ask for a final blessing before departing. I thought how Columban must have felt when he was expelled for the second time.”
This capacity to make friends and to nourish those friendships was not just the habitual mode of behaviour of a friendly man. It went much deeper than that. Michael knew that the essence of
Christianity is loving. Celibacy for him was a deliberate choice of a way of loving as extensively as possible. How do I know that? Because Michael was perhaps the only Columban ever to write so clearly about what celibacy meant to him. He wrote “As Catholic missionaries we valued celibacy because it made us totally available to serve our people. Having no family, we spent most of our lives with our people, identifying with them and sharing their culture as much as a foreigner could.
Celibacy was taken as a radical sign of our commitment to the Gospel we preached, but its greatest value lay in identifying us in the eyes of the people with our Lord and his work.”
Michael even wrote the following prayer:
“Lord Jesus Christ through your Church you have called me to share in your priesthood, for this I praise and thank you.
To remain close to you with an undivided heart and to be more free to serve you and others I joyfully accept your gift of celbacy.
I relinquish a beautiful noble gift in this life and offer it back to you foregoing marriage and family life for the sake of the Kingdom.
And as married love reflects your love for each individual, may celibate love unconditional and unlimited reflect your infinite love for all.
O Master, grant that I may never seek so much to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love with all my soul.”
Michael had a sweet tenor voice. His memory held the words of thousands of songs and he loved to compose parodies to well-known melodies.
When leaving Burma he composed the following:
“I return to our Burma mission, to the jungle where orchids grow, and the tribes people tell stories of the
Columbans of long ago.
In the great plain they lie asleeping where the Irrawaddy gently flows and the tall trees above them keeping silent watch as they sleep below
Some returned from our Burma mission to their loved one who held them dear but some fell in their hour of glory and were left to their resting here.
March no more, you nine Columbans.
There is peace where there once was war.
Sleep in peace, my dear companions. Sleep in peace now the battle’s o’er.”
And we say to Michael: “Sleep in peace, our dear companion. Sleep in peace now the battle’s o’er.
28 summer 2012

FEATURES
BY PAT POWER
When he planned a two-week holiday in Italy, Bishop Pat Power overlooked the fact that 11 October marked the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second
Vatican Council. So on that day he travelled by train from Spoleto in Umbria to
Rome. Article reprinted with permission by CatholicVoice , Canberra.
The historic occasion (50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council
) was marked by a Mass celebrated in St
Peter’s Square by Pope Benedict XVI with hundreds of bishops, many of whom were present in Rome for the Synod of Bishops.
Australia was represented by Archbishop
Denis Hart, president of the Australian
Catholic Bishops Conference, and Cardinal
George Pell, Archbishop Timothy Costelloe and Bishop Christopher Prowse who were participating in the Synod.
The only clerical attire I had was a blue clerical shirt, so I did not concelebrate, but happily sat among the People of God for the celebration of the Mass. Archbishop
Hart had kindly arranged a ticket for me.
A week earlier, I had prayed at the tomb of Pope John XXIII in St Peter’s Basilica and was moved to tears as I contemplated the great contribution he and Vatican II had made to the life of the Church and its impact on the contemporary world.
Before Mass, I had a chance meeting with
Australian, Devett O’Brien, international secretary of the Young Christian Students movement. That meeting reminded me of the influence on Vatican II of Joseph
Cardijn, founder of the Young Christian
Workers. The YCW method of see, judge and act is very much in harmony with John
XXIII’s call for us all to “read the signs of the times”.
Pope Benedict used the 50th anniversary of Vatican II as the occasion for the inauguration of the Year of Faith. During his homily he called for a renewed study of the council documents to better understand Vatican II’s significance for today.
Present at the Mass and given prominence close to the Pope were Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and
Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople
Bartholomew I. The previous day,
Archbishop Williams, a few months before his retirement, became the first Archbishop of Canterbury to address a Synod of
Bishops in Rome. In a major speech, he spoke of Vatican II’s crucial impact on the ecumenical movement and of the opportunity it gave to the Church to bring the message of Christ to the contemporary world in a way which made sense to believers and unbelievers alike.
“Today especially we cannot forget that great gathering which did so much for the health of the Church and helped the
Church to recover so much of the energy needed to proclaim the Good News of
Jesus Christ effectively in our age,” he said.
At the end of the Mass, Patriarch
Bartholomew, speaking in fluent Italian, reflected in detail on the Vatican Council’s impact on the life of the Church and of the world.
On the train trip from Spoleto to
Rome and back, I read from the newly published book, “Speaking to the Heart” containing some of the reflected wisdom of recently deceased Cardinal Carlo Maria
Martini. Although not treating directly of Vatican II, the book is taken from a series in which the Cardinal is writing in an Italian secular newspaper addressing questions posed by readers. They are touching examples of Vatican II’s plea for the Church to be in conversation with today’s world with all its complex questions.
During Mass, I was conscious of the parts played at the Council by Australian bishops, Thomas Cahill, Guilford Young,
Francis Rush and others, and what they did subsequently to help implement
Vatican II as part of the life of the Church in Australia.
I recalled, too, Kevin Barry-Cotter, at that time a student priest in Rome, and many others who had witnessed the historic events of 11 October, 1962. Kevin is in the course of writing for Catholic Voice a series of personal reflections on those momentous happenings. A young Wagga priest, Francis Carroll, was also absorbed in it all.
As I left Rome, I felt privileged to have experienced an historic moment of grace on 11 October, 2012 and I had hope in my heart for a new flowering of Vatican
II which would more clearly enable the
Church to show its best self in witnessing to the love of God and showing the face of Jesus to a world hungering for meaning.
the swag
29

FEATURES
BY PETER MAHER
In this homily written for Child Protection Sunday, 9 September 2012 at St Joseph’s Newtown, Peter Maher explored the enormous challenge of addressing this topic as a priest
I almost never read a homily but I want to speak on a topic that requires more than my normal confidence to preach without notes.
This is child protection week and I want to say something as a response to the tragedy of the destruction of people’s lives through the sexual abuse, especially of the young, by people representing the church.
I have found this particularly challenging. Why? Well priests are seen by society, and indeed by many Catholics, as the problem or a potential danger in this regard and thus the least qualified to speak. There is a real fear of making matters worse.
Priests are supposed to be leaders; spiritual guides and prophets.
I feel like the prophets of old when they claim not to know how to speak. I am called to proclaim the truth and be prophetic in the light of injustice and oppression but on this occasion I only know that not to speak is no longer an option. And yet to say something as if I know what to say might just offend further. My initial response is to say I don’t know what to say or how to say it.
In thinking about this, I have come to see that as a priest, I am part of the institutionalised structure in which clerical abuse has been able to live and grow unstopped even by those trying to help. I have to come to realise that the culture of clericalism is responsible for the ongoing tragedy that has left the vulnerable unprotected and unhealed by a leadership too willing to be hoodwinked by the doctrine of a priesthood that places priests above other human beings and what they call “the good of the church” above destruction of lives. I have come to see that the need to maintain power and control left the vulnerable without a voice – unsupported by the very people who claim gospel authority. For this - I am sorry.
I have recently had to admit to myself that my failure to speak clearly about this tragic injustice has been because I am confused about what to say and how to say it. I am somehow caught in the system and I am afraid I will sound phoney and defensive - adding to the problem rather than advancing the healing. It is difficult and confusing – but this is no excuse to stay silent.
Church spokespeople have all too often tried to make sense of the role of the church and its representatives in this crisis only to appear defensive and thus insult those who have been abused because the church and its “good name” remain privileged in the discourse rather than allowing the pain and despair of the victims to be heard and respected and honoured, as it must be, if justice is to be done. If there is to be healing we must be clear that honesty and justice must come first. South Africa’s Truth and
Reconciliation Commissions may not be perfect but they have succeeded far beyond the church’s efforts which many victims see as defensive and in the church’s interests first. This is one thing that must change.
What is missing for many victims abused in the church is any form of dialogue that might privilege the victim’s stories. Yet this is the first step in healing and reconciliation. Why is this? I think it is because church representatives are still trying to address this tragic abuse from a position of power – that is to say, maintaining its distance from the problem by the insistence on institutional innocence. I think it’s time to be more real and recognise that it is primarily an institutional failure: a failure to recognise that unfettered clerical power created a climate in which on-going abuse could go on unabated; a failure to recognise the victims plight; a failure to speak up on behalf of the victims and a failure to act in defence of the victim rather than the institution.
In the light of this reality, I have been struggling to find an image that might facilitate a genuine dialogue with people so profoundly ignored and left to heal themselves. I am working with the image of the wounded church offered by Adrian
McInerney, Parish Priest of St Alipius parish in Ballarat East. He recently wrote that we might reflect on the Pauline image of the church as the “body of Christ” and begin to accept that none of us is immune from the difficult malaise we are in. We are in it together as a theological imperative and we need to accept that we are a wounded church – that is to say a wounded people.
Then he goes on to say we might find a way of acceptance, not in a passive or defeatist way, but in actively embracing the figure of Jesus who, “like the suffering servant of Isaiah, took our sins upon Himself. The Passion of Jesus offers us a model of how we might act, for surely we will be stripped of our garments of pride and power and position” (Article to be published in The Swag ,
Summer 2012).
And all this without trivialising the woundedness of the victims.
Their space often seems to have been taken over by a communal outpouring of a shared grief and loss as if their (the victim’s) loss can somehow be subsumed into everyone else’s. That shared space must now give way to privilege a space for the victims and their woundedness. This must be always over and above the larger narrative of a communal woundedness. Our communal shame, our move toward humility must always be in service of the victims of abuse.
Taking on board this attitude might lead to a healthier dialogue.
This approach reminds us we are all complicit by our inaction, we are all involved by our being church and we are all responsible for creating a safe place for the vulnerable.
I recently spoke with a woman who found the touch of a work colleague uncomfortable. She said, “it’s not sexual abuse – I just don’t feel comfortable when he does that”. I reminded her it was sexual abuse. Maybe she did not feel in danger of being molested or sexually interfered with but it is sexual – every touch and word comes from who we are and we are sexual beings.
We are responsible for how we interact with others making sure our words and actions are not over-reaching into other’s personal space. This is especially true amongst the young and vulnerable – those who are unsure about themselves or who are still searching out the meaning of their identity in the world. We are all responsible for this safety everywhere in the world, but especially in church settings where an offensive word or action may leave people whose space has been invaded turning away from themselves, the church and God.
But if we are to privilege the victims, the last word must be that of the victims and so may I read a poem by a victim and survivor of clerical sexual abuse written for this weekend.
30 summer 2012

