Father Bob

A “flash” in our little world

We had a funeral for Roger last week. He was an ordinary good bloke, partner of Lulu for over 30 years.

He wasn’t “flash” as the world judges but he was “flash” in our little world.

He was consistently, happily present, with Lulu, for anyone who crossed his path or whose path he crossed.

Doesn’t sound much, especially after Michael Jackson’s funeral and memorial services dominated in all media.

I’m not putting M.J.’s funeral down, at all, because it seems to me to do what it set out to do and did very well – provide M.J.’s publics (plural!) with a vehicle for celebrating M.J.’s message while acknowledging his mess (as the preacher said).

We’re a global village and, therefore, experience our celebrities’ highs and lows on a global scale.

Melbourne did it in its own inimitable style as a response to bushfire trauma.

The Brits did it their way after the London bombings and Princess Di’s death.

The Americans do it their way, naturally differently, as masters of mass media.

Roger’s funeral, on the other hand, was the product of our parish and neighbourhood ethos, just 160 years in the making.

“Come as you are, that’s how I want you” is our parish theme song, our message celebrated, our mess acknowledged.

And, as the preacher said forcefully, “don’t concentrate on the mess or you’ll miss out on the message”.

So, thanks and “adious”, Roger and Michael Jackson, one our flesh and blood companion, the other our virtual infotainer.

By the way, lots of people, especially the young, seem to spend loads of time socially networking in cyberspace and less and less time in flesh and blood human company.

Local churches, I suggest, should accept this challenge to be an antidote to a possible virus more deadly than any ‘flu, because it can cripple the soul/self.

I’m not saying that’s a suasive reason for people to return to church services. We connected christians should, however, reflect that “fellowship” was one of the most powerful “selling points” in the first 400 years of christian church development.

The best way of building up local house churches was through attracting family members and friends to the radical new way of “doing” religion.

There’s a new book out “God is Back”, by John Micklethwait (editor of “The Economist” for the literati) which analyses the resurgence of what may well prove to be “toxic” religion, in some parts of the world, and “therapeutic” religion in others.

Each corner store church should conduct a self-examination process to check which type, toxic or therapeutic, it is.

Lots of critics have proclaimed religion to be toxic, a mess. Lots of others believe it to be the bearer of a healing message.

Roger’s and M.J.’s funerals both did that for me.

RJM 

The year of the Parish Priest

Burst water main on our side of the street or their side of the street? Head Office wants us locals to make decision.

Local useless assett needs to be sold to provide parish with the cash to not only survive but flourish. In this instance, locals can’t make decision head office wants to.

What the! Anyway, this is the year of the “Parish Priest” according tour Roman uber head office.

They even pick a patron, John Vianney, Cure of Ars, who was born in France, 1786, died France, 1858

I like John Vianney. He avoided conscription to join the catholic priesthood. He wasn’t bright academically. 

Senor clergy thought he was a fool. They posted him as far away as they could – Ars in the Pyrenees, France.

He had to start from scratch because Catholicism in France was in the throes of the French revolution.

Rich churches were persecuted, poorer ones, like Ars, lost priests and people to the new religion of liberty, equality and fraternity.

Anyway, John did what all quality parish priests do – he stuck to his guns, cleaned the place up, rang the church bell and kept turning up himself for predictable duty.

The villagers, neglected for generations by a centralist, monied clerical caste kept their eye on John until they were collectively convinced that he was their kind of priest.

He had a hard centre and soft coating. He had no frills. He reassured them endlessly in what is known in Catholicism as “the confessional”.

He had a frugal lifestyle and the villagers knew it. He knew them. They knew him. That’s what Jesus said was the preferred relationship between God and us, shepherd and flock, priest and people.

No-one’s in charge. Everyone’s in charge.

So fabulous was that relationship between John Vianney and villagers that it became a legend throughout France.

Tourists poured into Ars. Senior clergy hated to admit John’s successful ministry by doing all the right things but in his own inimitable way.

Secular authorities reckoned John was great.

He’d opened up the whole region to tourists, pious and impious alike.

Catholicism was caught more than taught. It took 36 years to finish his job in Ars and, in fact, in life.

His earliest foes were among his loyalist friends.

