Father Bob

One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind!

Fatherbob — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 15:29:39 +1000

I hope we catholics haven’t flown so high, either socially or economically, or both, that we’ve forgotten our roots.

For a long time from the landing of the First Fleet until World War 2 (1939 – 1945 for younger readers) catholics, especially Irish catholics, were vilified as disloyal dissidents.

That was the popular perception, fuelled by the press, but not the reality.

We, of all Aussie sub-cultures, should be the first to lend a hand to today’s vilified dissidents, be they Lebanese, Indians or Africans.

Here’s a quote to remember: “Industrial unrest, the response to the British suppression of the 1916 Easter Day uprising in Dublin, in particular the “profanities of the ‘Rasputin of Australia’, Daniel Mannix, the Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, the antics of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW),the upset accompanying the two conscription referenda”, all of these seemed to be the harbingers of a doleful future, which, leading citizens conceived of at an irrevocable slide towards social collapse.” (‘The Secret Army and the Premier’, Andrew Moore, page 17.)

I raise this nasty business of our own relegation to the level of “sin bin” in Australian society not to open old wounds but to challenge catholics to take advantage of their redeemed positioning in society to advocate publically, care, communication and concern for Lebanese, African and Indian recent migrants.

Instead of closing parishes of whatever denomination, we need to keep them open as multipurpose precincts at the service of the latest beleaguered migrant group.

Mr. Rudd’s generous funding of schools to provide halls, libraries and other facilities carries an expectation/legal requirement that these new facilities be shared with the neighbourhood without fear or favour.

Instead of waiting for an aforementioned group to approach a local church, could we not be proactive and approach them?

We need to exert in this volatile matter as much resource and energy as we’re presently investing in anti-terrorist operations and, in Victoria, anti-bushfire planning.

Bills of Rights, Anti-discrimination and vilification legislation have an important place at another level of social interaction.

There’s no getting away, I believe, from an urgent review, at local council level, of resources held by local religious groups which could be offered as ready response centres for the treatment of social alienation.

Resentment among teenagers leads to all kinds of unhappy outcomes for

all parties concerned.

Resentment within a migrant group, for whatever perceived grievance has led, historically in Australia, to a whole generation or two or three feeling alienated in the Australia we all want them to call “home”.

Intercultural, interreligious peace is not just the absence of war. It has to be worked at long and hard to develop into a commonwealth

One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind!

RJM

When will I ever learn?

Fatherbob — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 16:12:30 +1000

When will I ever learn? I asked my congregation last Sunday – all 200 of us (suburban churches have got over 2,000!) – to comeback sometime that day with one tin of food. That would add 200 tins to our takeaway cupboards which are easily depleted.

There’s even an in-house discussion as to whether the “right people” are getting the tins. Such is life in a catholic parish.

Anyway I learned a lesson. You can’t get a congregation of 200 to respond to an urgent plea. An individual, maybe, but not a collective.

I’ve missed out on that lesson over 49 years as a priest. I had thought that if you make your pitch for the poor to your closest church partners and if they are in receipt of good, consistent, pastoral care from you, they’ll answer your urgent appeals, without exception because only you, personally and as pastor, know the nature of the urgency.

I imagined every one of the 200 would leave Mass at 11am, and visit their own cupboard or their grocer’s and return asap to the church they had used for worship that very morning.

The Scripture readings had been by the way, about feeding the hungry even when resources were minimal (known, in the trade, as the feeding of the 5000).

I’m not complaining, despite appearances, just expressing surprise at my own naiveté. From my understanding of what this place was like, 1854 – 1960’s, the pastor’s appeal would have been answered, one way or another, keeping in mind our earliest years were marked by a local catholic poverty. We probably had precious little to feed ourselves.

Organisations sprang up, like St. Vincent de Paul, to do the job in an efficient way. After the social engineering of the 1960’s, which wiped out the parish and drove us back to the de facto status of a catholic mission, we have taken up to today to even begin to understand our predicament. We look like a parish but we walk like a mission.

H Office treats us like a parish, expecting too much institutional and organizational reflex action.

The core leadership group is beginning to understand that we’re fighting well above our weight. And fight we shall in memory and honour of our mission/parish/mission ancestors. We’ll have to manage our collective post trauma stress.

While our sub-leadership management committees are learning their trade, I’ll still appeal on Sundays to the worshipping 200 to rediscover the solidarity of a socio-economically poorer but, perhaps, religiously more robust catholic collective. 3 parishioners, by the way, returned. 2 Twitterers, including 1 from Craigieburn, made the trip. No offence intended.

RJM

WHO’S IN, WHO’S OUT?

Fatherbob — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 16:07:23 +1000

I ‘pinched’ most of this blog from “Eureka Street.com.au” an article about Ted Kennedy, late parish priest, Redfern, Sydney.

It’s about a parish priest with a mission, a vocation highly recommended and endorsed by 2000 v 200 bishops at the catholic watershed meeting known as Vatican 2.

I’m a coward in comparison with the prophet Ted. How to creatively handle being marginalised is the question facing me and my parishioners. United we stand, divided we fall. Please read on. Enjoy.

R.J.M

The marginalisation of Ted Kennedy

ANDREW HAMILTON JULY 23, 2009

Idealism often leads people who belong to idealistic groups to live and work among the marginalised. In time they often feel marginalised and are seen as marginalised within the organisations to which they belong. They are said to 'go native'.

This is often seen as an event to be avoided and as a problem to be solved. Wiser counsel suggests it is a fact to be accepted. If you live at the margins, you will be marginalised, if you work at the boundaries you will be seen to be outside the main game, if you dwell beyond the frontiers you will lose your citizenship. That is what happens. The real question is: how do you handle this fact of life?

