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Karen Armstrong: The Bible: A Biography (Books That Changed the World)
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Pictured is Jack. See him a few times in the road begging for money
for food and lodgings.
He is a very polite young man of Greek origins.
Assisted him and continue to do so whenever I see him in Elsternwick.
I may have said something silly in church last weekend something like “It’s lonely being a parish priest right now.”
It’s true in one sense because loneliness is the side effect of the contemporary clash of cultures within catholicism right now.
Had we pursued the path of lay leadership begun after our catholic self-reformation, known as Vatican 2, of the 1960’s, we parish priests would be embedded safely in a community, a parish, driven by wisdom, worship and work….www.
And each local parish would be part of another www… world wide web. Hence, my preferred code name for Catholicism…. www.www!
But, things didn’t turn out that way. About 20 years ago, lay leadership was sidelined by a powerful (out of all proportion to their numbers) group of revisionists claiming the god given vocation of, as they put it, “reforming the reform”.
So, “woe is me”. But, stop right there. Loneliness is one thing. Being alone is another. And, alone I’m not.
I only have to walk around this parish house, work in it, sleep in it to feel the presence of all the church people who’ve used this as a base since the 1850’s.
Blokes who left Ireland to spend their lives at this end of the earth, never to return home. We have an Irish flag flying from this parish house in memory of them.
These original settlements by catholics were called “missions”. Where I sit right now was “Emerald Hill Mission”. It was from here that Sandridge, now Port Melbourne, was begun. We were busy even then.
Lots of loneliness was the norm for ex convicts and free settlers alike. All were far from home. But, they made the best of it by forming a community, the only sure cure for aloneness.
And that’s what I’m here for, to invite you to reinvent community. This parish needs, as an evolutionary step, to recognise its future as a special community within a neighbourhood developing, hopefully, into a secular community – a community of special interest communities.
Channels 9 and 7 both have plans to screen reports on my “Canvas Town 2” and the Hopemobile – cures for homelessness and hopelessness.
If one or both reports go to air (neither of them may!), I’ll be trying to articulate what I’ve said above.
I’ve always believed catholics are meant to go OUT. The latest in-house culture coup seems to be calling catholics back IN.
It is, however, solid catholic orthodoxy to follow Paul of Tarsus (1st Century CE) by seeking God and good in the least “churchy” places and people.
My Foundation is merely a pilot light keeping the Vatican 2 “preference for the poor and young” alive, willing and able.
Readers of this blog are “virtual” members of this parish.
Welcome aboard.
R.J.M.
Last week I wrote that “A Current Affair” was interested in doing a story on my problem of paying rent for 30 people depending on me for health and safety.
ACA isn’t interested anymore. They’ve got Didak and the Shaws, or, even, the Beijing Games to keep the Channel cashed up.
“Today Tonight” may cover the story. That’s the latest. My union mates, thanks to Kevin Bracken, parishioner and Maritime Union State Secretary, have put up a sizeable tent, a symbolic gesture, to depict our willingness to share church land with my 30 dependants.
South Melbourne was called in the early 1850’s, Canvas Town. Eureka happened in 1854. The Eureka tower, with its splash of gold (wealth) and slash of red (labour) looks down on our corner of Dorcas and Montague.
Two Eureka Tower entrepreneurs, Bruno and Nonda, are regular contributors to the care of the poor emanating from our parish precinct.
Our very street, Dorcas, is named for a Christian biblical woman of the 1st century of church history. She was an entrepreneur, too. She wove and dyed cloth to sell to make money to help the poor.
(The local Anglican church was named Dorcas before its current St. Luke.)
It’s time for me and this Catholic parish and our associates of all faiths, all social classes, who’ve cared for the poor for the last 35 years, to proudly present our efforts as a unique, urgent and flexible response to social exclusion, the toxic imprint left by laudable progress.
Beijing will dominate our screens for the next few weeks. We’ll see the Chinese version of socialist capitalism at work. We’ve, already, been taught that the late great Chairman Mao said it was OK for a few Chinese to become the first millionaires (although, surely, the forgotten “culture revolution” must have made a shadowy few millionaires – social engineering always does!) and the rest of the Chinese would become less poor.
As a Confucian wise saying, Mao’s words probably cut the mustard (as a decadent western saying goes). What I’m being forced to say, via this blog, and whatever other outlet I can hijack is what Chris Middendorp of Sacred Heart Mission said last week in The Age:
“Those of us working in the community sector over the past few years have watched the poverty and disadvantage swell and rise along with the property values of our city’s real estate.
Homelessness was a dire problem 10 years ago: it is now scandalously out of control and urgent intervention is now required.” Thanks Chris.
As a catholic, I was both titillated and shocked by the opulence of Catholic World Youth Day in Sydney. Now I’m shocked into agitation, education and organisation, even if the result is “the power of one”, to launch What If Day.
