Father Bob

The never ending story of humanity

Tent’s gone.  Garden’s back to normal, ready for the wedding season.

For church readers of this column / blog may, I provide an explanation of style.  Otherwise what I write here could be deciphered as the ravings of an angry old man – just that.

Granted there may be an element of that, I’ve copied Paul of Tarsus’ style.

Catholics are supposed, by Vatican decree, to be “studying” Paul during ‘08/’09.  I’ve decided to imitate while studying.

Paul occupies the greater part of the Christian scriptures, mainly in “letters to” format, but, also, in the story of the first 100 years CE, the “Acts of the Apostles”.

Paul claimed a personal mission to non-jews.  I’ll say no more except that vocation required him to learn new languages, new respect for religious “outsiders”.

His letters give him away.  He wears his heart on his sleeve.  He criticises, praises, whinges, thanks his fellow believers.  He warns them against well intentioned but vicious compatriots, including the leadership of the Jewish Christian faction.

Paul personalised and personified the Jesus essential ingredient.  He’s just too “in your face” for lots of Christians.

As Parish Priest of South Melbourne, I’ve got to be like Peter, custodian of the faith, guardian of the sheep and lambs.

As Parish Priest, I’ve also got to be like Paul, messenger to the “other flock”, not a fashionable style in the contemporary Catholic scene.

Hence, I’ve had to create another vehicle, my Foundation, and another role, executive creative chairman.  Blame Paul for installing such a potentially counter cultural style at the heart of Christianity (Catholicism, in my case).

So, I write this column for the Parish newsletter, turned blog for virtual parishioners, as a personal explanation of the way we are, right here, right now.

This episode of the never ending story of humanity is not so much about me as about You.

The bank manager just rang.  She spoke to me.  I speak to you.

The funeral director rang again.  She spoke to me.  I speak to you.  Same with the real estate agent.  Same with the gas and light utilities.

In true Paul of Tarsus’ style, I criticize, praise, whinge, thank and warn.

Last week, we remembered and celebrated 35 years of blood, toil, tears and sweat.  We blessed the memorial to 40 local young people who died in the drug wars of the ‘80’s.

We baptised babies during Mass.  We sang hymns.  We drank tea and ate buns and cut the cake.  We also donated a swag of dollars to house and feed the poor.

It looked as though it was about me.  It really was about You. Congratulations on keeping the Parish going since 1854.  Congratulations on positioning the Parish for the next exciting, innovative and creative stage of its development as “mate to the neighbourhood”.

R.J.M.

$ Drought

I’ll have to pull down the two tents in the church garden. They’ve been there for a couple of months. Two TV channels had expressed interest in homelessness. They asked for interviews and pictures.

One channel concentrated on the tents and homelessness. The other preferred the “hopemobile” food van and its natural environment, hopelessness. The reporter had extensive interviews with citizens doing it hard in St. Kilda – our friends, in fact.

The Olympics pushed homelessness and hopelessness aside. We expected that.

Another week, another week. It’s not that we’re TV junkies. It’s just that every bit of publicity may attract one or two substantial supporters.

So, we’re in the middle of a $ drought. That means, in real terms, a compassion drought. I base that harsh judgement on Vincent de Paul’s shocking statement – “Money is love!”.

Like in a weather drought, you have to get water from tanks, drilling, desalination, towing icebergs, just about any source – so you have to try to do anything to keep people in their homes or keep hope in people’s hearts.

So I phoned up a few “suits” (also known as young entrepreneurs) and collected enough to keep a couple of families in their homes and keep hope alive in a few lonely hearts.

Incidentally, while my mates, Kevin and Dave, both Union officials, put up the bigger tent on the parish lawn, our local school (Galilee) kids put up a colourful smaller tent “just in case there’s homeless kids as well”.

That’s the spirit! Keeps me going – unsolicited wisdom!