He said, unashamedly, of his villagers: “When you are with me, things are not so bad, but when I am alone, I am worth nothing ….. I am like the zeros that have no value except alongside some other figures.” Neat!  

His bishop eventually made him a “canon”, a senior officer, a sign of approval in his 68th year. The bishop gave him a special scarlet and ermine cape to look the part. He sold it when the “boss” left.

France gave him the Legion of Honour the next year “Abbe Vianney is another St. Vincent De Paul, whose charity works wonders”.

Let’s hope, folks, John Vianney survives the selective devotionalism of this Year of the Parish Priest. I, for one, like his substance and style.

RJM

Core Business

Lots of deep and meaningful things will go through my head this weekend because it is the annual feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, after whom this parish and church are named.

Annual patronal feasts are meant to give catholics a fix on their contemporary situation. As there’s plenty of that in the parish newsletter, available online, I’ll leave it at that here and now.

Just came back from a conversation with 150 magnificent young women, at St Aloysius, North Melbourne.

Their parents came from every country on earth. Their interest in the subject of the poor was palpable. Justine, the McAuley Foundation, gave stunning evidence of the need for support for battered women and children.

Rohan, St. Vincent’s Youth Services, gave an excellent coverage of St. V. de P. Outreach to young Melburnians.

I was humbled today as I was yesterday at St. Kevin’s College, Toorak, where I did Mass for 50 Year 11 students. Last night 6 Parade College, Bundoora students manned our food bus on the Fitzroy Street, St. Kilda run.

What a blessing for an old man to be part of the experience these young Australians are willing to share with me!

These youngsters (the term dates me, I know) all show interest and feeling in the real world although they spend a lot of time in cyberspace.

What’s that song say? “What a wonderful world”.

Mr Rudd has given our regional primary school, Galilee, a few quid to build a hall. A condition is, as is fitting, that the neighbourhood be welcome to share the facility. Great idea! I hope it eventuates as an experience of community. We need plenty of demonstrations of communitarianism as an antidote to the poison of separatism, always lurking in the wings to destabilise us. In catholic jargon, it’s called original sin.

Whenever I feel like walking away from this venerable parish, into no-man’s land, because of age and temperament, I put on the brakes because I really believe that small bytes ( a parish/neighbourhood) play an indispensable role in the metamorphosis of society into a community into a commonwealth.

In my 36th year as parish priest of South Melbourne and my 49th as a commissioned officer of catholism, I willingly acknowledge the part this parish and neighbourhood have played in my personal history.

I want my social activism to be seen always as just a small episode in the noble cause of social justice respected as “core business” by both parish and town since their melded beginnings.  

Jesus will be forever known as “the Nazarene” because he grew up in Nazareth, Palestine.

I’d like to be remembered as “from South” because I grew up in South Melbourne as a disciple of both Peter and Paul.

RJM

Fly with it

With the struggle and strife going on between me and the Diocesan Finance Department over spending too much on the “undeserving” poor, I needed to lighten up for my own sake but, certainly, for lots of others who are my friends either in the flesh or online.

So, I’m pinching Father Pat O’Shea’s words on playfulness. They’re in the recent issue of “Far East”.  Bon appétit! 

“FLY WITH IT

Something has been added to our local park at Avalon in the Hutt Valley. It caught not only my eye but my imagination and my heart as well. It is a sculpture by Leon van den Eijkel that he calls “The Smiling Windmills”. He describes it as a celebration of childhood, of a time when nature played with us.

As I walked away from it I found I was smiling. I also found myself pondering the importance of play in life.

Our world is one that is marked by gravity. We confront serious issues on almost every side. People are working longer hours. It seems to be a world in which there is little time or place for play, even for children let alone responsible adults. Taking time to play can seem inappropriate in the face of what is going on in the world.

I remember a variation on the parable of the talents. In this version one person was given the gift of the flocks, the second the gift of the forest and the third the gift of music and dance. That place came on hard times while the ruler was away and he returned to find total devastation. The flocks had been slaughtered to feed the starving people and the forests cut down to keep them warm  during the long winters but worse than the loss of these, was the spirit of the people had been broken.

