In his book, “Beyond Belief,” Hugh Mackay, the Australian social researcher outlines the deep vein of ambivalence about religion that runs through Australian society: on the one hand many Australians do not actively worship, yet they still like to see local churches operating, and we still turn to churches to baptise our children and to educate them.[1]  Around two thirds of Australians say we believe in God or some ‘higher power’, but fewer than one in ten of us attend church weekly.  So those of us gathered here for Mass are an extraordinary minority no matter how mainstream we might consider ourselves to be.  And all of his means 90% of the population…

Jesus was a great story-teller, and as a story-teller of his time in 1st centrury Palestine he knew the means that a story-teller used to convey the meaning of what he wished ot share.  One of those techniques is hyperbole: something is overstated in order to make a point. It was an excellent technique in an oral culture, used to the art of storytelling. The hyperbole, itself, is not to be taken literally. People would go away and remember the over-statement and in time understand what was being said underneath. The use of juxtaposition is another technique: two statements are put aside each other, one informing and opening up the meaning of…

This Sunday, the last in September, is annually commemorated as Social Justice Sunday in the Church in Australia. We focus this year on Communications with the publication of Making it Real: Genuine Human Encounter in our Digital World. It raises the question of how we genuinely connect with one another. As Bishop Brady highlights in the Foreword to the Statement, “People of all generations hunger for friendship and genuine human encounter because we are made for community. Our digital world enables us to be more connected than ever before, but sadly it can also be a place of manipulation, exploitation and violence.” This indeed is one of the great paradoxes…

For a long time, it has been the social rule in Australia that the topics of religion and politics are not to be raised in polite conversation.  For a great deal of our history we have also had the adage that politics and religion don’t mix, and that they, therefore, should be kept quite separate.  In Australia, particularly, when religious leaders start talking about political or economic matters many of us start feeling uneasy, if not even embarrassed. We entertain concerns about naivety, or anxieties about appeals drawn from a sectarian past, or fears about ecclesiastical interference in affairs that are rightly independent of the structure of the Church.  Even if the religious voice…

One of the most important things we can learn about the gospels is the nature of the language that the writers use.  It is the language of parables – a language, it seems, favoured by Jesus himself. Jesus was a great teacher, as we know. He was a great storyteller and he constantly uses stories to communicate his message.  But the parables are not simply stories.  A parable is very particular kind of story:  it is a story that is designed to confuse us, to unsettle us, even in some cases, to shock us. We have grown used to them.  They are not unfamiliar. But yet, there is something in each of them that doesn’t make sense.…

Over this last week, throughout Australia, National Child Protection Week has been commemorated.  On this Sunday, the Church in Australian celebrates Child Protection Sunday. These are important commemorations especially given our recent history. We know only too well that those who are vulnerable in our midst suffer most when there is a culture of silence and suppression both within families and communities. Closed families and closed institutions create situations of self-preservation which place them above a sense of genuine self-examination and, on occasions, even above community responsibilities.  It is precisely this inward absorption of both families and communities that Jesus himself confronts in the gospel we hear this weekend.   Jesus calls us…

In the annals of Christian legend there is a famous story about one of the early Roman martyrs, St Lawrence. Lawrence lived in a time of persecution, and as a deacon was responsible for his community’s administration.  The Roman prefect had already taken the Bishop of Rome into custody and was about to do the same with Lawrence. However, realizing that Lawrence had the keys to the community store, and thinking that this might contain much gold and silver, the Prefect first demanded that Lawrence show him the location of the store. Being a wily administrator and not losing his cool, Lawrence said, “Give me three days and I will make…

As the football season reaches towards the Finals emotions are mixed. For the supporters of those teams that meet the Finals there is a great deal of excitement. For others, our teams have not met our expectations. We think, well next year things will be better, but we know that we are not promised such a guarantee.  Whether it is for our sporting teams, or in many other aspects of our life, we want the best that is possible, and this expectation begins to infiltrate most dimensions of our lives.  For example, in our relationships we can easily be led into thinking about how we might achieve the best partner, or…

17 August 2019 In an interview, the winner of the Miles Franklin Prize for literature this year, the aboriginal writer, Melissa Lucashenko quoted the philosopher, Rosa Luxemburg: “The most revolutionary thing one can do is always to proclaim loudly what is happening.”[1] Luxemburg is a Marxist thinker, but I think this declaration is to be something quite true. The most revolutionary thing one can do is always to proclaim loudly what is happening. It reminded me of a wonderful sentence in Pope Francis’ recent exhortation to the Youth of our Church when he declared, “I ask you to be revolutionaries, I ask you to swim against the tide; yes, I am asking you to rebel…

Homily to the Parish of Gosford 11 August 2019 Many years ago, there was quite a popular film called, “Dead Poets Society.” The catchcry of the film, Carpe Diem,“Seize the Day”, became somewhat famous in itself and got to be widely used. The film was very much a portrayal of the philosophy of Henry Thoreau. Thoreau was a well-known American humanist philosopher of the 19thcentury. His famous work was called, Walden,and was an account of him leaving the city and retiring to the side of Walden Pond in the north-east of the United States at which he sought to come to the essence of what life was all about.  It represented his own sea-change,…