No Hidden secrets: one, facelessly Breaking
Silence on ‘wrong’ touch (AND word/s).
About & for ALL Children of God especially young & vulnerable.
One, given just that much voice, saying otherwise cannot now, know, offer or receive love.
One of us, one of you. One abused. A call,
“SPEAK OUT”...
loudly, NOW... on “ wrong touch AND word/s “.
Proclaim, loudly right word & touch.
Can’t express? Love? No time ? No energy?
No Value?
No... voice? Don’t touch? Too much ‘risk’?
Can’t touch, too many broken piece!
Too broken, now?! Lifeless?
RIGHT LOUD LOVE WILL FILL the spaces.
This can be a time to notice continually, choices in words touch & love.
Daring to care, enough. (Then, of the next
“day of remembering”?)
For me, it is to now facelessly break-in to my own silence.
This, although we have so frequently shared.
This year, season or week or simply this day we can know closeness and love, be active witnesses to it and bannish silencing & silence.
Silence, bullying & silencing, clearly the fertile ground for abuse.
Inappropriate touch or word the sexuallizing of unequal or professional/ pastoral or family or therapeutic relating or relationships.
Fertile ground for abuse to occur & grow...
into local culture/s.
Do we approach & question & put & name
Truth, Light & Love where shadows cannot, can NO LONGER EXIST?
OUR Love, light & voices, (here, locally); precious, to be known, seen, heard, and guarded.
Love, touch, speech & closeness never to be hidden but proclaiming & loudly (?)
Proclaiming & so, yes, loudly we ALL CAN cry out & yell, naming ALL that does not seem or feel right or true or fair or loving.
NO MORE ... hidden. No more in secret.
by Peter Maher
FEATURES
BY ROSS NAYLOR
Ross Naylor, reflects on a moment of grace in the centre of pain and destruction during RAAF support after the tsunami in Indonesia.
I was with the first RAAF Aeromedical
Team into Banda Ache after the Boxing
Day Tsunami. We arrived on New Year Eve
(in itself quite extraordinary).
Banda Ache gave the impression of being quite a nice (if third world) small city.
The main street was a wide avenue with central flower beds and large ‘round about’.
One of my first impressions was of the dump trucks filled with bodies that were unloading into large pits dug by a back hoe. Banda Ache suffered not only the
Tsunami but was also the epi-centre of the earthquake. Four/Five storey supermarket buildings just collapsed.
It was Apocalyptic. Officially there were
180,000 dead (since downgraded to
160,000). Beyond comprehension. There were 5 in our team – along with a surgical team of about 15 who had gone in a few days before. There was also a civilian team of Specialists (perhaps a dozen).
The surgical team was led by an extraordinary doctor named Greg Norman
(he was the CO of the RAAF Hospital back in OZ). He would be in his very early
40’s. A Catholic, he had a young family.
He is quite an imposing man – perhaps
6’2” strong build. I was told that when his team first arrived at the main hospital, Greg halted his team and he alone went in and
‘attended’ to the children’s ward.
We had taken over a small Indonesian
Military hospital. The Tsunami occurred on
26 Dec. The nature of many of the injuries
(one of the surgeons said it was like being put in a washing machine full of rubble) was that by new year – in the climate and devastation – many of the wounds had become rotten. In the little hospital car park, under a bit of plastic sheeting, the pile of bodies would grow. Every few days a truck would come and take them to an area just outside the city where a back hoe had dug a large pit.
One day I was accompanying Greg and the team as they did rounds. Suffering upon suffering of a simple, poor people. In one ward a diminutive Swiss surgeon explained to a woman, in no uncertain manner, that if she did not have her leg amputated she would die. She left her decision too late!
We moved into one section where the smell of death was almost tangible.
On a small low mat type bed was an old woman – chain stokes breathing, that people will sometimes do when they are in the process of dying.
There was a younger woman sitting beside her reading (prayers?).
In another bed a little boy about 10 who had had his leg amputated.
So it went on.
We were walking out (Greg and I the last out) as we passed a bed, Greg stopped and turned. I had missed this. There in a bed was an old man, either asleep or unconscious. Standing beside him was a young woman – perhaps late 20’s. She was really quite beautiful – not in a fashion model sense, she had no make-up and was simply dressed. But she just exuded a serenity. And she was holding the most lovely chubby little baby – perhaps 7 months – out of the new born stage and with that alert and wondrous about the world stage. Big eyes – looking around.
Amidst all this indescribable horror.
And Greg leaned down – and gently brushed the back of his hand down the cheek of the little baby. Then he straightened back up – turned to me with a bit of a smile and said “I needed that!” And we walked on.
For me, it has become my defining experience of Grace. the swag
31

FEATURES
BY MATT DIGGES
In the first week of September the Kimberley priests gather for our annual retreat in
Broome. Our basic retreat house, in an idyllic location on Reddell
Beach, provides time to be with God and each other. The guidance of a ‘not too heavy not too light’ director gives the flexibility to enter retreat without too many surprises.
Waking on Wednesday to a strong onshore wind, I chose to hit some golf balls along the beach rather than go for a swim in the choppy water. Starting to scramble down the familiar cliff holding a nine iron and five golf balls was my last memory for some time as I fell 4m to the rocks below.
My fellow priests mopped and tidied me before taking me to hospital, where the doctors, nurses and staff (who knew me as the hospital chaplain), took care of me as
I muttered somewhat incomprehensibly under the influence of morphine. The frenetic activity in the Emergency
Department was beyond my control. I lay immobile for hours, holding my rosary beads tightly, asking God to help me to make sense of this mess.
Each day in this Year of Grace, like many of you, I had prayed “…. attune our hearts and minds to the presence of your Holy
Spirit…” This was my chance to make it real. I was the fit 48 year old who ran every day and just a month before had walked
250km on pilgrimage through France was now was an invalid. I now needed hospital staff (mostly parishioners) for the most basic of needs.
As my broken foot set, the four broken bones in my back knitted, and the stitches helped my head heal I replayed the scene so many times. There were so many ifs that it became confusing, particularly for someone whose morphine stupor challenged them to remember the Hail Mary! Whilst on my back for a week I decided that there is no point in what ifs, just in what is.
Grace surrounded me and I just had to look outside my own cocoon to unleash its transformative power.
My accident has been a dramatic vehicle of grace, alerting me to the presence of God in familiar people and places. Writing six weeks later I still need a band of willing people to assist me through the basic daily tasks I have always taken for granted.
Gradually I am able to reclaim activities and freedom, lost so very recently. In some ways it is like childhood, where a young life constantly rejoices in the ability to master new skills.
In October I was with friends as their daughter, Grace Elizabeth, beaming with delight, took her first two tentative steps. I also sensed fear as she realised that she had passed her known boundaries. This fear could not stop her exhilaration, for in her freedom she went with the encouragement of those who had nurtured and protected her young life. She knew her life was graced.
There is still time left in the Year of Grace to keep that daily prayer I pray with those at Mass with me coming to life.
The opportunity for transformation, the moment of grace, always exists.
Australian Young Christian Students (AYCS) have made the following call to Australians about children in detention.
Six hundred and sixty four children are currently being detained in detention facilities around Australia. Children cannot develop to the best of their ability whilst being locked up, as it is not in their best interests. This is as outlined in Article Three of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child. Detention facilities are known
“factories” for mental illness and as high school students of Australia, we just do not think this is good enough. We are able to relate to the children in this situation as we are the same age and believe that no child should ever be put in detention. Its not fair that people who have been through so much already should have prolonged suffering at our hands. As a YCS student, equality, justice and the rights we have to grow up in a safe place with education, proper resources and the freedom to shape our own futures are important to me.
Hundreds of other high school students and I would like to do something about this and we need your help! For more information on what we think see the
Position Paper attached.
We are petitioning the Parliament to change this situation and this petition can be accessed at: http://tinyurl.com/a4hzaku
This petition will be given to Politicians in an effort to provide awareness to the
Australian community and hopefully aid to put an end to child detention. When people sign the petition we will make a paper foot for them and over summer holidays students will march around their cities carrying a chain of paper feet with their names and cities written on them which anybody is free to sign. Then they have the choice to sign a paper foot to attach to the chain. The feet will then be sent around the nation ending up in Canberra where the chains will be lain out on the lawn of parliament house in the shape of Australia. We are calling this steps to freedom!
To bring attention to this issue, the
Australian Coalition to End Child
Detention (which YCS students helped to set up!) have produced a video posted online which can be found here: http://tinyurl.
com/a67y8b2 This video draws attention to just how serious the situation is!
32 summer 2012

