The Newman College Newsletter NEWMAN · 2017-09-28 · Homily: Twenty Second Sunday in Ordinary Time 52 Newman in Pictures 2015 54 2015 Newman College Advent Festival 59 From the

VOLUME 47 • NUMBER 2

NEWMANThe Newman College Newsletter

Spring 2015

2 NEWMAN SPRING 2015 • VOLUME 47 • NUMBER 2

Genesis 1: Third Day

And for an encore, why not some filberts and jasmine, spear-grass and spiderwort, ferns, ailanthus?

Huckleberry, frangipani, monkey-puzzle, honeysuckle – each is there for the having, given a warrant and a pinch of existence. Cactus and jack-in-the-pulpit would also look well: some casuarinas, set off by juniper, dashed on a swale of savanna, might lift up the heart. And who’d not rejoice, seeing wisteria, dragon tree, lotus, boronia?

Given the time-frame, and guessing at gardeners waiting, plumping for tangerine’s gone without saying: hyssop and spikenard, mandrake and pomegranate, vetches that grow with the gazing, melons and cumin, rue by the hazel-bush, mustard and bilberry, flaxes, creamy and sage-green, barley and cinnamon. Mulberry’s promising, laurels enchanting, and everything’s coming up roses, except for the apples. They call for attention: I must see they’re given their due.

Peter Steele SJ

In this edition...Genesis 1: Third Day 2

From the Rector 3

From the Provost 6

Choir Tour – New Zealand 10

Community Service Dinner 2015 12

Forum Dinner 14

This (Latin) Life 17

Expanding the Jesuit Higher Education Network 18

Commencement Homily 28

Commencement Dinner 30

Daniel Mannix Memorial Lecture 34

Camino de Santiago 35

Margaret Manion Dinner 46

The Council Dinner 48

Peter L’Estrange Music Soirée 50

Peter Steele Prize for Poetry and Prose 51

Homily: Twenty Second Sunday in Ordinary Time 52

Newman in Pictures 2015 54

2015 Newman College Advent Festival 59

From the President of NOCA 60

1995 Reunion 60

News of Former Collegians 61

Vale 62

Early Ecumenism 62

Kevin Gorman Obituary 63

Newman College at Night 2015 66

Found in the Archives – 1916 68

St Thomas the Sceptic 70

The Song to the Son of Man 71

cover images: A drawing by Marion Mahony Griffin c. 1918 and a photograph by John Kauffmann, 1918

Other photographs in this publication come from: Jenny Fiegel, Michael Francis, Jack Fang, Ikee Dimaguila, Jock Crosbie-Goold, Martin Reinoso and Sean Burke

3NEWMAN SPRING 2015 • VOLUME 47 • NUMBER 2

FROM THE RECTOR

CONGRATULATIONSCongratulations are extended to Mr Allan Myers AO, QC, on his appointment as a Fellow of the University of Melbourne at the Graduation Ceremony on Friday, July 31st, 2015. Mr Myers is an alumnus of both the University of Melbourne and Newman College and has been a very generous benefactor to both institutions. He is also, of course, a very distinguished legal practitioner, a generous benefactor to many other institutions and charitable organizations and a great patron of the arts, the sciences and the humanities. The Vice-Chancellor held a reception in honour of Mr Myers prior to the Graduation Ceremony.

OUTREACH ACTIVITIESThree Helder Camara Lectures are scheduled for this semester. On Thursday, August 13th, at 5.00 p.m., Dr Donna Orsuto from the Lay Centre in Rome spoke on “Good News and Contemplative Living in a World of Chaos”. Dr Orsuto is a professor at the Institute of Spirituality of the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. On Thursday, October 15th, at 5.00 p.m., Margaret Silf, noted United Kingdom author, retreat giver and spiritual director, will speak on “Good News and the Experience of God’s Compassion”. And on Friday, November 27th, again at 5.00 p.m. in the College Oratory, Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez, SDB, chair of the group of nine cardinals advising Pope Francis, will speak on recently beatified “Oscar Romero: A Saint and Prophet of Justice”. On the following day, November 28th, the biannual Advent Festival will commence, directed by Dr Gary Ekkel, and will continue through to the Sunday afternoon and the evening Carol Service.

Dr Jeffrey Turnbull conducted four tours of the College on Melbourne “Open House” Sunday, July 26th. Rare books from the College’s collection were on display for the public in the Academic Centre during “Rare Book Week” (July 16th – 26th ), and a soiree to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the birth of William Butler Yeats was organised by the students and the Academic Centre staff on Friday, August 7th, at 7.00 p.m. in the College Oratory. On Thursday, August 20th, at 5.00 p.m., Professor Zoltan Molnar, from the University of Oxford, the Allan and Maria Myers International Fellow at the Florey Institute, gave a lecture in the Oratory on “Neuroscience in Oxford: Four Centuries of Discovery”.

Finally, on Thursday, August 27th, to commemorate the arrival at the University of the Rothschild Prayerbook and other works from the Kerry Stokes collection and, more importantly, to celebrate Professor Margaret Manion’s The Rector after the NCSC Dinner in September, 2015


80th birthday and her lifelong contribution to the University, there was a lecture by Professor Christopher de Hamel from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge on “The Hours of Jeanne de Navarre: Three Medieval Queens and Herman Goering”. A dinner followed in the College Dining Room. On October 29th, at 5.00 p.m., Professor Manion herself will lecture on “The Rothschild Prayerbook and the Book of Hours” in the College Oratory.

THE UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE STRATEGIC PLAN 2015–2020In this recently released paper, the Colleges of the University merit four specific mentions in the Strategic Plan. The first two of these recognise the Colleges as providers of student accommodation, the latter two recognise the Colleges as contributing to the University’s public engagement and cultural profile.

The Strategic Plan places a strong emphasis on further promoting associations with industry and public engagement generally. It notes the importance of several centres associated with the University in the Parkville and Southbank precincts in developing these links. It also notes, however, the absence of a similar centre for engineering and the sciences within the Parkville campus, and suggests that the University may have to “explore sites further afield where we can attract, develop and support partners in the development and commercialisation of research, particularly around engineering innovation”.

There continues to be a focus on developing Melbourne as a graduate university and on attracting international and interstate applicants. Scholarship and accommodation packages are seen as vital in attracting these students.

There is a commitment to making the teaching timetable more flexible and individualised outside the two semester model. Interdisciplinarity will continue to be strongly promoted, as will opportunities for students to study overseas for part of their degrees and to be seconded to professional internships. The increasing financial stability of the University is commended, and, granted the

unpredictability of government policy on funding tertiary education and the current inadequacy of such funding, the University is encouraged to “reduce reliance on government funding and build a more diverse and sustainable revenue base”. To this end the Strategic Plan notes that the Campaign for Melbourne has already raised in excess of $450M from 18,000 of the University’s 338,000 alumni. There is, however, a sober warning that: “The dominant university model in Australia – a comprehensive teaching and researching institution – may become unviable in all but a few cases, outperformed by more specialised competitors that jettison the form and practices of traditional learning”.

SCHOLARSHIPS AND STONEWORKBetween January 1st and July 31st the College received $473,450 from 63 donors towards the Scholarship Appeal and $12,360 from 19 donors towards the Stonework Restoration Appeal. A further substantial donation is currently being processed through the University from the James and Penny Gorman Trust.

In 2015, we have been able to support, through the disbursement of nearly $800,000, over 180 students with either a scholarship or bursary. Income from the Scholarship Fund and new donations provide us with this opportunity to assist a large number of students, many from financially straitened families. Listed below are our donors for 2015. We are extraordinarily blessed in our benefactors, but it is still a relatively few who contribute so generously to the Scholarship and Bursary Fund. Every day at Mass, we give thanks to our benefactors - past and present.

W. J. Uren, S.J. Rector, Newman College, The University of Melbourne 8th September, 2015

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1 The Rector with Senior Common Room members, Carolina Romero, Ikee Dimaguila and Martin Reinoso.

2 Maria Allan and Maria Myers following his appointment as a Fellow of the University of Melbourne.


BENEFACTORS 2015Mr Guillermo Aranguren

Ms Louise Arendsen

Mr John & Mrs Angela Arthur

Justice Bernard Bongiorno AO

Mr Brian Bourke

Dr John Brady

Mr Walter & Mrs Marie Broussard

Justice Sally Brown AM

Mr Joe Buckley

Professor Henry Burger

Dr James Butler AM

Dr Stephanie Charlesworth

Mr Alvin Chong

Mrs Kate & Dr Michael Connellan

Mr David Corrigan

Mr William Cushing

Dr Timothy & Ms Jane Dillon

Mr Robert & Dr Marie Fels

Ms Katherine Forrest

Professor John Funder AC

Mr Michael & Mrs Helen Gannon

Mr Denis Gibson

Mr James & Mrs Penny Gorman

Mr Keith Grabau

Mr Andrew Gray

Associate Professor John Gurry

Mr Francis Healy

Mr Paul & Mrs Diana Hoy

Mr Robert Hutchinson

The Italian Services Institute

Dr Damien Jensen

Dr Gerry & Dr Marie Joyce OAM

The Newman College Jesuit Community

Ms Charlotte Kavenagh

Mr Robert Kelson

Ms John Laughlin

Mr Christopher & Mrs Rosemary Lester

Mr Linton Lethlean

The Honourable John Lloyd

Mr Simon Lourey

Professor Margaret Manion IBVM AO

Mr Garry Manning

Mr Isaac Marshall

Mr Paul & Mrs Maree McCaffrey

Mr Peter McDonald

Mr Paul McSweeney

Dr Augustine Meaher IV

Ms Helen Murphy-Gerraty

Mr Allan Myers AO QC & Mrs Maria Myers AO

Ms Van Ngo

Mr Patrick & Mrs Kate O’Dwyer

Mr Robert O’Shea

Mr Justin Peters

Ms Catherine Playoust & Mr Elliott Gyger

Dr David Quin

Dr Robert Reid

Mr Ian Renard AM & Mrs Diana Renard

Mr Brian Smyth

Mr Richard Stanley QC

Mr Jack Strachan

The Andrew & Geraldine Buxton Foundation

The Mary Carmel Condon Charitable Trust

Mr Neil Thomson

Dr Edward Tomlinson

Mr Geoffrey & Mrs Jane Torney

Valdichiesa Foundation

Victor Fox Foundation

Ms Janet Whiting AM

The Honourable John Wilczek

Ms Kristen Will

Professor Noel Woodford

Mr Robert Zahara

Anonymous (6)


FROM THE PROVOST

THE SEMESTER TO DATEWe are now over the half way mark of the second semester, although many of our graduate and postgraduate students have been in classes for many more weeks, some having very little of a mid-year break.

