ChurchAliveText02 26/6/06 11:09 AM Page 1 Church A LI V E ! Emeritus Professor GREGDENINGis a world-renowned scholar in his chosen field of research and writing: the encounter between indigenous and settler societies.From his first seminal book, Islands and Beaches (1980), to his most recent, Beach Crossings(2004),he has had a global reputation in cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary scholarly writing.All his books are in the great libraries of the world and are featured in postgraduate studies across the USA, the UK and Europe. Mr Bligh’s Bad Language (1992) was published by the History Book of the Month Club.Performances(1996) is much used in postgraduate courses and The Death of William Gooch (1996) is counted as a cross-cultural murder mystery written in near poetical prose. ChurchAliveText02 26/6/06 11:09 AM Page 2 ChurchAliveText02 26/6/06 11:09 AM Page 3 C hu r c h A L I V E ! Pi lgrimages in faith 1956–2006 G R E G D E N I N G UNSW PRESS ChurchAliveText02 26/6/06 11:09 AM Page 5 A Poet’s Prayer O God,who by the spirit in our hearts dost lead us to desire Thy perfection,to seek for truth,and to rejoice in beauty; illumine,we pray Thee,and inspire all thinkers,writers,artists and craftsmen; that in whatsoever is true and pure and lovely,Thy name may be hallowed and Thy kingdom come on earth. Lord,hear us. Direct and bless,we beseech Thee, O Lord,those who speak where many listen,and write what many read; that they may do their part in making the heart of the people wise,its mind sound,and its will righteous. Lord,hear us. PHILIP JOHN TALBOT MARTIN POET AND PARISHIONER 28 MARCH 1931–18 OCTOBER 2005 ChurchAliveText02 26/6/06 11:09 AM Page 6 A UNSW Press book Published by University of New South Wales Press Ltd University of New South Wales Sydney NSW 2052 AUSTRALIA www.unswpress.com.au © Provincial of the Society of Jesus in Australia 2006 First published 2006 This book is copyright.Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study,research,criticism or review,as permitted under the Copyright Act,no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission.Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher. National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Dening,Greg,1931– . Church alive!:pilgrimages in faith,1956–2006. Includes index. ISBN 0 86840 843 3. 1.St.Mary’s Parish (North Sydney,N.S.W.) - History. 2.St.Francis Xavier’s Church (Lavender Bay,N.S.W.) - History. 3.Star of the Sea Church (Milsons Point,N.S.W.) - History. 4.Catholics - New South Wales - History. 5.New South Wales - Church history. I.Title. 282.9441 Design Di QuickandRuth Pidd Front cover image The Bridge from North Sydney,1939,by Roland Wakelin.Courtesy of Judith Murray,Leslie Walton. Back cover image Tuhbowgule Nangamay,Sydney Harbour Dreaming, by Deborah Lennis of the D’harawal people. Printer Everbest,China ChurchAliveText02 26/6/06 11:09 AM Page 7 Contents A Prefatory Note 9 Prologue:The Spirit at Work 11 1 Living History 23 2 Triumph 1956 40 Reflection:On Religious Change 63 3 Hopefulness 77 Mystery 90 4 Breaking Bread 101 Believing 117 5 Word and Song 128 Celebrating 146 ChurchAliveText02 26/6/06 11:09 AM Page 8 6 New Church,New Priest 158 Priestliness 178 7 The Christ and Women 192 Calling 209 8 The Prophetic Imagination 224 Ministering 237 Epilogue: Pilgrim Parish 252 Acknowledgments 254 Notes 257 Notes on the artwork by Anne Kearney 270 Bibliography 276 Index 286 ChurchAliveText02 26/6/06 11:09 AM Page 9 A prefatory note Vatican Council II (1962–1965) brought an aggiornamento– a renewal – into the Catholic Church.This living history of three Jesuit parish churches on the North Shore of Sydney Harbour is a story of the hope and pain in that renewal. Church Alive! is a living history because it is, on my part, an ethnographic description of religious experience in times of change,1956–2006.But it is living, too,in another way.Nothing’s said till it’s dreamed out in words/and nothing’s true that figures in words only,the poet Les Murray has written.You will find the hope and pain of the Church’s renewal dreamed out in words in the word pictures of many parishioners who describe their religious experiences as they are – not as they should be or as they are told they should be. As they are! Those word pictures are to be found as Mystery,Believing,Celebrating,Priestliness,Calling and Ministering. There are living images as well as living words in Church Alive! Anne Kearney,a parishioner and an artist who has exhibited in oils,pastels,collage and ceramics for over 20 years, and who is also qualified in Systematic Theology, undertook to take an unmapped journey