BY JOHN SWANN
John Swann, Spiritual Counsellor for Teams SA, reflects upon Timothy Radcliffe’s contribution to the International
Teams event in Brazilia recently. The full text can be found at http://tinyurl.com/c7h9keu
As mentioned by
Frank Marriott elsewhere in this issue, Timothy
Radcliffe OP left our NCP Convention in
Warrnambool to travel to Brazilia where he was the key speaker for a gathering of just on 8.000 Teams people. The theme of his presentations on each of the five days was based on the theme of the Good
Samaritan. While his reflections were directed mainly to married couples, his message had implications for the wider church. In particular, after the spirit of
Jesus, he directed our attention to those oft
‘excluded’ from Church considerations.
To quote:
“At the heart of your vocation is a belief that marriage is a beautiful Christian vocation and an essential part of any human society. But you are deeply aware that many people find marriage difficult. It is often a place of suffering, misunderstanding and even of violence.
Also, more and more people are not married. Many people often cohabit and raise children without even thinking about marriage. Millions of people are divorced and remarried. There are also same-sex unions.”
“A big question for many of you, then, is how to be faithful to your original charism, and yet face the reality of so many people’s lives. You are committed to marriage and yet you all have friends, family and maybe children whose lives have taken another direction. What is your mission to them?
How you can reach out to them to share your love of marriage without making them feel excluded? These are vast questions for the whole Church.”
He went on to make the point that the parable was really part of a conversation
Jesus had with the lawyer and bystanders, and that we also are called to enter into conversation, even with those who do not share our values. (Reminiscent of his thoughts at out Convention re the importance of “engaging with those with whom we disagree”.)
“You have also asked me to look at these questions in the light of the parable of the Good Samaritan. This is a challenge, because the parable does not directly touch upon divorce or gay marriage!
But it is a profound exploration of the meaning of love and so it can help us in our search for a way forward.
“All Christian teaching involves conversation. The word ‘homily’ comes from a word which means ‘conversation.’
This is because the life of God is the eternal conversation of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Jesus is the Word of God, inviting us to enter the loving conversation of the Trinity. By its very nature, Christian truth cannot be imposed from above. It is God’s word inviting our response.
“You are faced with the question: What can you say to people who are cohabiting, or divorced or remarried, or gay? What can you say that is both open to the truth of their lives and yet is faithful to the
Church’s teaching? You will only discover if you enter into conversation. You will speak with authority if you give authority to their experience. If you listen to them, and put yourself in their shoes, feel with their skin, then perhaps the Lord will give you the right word.
FEATURES
“People often tried to trap Jesus by asking him impossible questions. For example,
‘Should we pay taxes to the Romans?’ If he says Yes then he is a collaborator, but if he says No, he is a rebel. ‘Should we stone this woman caught in adultery or not?’ If he gives says Yes, he is merciless, and if he says No, he rejects the law. Sometimes that is our experience too. If we affirm strongly our commitment to marriage then we seem to exclude the millions whose lives have taken another direction. If we do not affirm marriage, then we betray something vital to the Christian life. Like Jesus, we may feel that we are in an impossible quandary! But Jesus always finds a way forward.”
The danger is that we walk away without confronting the reality. Sadly this is what the Church does, it is what we priests tend to do. Timothy did acknowledge that he did not have any simple answers, but at least he entered into a discussion that was honest and hopeful.
Each day Timothy took the various phrases of the parable narrative and applied them to various aspects of the marriage relationship in his inimitable style of ‘conversation’. For example on the subject of sexual ethics he said:
“Conversation also tells us something about sexual ethics. Sexual ethics is not just about what is forbidden or permitted.
It is not fundamentally about rules. Sex is not primarily a physical act. In true sexual love, the couple speak to each other. Each says to the other: ‘This is my body given for you.’ Each offers the other a word made flesh. The first question about any sexual act is not: ‘Is it allowed?’ But ‘What does it say?’”
He spoke about ‘discovering who you are’ in marriage, continuing to learn more about one’s partner, the importance of fidelity, generosity and the healing of wounds, facing betrayals, the relationship between violence and sex, the great wound of poverty, and much more.
the swag
33

FEATURES
BY GARRY EVERETT
Garry Everett is deputy chair of Mercy Partners in Queensland and a former Deputy Director of the Queensland Catholic
Education Commission and previous chair of the Brisbane Archdiocesan Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace.
Reprinted from CathNews 20/08/2012.
Recently I received a set of PowerPoints which told a story of an exchange between former Franciscan priest, Leonardo Boff, and the current Dalai Lama.
The story begins with Boff’s question to the
Dalai: “What is the best religion?” The Dali answers in some detail, following further questions, and eventually concludes with this sentence: “There is no higher religion than truth.”
This answer reminds me of
Pontius Pilate’s question of Jesus
Christ: “What is truth?”. Jesus had been explaining to Pilate that he was “witness to the truth”, among other things, and this comment of Jesus obviously provoked Pilate’s questioning search for meaning.
I find it interesting that in today’s society and church, we have many ways of talking about the truth. We encourage young people to “tell” the truth; our legal system professes to
“defend” the truth; we are upset by those whom we perceive to
“distort” the truth. Our churches encourage us to “seek” the truth; our academic disciplines
“contest” the truth; and our faith asks us to
“imitate” the truth.
In the histories of countries and institutions, we have seen how the truth, or its manipulation, has played a significant role in the progression or regression of people.
The Iroquois Confederacy in North
America is one example, and the Third
Reich in Germany is another. The former example is not well known. It was developed in the 1500s AD, by an
American Indian, and is credited with influencing Benjamin Franklin to establish democracy as the basis for the
American Republic.
The Iroquois Confederacy was the work of one man, the Huron Indian,
Deganawindah (pictured), who formulated
The Twelve Cycles of Truth. Space only allows a one word summary of each
Cycle. Thus we have: learning the truth; honouring the truth; accepting the truth; observing the truth; hearing the truth; presenting the truth; loving the truth; serving the truth; living the truth; working the truth; walking the truth; and being grateful for the truth.
From this rich collection of insights about the truth, what can Australian society and the churches learn?
Interestingly, like Jesus and the Dalai Lama, the Cycles do not answer the question
“What is truth?” The Twelve Cycles indicate that the truth is often a moving target, and that we must continuously “cycle” through various approaches to truth, rather than settle too readily into one expression of it.
The truth manifests itself for a time until a larger and richer version appears as a result of our collective “cycling”. The answer of
Jesus: “I am the Truth”, has presented a never-ending challenge to our “cycling” ever since he uttered it.
What does it mean to be “working the truth?” Basically, to work the truth is to test it at its limits. It is to remain open to the possibility that there are other modes of accounting for realities, other paradigms for explaining apparent mysteries.
The work of Galileo and more recently that associated with “the God particle”, come to mind, as does the “hermeneutic of reception” in ecclesiology. “Working the truth” indicates that we should be restless about our current formulae for accounting for the truth.
Of course, such a stance makes conservative societies and churches nervous. They do not feel happy about the new; they fear the axiom: “The new is elsewhere”.
Conservatives often use words like “rebel” or “un-orthodox”, or “sinner” to label those who speak of the new. On the other hand, those testing the limits of truth have also been described as “visionary”,
“hero,” and even “creative” (a
God-like quality!).
The struggle is clear when experiences of “mission”
(the truth) and “vision” (the possible new) establish the dynamic forces of tension. It is an expression of the classic tension between hanging on and letting go.
When any significant issue emerges in a society or a church, how should we proceed? The Twelve Cycles of
Truth teach us that we should take our time and be prepared to cycle through all twelve stages, and not be content to stay in one comfortable cycle.
On the matter of gay marriage, for example, how should the truth manifest itself? What happens if society and church disagree? If there are differences within a given society or church? How are the prevailing norms to be understood and cycled through?
When we “honour the truth”, we are engaged in seeking a greater wholeness than currently exists. No single paradigm can explain the truth. We honour the more by not trying to funnel it through narrowing assumptions and teachings. We honour the truth by allowing it to do its transforming work unhindered. We cannot control the truth.
There is great value to be had in reflecting on Deganawidah’s contribution to truth.
Australian society and our Christian churches should open our collective minds and hearts to this ancient wisdom.
34 summer 2012