The mid-year break also saw the arrival in Melbourne of many Presidents, Heads and delegates from Jesuit Colleges and Universities from around the world.

The first half of the semester has been, as usual, full of opportunities. Four performances of the College Play, The Importance of Being Earnest, football, netball, basketball, swimming, and tennis have taken place. The Peter L’Estrange SJ Music Soirée, the Michael Scott Art Prize and the Peter Steele SJ Prize for Prose and Poetry, have all come and gone for the year. Commencement Mass and Dinner (where our guest speaker was former Collegian, Alexander Eastwood, the 2015 Victorian Rhodes Scholar), the Council Dinner and the NCSC Dinner (where the guest speaker was former Collegian, Sophie Li) have brought occasions for celebration and reflection. Our regular diet of formal dinners and communal eating and sharing, tutorials and Masses, continue to sustain the community. It is full and rich.

There is little change over the next six to eight weeks.

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THE SEMESTER 1 ACADEMIC RESULTSOur results were once again very good and the result of an environment that encourages and fosters learning. A summary of these results is shown below. The tutorials, the mentoring (formal and informal) and the growing understanding of what constitutes an appropriate environment, all contribute to these results. At the end of the day, it is the individuals themselves who have to make decisions about their priorities, and these sorts of results indicate that, in this particular area, sound choices are being made by most. Well over sixty students achieved an H1 average. All in the College contribute towards the academic environment, but I would like to particularly thank the Deputy Provost, the Senior Tutor, the Academic Committee, the General Committee, the Senior Common Room and the staff of the Allan and Maria Myers Academic Centre.

Undergraduate H1 H2A H2B H3 P NTotal 237 152 157 101 109 22% 30.46 19.54 20.18 12.98 14.01 2.83

Graduate H1 H2A H2B H3 P NTotal 42 21 24 12 19 2% 35 17.50 20 10 15.83 1.67

ARCHBISHOP MANNIX TRAVELLING SCHOLARSHIPWe have received a communication from Mr. Benedict Coleridge informing us that he has been confirmed as a DPhil candidate in Politics at Oxford University.

MATTERS IRISHFollowing the address by the Irish Ambassador to Australia at our Cardinal Newman Dinner earlier this year, we have been examining options for greater links between the Irish Embassy in Canberra, the Gerry Higgins Chair of Irish Studies here at the University of Melbourne and Newman College. I met with the Ambassador a few weeks ago to discuss various opportunities. There have also been discussions between Professor Gillian Russell, the Gerry Higgins Professor of Irish Studies, the Director of the Allan and Maria Myers Academic Centre, Angela Gehrig, and Dr Val Noone. I have also had meetings with Mr Eoin Hahessy, the Chancellery Communications Advisor and Ms Jacyl Shaw, Director, Culture and Community Development, from the University of Melbourne.

Here are some of the emerging plans from these deliberations:

• We will continue to offer the O’Donnell Fellowship under the auspices of the Academic Centre. This is for six weeks over the summer break. Professor Russell is chairing the selection committee.

• We are examining the possibility of having a year-long research fellowship attached to the Chair of Irish studies at the University. This would be sponsored by the University (Irish Studies), Newman College and the Irish Embassy in Australia.

• We are looking to hold a two day seminar here at Newman College and the University to coincide with the centenary of the 1916 Easter Uprising. This would end with a dinner where the Ambassador would give the address.

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1 The Rector and the Provost with the guest speaker at the Commencement Dinner, Alexander Eastwood, former President of the Students’ Club, and current Victorian Rhodes Scholar.

2 A table at Commencement Dinner: Emma Buckingham (Myrtleford), Annalisa Rigoni (Shepparton), Corinne Sanders (Melbourne), Justin Blankenship (Hong Kong), Anna Rose Shack (Perth), Miranda Fenton (Devenport, Tasmania), Carolina Townsend Arellano (Mt Claremont, WA), Faolan Ayres (Yarrawonga), Sebastian Cheung (Sydney), Stephanie Li (Turramurra, NSW), Anthony Kremor (Shepparton) and Daniel Lee (Blackman’s Bay, Tasmania)


• The University of Melbourne is now in advanced discussions with Science Gallery International to open a Science Gallery Melbourne, anchored at the University. As part of the pre-opening engagement they have been working with the Science Gallery Dublin/International to bring out an exhibition from Science Gallery Dublin. To that end the University has been successful together with Trinity College, Dublin, in receiving funds from the Irish Cultural Fund to bring an exhibition to Melbourne next year. The CEO of Science Gallery International, Dr Michael John Gorman, was in Melbourne in August, and Newman College hosted a small dinner where Science Gallery International discussions developed. At the dinner we were joined by, amongst others, the Dean of Science from the University of Melbourne, Professor Karen Day, the Irish Ambassador, Noel White, and the Vice Chancellor of the University of Melbourne, Professor Glyn Davis.

MAJOR BUILDING PROJECTSMuch of our work in recent months has been taken up with plans for the Fleming re-development, beginning in late November this year, and in the preparation of different financial models/possibilities for the Donovan re-development. The Fleming re-development will be completed by November, 2016. An artist’s impression of the project is shown above. It involves the internal renovation of the existing building and the construction of a new building on the Keppel Street side.

DINNER FOR PROFESSOR MARGARET MANION IBVM AOOn Thursday 27th August we hosted a dinner to honour Professor Manion, a long-time member of this College and a Visiting Scholar. The Dinner followed the 2015 Margaret Manion Lecture hosted by the University of Melbourne. The Dinner is but a small gesture of the love and esteem we have for this remarkable woman.

LAUDATO SIThere was repeated reference during the recent Jesuit Higher Education Conference in Melbourne to Pope Francis’ encyclical letter Laudato Si – on care for our common home. I reflected upon this at our last Rector’s Roll Call in College.

In the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, there is repeated mention of the phrase: And God Saw That It Was Good.

And the earth brought forth grass and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

A Papal encyclical is the name typically given to a letter written by a Pope to a particular audience of Bishops. This audience of Bishops may be all of the Bishops in a specific country or all of the Bishops in all countries throughout the world. In reality it is an open letter to the Church, although we see in this encyclical, as in Pope John XXIII’s Pacem in Terris (Peace on Earth), a wish to address it to a much wider audience. Pope Francis writes to address every person living on the planet; he seeks to enter into dialogue with all people about our common home. This style of engagement is, I believe, one of hallmarks of this papacy.

3 First year students, Jack Callahan from Geelong and Aaron Bhat from Shepparton

4 Fleming re-development, an artist’s impression

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He calls us, all of us, into dialogue. He challenges us to think and reminds us that we do not need his permission to think. The encyclical has brought forth a torrent of support and a fair bit of criticism. In fact a good deal of criticism was delivered before the encyclical was even published.

Laudato Si, mi Signore – Praise be to you, my Lord, is drawn from the beautiful canticle of Francis of Assisi. Here Francis, the Saint, reminds us that the Earth is our common home and is like a sister with whom we share life and like a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us. And Francis, the Pope, points out that this sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted upon her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will.

So, the encyclical is about climate change and ecology. Yes, but it is not that simple. It is a dialogue that is much broader in content and context than former Vice-President Al Gore’s championing of efforts to avert global warming. This was eloquently reflected in his film, An Inconvenient Truth. For Gore and many others, a change to cleaner energy providers (eliminate the burning of fossil fuels), the new technologies, will avert the impending destruction, and so we return to that often pushed Trojan Horse – ‘sustainable development’ in the benign market capitalist environment. Pope Francis, whilst acknowledging the relevance of this move, seeks a deeper reflection on the problem. He asks for an examination of the rampant consumerism that envelops so many societies. He is not anti-capitalism, as some suggest, and he is certainly not Marxist, as others have charged, but what he seeks is some serious appraisal of the current direction of political thinking and practice. These sorts of statements in the encyclical challenge us:

A politics concerned with immediate results, supported by consumerist sectors of the population, is driven to produce short-term economic growth. In responses to electoral interests, governments are reluctant to upset the public with measures, which could affect the level of consumption or create risks for foreign investment. The myopia of power politics delays the inclusion of a far-sighted environmental agenda.

