On 8 November last year, a small group of men stood outside the New South Wales Parliament dressed in black, their faces covered, their banners carrying the symbols and slogans of Nazism. I was in Rome at the time, but the shock of the incident stayed with me for many weeks. It was shocking not because hatred is new, but because of the sheer brazenness of the incident. Shocking because our society had emerged as a place where the unthinkable had now become possible. The events of 14 December 2025, and the subsequent legislative reform of only last week, have now made such a public protest more difficult.  But legislation alone…

Last Sunday evening, our parish along with members of other Christian Churches in the city of Willoughby gathered on the concourse at Chatswood for a beautiful evening of Christmas Carols. The night resounded with the sense of gentleness and peace, both of which lie at the very heart of the Christian Christmas story. Our evening finished with the sense of harmony and hope. At exactly the same time, on the other side of the city, at Bondi, others, too, were gathering with festivity to mark the Festival of Lights, Hanukah, itself a narrative of memory and hope.  Their evening finished with unimaginable pain and distress.  How do we reconcile these two…

In a couple of weeks’ time, our Parish of Chatswood will host again a Youth in Council. A number of students across years 9-12 have already participated in two earlier occasions of such a gathering. The mornings on which we gather senior students from both Pius and Mercy College aim to encourage conversation about some of the most important things.  At our first Youth in Council we focussed on what helps us belong.  At the second one a few months ago in March we focussed on Hope. And in our third on 22 May, taking the lead from the students themselves, we will focus on mental wellbeing. I am excited…

By a strange quirk of history, in June 2019 I was privileged to participate in the Australian Bishops Ad Limina visit to Rome. This is the pilgrimage that all bishops are expected to make to the See of Rome every so many years.  It was the first and only Ad Limina visit the Australian Bishops enjoyed with Pope Francis.  The pilgrimage took us to the four papal basilicas of Rome and, of course, central to the visitation was our encounter with the Holy Father. Pope Francis had introduced a different way for bishops on Ad Limina to meet him. On a stifling hot Roman June morning we met him as a group. Having been greeted by…

I have often shared it in the past, but I would like to share again today the scene in Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings in which one of the main characters, Sam, says at one stage, “We shouldn’t be here at all, if we’d known more about it before we started. But I suppose it’s often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a sport,…

In 1890, one hundred and thirty-five years ago, Mercy College was established. Australia was still a collection of British colonies, not yet federated; the Australasian Federal Convention which laid the groundwork for Federation only first met in this year. It was a moment of possibility and opportunity. Yet, it was also a year of great social unrest. In the late 19th century, there had been rapid economic growth, driven by industries like wool, mining and shipping. However, the growth was uneven, and workers often faced poor wages, long hours and harsh conditions. In August 1890, the now famous national Maritime strike began, paralysing the ports of Sydney. A state of emergency…

We often refer to the ‘word of the year’ – a word that encapsulates so much of the tenor and mood of a year that has gone.  The word for 2024?  “Brain-rot.”[1] Proposed by Oxford University Press, it’s a rather shocking indictment of where we.  As the publishing house described, ‘brain rot’ is defined as “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging. Also: something characterized as likely to lead to such deterioration”.  Oxford University Press goes on to explain, “The first recorded use of ‘brain rot’ was found in 1854 in Henry David Thoreau’s…

Over this last week, each evening, a number of us have had the opportunity to come together online and reflect on the seven sorrows of Our Lady – the seven moments that our Tradition gives us by which to consider the part Mary, the Mother of Jesus, plays in his life – and not only in the life of Jesus, but in our own lives as we struggle with the reality of suffering in our own experience.  We have explored in different ways the mystery of suffering, love, and hope, all embodied in the figure of Our Lady of Sorrows, the woman who stands steadfastly at the foot of Jesus’ Cross.…

The American writer, Robert Fulgham once told of a story of Frank Marshall, an international chess player. During a competition many years ago, Marshall made what is often called the most beautiful move ever made on a chessboard. In a crucial game in which he was evenly matched with a Russian master player, Marshall found his queen under serious attack.  There were several avenues of escape, and since the queen is the most important offensive player, spectators assumed Marshall would observe convention and move his queen to safety.  Deep in thought, Marshall used all the time available to him to consider the board options.  He picked up his queen –…

We have a natural instinct for stories. As Pope Francis once wrote: “From childhood we hunger for stories just as we hunger for food. Stories influence our lives, whether in the form of fairy tales, novels, films, songs, news, even if we do not always realise it . . . Stories leave their mark on us; they shape our convictions and our behaviours. They can help us understand and communicate who we are.” [1] We delight in weaving stories. For this reason, there is a link, as Francis identifies, between the words, ‘textile’ and ‘text’. Both come from the Latin word, ‘to weave’ (texere). Yet we know the capacity we have…