FEATURES
BY PETER DAY
Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
The ancient Jewish Christian, Paul of
Tarsus, once said a curious thing:
Lance Armstrong: The world waxed-lyrical, delighting and exalting as the great Texan, the brave cancer survivor, defied human endurance by riding into the streets of Paris seven years in succession with that fabled yellow lycra jersey clinging imperiously to his greyhound physique.
“I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.
For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
(2Cor 12:10)
But we don’t do weakness here, St Paul. We live strong, we thrive on praise, and bask in our glory. It is my power that allows me to change the world.
LiveStrong was his refrain. Here was a prophet who, like Job, overcame all that was thrown at him and, in doing so, inspired millions. But while Job’s endurance was underpinned by an unshakable and
‘foolish’ faith in Other, in God; Armstrong prevailed thanks to an unshakable and foolish faith in himself … and EPO and blood doping and steroids.
What a man. What a story. What a shame.
And isn’t this is our fatal flaw: A blind obsession with the superficial; our attentiveness to the beauty and purity of the outside of the cup, while inside it rots and corrodes?
As Colm O’Gorman, himself a victim of clerical abuse, wrote in The Tablet recently:
“… powerful institutions [and individuals] rarely cast an objectively critical eye inwards.
Power rarely subjects itself to honest and open
Jimmy Savile: He made us laugh and cry and smile and hope - especially the British public. He was with us through thick and thin, entertaining us in our homes; a tireless supporter of charities. He was one of us, if a little ‘better’; no wonder both the queen and the pope offered him knighthoods in the same year.
This larger than life personality was feted and propped-up by peers and a public intoxicated by the cult of the celebrity. A role model, untouchable: “Sure, there were those whispers, those rumours, but this is
Jimmy Savile, don’t you know?”
What a man. What a story. What a shame.
The church: That place of rest and trust, our mother in times of need. The one who shelters and protects, who champions the rights of the vulnerable, the young. A sacred place staffed by holy men dedicated to washing feet, to serving humanity.
For two thousand years we have, for the most part, looked up to her as she inspired us through her preaching, through her charitable works, through her selflessness.
What a place. What a story. What a shame.
So, what just happened? Why these devastating falls from grace?
There appears to be three common threads:
1. Love of self, at the expense of others
2. Being feted for being ‘special’ and strong
3. A pervasive silence scrutiny, and when it either discovers serious wrongdoing within its own ranks, or indeed is itself guilty of wrongdoing, it often acts to cover up such corruption in an effort to protect its reputation and its authority.”
Is it not also the case that when we derive benefits from a system, from an institution, we are very reluctant to do anything that might undermine the status quo? Indeed, it is our collective silence that ensures these benefits continue to come my way.
“Don’t mention the war,” so said Basil
Fawlty in a pique of feigned English politeness. Indeed, don’t mention anything that might cause me-you-us to lose face; that might upset the glorious narrative which makes us rich and famous and well thought of.
After all, it wasn’t that no one knew about
Lance, about Jimmy, about Father X; it’s that so many didn’t want to know. It didn’t suit the narrative.
the swag
35

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF DEACONS
CHAIRMAN
News of ordinations is always a happy event.
For the Deacons of
Australia, ordination to the diaconate is a very happy event. On
27 October, seven men were ordained for the
Archdiocese of Melbourne. Jim Curtain, a member of the National Executive was present and who functioned as the Deacon of the Word at the Mass, shares some highlights from the celebration.
(part-time, non-stipendiary) to parishes of the
Archdiocese, and four of them are presently also involved in paid church ministries (three full-time, one part-time). At the end of the ordination Mass Charles Balnaves, speaking on behalf of the newly ordained, thanked the wives and families for their loving support,
Archbishop Hart for having the courage and vision to start the program, and Fr Michael
McEntee for his hard work and guidance as
Director of the Permanent Diaconate for the
Archdiocese. Charles made the point that “no one really knows where the programme will go from here, but that this is a blessing and an opportunity for all involved, and indeed for the whole Catholic community in Melbourne.”
“The permanent diaconate in Australia had one of its golden days on Saturday 27 October when a group of seven men were ordained for the Archdiocese of Melbourne. This was the first group ordination for the permanent diaconate in Melbourne, which now has eight deacons (Jim Curtain incardinated into Melbourne in 2010). The diaconate program for Melbourne was launched in April
2007, and after a comprehensive selection program, a number of men were given the opportunity to undertake formation. This first group consists of Charles Balnaves, Joe
Leach, Kevin Pattison, Malcolm Lock, Philip
King, Charles English and George Piech
Meat. All have a long history of involvement in the church. They have all been appointed
Charles makes a very good point when he says that no one really knows where it (the diaconate in Melbourne) will go from here.
In fact, one could just as easily say that one doesn’t really know where the diaconate in
Australia will go. This really is the calling of the deacon, to do the work of the bishop within the respective diocese. It is the Holy
Spirit who will guide and define what that work will be and it is up to each man to be open and willing to go where the work is. It is as Charles Balnaves points out, a blessing and an opportunity for all involved and indeed for the whole Catholic community.
As I have written a number of times in my reports, the permanent diaconate is so very young in Australia. It is still evolving and will continue to evolve, just as the
Church will continue to evolve over time.
As with all parts of the Church, there are those who are suspicious of deacons and wonder what purpose they serve - just another men’s group in an already male dominated religion. However, the reality is that deacons are called by God to serve the communities in which they find themselves. And, they do great work, be it as chaplains in hospitals, schools or prisons; assisting in parishes or reaching out to those who have found themselves distanced by the Church.
The Catholic community in Melbourne has received a great blessing – a blessing that will continue to be a positive and dynamic addition to Church and community life. On behalf of the National
Association of Deacons, I would like to congratulate each newly ordained deacon for generously heeding God’s call. Our prayers go with you as you carry out very worthwhile and powerful work in the communities you serve.
36 summer 2012
Left to Right
Joseph Leach, Malcolm Lock, Philip King, George Piech Meat, Charles
English, Charles Balnaves, Kevin Patterson
John Casamento / Casamento Photography

