For
the first few years of my coming to Redfern to Mass,
St
Vincent's
meant chiefly the value I placed on the friendship and
support of Ted Kennedy.
I
had been closely associated with Ted during his time
as Chaplain at Sydney
University
and had come to appreciate the genuineness, the generosity,
the breadth of mind, the commitment to freedom and justice
that marked his Catholicism. I had been a Jesuit for
thirteen years, leaving the Order in 1962 after just
one year of Theological studies, and had been deeply
excited by the ferment of thought and the liberation
of spirit that were renewing the Church at the time.
I found in Ted the essence of what I had come to value,
a quiet openness to what the best thinkers were presenting
to the Church, and an inspiring capacity to look afresh
at aspects of Catholic life and thought, discerning
what was authentically Christian from what was simply
the cultural perspective of another age. His fearlessness
in abandoning what was unnecessary and in appropriating
what was new and genuine gave me complete trust in him.
He was what I wanted the Church to be and yet he pointed
so clearly to ways in which it wasn't what it should
be.
At
St Vincent's, then, I felt at home. Ted's homilies focused
on insights of the best scriptural scholars and offered
the sustaining power of the Scriptures. They showed
from Church History ways in which modern Catholic doctrine
and liturgy had been impoverished by deviating from
authentic Christianity. They pointed to ways in which
Church power had been, and was being, abused to the
detriment of the faithful. They offered rich insights
into the history of the Australian
Church,
(especially into the work and spirit of the early orders
of nuns) and made being an active member of the Church
a natural thing. They insisted on the modern insight
that authentic Catholicism is “the faith that does justice',
and on the necessity to the Church of a “preferential
option for the poor'. They showed Ted's love for the
Aboriginal people and challenged us to share it. They
attacked political insensitivity to, and even malice
towards, the Aborigines. And constantly they made use
of (usually Australian) poetry to show how the imagination
puts us in touch with the truth of our hearts and opens
our eyes to a truer vision of ourselves and our values.
At
St
Vincent's,
too, I was able to feel safe. For years I had hated
with a passion the injustices the Church had inflicted
on those who did not subscribe to comfortable orthodoxies.
The harsh treatment, for example, which Rome in the
early twentieth century had meted out to scripture scholars
daring to break ground that (for the Catholic Church)
was new filled me with resentment; and similar injustices
to theologians which, in the name of Holy Orthodoxy,
continued throughout the century and climaxed, perhaps,
with the Pope's refusal to grant Tissa Balisuriya the
right to appeal against the ridiculous and unjust charges
against him sustained my animus. There had been a history
of such injustices in the Australian
Church,
too, (not to mention the many material injustices inflicted
by autocratic bishops on generations of nuns) and in
Sydney
I had been involved in the public meeting which had
censured Bishop Muldon for his harsh and unjust treatment
of Mother Gorman R.S.C.J. In Melbourne, Archbishop Pell's
cruel silencing of Michael Morwood (then M.S.C.), because
in Tomorrow's
Catholic he did no more than develop and popularise
ideas that were current throughout Christianity, was
a recent example that we in Sydney then thought concerned
us only from a distance. At St
Vincent's,
encouraged by Ted and living amongst fellow spirits,
I breathed the congenial atmosphere of opposition to
such injustices.
Over
the last few years, however, perhaps because Ted wasn't
there so much, I became aware of a new reason for valuing
St
Vincent's
- I became aware of just how precious to me the community
was. It was a community made up mostly of lay people,
many of them with a strong and informed sense of what
they wanted the Church to be, but there were also a
surprising number of religious, some looking after the
running of the parish and working with Aboriginal people
in the area, some coming regularly from other places.
All of these people were there because they wanted very
much to be, because they shared deep values of freedom
of conscience and commitment to social justice, values
that they did not find satisfied, or find such scope
to express, in other parish churches. And precisely
because of their commitment to those values they were
an independent mob - the larrikin, even the subversive,
hiding not very far below the surface of the most decorous
of them. They were articulate, too, a fair number of
them taking the chance, before the end of Mass, to make
announcements about things of importance to them as
committed Christians - and above all they were inspiring,
encouraging me to work and act for justice in ways open
to me. They were informal too, and full of good will
to each other (indeed loved each other) and this often
made them unruly, especially before Mass or during the
giving of the Peace. But Mass at St
Vincent's
is never predictable and I quickly learned to accept
(with a tolerance that surprised me) the most unexpected
things happening.
I
became aware, too, of how grateful I was to the Priests
who supplied for us and kept us together as a community
during the long period when Ted was too ill to be with
us very often. There were several M.S.C.s, several Jesuits
and a Passionist, there was a Sri Lankan and a Papuan,
some of them gentle, some of them very passionate men,
but all ready to enter in their degrees into the relaxed
spirit of St
Vincent's.
Mostly, however, there was dear Father John Ford who
built a special relationship with us week after week
after week. I hope there's still a role for him at Redfern.
We
welcome Fr Peter Carroll M.S.C. now as our new parish
priest and we hope he finds a happy and fulfilling ministry
among us. His generosity in taking it on so readily
and our gratitude to him for doing so both promise that
he will.
by Joe Castley
|