Those words have a familiar ring: ‘immediate results’, ‘short-term economic growth’, ‘electoral interests’ and ‘upset the public’. Consumption is not necessarily connected to wellbeing. Pope Francis believes the crisis of environment is caused by the crisis of society. We have become greedy. When Oliver Twist asks for ‘more’ it is because he is hungry; when we ask for ‘more’, it is because we want more options as we are never satisfied.

Robert Manne in reviewing Laudato Si, concurs with Bill McKibben who wrote in the ‘New York Review of Books’: This marks the first time a person of great authority in our global culture has fully recognized the scale and depth of our crisis, and the consequent necessary rethinking of what it means to be fully human. My own sense, after spending the day reading this remarkable document, was of great relief.

So we have to change; Father Rector often reminds us of this. But the decision to change must come from within all of us as individuals. I am reminded of the prayer, of James Martin SJ:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, which is pretty much everyone, since I’m clearly not you, God. At least not the last time I checked.

And while you’re at it, God, please give me the courage to change what I need to change about myself, which is frankly a lot, since, once again, I’m not you, which means I’m not perfect. It’s better for me to focus on changing myself than to worry about changing other people, who, as you’ll no doubt remember me saying, I can’t change anyway.

Finally, give me the wisdom to just shut up whenever I think that I’m clearly smarter than everyone else in the room, that no one knows what they’re talking about except me, or that I alone have all the answers.

Basically, God, grant me the wisdom to remember that I’m not you.

The Japanese believe that 20 years is short-term planning. They believe in planting trees for their grandchildren. I hope that when our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren are walking the streets of Carlton, Benalla, Sydney, Jakarta, Beijing, New York, Santiago, London, Rome, Nairobi, Marondera, Singapore or wherever they walk, God will see that it is good. I will now shut up.

Sean Burke September, 2015


THE CHOIR TOUR TO NEW ZEALAND

The Choir of Newman College embarked on its first concert tour of New Zealand in the week following Easter this year. The Choir joined forces with the highly-regarded New Zealand instrumental ensemble, Affetto, to perform Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers in five cities across both the North and South Island. Twenty-three singers travelled to New Zealand, together with the Choir’s Organist, David Macfarlane and the Choir’s Director, Gary Ekkel. Concerts were held in:

• St Peter Cathedral, Hamilton

• St Matthew-in-the-City, Auckland

• St Paul’s Cathedral, Dunedin

• St Patrick’s Basilica, Oamaru

• St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral, Christchurch

The Choir was very well received with standing ovations in a number of the venues. Many people wrote to us after the concerts to express their appreciation. In Hamilton, an international musician wrote to say that the ‘Vespers was beautiful, with lovely rhetoric and shape’; a listener in Dunedin said that the ‘concert was sublime’. The climax of the tour was a moving concert in front of 250 people at Christchurch’s Pro-Cathedral, shortly after many of the choristers had been taken on a tour of the still devastated city.

The tour received considerable media coverage in New Zealand: the concert in Oamaru’s magnificent basilica was televised in the South Island and, prior to the tour, the Choir was the subject of a 30-minute interview on Radio New Zealand.

1 Performance in St Matthew-in-the-City, Auckland

2 Dinner in Dunedin

3 Final performance in St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral, Christchurch

4 Jack Fang, Gary Ekkel, Liam Headland and Matthew Bennett at St Patrick’s Basilica, Oamaru

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The Waikato Times printed the following review:

It is rare, but it happens. A choir and an orchestra make music together and the balance between them is perfect. In combination they interpret and present the music as only a composer could appreciate it and an audience be moved by it. It happened tonight. Twenty three voices, nine instruments, and a conductor came together in St Peter’s Cathedral to interpret a manuscript written just over four hundred years ago. Fugues flew, chords clashed and resonated, shattered and resolved, sackbuts and devilshly curved cornetti blew the winds of heaven through their ancient pipes and we mentally bowed as Polly Sussex bowed her bass viol with all the ambience of the very first performance of Monteverdi’s remarkable work. What Monteverdi, together with the Newman College Choir and Affetto have done with the words of five psalms and some additional liturgical elements is magical. The wind section combined with the choir to begin the performance at the rear of the cathedral. The result was a spine-tingling moment with a blend of sound so subtle that one could not detect where voices ended and instruments began. Discipline and passion were clearly present. This ensemble was utterly focussed ... And how did the audience respond to this grand cru of musical experience? Why, with a standing ovation, of course.

The Choir were billeted throughout New Zealand and were warmly received with New Zealand’s legendary hospitality. All in all, the tour was a great success, the choristers returning with renewed musical sensitivity and energy.

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The College’s main fundraising activity each year is our annual Community Service Dinner. Each year these dinners raise funds for the work of Jesuit

Mission, Jesuit Social Service and Jesuit Refugee Service. Our guest speaker at this year’s dinner was Father Jeremy Clarke SJ, Director of Jesuit Mission in Australia. He gave all a thoughtful and thought-provoking address on the work of Jesuit Mission. The organising committee for the Dinner was chaired

by Robert Muirhead of the General Committee; other committee members included Amelia Ekkel, Paul O’Shea and Christina Jovanovic.

Parents, students and former Collegians all contributed to a most successful evening where raffles, an auction, donations and ticket sales helped the

College raise over $17,000 towards these most worthwhile organisations.

COMMUNITY SERVICE DINNER 2015

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1 Amelia Ekkel with auctioneers, Mai Mitsumori Miller and Michael Keem

2 A ‘selfie’ at the Dinner!

3 Staff and student volunteers at the Dinner

4 Maddie Smith, Martin Reinoso, Jayami Ganepola, Chuchu Wang, Heri Lim, Jack Fang and Cristina Molina

5 Father Jeremy Clarke SJ, Director of Jesuit Mission

6 Amelia Ekkel, Keeley Dunn, Rob Muirhead and Paul O’Shea

7 Singing closing Grace

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I am going to start with a contention because that is what philosophers are supposed to do. This may be controversial, but I am prepared to defend my position. Indeed, it may be outrageous, but Newman College has always been a home for unusual and challenging ideas.

My argument is that real estate agents don’t know everything. This is not to say they know nothing. Indeed, they have great powers. I have met agents who can know things that aren’t even true. But there are limits.

A while ago some friends of mine in Canberra were trying to sell their house. The agent, I think, was a frustrated theatre director. For one very long month, he turned the place into a stage. The family had to hire some cushions, because they were the latest fashion, and also some curtains. Some of the

furniture had to be stored to make the place seem bigger. Many of us have been through this kind of thing. When we were selling our house a few years ago, the agent was merciful. He allowed us to keep our family photos on the walls with the exception of the ones of me. He clearly thought those would bring down the value of the property. My Canberra friends did not fare so well. They had to live in constant expectation of buyers turning up who would want to see something from the pages of a magazine. Not a speck of dust was tolerated. But for ages there was no interest and the family was being driven mad by their inability to even leave their toothbrushes on the sink.

One Sunday my friends were having a long lunch at home with two other families. They extended the table and were chatting and eating amid a joyful clutter of plates and napkins and all that sort of thing. At 3pm, the agent rang and said that he had two lots of buyers who were in town for the day, and could they come around right now. They had no choice but to agree. The buyers arrived, and the place was in a total mess with a dishwasher that clearly couldn’t cope and burnt offerings left on the BBQ. But there was laughter and merriment. As it turned out, both those groups made an offer. They were drawn to the energy and homeliness of the place. Nobody wants to live in a glossy magazine. Everyone wants the real thing, not an image. One of the reasons I teach philosophy in a secondary school is hopefully to sharpen the appetite of students for the real thing. I teach religion for the same reason.

Is this a story about philosophy? Well, it does make a point about the difference between pleasantness and happiness. Just today my Literature class finished looking at a small book by Leo Tolstoy called The Death of Ivan Ilyich, a wonderful work in its simplicity and appreciation of reality. The main character, Ivan Ilyich, has a pleasant life. A decent life, you might say. But that is a far thing from a happy life. Yet he ends up having a happy death. Tolstoy believes that a happy anything, even death, is better than a pleasant anything, even life. Pleasantness is about matching the colours of your mind to those in fashion, measuring your life by what you see in Vogue. Happiness is about freedom, and this means not just freedom from the tyranny of pleasing, sometimes the tyranny of pleasing yourself. Tolstoy was born in 1828 and lived until 1910, so he had a long time to think about things, which is what most of us here tonight might expect. Tolstoy believed with good cause that all happiness lay in finding freedom from the ego.

WHAT MATTERS

THE ADDRESS GIVEN BY MICHAEL McGIRR AT THE

FORUM DINNER HELD ON 22 MAY, 2015,

IN THE DINING ROOM.


He proved the point himself. He was an ego maniac and, for the most part, desperately unhappy.

I first encountered philosophy in Year 7. I had two teachers. The first was Father Connolly. In those days, we were not allowed to eat meat on Fridays during Lent. But one day, the pies turned up by mistake, and there was no refrigeration to keep them over the weekend. What were the tuckshop mums supposed to do? Could they keep the rule and waste the pies, or waste the rule and keep the pies. Father Connolly to the rescue. He stood up and announced that, of course there would be no problem eating the pies ‘because everyone knew there was no meat in a meat pie, only sawdust.’ So everyone was happy. This was my first experience of what has been called Jesuit casuistry, the art of high moral argument at the service of what you want anyway. It is by no means restricted to Jesuits.