RETURNED TO THE FATHER
JosEph conway 28/05/1928 - 19/09/2012
Joseph was born at Howlong and began his education at St Bridgid’s School, Howlong, before attending
Assumption College, Kilmore. After studying at Corpus Christi Seminary, Werribee, Joseph was ordained in
Cowra on 28 July 1952, by Bishop Henschke. He served the Diocese of Wagga Wagga for 60 faith-filled years and the parishes of Yenda, Albury, Narrandera, Cathedral, Yanco, Tocumwal, Tumbarumba, Darlington Point,
The Rock, Berrigan, Urana, and Ganmain were all lucky to have known his loving pastoral care. Joseph was farewelled from St Mary’s Church, Lockhart and is buried at Lockhart Lawn Cemetery.
allan william cuRRy 06/12/1926 – 27/07/2012
Allan was born in Deniliquin to William and Muriel Curry. Following his early education at the Convent School in Deniliquin, he studied for the priesthood at Springwood and Manly and was ordained a priests for the
Diocese of Wilcannia-Forbes by Bishop B D Stewart at Deniliquin on 22 July 1964. Allan’s gentle nature and his friendly smile created comfort and support for those to whom he ministered and his service to the extensive
Wilcannia-Forbes Diocese is evidenced in the following appointments: Forbes 1965; Broken Hill South 1965-69;
Bourke 1969-71; Parkes 1971-72; Broken Hill as Administrator 1972-80; Hay as Parish Priest 1980-89; Moarna
1989-96; and Narromine 1996-2007. After retiring in April 2007, Allan was lovingly care for by the staff at
Southern Cross Village, Parkes. The respect and love of his people were evident by the crowd attending his Requiem Mass at Parkes and his interment at Deniliquin on 25 January 2012. The Requiem Mass was concelebrated by twenty priests with Bishop Kevin Manning the main celebrant. In the words of a fellow priest, “Allan wore his priesthood with a shine and sparkle.” May he now rest in peace.
RichaRd Gamanski sVd 11/11/1939 - 10/10/2012
Richard was born in Zielona, Poland, the eldest of eight children of Antoni and Regina. He enjoyed his schooling and, from an early age, showed a keen interest in sports - his favourite being soccer/football and indeed he proved to be an exceptionally talented player. After high school studies Richard joined the SVD at
Nysa and took his first vows on 8 September 1960 in Pieniezno. A few weeks after taking vows, Richard was obliged to do his National Service in a special army unit for seminarians. After two years of service Richard returned to St Adelbert’s to continue his studies.After final profession and ordination, Richard was assigned to
Australia, arriving in Sydney to study English 1970. He subsequently began ministry with the Polish Catholic
Community in Melbourne and remained in this ministry for 15years. Richard played soccer/football for a local club and successfully mixed his priestly ministry with his love of sport. He proved to be very popular with young sports people as they had not met a priest before who played sport with such passion. Richard returned to Sydney in 1987 and ministered in a number of parishes and nursing homes, as well as attending to the needs of the Polish Catholic community. Although he was a little old to play soccer/football competitively, this did not dampen his passion. He turned to coaching and continued his ministry with many young players. He was very active in promoting the development of the Polonia Polish Football Club and was attributed with providing the necessary enthusiasm and encouragement to keep the club together during difficult times. Richard wrote and published a book in Polish entitled
“The Chaplain of the White Eagles” about his experiences as a coach. In 1996 he moved to the Marsfield SVD community. In recent years Richard developed Parkinson’s Disease and was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins Lymphoma two years ago. He endured many hospital admissions and sessions of chemotherapy with all the associated symptoms – but never once complained. After a day of visits from family, friends and confreres, Richard died peacefully in his sleep. colin EdwaRd kEnway oFm 19/04/1935 - 16/08/2012
Colin was born in Toowoomba, Qld to Edward and Mary Kenway (both deceased). After completing his secondary education he worked for the Queensland Public Service (Railways) and then decided to commit to being a lay missionary. He went to Aitape, PNG in 1961. Colin later decided to join the Franciscans and was received into the Novitiate in1975 and made his first profession on 8 February 1977. His solemn profession his 77 years in PNG and his commitment to the people of PNG and his ministry over the years is testament to his love of God and neighbour. Colin was prepared to leave his homeland to serve the people of God. May the Lord now reward him for his life of service. was 1 November 1980 and he was ordained to the priesthood on 8 December 1982. Colin served the people of PNG working in various ministries in Aitape, Banaule, West New Britain and Port Moresby. He spent 52 of
BaRRy kiRBy oFm 24/02/1941 - 02/08/2012
Barry was born at Waverley NSW, the only child of William and Phyllis Kirby. He joined the friars in 1958, was professed in 1959, solemnly professed in 1962 and ordained in 1965. Barry’s main apostolate was in education and after completing his teacher training at Oakhill College, Castle Hill (1966) he was appointed as a teacher at Padua
College. This was where he spent a large portion of his ministry. During 1969-73 he did part-time study and obtained a B Ed at Queensland University. Following three years as Provincial Vocation Director Barry returned to Padua as vice-rector, becoming rector in 1984 until 1989. Barry’s contribution to the development of Padua and his leadership will be remembered with one of the new college houses being named Kirby House. When told this news Barry was very happy that the name Kirby will be remembered for generations of future Paduans. After an awe-inspiring battle to remain an engaged member of his Franciscan community, Barry died at 12.20 am on the Feast of Mary of the Angels. Over recent months Barry has confounded many with his will to live, and his great desire to be with the friars. When visited the night before his death
Barry was ready to “let go” after what he termed “a wonderful life with the friars”. The sadness in losing a brother must be tempered with our faith in the Resurrection and the assurance that Barry is at peace with his Lord and Master whom he served so faithfully.
the swag
37

RETURNED TO THE FATHER iVan paGE (missionaRy oF aFRica) 127/02/1938 - 07/09/2012
Ivan grew up in Sale, attended St Patrick’s, repeated matriculation and at 16, set out on an Arts course at
Melbourne University. He graduated and worked at the Commonwealth Department of Defence, Melbourne, found his way into the National Library in Canberra, became the Keeper of Rare Books - and one side of his life was settled! The National Library sent him to London with various briefs - he was responsible for securing the
Torres Diaries for Australia. He made a few side trips, as you do, and found the Missionaries of Africa in Africa.
That settled another side of this charming and learned man. He was ordained in Canberra by Archbishop
Frank Carroll on 30 August, 1986. Ivan worked in Burkina Faso for 10 years; was recalled to reorganize the
Archives of the Order in Rome and in 2008 retired to Australia settling in St Joseph’s Presbytery in Quarry Hill. On 4 September he took ill whilst on Retreat and died in St Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne, on 7 September. A charming, cultivated scholar left behind a heartbroken community at Quarry Hill. May he rest in peace.
hEnRy FinBaRR walsh 05/03/1929 - 31/05/2012
Henry had been a priest for nearly 59 years, 31 of which he served as the parish priest at Our Lady of Lourdes
Rockingham WA. Born in Cork, Henry was educated at Christian Brothers’ College in Cork prior to entering
All Hallows College in Dublin. While at All Hallows he was ordained on 21 June 1953 for the Archdiocese of Perth and arrived in November of that year. On the day of his arrival he was appointed assistant priest at
West Perth and on 26 February1954 was appointed to the same position at Cottesloe. Three years later he was appointed assistant priest at St Mary’s Cathedral and was made Secretary of the Church Office in 1964. He became Administrator at the Cathedral in July 1969 and also appointed a member of the Council of Priests at the same time. On Christmas Day 1972 he became Dean of St Mary’s Cathedral and in the following year was the WA coordinator for the International Eucharistic Congress in Melbourne. From St Mary’s he was posted to the rapidly growing parish of Rockingham where he built the new Our Lady of Lourdes Church, with a spacious presbytery and parish centre as well as the Star of the Sea parish school. He also had a hand in building Kolbe College regional high school. Finbarr continued to further the cause of Catholic education serving as a representative of the Council of Priests and on the Catholic Education Commission of WA. He retired from active parish ministry in 2007 and was honoured for his apostolic work in the local church in 2009 with the Papal Award Croce pro
Ecclesia et Pontifice.
Recently returned to the Father but no obits received prior to going to print. we hold them in prayer.
Rev paul webb
Rev peter claridge
07/09/2012
19/09/2012
Rev Joseph staunton 15/10/2012
Rev mark west oh 23/10/2012
Please email obits to Sally at national.office@ncp.catholic.org.au
Specifications • Text as a Word Document (max 200 words)
• Digital photos not less than 200KB sent as a separate .jpg file
(not to be included in the Word Document).
You are most welcome to email detailed obituaries as separate documents and these will be published in full on The Swag website (www.theswag.org.au).
Closing date for letters & articles
Please email all submissions for consideration to editor@theswag.org.au
Articles - 700 words Major Features - 1,400 words
38 summer 2012