Before 10am Mass this Sunday we’ll have the third annual Father Bob Maguire Foundation memorial day. We’ll gather at the plaque in the same parish garden with the names of forty young people who died in the 1980’s during a dark period in local history I’ve nicknamed the pre-prequel to “Underbelly”.

These 40 local young people died in institutional and departmental “no mans land”. Read the plaque for further cryptic comments.

I’d like something practical to come out of the short ritual.

Just as I’d like some practical resolutions to come at annual Anzac Day services around Australia on April 25th.

I was speaker at one of those services a few years ago, at the Melbourne Shrine. For non-Melburnians, the Shrine is set on a grassy knoll part of the beautiful streetscape of St. Kilda Road.

I looked down where the boulevard runs into the CBD of Melbourne.

“These men and women we commemorate today would commend those of us, so grateful to them, engaged in the battle to build a civil society by investing our own blood, toil, tears and sweat.”

Rituals, you see, are meant not only to remember the past but to look to a future built by a present involvement in getting social justice right.

R.J.M.

Evolution of the local Church business model.

This is Melbourne, Australia. I have to put out that identifying signal because what’s written here is meant for the parish newsletter (local) and the parish/foundation blog (global).

Australia is millions of years old. You can tell by its flatness. White Australia is just over 200 years old. This Church, South Melbourne, is over 150 years old.

I notice that several churches around Melbourne are going through metamorphosis. Another one, Pascoe Vale, faces closure of the local school after much less than 100 years.

The demographics have changed so markedly that the catholic combo of church, presbytery, school has had to shift to church and whatever else can earn a dollar.

Good on the church managers at the highest level. They see everything from a better view point than us locals and do their duty on behalf of the catholic collective known as the Roman Catholic Trust Corporation.

The archbishop of Melbourne is both priest and chairman of the trust.  He’s like a guardian angel in matters spiritual and material. He “lights and guards, rules and guides”. Amen. He’s in a unique position of responsibility, not just privilege.

Because South Melbourne church is over 150 years old, we’ve evolved from a property driven catholic community to a cash oriented, business, cooperative.

We sniffed the breeze 15 years ago and invited 3 other adjoining parishes to close their schools of under 100 pupils to create a regional catholic school, mainly on our property, of a viable 300 pupils.

The other parishes have either sold or leased their schools to put themselves in a “cashed up” position to provide quality worship for insiders and ministries of care and concern to outsiders. Well done, I say.

South Melbourne is doing what it’s done for over 150 years. It’s put self interest on hold for over a dozen years by foregoing income during a heady financial period to keep faith with our ancestors who had provided the following unbelievable inventory of socio-religious assets: two orphanages, a technical school (reunion this very weekend!), a commercial school, a pre-school centre, a parish primary for boys and girls, Emerald Hall for large social gatherings of working class catholics.

That was the innovative and creative apparatus researched and developed to suit the mid 1800’s to the mid 1900’s.

More strength to the arm of Melbourne church’s research and development department. They can find comfort in the discovery that Melbourne’s oldest suburban church, South Melbourne, pioneered primary school “clustering” after a long period of due diligence and transparent public consultation.

This is as close as I can get to putting on public record the brave work done by a very small band of local catholics over the past 30 years.

And, it’s not over yet.

R.J.M.

Big things from little things grow!

The reason I want webcam operating in our church building and, indeed, in all churches, mosques, ashrams, temples and synagogues, is to let the world know that big things from little things grow.

Lots of good little things are nourished in small spiritual/religious communities worldwide.

There’s a small Victorian rural protestant church tottering on its last legs – no minister, no infrastructure - rescued by a big, splendidly resourced Melbourne suburban protestant church.

The suburban church recognised, celebrated and practically supported the little country church. By an IT connection between churches, they shared a community worship link.

Soon that link will be developed to be interactive.

It’s not meant to be a patronising link between a flourishing church and a diminishing one.

The strong can learn from the weak as well as vice versa.