The second philosopher I met more by accident and had a much greater impact. I will not forget the Saturday night when we were all taken into Sydney Hospital to say our final goodbyes to dad, who was expected to die that night from renal failure. I was 12. This was 1974, and we had just taken delivery of a new colour TV. We arrived home in a sorry state and put on the tele. It just so happened that the first episode of the BBC’s production of War and Peace was beginning, and instantly I was hooked. It was a marvellous story and, best of all, it had nothing whatever to do with my life at that point. It is set 200 years ago in Russia and is full of costumes and banquets, at least at the start. The production features a very young Anthony Hopkins in what I still consider his best role. He plays the part of Pierre Bezuhov, the illegitimate son of a great count, who, in the opening episode, is also about to die. Through the machinations of an aunt, Pierre is made legitimate and inherits an enormous fortune. He embarks on a pleasant, but desperately unhappy, life.

As it happened, I started reading War and Peace in sync with each week’s episode. I still have my tie-in copy with all my underlinings, It is a long book, about 1400 pages, but a page turner. Somebody called it the greatest work of pulp fiction ever written. Thirty years later, Tolstoy was to compress the same passion into the fifty pages of the death of Ivan Ilyich. He had learnt the philosophers’ art of condensation and distillation, which is a painful art to practise, but pain is always the price of wisdom. That is why we live in a foolish age.

War and Peace follows Pierre Bezuhov in his search for meaning. He tries everything. He has an unhappy marriage, gets into gambling, fights a duel, dabbles with free masonry and considers the army. Meanwhile, Russia is being invaded by the Napoleonic forces. Eventually, everyone flees from

Moscow ahead of the conquerors, and Pierre is left wandering alone in his two enormous and very pleasant mansions. He is taken prisoner and narrowly escapes the firing squad. For the first time in his life, he is among peasants and has no idea of how to look after himself or to cope.

Luckily, he is befriended by one of my favourite characters in literature, Platon Karaytayev, a wily peasant with a fund of wise little sayings. He always says ‘every night I lay down like a stone and rise up like new bread.’ I think that is a great prayer. Platon takes Pierre under his wing, which is just as well because the Cossacks are moving the prisoners through the snow at a remorseless pace, and anyone who can’t keep up is taken to the side of the column and simply shot and left for dead. Apart from Platon, this would have happened to Pierre.

But then comes the time when Platon gets sick and he can’t keep up. The Cossacks take him aside and shoot him. What follows is a line buried on about page 1100 of a huge dog eared paperback that changed my life. The line says that when Platon is shot, Pierre doesn’t even look back. I have been literally winded by a book on only a small number of occasions. One was when I first read the last line of Orwell’s 1984, ‘he loved big brother.’ Another was in Year 12 when we were reading Great Expectations and Pip realises what he has done to his gentle mentor, Joe Gargery. I have had this experience reading scripture such as the moment in John’s Gospel where Jesus asked Peter three times ‘do you love me’. It is such a vulnerable question. But seeing the way Pierre Bezuhov trashed his dear friend has stayed with me now for 40 years.

Nevertheless, that moment is the beginning of Pierre’s salvation. He came to realise that he was capable of as much evil as Napoleon or the Cossacks or anyone else. He touched the bedrock of his humanity and found it stripped bare. But once he had owned the dark truth of himself he was able to begin again and to build. He discovered his own need for forgiveness and healing. This was the start of happiness. There was nothing pleasant about it.

You can see this book did for me what literature and philosophy both have a knack of accomplishing. What stared as escapism brought me back to reality by another door. And a key to that reality is philosophy: Tolstoy was developing a philosophy that it is the so-called little people, like Platon, who are the architects of history more than those such as Napoleon. I would guarantee in 2015 that the history of Australia is being made by those knocking on our door in dangerous boats far more than those in power whose idea of leadership is about making images.


It saddens me that words are so cheap. We are all drowning in words. The whole world keeps chattering at us mercilessly. We can’t hear the things of importance because they are lost like a needle in a haystack. We use more and more words to say less and less of substance.

Last year, I was on a program on the BBC and was asked to come up with an idea for humanity. My idea is that every new person should come uploaded with a lifetime word limit. Perhaps they could have a word-counter in the back of their hands as well so they know how many words they have left. Once their ration has expired, they have to spend the rest of their lives in silence. The point of the scheme is to increase the value of words. Perhaps the word limit could be 4.6million, which is the number of words that Charles Dickens wrote in his career. This sounds like a lot, but I discovered that the average person uses 365 million words in a lifetime.

I really do enjoy teaching philosophy, and one of the figures I enjoy introducing to young people is the Austrian, Ludwig Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein was as strange a man as you could possibly imagine. In some ways he was tortured; he had great trouble accepting the fact he was gay, which, as you might expect, led to a lot of needless bother. But there was more to him than that. He was born in 1889 to a family that was rich beyond imagining. He grew up in a house with seven grand pianos and where the likes of Brahms and Mahler came to perform. He inherited a fortune but gave it all away, mainly to his sisters, because they were the only people he knew who were richer than he was and so could not be poisoned by wealth any more than they had been already. He lived all his life in an extremely modest fashion, usually in nothing more than a room or a cabin. Once again, for him philosophy was a matter of stripping away all the stuff we gather around ourselves to discover what was essential.

In a way, Wittgenstein’s moment was WWI, in which he enlisted. We have heard a lot about the war this year. It was, on top of everything else, the deepest philosophical trauma in the western world since the fall of Rome. This was because the war was suffered by habitually verbose cultures. One outcome was that many people began to doubt the power of the very thing that they had learnt to trust, namely words or language. How could you describe what had happened? How could you possibly use words to attribute any meaning to the destruction?

After the war, Wittgenstein stayed in uniform for five years. By this I mean, he actually kept the same clothes on and did not change. This to me was symbolic. Then in 1922, the same year that saw the publication of Ulysses and The Wasteland,

he published a small word with an odd title, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus that he had been working on since before the war. It was a big moment in the history of philosophy because up till now most thinkers right back to Socrates and even further had thought that, even if you didn’t know the answer, then at least you could ask the question. Words could help you to that extent at least. But Wittgenstein believed that even questions such as ‘what is truth?’ and ‘what is love?’ were beyond the capacity of language. He concluded this book with a famous line ‘whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent.’ He began to turn our minds around, just as in earlier centuries people had asked us to move the earth away from the centre of the way we imagined the universe. Instead of thinking that our language describes experience, Wittgenstein suggested that our language creates our experience. He said famously that the limits of our language are the limit of our world. He said that words are tools, not names.

You are probably already starting to throw questions back at Wittgenstein and there are plenty of people who have done that. It confuses me, for example, that Wittgenstein believed in God. He said, for example, that only love can believe the resurrection. But is the word, ‘God’, a name or a tool? Is it describing something that exists or making something exist? Christian history is very much about the interplay of these two alternatives.

Of course, language is hugely formative, and that is why we need to be careful with it, respect it and enjoy the discovery of what it can make happen. Compare the difference between saying to a stranger, ‘excuse me sir’ and, ‘get out of my way, mate.’ The phrases will create quite different relationships. We all need to have a far greater reverence for language than we commonly do.

This weekend we celebrate the great feast of Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit. Pentecost is a great feast of language and also of reality. It balances the Easter story where people are always fumbling for words. If Jesus is the word of God, as we believe, I sometimes like to think of the Father as the author and the Spirit as the reader. St Paul says the Spirit comes to help us in our weakness. Part of this is that the Spirit helps our feeble attempts to understand reality rather than escape from it. It is the Spirit that leads us on a journey from image to reality, from gloss to honesty, from ego to humility. None of these great expeditions tend to trend much on social media. But they are what matters. I hope you will all over the years ahead find them more thrilling than real estate.

Michael McGirr is the Dean of Faith and Mission at St Kevin’s College in Melbourne.


“Veni, vidi, vici” was the purported victory phrase of Julius Caesar in about 46BC.

“I came, I saw, I conquered” is both pithy and catchy, and has since been adapted or quoted by people from Shakespeare to Hillary Clinton.

I have always found a particular kind of joy in this phrase, frequently applying it to anything from the discovery of a new restaurant to the completion of an exam. The possibilities for dramatization – cue Roman legionary stance, defiant gaze and the majesty of Caesar – are endless.

Aged 18, I brazenly veni, vidi, vici’d my way around Italy as a backpacker.

The heady, orange-tinged air of bustling Milanese backstreets sparked a thrill of adventure that prompted me to take train after train, winding my way down through Italy, not knowing where I would end up one day to the next.

I went to a toga party in Rome, stayed in youth hostels, nestled in olive groves, watched the sunset from the top of Assisi, ate a plum from a tree in a hidden courtyard in Pompeii, saw the Pope in Vatican City, and soaked my weary feet in Siena’s Fontebranda (which is mentioned in Dante’s Divine Comedy). My fascination with Ancient Rome progressed to enrolling in an intensive Latin course at the University of Melbourne this summer.

The course promises to deliver an entire year’s material in a mere eight weeks – no undertaking for the faint of heart. At least one hopeful fact is that Latin, because it is a dead language, is comparatively small.

I can now confidently translate interesting sentences such as “Oh Brutus! I love the pirate’s daughter!” and “the pigs and the wild animals go into the forest”.