RETURNED TO THE FATHER
BY MICHAEL COSTIGAN WITH MEG MILLER
“Miller for Pope! Miller for Pope!” was the chant of 200 men of Balliol College as they thumped their tankards on the table at a
Boat Club dinner in Oxford over 50 years ago. Balliol’s boat crew had been Head of the River that year, under their Captain of
Boats, a tall young Australian priest, Julian
Miller, said to be the first Catholic priest admitted to the college since the
Protestant Reformation.
At Oxford his tutors had enjoyed an academic joke by setting him to study the Reformation, and by appointing
Christopher Hill, a well-known communist, as his moral tutor. While at
Oxford he said daily Mass in the Catholic chaplaincy. At the same time his studies, combined with friendships developed at
Balliol and inter-church contacts made travelling in Europe, prepared him for the ecumenical work awaiting him as a priest in Sydney.
Before returning home Miller spent six months visiting many parts of the US after winning a scholarship. The tour coincided with the 1960 presidential campaigns of
Kennedy and Nixon, both of whom the traveller saw in action at rallies.
Eric Scott Julian Miller was born on
26 September 1932, the oldest of eight children of Eric Miller, QC, and his wife
Rita (nee Clarke). He grew up in Vaucluse, was sent to the Blue Mountains during the war and was a boarder at St Joseph’s College at Hunters Hill.
the priesthood, beginning with 18 months of philosophy at the Springwood seminary.
Cardinal Norman Gilroy then sent him to
Rome in September 1952 to complete his priestly training at the Propaganda
Fide College.
He enjoyed many mind-expanding Roman experiences, one being the companionship of 240 other seminarians from over 40 countries. Miller, in turn, made a stillremembered contribution to the life of the international missionary college. After being ordained in Rome in 1956, Miller accepted the chance to study at Oxford and graduated with a degree in history in 1960.
His first home appointment, in 1961, was as curate to Bishop Thomas Muldoon in the Mosman parish. Elderly parishioners still remember with delight the ministry and preaching of two gregarious and eloquent clerics. Miller’s role for over a decade after Mosman was on the staff of St
Patrick’s Seminary, Manly, where he taught church history and patrology.
It was the time of the Second Vatican
Council, which addressed relations between the Catholic Church and the modern world. Miller was enthused by its reforms.
Some of his former students, several of whom became bishops, remember him as
“a breath of fresh air” in what had been a staid institution. In the final few years of his appointment he was director of students and vice-president.
In 1950 he entered the University of
Sydney and started a veterinary science course. However, a year later he opted to pursue a long cherished wish to prepare for
The young priest was also attracting public attention through television and radio work, as a lecturer giving courses to religious women and men and because of his active commitment to ecumenism. He
REVIEWED BY JOHN SCANLON
What happens when power and lack of transparency infect a parish?
John Scanlon, a lay subscriber to The Swag , reviews Souled Out: Power
& Protest in a Catholic Parish , Jane Anderson, 2012. D Publishing,
428 George Street, Sydney NSW. 189 pages.
Jane Anderson is a social anthropologist and Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia. This book is a case history of institutional failure in a regional Australian parish, in which abuse of authority on several levels results in great injustice to a parish priest and the destruction of a Vatican II-oriented community. It is a true story, in which the author was herself a protagonist.
Readers of The Swag which was a popular
may remember Dr. Anderson’s
2005 book Priests in Love , also did part-time parish work in Harbord and had a key role in the formation of the
National Council of Priests.
However, in 1974, Miller took indefinite leave as a result of what was later recognised as an undiagnosed bipolar disorder. His meeting Meg Stevens, at a time of a deep depression, led to marriage in 1983.
He also went back to teaching, first at
Cranbrook and then at St Joseph’s.
After retirement in 1997 the couple moved from Annandale to Bowral, where they soon became active members of the community, in particular in both the
Anglican and Catholic parishes. Julian also lectured on the history of Christianity for the University of the Third Age.
Together they enjoyed more travel, highlights being return visits to Rome,
Oxford and the US, as well as several journeys around Meg’s much-loved Greece.
Julian Miller is survived by Meg and stepchildren Philippa and Alex.
BOOK REVIEWS version of her Ph.D thesis on Catholic priests in illicit love relationships. She writes of parish life with a passion born of her active involvement in parish communities over a period of thirty years, but also with the careful approach of a professional researcher.
The story that she tells in
Souled Out has a great deal of human interest, and will cause many readers to be reminded of particular events in their own parish lives. But an equally important part of the book is the series of observations on various topics that are the swag
39

BOOK REVIEWS interspersed through the chronicle and are provided with an extensive set of references.
Among observations of particular interest to clergy readers are those on the cultural background of priests from Africa and Asia, the particular problems of governance in parishes staffed by priests from religious orders and the differences between various models of priesthood [“cultic” vs. servant leader]. The observations on clericalism as a generator of infantilism in laity and lower clergy, and of paternalism in the wielders of authority, will resonate with laity and clergy alike. So also should the comments on discrimination against women in the church. The only readers who will obtain no benefit from this book are precisely those who the author sees as the source of major problems in the church because of their closed minds - authoritarian clergy and infantilised laity.
The author has considered it necessary to use pseudonyms for all of the people and places in the story, as well as for the religious order that is a major player.
However anyone with a sufficiently large dose of curiosity should be able to crack the codes without very much effort.
In her preface, Jane Anderson says “As an anthropologist, I started recording the details of the unfolding drama so I could try and make sense of what was happening. I ended up with a narrative of sorts, but I couldn’t make much sense of it. I couldn’t answer my major question;
‘how and why could presumably good and faithful Catholics treat one of their own in such an appalling way?’ This book serves as a process for finding an answer.” In the end, she finds her answer in a pattern of huge inequalities, which arise from the hierarchical-monarchical structure of the
Church. However one is still left looking for whatever it is in the souls of men that allows “good” Catholics to be so un -Christian.
REVIEWED BY PETER MAHER
How can we imagine living the gospel in the heart of Empire?
Where will the inspiration come from? What is a political reading of the gospel? These and many more questions are discussed in this remarkable book. Engaged Spirituality, Faith Life in the Heart of
Empire , Joseph Nangle OFM. Orbis Books, 2008, 170 pages, $25.
Nangle has written regularly for Sojourners
Magazine which come out of an intentional ecumenical community set up by Jim
Wallis 40 years ago in Washington DC to respond to the issues of justice from the perspective of the poor living in the dominant world. Nangle lives and breathes the challenge of living the gospel of the poor in the most affluent part of the world.
How can we find a spirituality that will hold us?
the lived experience of the body politic.
Nangle explains in a facinating chapter on a political reading the scriptures how to read the texts politically, that is aware of the social, economic and political implications. It will come as no surprise that Nangle’s spiritual heros are Dorothy
Day and Oscar Romero and his theological mentors are Gustavo Gutierrez, Leonardo
Boff and Jon Sobrino.
Nangle depends on the stories from his time in South America where he lived with the poor. He wonders how the 1968
Medellin Synod could possibly have happened. Why did those South American bishops vote so strongly for the “preferential option for the poor” that has shaped
Catholic gospel spirituality to this day?
Nangle says it is because they lived with the poor. Their pastoral practice made them aware that there was no church without the poor who witnessed the gospel in their parishes and communities. They saw the gospel in action. Sadly, now the Latin
America church has turned away from the spirituality proclaimed in Medellin, and so have many Catholics.
What has this to do with living in the affluent West? Nangle writes convincingly about the dangers of living at the heart of the new Empire of the US and the West, but also how similar it is to the christians in the time of the gospels. The gospels were written in the heart of the Roman
Empire and are strangely most relevant to our time in the West. However the gospels have been spiritualised and taken out of
He notes that political in this text means the things that pertain to the life of the people, “the way biblical texts focus on, illuminate and question the structures of societies and their impact on the lives of human beings”(p21). For example, the
Magnificat is not just a beautiful prayer of praise by a young woman following God’s will, but a startling statement of God’s intention to turn Empire on its head: scattering the proud, bringing down the powerful and raising up the poor, filling the hungry and sending the rich away empty. And it is not just the gospel, the liberation of the enslaved people in Egypt happened because the Red Sea parted and gave them safe passage. A political reading of these passages means freedom from foreign, proud, rich military for the people of Afghanistan and safe harbour for refugees from Sri Lanka on Australian soil. It also means Christians at the heart of the Empire of the First World must be active in countering the military presence in Afghanistan and demanding asylum for the “boat people” arriving on our shores. It demands that we look at texts through the eyes of the disadvantaged and accept the call to action inherent therein.
Sin and grace take on new meaning in gospel spirituality.
Sin is where the social and economic fabric is broken and grace is where signs of hope spring forth in the moments of liberation for the poor. Political readers of the gospel can rejoice when asylum seekers are accepted into the community, homeless people are housed, troops are withdrawn from Afghanistan, the earth is given consideration as our mother and gays are accepted as gifted members of our communities. Nangle notes how this might change how we celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation. He notes it might be an engagemnet with social sin and grace from the underside of empire which can rescue this Sacrament from oblivion.
Nangle makes some wonderful points about reading the signs of the times again just as John XXIII did when he announced the Ecumenical Council. Nangle’s comments on the social aspects of the
Eucharist are particularly timely as he notes that the point of the Mass is a time for communal reflection on our discipleship place, the world, while unfortunately we are spending huge amounts of effort on liturgical minutiae.
He follows the Cardijn method. He begins with the stories of the poor and their struggle for justice and freedom and proceeds through a political reading of scripture to engage in justice and peace action in the world for those in the First
World. A great read.
40 summer 2012