Here, in South Melbourne, we’re weak in numbers but strong in spiritual heritage.

As soon as we collect enough dollars we’ll be able to install webcam so virtual parishioners will be able to visit their church whenever they want during public services or for private devotion.

The world needs to know what local religious communities are up to. The public media picks and chooses what we can see and hear about religion, usually controversial infotainment.

Serves us right.  That’s the media’s preferred rules of engagement. But it’s only 1% of what goes on in churches and other religious enclaves.

We’re going through an identity crisis here at South Melbourne church. To be fair and even, more accurate, I’m going through an identity crisis. This parish is the venue for that crisis.

On the one hand, I love the church services and pastoral care of local catholics. That’s my vocation whatever parish I’m in.

I love, also, my self appointed mission to “outsiders”. But they’re so unpredictable and unreliable, by “insider” standards.

To highlight my personal tension as priest to 300 insiders and 1,000 outsiders, I presided over two funerals this week.

One was a beautiful Mass for hundreds of admirers of a beautiful Italian immigrant man. He was late 80’s.

The other was for 50 friends of a prematurely deceased 44 year old public housing resident.

The first was a joyful celebration by people who had, in the main, done well.

The second was a bitter sweet memorial by hurt family and friends who’ve been through similar tragic rites of passage on many occasions since the 1970’s when I arrived here.

I’ve discovered, to my unease as priest to both groups, that some of our 40 something year olds are experiencing mid life catharsis. The ghosts/demons, brewing inside them for 40 years are bursting their chains.

Will the 300 insiders back me up in my work with 1,000 outsiders, even when a handful of them howl in anguish? Will the parish “own” the mission to veterans of institutional and departmental care? Such a mission began here 14th September 1973.

R.J.M.

It's not over yet

This is Melbourne, Australia. I have to put out that identifying signal because what’s written here is meant for the parish newsletter (local) and the parish/foundation blog (global).

Australia is millions of years old. You can tell by its flatness. White Australia is just over 200 years old. This Church, South Melbourne, is over 150 years old.

I notice that several churches around Melbourne are going through, metamorphosis. Another one, Pascoe Vale, faces closure of the local school after much less than 100 years.

The demographics have changed so markedly that the catholic combo of church, presbytery, school has had to shift to church and whatever else can earn a dollar.

Good on the church managers at the highest level. They see everything from a better view point than us locals and do their duty on behalf of the catholic collective known as the Roman Catholic Trust Corporation.

The archbishop of Melbourne is both priest and chairman of the trust.  He’s like a guardian angel in matters spiritual and material. He “lights and guards, rules and guides”. Amen. He’s in a unique position of responsibility, not just privilege.

Because South Melbourne church is over 150 years old, we’ve evolved from a property driven catholic community to a cash oriented, business, cooperative.

We sniffed the breeze 15 years ago and invited 3 other adjoining parishes to close their schools of under 100 pupils to create a regional catholic school, mainly on our property, of a viable 300 pupils.

The other parishes have either sold or leased their schools to put themselves in a “cashed up” position to provide quality worship for insiders and ministries of care and concern to outsiders. Well done, I say.

South Melbourne has done what it’s done for over 150 years. It’s put self interest on hold for over a dozen years by foregoing income during a heady financial period to keep faith with our ancestors who had provided the following unbelievable inventory of socio-religious assets: two orphanages, a technical school (reunion this very weekend!), a commercial school, a pre-school centre, a parish primary for boys and girls, Emerald Hall for large social gatherings of working class catholics.

That was the innovative and creative apparatus researched and developed to suit the mid 1800’s to the mid 1900’s.

More strength to the arm of Melbourne church’s research and development department. They can find comfort in the discovery that Melbourne’s oldest suburban church, South Melbourne, pioneered primary school “clustering” after a long period of due diligence and transparent public consultation.

This is as close as I can get to putting on public record the brave work done by a very small band of local catholics over the past 30 years.