of considerable risk and insecurity by providing her own creations to introduce our essays on sacred space and sacred time and the word pictures. I thank Anne and all the others for being willing to join me in writing a dif- ferent sort of history,one informed by hope and love as much as science and art. By agreement, the word pictures are individually unnamed. The names of their authors are to be found in the Acknowledgments. ChurchAliveText02 26/6/06 11:09 AM Page 11 Prologue The spirit at work Pentecost They come down from the mountain in a daze.They realise that the Lord has gone from them in a physical sense, that his appearances – ophte is the word they use, a word their Scriptures use exclusively for the ways Yahweh ‘made himself seen’to Abraham and Moses – are as much a way of understanding as seeing. There is much to be understood. First, they must understand that a Spirit will support them in their ministry. Their ordinary human presump- tions will have to be watched. They know somehow that these momentous days in their lives between a Passover that gave them a frightening freedom and Shavu’ot, The Feast of Weeks, when Israel celebrates the Covenant it made with Yahweh at Sinai, have been 40 days and more of their own pil- grimage – their own journey in the desert. ‘Go to Jerusalem’, they are told. Jerusalem isn’t far. It’s a ‘Sabbath walk’, Luke tells those readers who don’t know Jerusalem,just a mile or so,two kilo- metres. The traveller moves down through the rocky burial sites on the Mount of Olives, across the Kedron, with a glance to Gethsemane with its terrible memories of cowardice and betrayal, and around the Temple. Then she or he continues nervously past Caiphas’ Palace, past the memorial to David that Herod had created to assuage his guilt for having tried to rob the King’s Tomb (Peter would refer to it in his first sermon, reminding the Jews of Jesus’royal lineage.) Finally,to the ‘Upper Room’. ChurchAliveText02 26/6/06 11:09 AM Page 12 12 ~ Church Alive! The Upper Room, Hyperion, probably belonged to Nicodemus, a Pharisee and a man of means.It was their meeting place of prayer and reflec- tion.It will be their first synagogue,their first church.The room is large and equipped for prayer.There would have been a niche that acted as a library for their sacred texts. At this time, that niche was oriented to the north and the Temple. When it was rebuilt by Jewish Christians after the Romans had destroyed all of Jerusalem in 70 CE,the niche was oriented to the north-west, to the empty tomb and the site of the Lord’s Resurrection, a symbol of the new sacred spaces and sacred times of a new covenant. The Upper Room was on the edge of an Essene encampment on the south-west slope of Mt Sion. ‘Camp’ is their word. They are the spiritual purists of Israel.They live life with all the laws of hygiene and food as if they were still in Exodus.There is an air of intensity and fervour in this camp, of Torah debate and interpretation, of prophecy and history.We see much of it in their library,which has survived in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The city itself is intense. This Passover has been like no other. The Roman occupation lies heavily on it, mocking the insurgencies all around by crucifying ‘The King of the Jews’.Pilgrims from all over Israel and the known world are in Jerusalem to prepare for Shavu’ot.There are Jews in all their spir- itual and political genres – Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes – and proselytes, and pagan converts who bring their own brand of intensity. They are all in reflective retreat.That is the chief demand in preparation for Shavu’ot.Prayer and reading sacred histories. The Upper Room is full of memories for this band of Eleven coming down from the Mount of Olives. The Lord had his Last Supper there with them. They gathered there in terror after the crucifixion. They interviewed the women telling them,in near delirious words,the story of the empty tomb. Thomas had tested his doubts there.They had heard of the bloody death of Judas Iscariot there, and the details of his 30 pieces of silver in betrayal.The Eleven make themselves Twelve again.They throw stones or die on the floor and let the Lord choose Mathias by lot.They are searching for signs and are certain that they will find them. Their numbers are growing all the time.In the end,there will be a 120 in the Upper Room,or,as Luke might be telling us,as large a number as would be representative of the twelve tribes of Israel.In any case there had been 72 disciples in Galilee who had gone out two by two on their ministry and we can name at least 30.