REVIEWED BY PETER HENRY
Congar’s contribution to the Second Vatican Council was significant. Peter
Henry, retired priest in residence at Greystanes parish, explores the influence of Congar in his review of Yves Congar - My Journal of the Council , ATF
Theology Adelaide. 2012. ($69.95, 979 pages).
To read this book, I placed beside me my well worn copy of the “Documents of Vatican II”
(editor Walter M. Abbott SJ, 1966).
He is strong in his praise of Mgr.
Gerard Philips, the Secretary of the
Theological Commission.
On the jacket cover of Congar’s Journal,
Congar is quoted on June 3 1964: “At the beginning of the meeting Cardinal
Ottaviani said that, to speed the work up, the experts should not speak unless questioned. At my side, Rahner was champing at the bit, and said to me,
What are we doing here..?”
He includes the interventions on the floor of the Council by our Australian Bishops,
Cardinal Norman Thomas
Gilroy (p 155, 181, 188, 402); Bishop
Thomas Muldoon (p 148, 459, 460) and
Archbishop Guilford Young (p 89, 113).
At a number of places in the journal,
I noticed that Congar took a different approach to being a Consultor to the
Theological Commission from his fellow
Consultors, K Rahner and Ratzinger. He always sought to act “in accord with the wishes of the Fathers (p820, 895 ff).
Gilroy said “it is extraordinary how the
Australian episcopate has changed during the last month” (8th November 1962).
Prior to this statement, Congar mentions after the opening ceremony on 11 October
1962, his meeting Mgr Young, born in
1916, Archbishop of Hobart, Australia
(p 89): “A little before 5pm, visit from
Mgr Young, an Australian bishop, young,
REVIEWED BY MICHAEL WHELAN SM
Geoff Robinson returns to his first love – the study and teaching of
Sacred Scripture. The result is pleasing. The Gospel of Luke – For
Meditation and Homilies , by Geoffrey Robinson, Garratt Publishing,
2012, 95 pages, A4 format. $29.95
In the fourth century the bible was an object of special veneration in the Christian communities. It was common practice to enthrone the bible in the midst of synods and special meetings. St John Chrysostom urged people to wash their hand before picking up the bible for the same reason they should wash their hands before receiving the Eucharist. St Jerome famously said: “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of
Jesus Christ.”
The bible – the Word of God – was regarded as an extension in the community of the Incarnation. The ritual surrounding the proclamation of the Gospel in the assembly in our own time echoes this ancient belief, that the Risen Lord is present when the Word is proclaimed. The person proclaiming the Gospel begins by greeting the assembly and the people return the greeting. Then the proclaimer anoints the Gospel and announces it. Immediately the assembly is focused on the Risen
Lord: “Glory to you Lord!”. Similarly at the conclusion of the proclamation: “The
Gospel of the Lord!” The people respond: “Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ!”
A strong cult of the Blessed
Sacrament developed in during the 12th century.
In that cult a special emphasis was placed on the real presence of Christ in the consecrated bread. This was accompanied by the desire of medieval men and women to see. It was at this time that the elevation of the host was introduced. In the following century the feast of Corpus Christi was established for the universal Church and processions of the Blessed Sacrament became popular. The monstrance – from monstrare meaning “to show – was introduced for these processions.
There were at least two deformative effects of this development. In the first place, it took our attention away from the celebration of the Eucharist as a communal event, helping us to forget that the point of
BOOK REVIEWS mixture of straight-talking, and solemnity.
He has fed on Congar for twenty years. He told me how terribly disappointed he was in the schemata and in the ceremony in
St Peters, indeed almost to the point of being scandalised”. “We preach to the laity about participation and look at the example they are given! for the voting for the
Commissions tomorrow. We chatted. We will meet again.”
He asked me to suggest the names of Bishops
Congar is at his best when describing his friendship with the others, for example, the observers for Ecumenical Dialogue.
This is truly a wonderful work by Yves
Congar OP, one of the most important
Roman Catholic theologians of the 20th
Century and a major influence on the theology of the documents of Vatican II.
the Eucharistic action is our participation together in the Paschal Mystery. In the second place, it gave significant impetus to the diminution of the
Catholic community’s appreciation for the
Word of God.
It was wonderful to see the Council Fathers revive the ancient practice of enthroning the Gospels at the commencement of each of their sessions:
“A particularly significant rite was the one with which each congregation began: the solemn enthronement of the Gospels. …. Although the official communiques spent more time on a bibliographical description of the codex than on an explanation of the theological meaning, this rite proclaimed the supremacy of the Word of God in the life of the Church and over all the conciliar debates. It thus anticipated one of the most important statements of Vatican II: ‘The magisterium is not above the Word of God but at its service’.” (Hilary Raguer, “An
Initial Profile of the Assembly” in Giuseppe
Alberigo and Joseph Komonchak, editors,
History of Vatican II – Volume II, Orbis
Press, 1997, 185-86) It was also pleasing to hear the Fathers of the Second Vatican
Council say:“The Church has always the swag
41

BOOK REVIEWS venerated the divine Scriptures just as she venerates the body of the Lord, since, especially in the sacred liturgy, she unceasingly receives and offers to the faithful the bread of life from the table both of God’s word and of Christ’s body.
(Dei Verbum 21)
Against this backdrop, we should all be grateful to Bishop Geoffrey Robinson for sharing with us the fruits of his meditation on the Gospel of Luke. It is no secret for those who know Geoff, his first love is the study of Sacred Scripture. It shows in this little book. In particular, the rich fruits of contemporary scholarship are made available here.
The Gospel of Luke can be used for personal reflection, group discussions, homily preparation. No doubt readers will find this book to be a valuable resource for other possibilities too.
The book divides the Gospel of Luke into
112 sections and offers a brief and pithy reflection on each. It starts at the beginning of the Gospel and works through it – it is not divided according to the texts of the
Sundays in Year C.
Each section begins with a very readable few paragraphs offering an exegesis of the particular section. We could call this the interpretation. That is followed by a more personal, brief reflection – homily/ meditation – on that material. In these brief reflections – written in italics to distinguish them from the slightly more formal exegetical parts – we are asked questions to evoke our own reflection and meditation. We are also introduced to comments by people like Helder Camara,
William Barclay and Brendan Byrne SJ. We could call this the application.
When I received my copy of this book I immediately turned to a passage I have found troubling over the years. It is a passage calculated to have every woman in the church grinding her teeth. I am speaking of the story of Martha and
Mary in Luke 10:38-42. It has been the custom down through the centuries to interpret this story as an allegory of the contemplative life versus the active life. I have never found this a satisfactory reading of the text. Clearly Geoff seeks something more from the Word of God here. The
Gospel of Luke offers a very thoughtful interpretation of this story and a practical application. I encourage you to read it!
REVIEWED BY PETER MAHER
This book is about the beginning and development of the Irish
Association of Priests, a new independent group of priests which is growing rapidly. Where do we go from here?
The Crisis in Irish
Catholicism , Brendan Hoban, Banley House, 144 pages. ecology and psychology. Brendan Hoban is a founding member of the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) which grew out of a meeting of Irish priests in June 2010. He is a parish priest in Co.
Mayo. This book reflects a deep passion for the church’s future mixed with some dismay at the kind of winding back of the promise of Vatican II.
The book offers a broad sweep of the where we have come from, the present situation and ideas for reform in the future. While it is clearly set in the Irish context, it is strikingly relevant to the Australian church and wider. His analysis of the present cultural shift in the church is shaped by his personal experience. He notes that while he did not go the seminary because of the
Second Vatican Council, he believes it was why he stayed (p29). For Hoban the
Council offers a kind of spiritual blueprint for reforms that, if implemented, may have helped avoid much of what is now an open wound for the church. He sees Vatican II as promoting a hope in a people’s church where renewal, progress and flexibility are encouraged; where people are engaged at every level of church governance and culture and where inclusion means respecting and taking seriously the hopes and dreams and wisdom of the whole people of God. He hears the Council call for recognition of the Spirit of God in every human story, not just the baptised ones but the ones speaking the wisdom of science,
What would the church look like if that call were headed? Hoban spends the rest of this book exploring ideas in very practical terms. Of interest to Australian priests is his thumbnail sketch of priest associations in Ireland. It highlights the importance of Australia’s NCP and why it is worth fighting to keep it. He charts the rapid rise of interest in the Association and the issues they tackled; the response of the bishops
(some tried to stop it developing) and the climate of fear that emerged as a voice for change arose.
It’s a story of hope as they try to harness the sleeping giant of the laity
(somewhat diminished these days). The
ACP conducted a survey of laity called the Amarach survey which revealed dissatisfaction with church policies on married and women clergy; the church’s sexual ethic was considered largely irrelevant or inadequate and strong support for divorced and remarried Catholics and homosexual Catholic couples being treated more inclusively. This led to large assemblies of lay people to discuss their hopes for the future of the church.
This kind of activity produced comments of condemnation and disloyalty. This book charts the all too familiar story of trumped up and overstated accusations and the “Apostolic Visitation” that followed with input from the ACP on priests accused of sexual abuse resulted in five ACP members being ‘censured’ or silenced.
Where to from here? Hoban reports a story of a parish where the parish priest announced one week he was leaving the priesthood to marry and the next week the bishop appointed a married priest
(formerly Anglican) as the parish priest. This symbolises the twisted state of present discipline. There are suggestions about inclusion in church governance including appointing women as cardinals
(already possible according to Hoban); rethinking the closed shop of clericalism; opening parish councils to democracy and incorporating greater transparency in the appointment of bishops.
According to Hoban the way ahead includes embracing the change of attitude embedded in the Second Vatican Council’s principles; reforming the clerical culture, reforming the Catholic sexual ethic; realising loyalty doesn’t mean conformity and becoming firstly a listening church.
This book is a great read and offers a wonderful challenge to the church and its people. Would be good to think NCP, ACP and AUSCP (Association of US Catholic
Priests) could facilitate a voice for change beyond the clergy. This book offers a way ahead for such a dream.
42 summer 2012