These pastoral phrases contribute to a rather Romantic learning experience.

More seriously, the opportunity to eventually read the poetry of Catullus and Virgil in the original is a privilege. I’ve also discovered that Latin is an inherently sexist language, demonstrated by the complete absence of a word for a female pirate or farmer. (Two career options off the table for the young women of the Roman Empire.)

Although technically there are ways around it, our task isn’t to start constructing 21st-century Latin but rather to learn it as the Romans knew it.

Perhaps one of the most revealing things I have learned to date is that classical Latinate pronunciation changes all V’s to a W sound. I have found myself confronted with the fact that my beloved “veni, vidi, vici” is now in actual fact “weni, widi, wici”.

Somehow it doesn’t have quite the same triumphant ring to it. But all the same I’m determined to “weni, widi, wici” my way through to the end of this course.

THIS (LATIN) LIFE

An article written by second year Arts student, Anna-Rose Shack, which was published in The Weekend Australian, Review, 31/1-1/2/2015


The Rector, the Provost and Father Healy, attended this conference and meeting which was held in Melbourne.

THE MELBOURNE 2015 JESUIT HIGHER EDUCATION CONFERENCEThe University of Melbourne most generously hosted a cocktail party on the evening of Tuesday 7th July to welcome the delegates to the Jesuit Higher Education Conference. The Provost of the University, Professor Margaret Shiel and the Vice Principal, Engagement, Mr Adrian Collette were our hosts for the evening.

Well over 200 delegates attended the Conference which was held at the Australian Catholic University. The Conference venue was excellent and the arrangements by the University were first rate. Professor Greg Craven was a most gracious host during the three days.

Presidents, Heads and representatives from many Jesuit tertiary educational institutions attended the Conference. Countries represented included:

Africa: Zimbabwe, Kenya and Madagascar.

South and Central America: Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Peru, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Venezuela, Myanmar, Colombia, Guatemala, Bahamas and Peru.

Northern America: USA

Asia and the Pacific: Australia, Japan, India, Philippines, Timor-Leste, Indonesia, China, Korea and Taiwan.

Europe: Spain, Italy, UK, Germany, France, Belgium, Slovenia and Slovakia,

Middle East: Lebanon.

The Programme:

Wednesday 8th July: Our Social Justice Mission

• Welcome – Fr Michael Garanzini SJ, Secretary for Higher Education, Society of Jesus, President Loyola University, Chicago

• Video: Social Justice and the Jesuit University – introduced by Fr Paxti Alvarez SJ, Secretary, Social Justice and Ecology Secretariat (Spain)

• How Social Justice is manifested in the University – Dr Gonzalo Inguanzo Arteaga, Vice President for Academic Affairs, Iberoamericana University Puebla (Mexico) and Fr Francisco José Virtuoso SJ, President, Andrés Bello Catholic University (Venezuela)

• Best Practices in Faculty Development for Mission – Fr Jorge Humbert Peláez Piedrahita SJ, President Javeriana Unversity (Columbia) and Fr Pedro Rubens SJ, Rector of the Catholic University of Pernambuco, President of the International Federation of Catholic Universities, and Vice President of AUSJAL.

• Panel: Service Learning and Student Formation Programs – Dr Susana Di Trolio Rivero, Secretary General of Association of Latin American Jesuit Universities, Fr Joel Tabora SJ, President, Ateneo de Davao University (Philippines) and Chair of Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities in Asia Pacific.

On this evening all delegates gathered for Mass in the Chapel of the Holy Spirit, Newman College. The Provincial of the Society of Jesus, Fr Brian McCoy SJ, was the principal celebrant and Fr Bill Uren SJ, Rector of Newman College, delivered the homily. The Choir of Newman College sang at the Mass.

EXPANDING THE JESUIT HIGHER EDUCATION NETWORK

COLLABORATIONS FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE (7th–10th JULY, 2015) AND THE ASSOCIATION OF JESUIT COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES –

ASIA PACIFIC MEETING (11th–12th JULY, 2015) – THE PROGRAMME AND SOME REFLECTIONS


After Mass, a Dinner was held in the Dining Hall at Newman College. Fr Frank Brennan SJ gave the address at the Dinner.

Thursday 9th July: Our Social Justice Mission

• Transform Thinking...Transform the World: Jesuit Commons: Higher Education at the Margins – Fr Peter Balleis SJ, International Director, Jesuit Refugee Service, Fr John Fitzgibbons SJ, President Regis University (USA), Dr Mary McFarland, International Director, Jesuit Commons: Higher Education at the Margins and Professor, Gonzaga University (USA)

• International Jesuit Ecology Project: Healing Earth Electronic Textbook in Environmental Science, Ethics, Spirituality and Action – George McGraw, Director, DIGDEEP Right to water Project, Los Angeles, California (USA), Professor Lazar Savarimuthu, Professor of Human Resource Management, Loyola Institute of Business Administration, Loyola College, Chennai (India), Professor Michael Schuck, Department of Theology, Loyola University, Chicago., Professor Nancy Tuchman, Department of Biology, Loyola University, Chicago and Fr Pedro Walpole SJ, Director for Research, Institute of Environmental Science for Social Change, Ateneo de Manila University (Philippines)

• Developing Social Entrepreneurs: Jesuit Business School Collaboration – Rudy Ang, Dean of the Graduation School of Business, Ateneo de Manila University (Philippines), Professor Thane Kreiner, Execeutive Director of the Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship, Santa Clara University (USA), and Dr Madhukar Shukla, Chair, Fr Arrupe Centre for Ecology and Sustainability at XLRI Jamshedpur (India)

• Collaborations in Latin America: AUSJAL Presentation – Fr Fernando Fernández Font SJ, Rector of Iberoamericana University in Puebla (Mexico) and President of AUSJAL, Fr Luis Ugalde SJ, Secretary for Education of the Conference for Provincials in Latin America

• The Ignatian Spirituality Project – Fr Joseph Christie SJ, from the Madurai Province, India, Professor of Decision Studies at LIBA.

Friday 10th July: Exploring future collaborative opportunities

• Toward a Jesuit Digital Network – Dr Damian Saccocio, Principal, Course Gateway

• Collaboration for Higher Education in Africa – Fr Ron Anton SJ, Senior Advisor, Executive Education at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business

• Global Jesuit Case Series – Jim Joseph, Dean of the Madden School of Business, Le Moyne College (USA).

• Online Master’s Degree Program for Jesuit Education and Pedagogy – Fr Jose Mesa SJ, Worldwide Secretary for Education of the Society of Jesus and Visiting Professor at Loyola University, Chicago.

• Lunch and Remarks – Archbishop Angela Vincenzo Zani, Secretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education (Vatican City)

• Regional Meetings

ASSOCIATION OF JESUIT COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES – ASIA PACIFIC MEETINGThis meeting was held over two days at Newman College. The meeting started on Saturday 11th July after dinner in the College.

Institutions represented:

Ateneo de Davao University (Philippines) Ateneo de Manila University (Manila) Ateneo de Naga University (Philippines) Ateneo de Zamboanga (Philippines) Loyola College of Culion (Philippines) Xavier University (Philippines) Santa Dharma University (Indonesia) ATMI-Politekni Surakarta (Indonesia) Sogang University (Korea) Sophia University (Japan) Elisabeth University of Music (Japan) Fu Jen Faculty of Theology of St Robert Bellarmine (Taipei) The Beijing Center for Chinese Studies Newman College (Australia) Sentir, University of Divinity (Australia)

The programme was:

Saturday 11th July

• Drinks in the Rector’s Lounge followed by Dinner in the Coffee Lounge

• Welcome – Fr Joel Tabora SJ, AJCU –AP Chair, Fr Eric Velandria SJ, Socius to JCAP

• Sharing and reflections on AJCU-AP 5-Year Strategic Direction

Sunday 12th July

• ‘Our Shared Educational Mission in the Light of the Common Good’ – Fr Patrick Riordan SJ, Heythrop College, University of London (attached). Reactors: Fr Benedictus Hari Juliawan SJ, JCAP Committee on Social Apostolate and Migration, Fr Pedro Walpole SJ, JCAP Committee on Reconciliation with Creation, and Fr Yoannes Berchmans Heru Prakosa SJ, JCAP Committee on Muslim-Christian Dialogue


• Open Forum

• Discussion on AJCU-AP Strategic Direction

• Report on the 2014 Service Learning Program (Xavier University)

• Business Meeting

• Mass in the Lady Chapel

• Drinks in the Rector’s Lounge and Dinner in the Coffee Lounge

SOME REFLECTIONS:These gatherings provided an opportunity to meet many people engaged in Jesuit Higher Education from across the world. Past and ongoing successful and unsuccessful efforts of collaboration were examined and other opportunities explored. The recent Encyclical of Pope Francis, Laudato Si, was constantly a reference point to a number of the presentations and informed many discussions. Even though there are large differences between our institution, Newman College, and most of the other Jesuit institutions present at the Conference and Meetings, there were a number of opportunities to pause and reflect upon possible changes here. There were some interesting and informal discussions on private vs public funding of universities. The address on the ‘Common Good’ by Fr Patrick Riordan was a particular highlight. The ensuing conversations were most stimulating. Fr Primitivo E. Viray, Jr., SJ, from Ateneo de Naga University reflected that the ‘common good’ and ‘common sense’ are often not as common as we would like.