The owner understood and sympathised with what had happened to the flocks and the forest by those entrusted with them but he asked the one entrusted with the gift of music and dance why he had not used his gift to keep the spirit of the people alive.

He replied that it did not seem appropriate amid such hardship to be singing and dancing. So he did not use his gift and the spirit of the people, that might have sustained them through the physical hardships, also died.

The story is a reminder of the need at times to do what seems to be ‘counter-indicated’: to exercise when one feels depressed and totally lacking the energy to do anything, to play with important ideas that we are expected to take seriously, to seek out the company of others when we feel like being alone and to find cause for laughter and humour in situations which seem to exclude them.

I have always loved the notion that for the Celts “religion was too important to be taken solemnly”. One interesting expression of the approach is to be found in the Book of Kells, where it seems that a number of the illustrations that accompany the biblical texts resemble cartoons more than anything else. It suggests that a playful approach while it may lack solemnity can nevertheless be a serious way to explore the sacred and sacred texts.

The bible too says something similar when it speaks of Wisdom as “ever at play in the universe, delighting to be with human beings”. Children too remind us if we let them. As one parent reflects “When I feel the wind on my face, I brace myself against it. I feel it messing up my hair and pilling me back when I walk. My kids close their eyes, spread their arms and fly with it, until they fall to the ground laughing.” They know that nature plays with us.

Hopefully there are things in your local environment like the “Smiling Windmills” that can remind you to mix in some levity with all the gravity, a little play with all the work and some rest in the busyness of our lives. For this too we have the Sabbath Day.

R.J.M.

My friend…

My friend John Safran got himself involved in a crucifixion ritual in the Philippines. There were some comments in the media about how it all happened that the producers thought should be cleared up. Here's a statement from the producers; 

 

"John Safran recently participated in a crucifixion ritual in the Philippines for his upcoming tv show Race Relations. A freelance staff member told an organiser that John was partly motivated by news of a sick family member. This claim was made without John Safran's knowledge or permission and its use was an error in judgement".

RJM

Christ Incorporated

It’s hard to have bright thoughts in this bleak snap of winter.  Maybe our minds hibernate even though our bodies battle on to earn a quid.

I’m about to jump on a plane at 2pm, and do Compass for the ABC (same building as the Chaser!)  I’m back here by midnight.  Dog will be pleased to see me.

Next morning, it’s our privilege to host the Lenaghan family and friends, to farewell recently deceased Patriach, John.

His wife, Kath, predeceased him.  The Lenaghans are pillars of parish and neighbourhood.

We’re blessed with half a dozen such entire families.  South Melbourne’s like that and has been since 1854.  It’s part of the ethos of the place.

It’s kept us as a going concern from 1854 to the 1960’s, when government social engineers changed, with the stroke of a pen, the social fabric of South Melbourne.

Rob Grogan is on the verge of publishing a record of this 1960’s intervention, “From Green to Red and Write”.  It may be available by our parish feast day of Sts Peter and Paul on Sunday 28 June.

He’s got a chapter, “From Presbytery to Parish House”, which touched me, personally, because I’ve lived here for 36 years.

There were four priests in the house when I arrived in 1973, after 4 years full-time chaplaincy duties with the Australian Army.

All those priests were needed up until the 1960’s because the parish covered a huge inner urban area, and boasted a public hospital, Prince Henry.

By the time I got here, there wasn’t work enough for four priests.  Over the next couple of years, we were down to just one, me.

Thank God, this has become a lay-led parish in the best sense.  I conduct the orchestra.  Everyone else is expected to play their part.

Thirty years ago, the Lenaghans and the other half dozen families, because of their training in higher education, and their inherited / learned civility, kept our Parish Catholicism meaningful and mindful of our collective responsibility to the neighbourhood.

Of course, many key individuals have played leading roles in our parish’s development, both in it’s “golden era”, and now during its renaissance.

I’m banging on about this because I sense ennui, a boredom, among our 200 churchgoers.  I’m copping it from diocesan HO for leading according to the Saints Peter and Paul ethos, developed with much blood, toil, tears and sweat.

Today, please excuse us, online comrades is the Catholic Feast of Corpus Christi (Roman for “Body of Christ”, which when decoded, for general consumption, means “Christ Incorporated”).