And, it’s not over yet.

R.J.M.

Wanted: Catholicism at the coal face

What follows, as part of this blog, is catholic specific. I ask general readers to be patient with me.

“Taking a Stand” is by Shaun Middleton, Parish Priest, St. Francis of Assisi, Pottery Lane, Notting Hill, West London. The article appeared in the catholic reputable weekly “The Tablet”, just recently.

I felt sad and empathetic as I read it. The Catholicism Shaun represents, in a parish remember, not in a theological debate but at the coalface, is what neighbourhoods need now.

Together, of course, with “reformed” other Christian churches, mosques, temples, synagogues and ashrams.

What the world needs now are local centres of spiritual excellence expressed in compassion and practical care for all.

As I was making up my mind about adding Shaun Middleton to this blog, the phone rang. “You found a baby in a basket on your doorstep 20 years ago. I am the adoptive father of that baby girl. I am in Australia, on a visit and I’ll drop in tomorrow.”

Wow! I haven’t seen him yet. The blog deadline precludes that report. I do let you know, however, that his phone call reminded me of South Melbourne Catholicism 20 years ago. The baby was just born. A note accompanied her. “Take care of my baby.”

Shaun Middleton and I stand together at the barricades in defence of a church which puts first the poor and the young. Here’s Shaun’s words:

“The advent of the Gregorian Rite and the appearance of a high-ranking cardinal swathed in yards of red silk at Westminster Cathedral has made me wonder whether the Holy Father longs for the ecclesial certainty of his pre-conciliar Bavarian childhood. We’ve all noticed that the papal dressing-up cupboard has been raided quite frequently of late.

Priests who labour in the parishes don’t usually take much notice of such frippery. But when such frippery becomes translated into a perceived attempt to turn the clock back alarm bells start to ring. Such alarmist reaction is substantiated by the thought of having to use a new translation of the Mass which encourages people to use the anachronistic greeting “and with thy spirit”. The clerical caste deals in symbolism. The symbolism of such language and of pontifical gesture has started to sound a warning that the institution is really out of touch with the daily reality and lived experience of the majority of members of the Church.

So it wouldn’t surprise me if Rome soon had to react to the plea of a number of catholic priests who may wish to form a new association. The Society of Pope Paul VI would comprise a group of clerics who wish to remain true to the spirit of Vatican II. In particular they would have an affection for the English Missal of 1974 and the scriptural translations contained in the 1981 lectionary. The reformed liturgy and Mass in the vernacular are important to them. They would wish to continue to encourage lay participation and to enjoy the rubrical flexibility that has enabled them to leave the sanctuary to offer their people the sign of peace.  They believe that Communion can be received reverently in the hand and that altar rails are anachronistic.

They are aware that much modern liturgical music, especially after Vatican II, was not of good quality. But they also acknowledge the reality of that time and the fact that simple, popular tunes of the early post-conciliar period encouraged people to leave the bastion of liturgical silence which up until then had been  the norm. However, there remains a wish to continue to use good-quality modern hymns and liturgical music. For this group a desire for the full, active and conscious participation of all God’s people still remains at the heart of liturgical celebrations.

Conscience is a powerful companion and I would suggest that the consciences of many catholic priests are being tested by the subtle reform that seems to be going on at the moment. There seems to be no sense of dialogue or openness to the Spirit in the present climate. If the Society of Pope Paul VI were to be founded there would undoubtedly be a sense of panic among the Catholic hierarchy. This is because the communion of the Church would be affected. Such communication is our most precious gift: it binds us not only in common practice but also in charity, but such charity can only survive for a limited period of time when it feels itself to be at breaking-point.

R.J.M.

Street Report #25

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.

www @ www (Wisdom, Worship and Work)

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.

Canvas Town returns to South Melbourne's Homelessness

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.

Street Report #24

In Fitzroy St, St Kilda, we came accross some enterprising homeless people selling papers and shoes.