1 2

1 Dinner at Newman College during the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities - Asia Pacific meeting.

2 Fr Louis Gendron SJ, President of Fu Jen Faculty of Theology of St Robert Bellarmine, Taiwan, and Fr Primitivo E. Viray, Jr., SJ, President, Ateneo de Naga University, Philippines


Votive Mass of St IgnatiusWednesday, July 8th, 2015

EXPANDING THE JESUIT HIGHER EDUCATION NETWORK: COLLABORATIONS FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE

The homily given by the Rector at the Mass in the Chapel of the Holy Spirit as part of the Expanding the Jesuit Higher Education Network Conference finished with this prayer often used by Archbishop Oscar Romero to “Ministers to the Future”

Ministers to the Future It helps, now and then, to step back and take the long view. The kingdom is not beyond our efforts; it is beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is the Lord’s work…

Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us. No sermon says all that should be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection. No pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the Church’s mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

That is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one day will grow, We water seeds already planted knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that has effects far beyond our capabilities…

We cannot do everything and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very, very well.

It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the Master Builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders… Ministers, not messiahs.

We are prophets of a future that is not our own. Amen


Dinner at Newman College

I join with Fr Bill Uren and Sean Burke in welcoming you here to Newman College. Until 100 years ago, this place where we meet was still an open paddock. It was the traditional land of the Wurundjeri people who had made their home here as hunters and gatherers for tens of thousands of years. The surrounding blocks were already the sites for the splendid university colleges erected by the other major Christian Churches with a presence here at the University of Melbourne. You will understand that the Catholics, many of whom were Irish, did not yet have the means nor the vision for the building of their own college on the crescent adjacent to the university.

International visitors need to appreciate that Sydney was founded well before Melbourne with the result that there was already a well established Catholic men’s college at the University of Sydney. But not even Sydney had a college for Catholic women. Back in 1885, Cardinal Moran had cause to dismiss the then rector of Sydney’s St John’s College for ‘levity of conduct with young ladies’ as well as for low enrolments. I don’t know how sustainable the rector’s claim on his job would have been if enrolments had been healthier. When looking for a new college rector, Cardinal Moran could not afford to be too choosy. But he did rule out two classes of men: Englishmen and Jesuits. He regarded Jesuits as ‘a law unto themselves’.1

When the legendary Irish cleric Daniel Mannix left Maynooth and came here to Melbourne as coadjutor bishop to Archbishop Carr in 1913, Carr entrusted him with the mission of developing this vacant site. Brenda Niall, a splendid Australian biographer, has recently published a new life of Mannix. She was left in no doubt that Mannix had no interest

in building a Catholic university, but rather saw the need for Catholics in the tertiary education sector to act as a leavening element in the thoughts and ideals of the developing secular universities. Unlike many other countries, Australia has long had a strong system of Catholic secondary schools but until recently no Catholic universities. I remember when the Provost of the newly established Notre Dame University here in Australia proudly told my father when he was Chief Justice of Australia that Notre Dame was about to establish Australia’s first Catholic law school. Dad simply responded with a question, ‘Must you?’ We now have two Catholic universities in Australia. Much has changed since Mannix’s day.

In a chapter entitled, ‘Playing Poker with the Jesuits’, Brenda Niall spells out Mannix’s vision for Catholic tertiary education. He wanted to put Catholics (and that more than often meant Irish) ‘on a footing similar to that of other denominations’. In 1910, Archbishop Carr had welcomed the Newman Society into his archdiocese so that it might have a presence here at the University of Melbourne. Brenda Niall opines that nothing much might have become of Mannix but for the 1916 Easter uprising at the post office in Dublin and the subsequent conscription campaigns here in Australia where Mannix strongly and successfully opposed government moves for military conscription during the First World War.

Planning for Newman College, Mannix, unlike his Sydney episcopal brethren, wanted the Jesuits to do the job. It would have made sense for him to commission Fr James O’Dwyer SJ, then rector of Xavier College, our large Jesuit secondary school with place for boarders, to be the first rector. But alas, though Irish born, O’Dwyer was ‘a King and Empire Man’ who had told the Old Xavierians at the outbreak of the war that

EXPANDING THE JESUIT HIGHER EDUCATION NETWORK: COLLABORATIONS FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE

The address given by Father Frank Brennan SJ at a Dinner at Newman College which was part

of this Conference, 8th July, 2015


‘in the story of Empire there is nothing so unselfish as the relation of the Motherland to her colonies’2. This was too much for Mannix. Eventually he found another Jesuit for the task.

Once assured a major donor from Sydney, Mannix took a very hands on approach to the construction of Newman College. He knew that architecture mattered. He made a bold choice, giving the job to an American couple Walter Burley Griffin and his wife Marion Mahony. Brenda Niall observes that Mannix ‘never liked being predictable and it would have pleased him to have the Catholic college, a latecomer to the University of Melbourne, make such a strong statement of individuality. Choosing between adventurous modernism and predictable neo-Gothic, Mannix would take the risk of the new, even at the cost of antagonising the major donor.’3

You will note that we are gathered in the splendid circular dining room. Thomas Donovan, the Sydney donor, disliked much about the building, but most especially this dining room. He thought it was designed to ‘enforce equality’. That was the sort of thing Americans did! It was American, even socialist, in feeling. Niall interprets Donovan’s displeasure: ‘No humble approach to High Table, no dignity, nothing to signal the authority of the rector’.4 Mannix was so delighted with the result that he became a great backer for Burley Griffin who then became the architect for Canberra, our national capital which is home for me and Newman’s erstwhile rector Fr Peter L’Estrange. I often tell my American friends that Canberra is a bit like Washington DC, but without the power, money, influence and prestige.

On the far wall you will see the portrait of Fr Jeremiah Murphy who was rector here for 30 years. He loved the place, and he was very at home engaging with the administration of the University of Melbourne. When his provincial finally moved him to Xavier College, he wrote in his diary: ‘Entered the desert’5. He died within a year, aged 71.

As a young Jesuit, I had a couple of brief stints here at Newman, tutoring in constitutional law. Kevin Andrews who is now the Australian Minister for Defence was president of the students’ club. Kevin is part of a cabinet which contains a great number of alumni from Jesuit schools including the Prime Minister, the Treasurer, the Minister for Finance, the Minister for Education and the Minister for Agriculture. And it almost goes without saying that the nation’s Chief Justice and Leader of the Opposition also attended Jesuit schools. It’s good for our corporate humility to acknowledge that the Governor-General was educated by the Christian Brothers and that our Queen received no Catholic education at all, though she is of course not one of us, and she lives on the other side of the globe.

I suspect Pope Francis had some of our alumni in mind when he wrote in his encyclical Laudato Si:6

A politics concerned with immediate results, supported by consumerist sectors of the population, is driven to produce short-term growth. In response to electoral interests, governments are reluctant to upset the public with measures which could affect the level of consumption or create risks for foreign investment. The myopia of power politics delays the inclusion of a far-sighted environmental agenda within the overall agenda of governments. Thus we forget that “time is greater than space”, that we are always more effective when we generate processes rather than holding on to positions of power. True statecraft is manifest when, in difficult times, we uphold high principles and think of the long-term common good. Political powers do not find it easy to assume this duty in the work of nation-building.

1. Brenda Niall, Mannix, Text Publishing, 2015, p. 105

2. Ibid, p. 112

3. Ibid, p. 115

4. Ibid, p. 116

5. Ibid, p. 327

6. Pope Francis, Laudato Si, #178


Many of us were last gathered together five years ago in Mexico at this conference under the leadership and inspiration of the late Fr Paul Locatelli SJ to hear Fr General Adolfo Nicolas put before us three major challenges in response to what he called the pervasive ‘globalisation of superficiality’ by which we can be ‘overwhelmed with such a dizzying pluralism of choices and values and beliefs and visions of life, then one can so easily slip into the lazy superficiality of relativism or mere tolerance of others and their views, rather than engaging in the hard work of forming communities of dialogue in the search of truth and understanding’. Fr General told us:7

First, in response to the globalization of superficiality, I suggest that we need to study the emerging cultural world of our students more deeply and find creative ways of promoting depth of thought and imagination, a depth that is transformative of the person. Second, in order to maximize the potentials of new possibilities of communication and cooperation, I urge the Jesuit universities to work towards operational international networks that will address important issues touching faith, justice, and ecology that challenge us across countries and continents. Finally, to counter the inequality of knowledge distribution, I encourage a search for creative ways of sharing the fruits of research with the excluded; and in response to the global spread of secularism and fundamentalism, I invite Jesuit universities to a renewed commitment to the Jesuit tradition of learned ministry which mediates between faith and culture.

Those of us inspired by the Jesuit tradition once again gather in the global South to consider the challenges put to us by Fr General. We mourn the loss of Paul Locatelli who died soon after our last conference reminding us: ‘We must challenge the illusion of privilege and isolated individualism. We must bind ourselves emotionally and functionally to others and to the earth.’8 This time we have gathered in Asia, though admittedly Australia is probably the least Asian

country in South East Asia. Fr Peter C. Phan the Georgetown theologian recently reflected on the Church in Asia which he describes as ‘the cradle of the world’s religions’. Profiling the concerns of the Federation of Asian Bishops Conference, Phan writes:9

The FABC’s dominant concern is centred on the kingdom of God (not on the institutional church); mission (not inward-self-absorption); communion (not splendid isolation); dialogue (not imperialistic monologue); solidarity with victims (not victim-blaming and withdrawal into an otherworldly ‘spirituality’); care of creation (not exploitation of natural resources); and witness/martyrdom (not cowardly compromise).