What if someone out there with disposable income, sponsored my/our puny but promising experiment to heal homelessness among 40 men, woman and children who’ve put their trust in me and mine.
R.J.M.
In Fitzroy St, St Kilda, we came accross some enterprising homeless people selling papers and shoes.
What we’ll be seeing in Beijing has taken over 3000 years to stage. The Chinese tribal memory goes back that far – and further.
The individual, according to the Chinese paradigm, has to submerge into the collective. There has to be a figure at the head of the collective to act as political, social and religious focus, yesterday’s Emperor, today’s Chairman.
Chinese history, all 3000 plus years of it, is about the struggle to maintain the essential harmony of the Chinese universe. No harmony is chaos.
Our western prevailing philosophy has chosen secular democracy as its preferred model.
The current western turmoil about money, led, it seems, by some mystical US virus called “subprime”, threatens to plunge secular democracies into chaos.
The disappearance of Starbucks from Australia is a symptom of the virulence of the disease.
The real culprit is, of course, and I write here, not as a Chinese Confucian, but as a Jesus freak, not “subprime” but GREED.
Greed may well be good for the individual, but it’s always bad for the collective.
Catholics get caught occasionally, in the seductive dance of greed – rich rituals, rich infra-structure, rich lifestyle of church officials.
Thank God, help is on its way . The poorer members of our secular democracies are available and, hopefully, willing to teach our rich people how to make do with less. Our poor are, also, crying out to the rich not to panic but to exercise discipline so as to continue to make money to fund restorative programmes for the poor.
I speak from almost 50 years of experience in the field of supporting both rich and poor (I’m not boasting, as St. Paul said, just stating a fact!).
As a businessman told me last week: “You’ve got an impeccable track record – founded and ran both Open Family and Emerald Hill Mission. Now you’re pursuing a final initiative, the Father Bob Maguire Foundation. It caters for 300 dependants. It’s serious business. Maybe you should get serious and appeal to serious “suits” for serious money.” Maybe he’s right.
This coming week I’ll be alerting the press to the difficulty of supporting 300 people dispersed throughout Melbourne.
I’ll be suggesting setting up tents in the parish garden, establishing a micro version of Canvas Town, last seen around here 1850’s.
My businessman friend won’t be impressed but I haven’t a moment to lose.
R.J.M.
The carnival is over. I do hope cynicism wasn’t the dominant note struck by my blogs during World Youth Day week.
The so called “ecclesial movements” like the Neo Catechumenal Way, soon to be performing at a western or northern suburb near you, did an efficient job of cheerleading.
How many members of these cashed-up, highly trained motivated and deployed troops infiltrated WYD? There must have been thousands.
Good on them for managing to get the next WYD booked for Madrid, Spain. That’s the place where both they and Opus Dei were founded. So it’s off home to the land of extremes to confront the secular humanist state on its own inherited blood stained patch. Bone up on the history of the Iberian Peninsula and see what I mean.
As the WYD final weekend of finery unfolded, finishing with the latest Australian envoy to the Vatican, Tim Fisher, kissing the Pope’s hand, little catholic churches all around the world read the gospel of the “weeds and wheat”.
“Let both grow together”, said Jesus. “None of your business to become weed terminators.” Weeds and wheat share the same natural environment. The Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us. Catholics must become flesh and dwell amongst the general population. Jesus is really and truly present in the bread of the Sacrament. But He is also really and truly present in the minds and hearts of individual humans and collective humanity.
The commissioned pilgrims, hopefully, found what they came to find, the sacred in the secular. Now let them spend what’s left of their youth finding the sacred in their secular homelands, most of which are as blood stained as Spain, lest we forget.
I pray that each and every pilgrim will have stashed in his/her boogie board, the Aussie vaccine to the global virus of contaminated religion of whatever brand.
R.J.M.
A national magazine booked an interview last Monday then cancelled a day later. They wanted to talk about World Catholic Youth Day but got bored just thinking about it.
TV show, Big Brother, is dumped. Catholics in the raw, via all the media, is in. The Beijing Games comes next. Mustn’t leave too big a gap between main events. The natives might get restless.
Got a surprise this week. Phone call early morning – “Is your church available this afternoon for 100 pilgrims? They want to ‘do’ Mass at the end of a hectic day of touring.”
OK, says I. They were two hours late. Four very big buses arrived at 6pm. A hundred, including three priests, piled into our 150 year old church.
These were the “neo-cats”, a recent development in Catholicism, well disciplined and behaved, heavily dependent on worship and morale sustaining singing and dancing.
We wouldn’t have thought at the start of the week that our parish church would be sought out a safe place by THREE separate groups of one of the world’s most militant catholic associations – the “neo-cats” (short for Neo-Catechumenal Way).
Two lots of 100 were from U.S.A. The third from Austria. Their organisers were caught short, apparently, so rang around hoping. I fell for a begging story, as usual.
Bus loads turned up. The Austrians had been in the air for 2 days. This was their first experience of Australian hospitality. They liked it, especially since my offsider, Martin, spoke German!