Trinity means God is a collective.  Corpus Christi means WE are a collective of which Jesus of Nazareth is the essential ingredient.

What I say about this 155 year old parish, applies to all church communities worth their salt.  Every member needs to do something for both religious and secular demographic.

Swine flu may have reduced us to nodding instead of touching during the “Sign of Peace” ritual.

Nothing and no one should be allowed to stop a “Christ Incorporated” Parish from persuing its manifest destiny.

R.J.M.

No harm and a little good

Queen’s Birthday is observed in Australia, except West Aust, Monday 8th June.

Why here so far from England?  What happened to the Republic debate?

No place for politics in this blog / parish newsletter.  Yet politics seem to rule the world.  Politics are, after all, the art of the possible.

Politics had to be practised at every level on Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo, Egypt.

A speech is one thing, “show me the politics” is another.

The best politics, do no harm and a little good, is the responsibility of every man and woman in whatever society.

Who pulls the levers in North Korea?  Who are the hidden power brokers?

At a local level, like here in the South Melbourne Parish and the City of Port Phillip, who pulls the levers.

Who was responsible for the speed, or lack of it, of leadership decision-making at the height of Victoria’s bushfires?

It’s Trinity Sunday on the Catholic calender.  As a preacher, I have to make sense of that for my parishioners, so they can make their own sense of Trinity.

That’s how religious story telling goes, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim (the ones I know best).

Gather the people, tell the story, let the people ritualise the story through bread breaking or whatever.

The assembled people leave the synagogue, church, mosque, and personalise, personify their shared ritual.  That’s where politics come in.

Every single one at the assembly is expected to politicise the message received – we’re not talking Party Politics here, but personal commitment to getting the “possible” into practice.

Trinity means communitarian God.  We and God are all in this “thing” together.  There may well be no beginning and no end.  Otherwise, what do eternal and infinite mean?  (I withdraw any and all of this on demand, if required by the religious police).

Trinity is incomprehensible as sheer doctrine.  It’s inspirational as a practice.

Jesus of Nazareth, I believe, is Trinity in practice.  From deference to my majority readership, I pursue this no further except to reassure them I believe both religious and secular is sacred.

Politics is sacred when it does no harm and a little good.

Head Offices, both religious and sacred, have a special vocation to enable those they serve to get done the job confronting these field offices.

There’s nothing worse for a field officer to be deserted by a head office.  The bushfire Royal Commission has already heard sad submissions to that effect.

I, myself, on behalf of 200 church going parishioners, and 300 non church going dependants, need to have the total support of head office, to avoid dire consequences, even fatal, for socially challenged dependants.

R.J.M.

Unity is essential to Catholicism, uniformity is not

Priest Peter Kennedy on ABC “Australian Story” made me think.  Maybe his sin is that he offends the Roman part of Catholicism, and has slid into a possibly South Brisbane “rite” of Catholicism.

The adjective “Roman” applies more properly to the diocese of Rome, than to the worldwide church that is in union with the Bishop of Rome.

Indeed, it strikes some as contradictory to call the church Catholic and Roman, at one and the same time.

Eastern rite catholics, who are in union with Rome, also find the adjective “Roman” objectionable.

A couple of their bishops raised their voices at Vatican 2, in protest against the dominant “Roman” bishop lobby, discussing Catholicism as though it was “Roman” alone and not multicultural.

They prefer to speak of their church as Catholic, and then to distinguish particular church traditions, e.g. Roman, Byzantine, Maronite, American, Coptic, Ethopian, East Syrian and West Syrian, within the Catholic communion.

The point I’m labouring to make this Pentecost, is, that Catholicism is broader than Romanism.

Unity is essential to Catholicism, uniformity is not.

Peter Kennedy is well and truly in union with Rome, but may not be in uniformity with Rome.

This is a trivial topic in comparison with other real life issues.  It does, however, deserve a free and frank discussion in every parish and diocesan head office in Australia.

It’s just unnecessary and plain awful that some parishes, known to us all, are stricken with grief at the news that their venerable Parish Priests have been advised to retire to the clubrooms, to have no further influence on the parishes they have served so well for so long.