Edmond Campion's stimulating new book describes the process of marginalisation, and suggests lines of reflection on it. He tells the story of Ted Kennedy, a notable Sydney priest whose desire for an engaging form of ministry led him to Redfern in the 1970s. There he found and was found by the Aboriginal community. He opened his church and his house to people as he found them — which often meant drunk, dirty and abusive — and stayed with them for 25 years. In his language, he found Christ in them.

He also felt and was seen as marginalised. Acting as if nothing mattered more than to respect and be with his people soon brought him into conflict with police and landowners. It also alienated him from some of his parishioners and brought him into tension with church authorities whom he believed to have only a perfunctory interest in Indigenous Australians. He came to see the world and church through the eyes of Aboriginals. This perspective inevitably diverged more and more sharply from that of officers of church and government who saw them only in relationship to their own institutions and their own kind of people.

This is a common experience and fact of marginalisation. Its logic is to alienate people from the group in which they found the inspiration to live at its edges. That is a pity because it cuts off a basically well-disposed group from the bridge that could be made to the marginalised community. How then can people handle the fact of marginalisation in such a way that they can feed back their experience to their broader community?

These ways of imagining and acting in the world will seem prissy and self-protective when they are adopted as a slogan by those who live and work among Catholics. They will be used to suggest that marginalisation is a problem, not a fact, and ultimately discount any kind of life at the margins. But when they are embodied in a life lived at the edge they will have a robust, often rebarbative, shape.

As Ed Campion shows, the way in which flesh and blood human beings like Ted Kennedy creatively handle being marginalised is messy. Ted handled it with rage followed by request for forgiveness, with indictment of Catholic pastoral priorities and safer understandings of what it meant to be a priest, with large expectations of himself and others, a simple faith, and with a gift for friendship and good conversation.

He was a priest in a world without walls. He was blown by the winds that raged through his world. He often raged at those who lived a more sheltered life, and faithfulness became native to him. There are other ways of being Catholic and being a priest, but as a margin dweller he was exemplary: subversive of settlements that trimmed the Gospel, a human being among human beings, and faithful to his calling.

Father Bob's Community Market

Fatherbob — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 13:52:30 +1000

Excerpt from the Port Phillip Leader

“Bob’s latest good deed

South Melbourne’s favourite parish priest Father Bob Maguire has launched a new weekly market to generate community spirit and extra cash for his charity work. Binti Singh will sell home-made curry sauces while other stalls will offer jewellery, arts and craft and clothing."

“What we want to achieve is a forming of neighbourhood networks of pooled assets and present these local stockpiles of goods and services in a stunning expression”, Fr. Bob says. Money raised will go to the Fr Bob Maguire Foundation which helps the homeless, migrants, disadvantaged school children and refugees.

The market is on Sundays, 10am to 3pm in and around the old school hall at the corner of Montague and Dorcas Streets, South Melbourne.”

Enquiries:03 9690 3999 or info@fatherbobscommunitymarket.com

http://www.fatherbobscommunitymarket.com/

Don’t leave me behind cobber!

Fatherbob — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:36:22 +1000

Help, at least moral if not material, has arrived from an unexpected source.

For us dogooders and bleeding hearts hard pressed by dependants and head office alike, Pope Benedict has sent a signal of hope.

Just when I thought economic rationalism, practised by both church and state, had chased economic relationalism from the market place, along comes a papal encyclical “Caritas in Veritate” or, in English, Charity in Truth or, even True Charity.

Pope Benedict calls for the Catholic Church to return to Christian ideas of charity, writing that “the Church can never opt out from practising Charity as an organised activity of believers” and that “there will never be a situation where the charity of each individual Christian is unnecessary”.

One commentator says: “We must realise there are limits to Law and Order in solving human problems”.

We, as Christians, must not lose sight of the need for radically changing our whole selves, healing ourselves and others.

We must never forget the Victorian era phrase: “As cold as charity”.

Thank you, Pope Benedict, for your providentially timely intervention on behalf of our parish’s mission to those who fall through the cracks of other people’s abundance.

How the 10% of Catholics, who control the Church’s material resources, will respond to Pope Benedict, is anyone’s guess.

A good start (no, not to sell off the Church’s inherited treasures!) would be to encourage and not to obstruct local churches in their social enterprises. Provide us with a bit of “seeding” capital, like the much awarded Grameen Bank, and let us get on with the job of resilient self-sufficiency.

After all, it’s the 90% of catholics who enable the “top” 10% to flourish in a degree of comfort unknown to the local echelons of catholics.

Hand outs are not what we, the people, want or need. Hand ups we do both want and need.

EurekaStreet.com.au says: At a time when Centrelink officers came to resemble parole officers, when, like pocket money, welfare money is taken from you if you act up, and when the State acts like Victorian-era charity workers towards the “undeserving” poor like single parents, unintelligible migrants and belligerent post-trauma stress sufferers.

Charities, like ours here in South Melbourne, must provide help to those left behind.

I can feel better now because the Pope himself has officially endorsed the unspoken “encyclical” of the monument just down from the Shrine of Remembrance, Melbourne.

Fromelles, World War I, France. A dazed digger staggers through the smoke of battle, lucky to be alive. It’s night. A voice comes from nowhere. “Don’t leave me behind cobber!.

The digger hears and turns back. He does his moral duty. He puts the wounded man on his back and painstakingly carries him to safety.

An undeniable challenge – that digger and Pope Benedict.

R.J.M.

A “flash” in our little world

Fatherbob — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:12:06 +1000

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

Fatherbob — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:22:28 +1000

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

Fatherbob — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:50:07 +1000

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

Fatherbob — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 16:48:17 +1000

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…

Fatherbob — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 11:27:20 +1000

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