I can see how this mob’s admired and feared. They’re charismatic, religiously well educated and always on the lookout for converts.
Not converts to wishy washy Catholicism as practised here and in most other parishes – wishy washy as far as these zealots are concerned, anyway – but converts to the NEOWAY.
It must be daunting for anyone born or recruited into the NEOWAY if that person wants to leave the community. That’s a story yet to be told by investigator Safran on Triple J.
I realise, now, after this week’s dose of the NeoWay, that the groups’ enthusiasm is seductive to a bunch of parishioners, but could be fatal to the bored and boring survival of a local church doing its best to be the heart and soul of the neighbourhood, not just an “Amway” or “Hillsong”, “in house” self-indulgence.
Ask a cabbie about a town. I asked the bus drivers about these tourists/pilgrims. “Good value” said they. Good enough, I say. Glad they’re gone, though. Could be catching!
Bit uneasy about showing off all the “goodies”, accumulated by catholics across all ages and cultures, in the Sydney Expo – giant cross, clerics in roman and germanic western European dressage, stations of the cross scattered around the CBD.
This is like “speaking in tongues” in public. “Don’t do it”, said our Paul, 2000 years ago, “unless you supply a skilled interpreter”. Otherwise the public will be perplexed, then afraid, even hostile. Practise your devotions in private. Go public with your good works for the outsider.
Congratulations to the organisers of the biggest show on earth – seriously. Now let’s flatten the model and give equal resources to the myriads of little churches carrying the torch for best practice Catholicism not only best believed.
By the way, I’ve solved the Pope’s “red shoes” puzzle. B16’s in Sydney, isn’t he? Sydney’s home of the Swans F.C. B16’s just gotta wear Swans colours – red and white!
R.J.M.
Looks like you’ve got to take sides with everything…..global warming, the Murray-Darling basin, Barry Hall’s AFL and Israel Folau’s ARL states of sin.
And WYD’s right in there with my priest mate Frank Brennan “stirring the possum” about the rights of free speech and assembly during the WYD pilgrimage.
Frank says these hallowed rights of free speech should not be curtailed and the legislation is a dreadful interference with civil liberties and contrary to the spirit of Catholic Social Teaching on human rights.
Bill, a catholic teacher attending WYD with several students, like Fr. Frank a true-blue catholic, puts a satirical spin on things. Is he entitled, according to this amendment, to ask an authorised person to firstly warn a bishop, or other tutor at an RE session, if Bill feels “annoyed” or “inconvenienced” by the tutor’s message.
If he fails to heed the warning, the bishop/tutor could receive a $300 penalty!
I was part of an interview on Triple J’s Sunday Night Safran when a devout Raelian flagged his alien focussed sect’s intention to “streak” during WYD. This could, of course, be an impassioned plea for mass baptism into catholicism, Australia’s religious flavour of the month.
I suggested the Raelian call off their demonstration of whatever. I love mother church. Don’t like the way “she” behaves sometimes. Even so, I must stand up for “her”, and especially when she behaves inappropriately, as Frank, Bill and Peter (Mt. Druitt catholic priest) would lament.
The “Say No To Pope” group, including Raelians, will not be surprised their beloved devotional artefact is not in the pilgrim backpack 10 item list – book, pen, bandanna, rosary beads, poncho, water bottle, clip-on koala, kinetic torch, thermal blanket and tattoo (unlikely wording, DON’T ROPE OUR POPE).
And, another thing -
I’m still waiting for a call from the Vatican about borrowing our food van with HOPEMOBILE emblazoned on it.
If B16 drove around Randwick racecourse in the Hopemobile, instead of the Merc. Popemobile, it might send a clearer message than mere words of apology.
And Cardinal Pell could send a similar message, much louder than words, by scrapping the flash clobber designed especially for the occasion and dressing down in biblical sackcloth and ashes.
The train strike’s off. The witty but, to lots of catholics, offensive Tshirts are on.
Even down here, in the deep South, we’ve been asked to provide our church space next week to accommodate 150 Austrian pilgrims/tourists for a penance service.
It’s before the week in Sydney, known in the comic books as Sin City, but I didn’t dare suggest the 150 leave their group repentance til after their Sydney experience.
They’re from a catholic movement known as the Neo Catechumenal Way, “neo-cats” for short and for fun. So, no sin there, I presume. Before Sydney it stays, then. No need after!
I just hope, sincerely, that we’re not caught short by WYD. We’re showing off in public, no doubt of that.
The “founder of the firm:” issued an advisory about showing off in public. Palm Sunday, it’s called in the catholic lexicon. He went along with the organizers against his better judgement, because they’d put so much blood, toil, tears and sweat into the preparations.
I’m not going to bag WYD. Like “the founder of the firm” I’m going for the ride, virtually I admit.
I’ll keep the mobile phone switched on in case the Hopemobile is called for the ride of its life.
R.J.M.