I’m not talking about myself and South Melbourne here.  That would be inappropriate for the purposes of this blog, and parish newsletter.

I’m simply raising an issue that makes me uneasy.

Authorities need to quickly realise that parishes deserve to be consulted when a venerable parish priest’s future is under administrative discussion.

Let’s practise Catholicism at its best in these delicate matters, not err on the side of roman law and order.

Each parish has an ethos of its own, for better or worse.  Parishes are the way the Australian Church chose to follow.  We could have chosen a sort of monastic federation, as looked likely from the arrival of the Benedictine Monks in Sydney, at the earliest stage of Catholicism in Australia.

Parishes, like villages, are delicate pieces of precious human fabric, at once, material and spiritual together.

Vatican 2 labelled these units, local church communities.  Even these units were too ungainly for the kind of social gospel interactive work, undertaken by catholics in Latin America.

These became known as basic church communities.  The Parish was known as the community of communities, the matrix of local catholicism.

Pentecost 2009 cries out for a return to this model.

R.J.M.

Flood alert!

An email update from one of the team - Henri

"On Sunday the soup kitchen went out per usual. Upon arrival there was  already app 20 people awaiting for me.

It was busier than it was last Thursday. After all these past 16 years I still can't really work out when and on what day will it be a busy  night. Besides economical factors ( such as dole payment) there is nothing definite to put it down to.

We gave out the following 192 slices of pizza. 146 hot dogs. 7 made up Sandwiche bags. Countless cups of coffee. Very busy night.

For the first 15 minutes at St. Kilda I had to close the bus doors and single handly serve out hot dogs only as my volunteers were late. Very exhausting as the queue just kept getting busier.

Yours

Henri"

RJM

Care, Communication and Concern

I’ve been talked into “twitter”.  Not sure I measure up.  I’m confused.  Are we no longer to have a single unpublished thought?  Maybe that’s not even the point.

The God Squad motocycle “chapter” has the motto:  Care, Communication, Concern.  I knew the founder of Melbourne God Squad, Reverend John Smith, over 30 years ago.

Like the legendary Rev Ted Noffs of Wayside Chapel, Kings Cross fame, Rev John was an excellent aussie protestant theologian.

Care, Communication and Concern was their core business.  And they were, personally, good at it.  As are their 2 projects after more than 30 years contribution to the Christian Church within Australian society.

The worldwideweb seems to present an excellent testing ground for techniques we’d love to see work in reality.

Twittering goes on endlessly.  In real life, it’s hard to get people to return your call.  Yet we all know the value of communication in making care and concern practical.

Listen to the Bushfire Royal Commission reports.  Communication seems to be the number one issue under scrutiny.

Churches were designed to be local communication centres, albeit for denominational specific purposes.

Now, they, together with temples, synagogues and ashrams, need to rediscover their vocation as local centres of care, communication and concern…for the neighbourhood, not just the faith community.

Two religious days, special for Christians, are upon us – Ascension and Pentecost.

We know every other religious group has its special days of remembrance and festival.

I’d dearly love those religious groups to show public care and concern by communicating to the wider community, the religious message but in secular terms.  I’d call that religious civility.  For catholics, Ascension marks the disappearance of the founder, Jesus of Nazareth, physically, from our collective experience.

The moral of that story, “he ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God”, surely is that the founder has left the building in the safe keeping of his followers.  No good waiting for God to come and save us.  We’re the one we’ve been waiting for, so let’s get on with the business of helping in the evolution of a better world for every human, animal, vegetable and mineral.

The Pentecost feast has an equally relevant moral.  Not long after Jesus disappeared, the confused and grieving few hundred believers were gathered in one place, somewhere in Jerusalem.

What happened next, reads like a report to the Bushfire Commission.  The sound of the gale force wind was terrifying, like half a dozen jet engines sounding off together.

What came next, in Jerusalem, was a phenomenon, known throughout the Christian world as Pentecost, named for the Jewish feast celebrated annually to mark harvest time.

Not only the original Christians but their startled Jewish compatiorts experienced communication at its best – everyone understood everyone else, irrespective of differences of gender, colour, class or creed.

Let’s try again, right here, right now.

R.J.M.