We are now preparing for the 36th General Congregation of the Jesuits. And we are buoyed up by the leadership of our Jesuit pope Francis who embodies so much of what we espouse and who challenges us to respond with full hearts, applied minds, and willing hands.

Remember how Pope Francis ended his address to the journalists in Rome on the day after his election when he gave a blessing with a difference. He said:10

I told you I was cordially imparting my blessing. Since many of you are not members of the Catholic Church, and others are not believers, I cordially give this blessing silently, to each of you, respecting the conscience of each, but in the knowledge that each of you is a child of God. May God bless you!

Now that is what I call a real blessing for anybody and everybody—and not a word of Vaticanese. Respect for the conscience of every person, regardless of their religious beliefs; silence in the face of difference; affirmation of the dignity and blessedness of every person; offering, not coercing; suggesting, not dictating; leaving room for gracious acceptance. These are all good pointers for us members of the Jesuit Higher Education Network holding the treasure of the Ignatian tradition, Roman authority and Catholic ritual in


trust for all people of good will, including all our staff and students, as we discern how best to make a home for God in our lives and in our world, assured that the Spirit of God has made her home with us.

Something crystallised for me at the splendid Sydney Opera House soon after the election of Francis when I appeared on stage with the British philosopher AC Grayling, author of The God Argument, and Sean Faircloth, the US director of one of the Dawkins Institutes passionately committed to atheism. We were there to discuss their certainty about the absurdity of religious faith. Mr. Faircloth raised what had already become a hoary old chestnut, the failure of Pope Francis when provincial of the Jesuits in Argentina during the Dirty Wars to adequately defend his fellow Jesuits who were detained and tortured by unscrupulous soldiers. Being a Jesuit, I thought I was peculiarly well situated to respond. I confess to having got a little carried away. I exclaimed: Yes, how much better it would have been if there had been just one secular, humanist, atheist philosopher who had stood up in the city square in Buenos Aires and shouted, ‘Stop it!’ The military junta would have collectively come to their senses, stopped it, and Argentinians would have lived happily ever after. The luxury for such philosophers is that they never have to get their hands dirty and they think that religious people who do are hypocrites unless of course they take the course of martyrdom. As believers, we are able to hold together ideals and reality, commitment and forgiveness.

Last November, I had the good fortune to be a visiting professor at Boston College where the university community marked the 25th anniversary of the assassination of the six Jesuits, their housekeeper and her daughter at the Universidad Centroamerica (UCA) in El Salvador during their dreadful civil war. The American poet Carolyn Forché who spent years in El Salvador listening to the horrific stories addressed us. She spoke about ‘A Poet’s Journey from El Salvador to 2014: Witness in the Light of Conscience’. She knew Fr Ignacio Ellacuria SJ, the rector of UCA who was the

main target of the assassins. He taught her that ‘each moment of our life shapes the whole of our life, and that we are not always responsible for what befalls us but we are certainly responsible for our response’. He spoke of the capacity to meet the moment beautifully, and in a manner that honours our deepest human aspirations.

She was a friend of the late, now canonised, Archbishop Oscar Romero. She was with him the week before he was assassinated in March 1980. This is how she told the story:

I met with Monsignor in the kitchen of the convent of the Carmelite Missionary Sisters, where he told me gently that it was time for me to go home, as the situation had become too dangerous, and I was more needed in the United States, in the work of helping Americans to understand the struggle for justice. But I begged him to leave, as his was the first name on the death squads’ lists. He seemed so calm that afternoon, tapping his fingers on the Bible he carried with him. I realised I was in the presence of a saint. ‘No’, he said, ‘my place is with my people, and now your place is with yours.’

7. Adolfo Nicolas, ‘Depth, universality, and learned ministry: Challenges to Jesuit higher education today’, Address to the ‘Networking Jesuit Higher Education: Shaping the Future for a Humane, Just, Sustainable Globe’ Conference, Mexico City, 22 April 2010 at http://www.scu.edu/scm/winter2010/shapingthefuture.cfm.

8. Quoted by Fr Michael McCarthy SJ in his homily at the funeral of Paul Locatelli SJ on 16 July 2010, at <http://www.scu.edu/scm/winter2010/lastgoodbye.cfm>.

9. Peter C. Phan, ‘Reception of and Trajectories for Vatican II in Asia’, in David G. Schultenover (ed.), 50 Years On: Probing the Riches of Vatican II, Liturgical Press, 2015, p. 312

10. Pope Francis, Address to Members of Communications Media, 16 March 2013, at http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2013/march/documents/papa-francesco_20130316_rappresentanti-media.html


In the Boston audience was Fr Donald Monan SJ who had been president of Boston College when his Jesuit brothers at his sister university were assassinated. With other Jesuit university presidents from the USA, he went to El Salvador and sat through the trial of the soldiers indicted with the killings. He spent years lobbying US congressmen to withdraw support for the unaccountable military in El Salvador, observing, ‘The intellectual architects of this crime have never been publicly identified’ or called to account.

When Ellacuria became rector of UCA he said that his country was ‘an unjust and irrational reality that should be transformed’ and that the university needed to contribute to social change: ‘It does this in a university manner and with a Christian inspiration.’ When Monan returned from El Salvador, he was fond of telling his students: ‘We must do all we can to ensure that freedom predominates over oppression, justice over injustice, truth over falsehood, and love over hatred. If the university does not decide to make this commitment, we do not understand what validity it has as a university, much less as a Christian inspired university.’

The voice of conscience missions the believer not just for service in the Church but most especially for service in the world, not just with commitment to justice in the Church but most especially to justice in the world. This cannot be done without a commitment to laws and policies which do justice, protecting the weak and vulnerable. It is a call to take an intelligent, informed stand in solidarity. In his encyclical Pope Francis calls us to consider the tragic effects of environmental degradation especially on the lives of the world’s poorest. He says:11

The problem is that we still lack the culture needed to confront this crisis. We lack leadership capable of striking out on new paths and meeting the needs of the present with concern for all and without prejudice towards coming generations. The establishment of a legal framework which can set clear boundaries and ensure the protection of ecosystems has become indispensable, otherwise the new power structures

based on the techno-economic paradigm may overwhelm not only our politics but also freedom and justice.

Developing the culture, the leadership, and the legal framework. These are the challenges to those of us who want to be intelligent believers responding to the call of the Spirit. It is heartening to note the pope’s humility born of true consultation with bishops’ conferences (17 of which are quoted directly in the encyclical) and detailed meetings with experts including scientists, economists and political scientists as well as philosophers and theologians. Having noted, ‘There are certain environmental issues where it is not easy to achieve a broad consensus’, he concedes that ‘the Church does not presume to settle scientific questions or to replace politics. But I want to encourage an honest and open debate, so that particular interests or ideologies will not prejudice the common good’.12

Returning home to our universities and places of higher learning, we must commit all our institutions to engagement in this honest and open debate, respecting the competencies of all, and inspired by Pope Francis’s vision of St Francis of Assisi who is the model of the inseparable bond ‘between concern for nature, justice for the poor, commitment to society, and interior peace’13. Mind you, I do think the encyclical would be all the stronger if it conceded that the growth in the world’s human population – from 2 billion when Pius XII first spoke of contraception to 3.5 billion when Paul VI promulgated Humanae Vitae to 7.3 billion and climbing as it is today – points to a need to reconsider the Church’s teaching on contraception. The pope is quite right to insist that the reduction of population growth is not the only solution to the environmental crisis. But it is part of the solution. It may even be an essential part of the solution. Banning contraception in a world of 7.3 billion people confronting the challenges of climate change and loss of biodiversity is a very different proposition from banning it in a world of only 2 billion people oblivious of such challenges.


I doubt that you would find any papal adviser today who would advocate that the planet’s situation with climate change, loss of biodiversity, and water shortages would be improved if only all people of good will had declined to use artificial birth control for the last 50 years.

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of Vatican II and preparing for the forthcoming Synod on the Family, we can take heart from the changes in our Church which permit and encourage such questions and dialogue. You will note that one effect of the recent encyclical is that it is no longer just liberal Catholics who are labeled as cafeteria Catholics. Some erstwhile conservative Catholics and papal apologists have become very exceptionalist in their discussion of this encyclical. We are now all welcome to the real world of questioning engagement in a Church that we cherish for its teaching office and sense of tradition. John O’Malley SJ, the finest contemporary historian of Vatican II writing in the English language has provided us with ‘a simple litany’ of the changes in church style indicated by the council’s vocabulary: ‘from commands to invitations, from laws to ideals, from threats to persuasion, from coercion to conscience, from monologue to conversation, from ruling to serving, from withdrawn to integrated, from vertical and top-down to horizontal, from exclusion to inclusion, from hostility to friendship, from static to changing, from passive acceptance to active engagement, from prescriptive to principled, from defiant to open-ended, from behaviour modification to conversion of heart, from the dictates of law to the dictates of conscience, from external conformity to the joyful pursuit of holiness.’14

As members of the Jesuit Higher Education Network committed to social justice we have great potential and vast material, intellectual and spiritual resources. But this is no time for self-satisfaction nor complacency. If you’re in any doubt about that, consider only this week’s London Tablet which carries the front page headline: ‘Are the Jesuits pulling out of Britain?’15 The closure of Heythrop College brings to an

end a history that began in Louvain in Belgium in 1614, when it was illegal to educate Catholic priests in England. The original college in Louvain was made possible by the gift of a wealthy English benefactor. Four centuries later, its successor institution has now run out of benefactors. No institution is sacred. No institution is spared the scrutiny of accountants and bean counters.