How did Jesus understand God? How did he teach his followers to understand
God? Our human understanding is full of limitations and gaps, and Luke’s Gospel explores this, offering the possibility for change and renewal. the Gospel of
Luke takes us on a into the mind of the evangelist. invitation to engage in the
Divina. Reading and meditating on can open us to new ways of listening to the whole of Luke’s gospel, passage by how Luke’s way of telling it offers beginning to see deeply.
the text unfolds
Luke’s extraordinary
Jesus’ unique way of demonstrating love for imperfect, frightened, limited
Robinson’s glowing exposition shows compassion and seen by Luke. for priests and pastoral associates, to explore Lectio
Divina applied extraordinary riches: love, and hope are all to be found in these
Robinson tells us,
Jesus sang a song
Understanding more about Jesus to sing Jesus’ song ourselves.
Geoffrey
Robinson is a
Bishop Emeritus and notable scholar with advanced degrees in theology, philosophy and canon law. His previous works on spirituality and the church include the best-selling
Confronting Power and Sex in the
Catholic Church:
Reclaiming the
Spirit of Jesus and Love’s
Urgent Longings,
Wrestling with belief in today’s church.
Toll free: 1300 650 878 garrattpublishing.com.au
:
for Meditation and Homilies
Geoffrey Robinson
FOR
MEDITATION
AND
HOMILIES
The central purpose of this beautifully presented book is to assist in meditation and homilies on Luke’s Gospel.
Bishop Geoffrey Robinson believes that homilies and meditation are all the more rich and meaningful with “a deeper understanding of the meaning of the text.” In The Gospel of Luke for
Meditation and Homilies, Robinson draws on his biblical scholarship and rich pastoral experience to provide a welcome resource for all who wish to explore Lectio Divina applied to the Gospel of Luke.
ISBN 9781921946349 RRP $29.95
Web Price $26.95 Sophia $23.96 Sophia Web Price $21.56
Order ONLINE and SAVE!
Stuart Moran
An up-to-date, easy to read and engaging guide to
Luke’s Gospel.
ISBN 9781921946318 RRP $24.95
Web Price $22.45 Sophia $19.96 Sophia Web Price $17.96
Other New Titles in the
Friendly Guide Series:
Everything is 10% cheaper
AND delivery
Dorothy A Lee
ISBN 9781921946332 RRP $24.95
Web Price $22.45 Sophia $19.96 Sophia Web price $17.96
Mary L Coloe
ISBN 9781921946325 RRP $24.95
Web Price $22.45 Sophia $19.96 Sophia Web Price $17.96
To see all titles in the Friendly Guide series, visit: www.garrattpublishing.com.au/ index.php/category/Friendly-Guides welcoming_jacket_ISRJbr.indd 1
I have called this collection of homilies Welcoming the Outsider, thereby sounding a note that resonates throughout Luke’s gospel, and which is particularly evident in stories unique to Luke…In
Luke’s gospel, the final words that Jesus spoke from the cross to another human being were addressed to an outsider: “Today you the outsider.
– From the Introduction
Geoff Plant’s homilies teach by surprise! In each, he first devotes time to offer his knowledge of the biblical aspect of the given reading, from settings to scholarship. Then he invites us to share his delight in something from his own discovery of our contemporary secular world which has made its mark, from people to places. In a deft conclusion, he draws the two worlds together so we are suddenly, clearly and unforgettably instructed in holy understanding. Spiritual growth is the result.
These homilies will be welcomed by priests and Church workers, students of Biblical Studies, Bible Study groups and individuals wishing to enrich their own spiritual understanding.
About the Author
Geoffrey Plant is pastor of St Luke’s Parish, Revesby, within the john garratt publishing john in Melbourne, and at Sydney University.
garratt is his first love. He studied theology at the Yarra Theological Union
W E L C O M I N G T H E
Homilies for the year of Luke
Homilies for Year C, the Year of Luke.
Geoffrey Plant john garratt publishing
G E O F F R E Y P L A N T
BR
ACING T
W O R D !
The evocative title has been used by Geoffrey Plant to
28/8/09 4:19:13 PM sound a note that resonates throughout Luke’s
Gospel, and which is particularly evident in stories unique to Luke. As Plant notes, the final words that Jesus spoke from the cross to another human being were addressed to an outsider:
“Today you will be with me in paradise.” Jesus died as he had lived, welcoming the outsider.
ISBN 9781920682019 RRP 29.95
Web Price $26.95 Sophia $23.96 Sophia Web Price $21.56
FOR NCP MEMBERS *
Purchase Friendly Guide to the
New Testament, Friendly Guide to
Matthew, Friendly Guide to Mark,
Friendly Guide to Luke and Friendly
Guide to John for $100.00
Sophia $80.00*
Sophia members save over $40.00!
* no further discounts
We have stacks of resources for Advent,
Christmas, Lent and the new liturgical year, all designed to make your job easier.
Check them out at our new website: www.garrattpublishing.com.au
James Griffin
Not the first to delve into the complex life of
Daniel Mannix, Griffin’s biography is unique for exposing the Archbishop’s human flaws, previously avoided or brushed over by other biographers. While he credits
Mannix for his many achievements, Griffin does not shrink away from careful analysis of controversies where Mannix’s influence is less well known: conscription in the Great War; state aid for Catholic schools; his association with entrepreneur John Wren; and his fateful connection with B.A. Santamaria. This produced damaging splits in the Church, the Labor Party and even families.
Beautifully written from an acerbic distance, this biography should appeal to those interested in how the Australian church and the nation was shaped and how its values and institutions were influenced by the life of this extraordinary man.
ISBN 9781921946233 RRP $49.95
Web Price $44.96 Sophia: $39.96 Sophia Web Price $35.96
Garratt Publishing would like to wish the
NCP a very happy Christmas and a joyful new liturgical year.
TO ORDER: Phone 1300 650 878
Fax 03 8545 2922 email sales@garrattpublishing.com.au web: www.garrattpublishing.com.au
ings!
1 x LIVING LITURGY 2013 Joyce Ann Zinnerman et al.
Living Liturgy is the indispensable resource that supports parish ministers of all types in preparing for the celebration of Mass for Sundays, solemnities – and select other days – so that celebrating the liturgy and living a liturgical spirituality go hand-in-hand.
1 x CLIP ART FOR CELEBRATING YEAR C LUKE Sr Susan Daily
This creative resource offers you an opportunity to add colour to your liturgies and to co-ordinate newsletters, overhead projections, banners, religion classes, certificates and many other resources.
10 x SUNDAYS UNDER THE SOUTHERN CROSS: YEAR C Dr Mary Cole
An inexpensive resource for readers, teachers and anyone wanting a brief, informed reflection on Luke’s Gospel.
PLUS the choice of one of the following:
GOSPEL OF LUKE: for Meditation and Homilies Bishop Geoffrey Robinson
The Gospel of Luke offers a brief commentary on each passage and then give points that might assist in meditation and in preparing a homily.
WELCOMING THE OUTSIDER: Reflections for the Year of Luke Geoff Plant
A welcome collection of insightful, engaging and quite unique homilies and reflections.
WELCOMING THE WORD IN YEAR C WITH BURNING HEARTS Sr Verna Holyhead
Rich in references to poetry and history, these reflections on the Old and New
Testament readings are infused with the Rule of St Benedict, which invites
Christians to take the two testaments as ‘the truest guides for human life.’
RRP: $207.35
Save $57.35 Sophia members save $87.35
Garratt Publishing | 32 Glenvale Crescent Mulgrave Vic 3170 | ABN 28 076 537 623 | the swag
|
43

O
Of all life’s celebrations the funeral liturgy can touch us the most deeply.
We prefer to place our trust and reliance on those who have the skill and experience to plan a funeral that has meaning and dignity.
At least that’s what Sydney families look for when they choose
WN Bull Funerals.
As the funeral liturgy expresses faith, it also contextualises the life of the deceased with traditional and contemporary elements.
44
T: (02) 9519 5344 F: (02) 9519 4310
24 HOUR HELP LINE lgadv_SWAG_142 summer 2012
AUSTRALIAN FUNERAL DIRECTORS ASSOCIATION MEMBER