Looking to the future, lets sustain each other in hope. Looking to the future, I conclude appropriately quoting one of our fine contemporary women theologians. In her new book Ask the Beasts: Darwin and the God of Love, Elizabeth A Johnson, writes: ‘Living the ecological vocation in the power of the Spirit sets us off on a great adventure of mind and heart, expanding the repertoire of our love.’ Let’s leave the Newman dining room this evening grateful for the vision of Mannix, inspired by the architecture of the Griffins, buoyed by the encyclical of our Jesuit pope, and grounded in the realities that all this needs to be translated into the daily fare of fee paying education for students seeking employment in a globalized world back home.

11. Pope Francis, Laudato Si, #53

12. Ibid, #188

13. Ibid, #11

14. John W O’Malley, ‘Vatican II: Did Anything Happen?’, in Vatican II: Did Anything Happen?, David G Scholthoven, (e.g.), Continuum, 2007, at p. 81

15. The Tablet, 11 July 2015


Then, because her health insurance will not cover the exorbitant cost of the only possible operation, she resigns herself to the fact that she has only a few weeks to live. She is in deep despair.

Her immediate temptation is to cut herself off from her friends and wait in solitude for death to overtake her. But then she has a change of heart. She quits her job, liquidates the savings acquired over a lifetime, and sets off on a dream vacation to the deluxe Grandhotel Pupp in Karlovy in the Czech Republic. In effect, instead of death, she chooses life.

Free of inhibitions and determined to live what remains of her life to the fullest, Georgia checks into the Presidential Suite at the hotel. She buys a designer wardrobe, makes extensive use of the hotel’s facilities, enjoys wonderful meals prepared by the hotel’s world-renowned chef, and wins a small fortune playing roulette in the casino. Georgia’s initial “Why me, God?”, has changed to “Why now, God?” as, even as death is approaching, everything she touches turns to gold.

All the international celebrity-list guests at the hotel are charmed and enchanted by this mysterious free-spirited woman. They vie to be seated at her table, to dance with her and share her luck on the roulette table. The world-renowned chef is delighted that at last there is a guest who appreciates his gastronomic delicacies. Everybody wonders who this apparently wealthy woman is, where she comes from, where she has acquired her wealth, how she has developed these wonderful gifts of personality, intelligence and charm.

Inevitably there is a fly in the ointment. One of the other guests at the hotel is Matthew Kragen, the owner of the department store in which Georgia had worked. His investigations reveal both Georgia’s identify and that she is in the last weeks of her life. Her wealth is an illusion, not genuine wealth but merely the lifetime savings of a department store clerk. Jealous of her popularity, he reveals the true story to Georgia’s fellow guests. But instead of rejecting her as a fraud and a charlatan, it is Matthew who is rejected. Georgia’s free spirit, her generous personality and her impending death challenge the other celebrities to reflect on the how superficial is their own wealth, how transitory its advantages, and how much more important are the gifts of honesty, integrity and simplicity that Georgia has in such abundance.

Of course, there is a happy ending. It is discovered that the original diagnosis was generated by an outdated and faulty CAT scanner. Georgia is restored both to health and to her friends. She has won enough money at the

COMMENCEMENT MASS

THE HOMILY GIVEN BY THE RECTOR AT THE COMMENCEMENT

MASS FOR SEMESTER 2 ON FRIDAY, JULY 31st, 2015, IN THE CHAPEL OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.

“Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the Lord, your God, heeding his voice and holding fast to him” (Deuteronomy 30:19)

This homily is divided into two parts. The first part is a story. The second part is four texts drawn mainly from this evening’s readings. There are, I believe, resonances between the two parts, and I hope that you may be able to detect them. It’s about life and identity.

So, to the first part – the story.

A couple of weeks ago I was watching a late-night movie entitled “Last Holiday”. It featured the American actor, Queen Latifah, as Georgia Byrd, a middle-aged black woman. She is a shy, unassuming woman and quite religious in her own way. She is employed as a lowly clerk in the cookware department of Kragen’s Department Store in New Orleans. She longs to cook professionally, and she records this and her other dreams for a better life in a journal called “Possibilities”.

While assisting a co-worker, Georgia accidentally bumps her head on a cabinet door. Despite her protestations she is taken to the store’s health centre and has to undergo a CAT scan. She is devastated when the results of this scan reveal that she has several brain tumours. These have resulted from a hitherto undiagnosed rare neurological disorder called Lampington’s disease.

Georgia’s initial reaction is, understandably: “Why me, God?” She rails at her misfortune and searches frantically for a remedy.


roulette table to start up her own restaurant. It is patronised by all her newly-won celebrity friends, whose own lives, of course, have taken radically new directions as a result of their association with Georgia.

So, that’s the story, the first part. Now, the second part, the four texts. First of all, like Georgia and the author of the text of this evening’s First Reading from the Book of Deuteronomy: “Choose life!” That means, above all, being a life-giving and a life-promoting person. It means being positive and active, not a passive aggressive personality, for instance – being, as St Paul says of Jesus, a “Yes” person rather than a “No” person. If, like Georgia, you choose life, then you will be a person of honesty, integrity, modesty and simplicity. You will always tell the truth when you speak, not just when it suits you. You will keep promises and honour friendships. You will be open-hearted and generous, always willing to lend a hand, especially for those in need or for those at Newman or in the wider community who are marginalised and disenfranchised. So, choose life!

Then, there’s a second text. It is a comment on what choosing life involves. It’s a quote from John Henry Newman, the patron of this College. “To live,” he said, “is to change; and to be perfect is to change often”. So, be open, be flexible, don’t be stuck in the prejudices of your class, your school or – may I say it – your friendship group. Be willing to listen to opinions other than your own, to be broad-minded and to understand where others are coming from. Be tolerant even when you disagree , and be willing to recognise and acknowledge the at least partial validity of the opinions and arguments of those with whom you may not altogether agree. And, perhaps, even be willing to step outside your comfort zone and make new friends. “To live is to change; and to be perfect is to change often”. Like Georgia, don’t retreat into your own personal solitudes, the prejudices and presuppositions that inhibit change and freedom of spirit. “Choose!” and “Change”.

And then there is third text. This time, it’s taken from the Second Reading of this evening’s Mass. St Paul reminds us that, although we are fragile earthenware vessels, we are yet strong and resilient in the gifts and talents with which God has blessed us. Like earthenware vessels, and, indeed, like many old pots, pans and other utensils, though we be chipped and battered, we can still be very serviceable and significant because of the treasures we hold. So, we do recognize our own fragility and the scars and chips we may be carrying from previous encounters. But we are conscious, too, of our own dignity, made in the image and likeness of God, and called by him to use the treasure entrusted to us, the gifts and talents that we have, for our personal development and for that of the community in which we live.

Like Georgia, in St Paul’s terms, we may at time be in difficulties on all sides, but we are never cornered; we may see no answer to our problems, but we never despair; we may be persecuted, but we are never deserted, we may be knocked down, but we are never killed. We still choose life rather than death, truth rather than falsehood, honesty rather than dishonesty, generosity rather than meanness. And we are able to recognise too, that others are, like us, earthenware vessels, bearing chips and scars, and treasures, to whom we will respond with understanding and compassion.

In October 1528 St Ignatius Loyola, later to be the founder of the Jesuits, whose feast day we celebrate in this evening’s Mass, came to the College of Ste Barbe, one of the colleges of the University of Paris, the Sorbonne. He was 36 or 37 years of age, a mature age student. The Rector of the College, Diego Gouvea, was at a loss where to accommodate him. He finally decided to impose him on two of his graduate students in their middle twenties, Francis Xavier and Peter Faber. They were not happy. Ignatius was much older than they were and he was reputed to be virtually a religious fanatic. Relations initially were very frosty.

Francis Xavier was an excellent student and an outstanding athlete. He was also an inveterate party-goer. Ignatius, on the other hand, was at best a mediocre student. And when Francis returned from his parties early in the morning there would be Ignatius still bent over his books. They would enter into conversation. Francis would recount his conquests and his exploits. He was clearly destined for greatness. Ignatius would listen patiently and politely. However, he always had the last word, quoting Jesus’ admonition to his disciples that we heard in this evening’s Gospel: “But, Francis, what does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul?” A bucket of cold water on young Francis’ ambitions! Yet just six years later when Ignatius and his first six companions gathered in the little chapel of Saint Denis at the foot of Montmartre to form the Society of Jesus there were Francis and Peter Faber, still destined for great things, but not for this world but for God and the Spirit.

So, that’s our fourth text for this evening: “What does it profit a man – or a woman – to gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul?” So, add it to Georgia’s and the Book of Deuteronomy’s: “Choose life!”; to John Henry Newman’s: “To live is to change; and to be perfect is to change often”; and to St Paul’s “We are only earthenware vessels”. I hope that you can detect the life-enhancing resonances that echo through each of the texts. I hope, too, that the upcoming semester here at Newman will be marked by that same spirit of honesty, integrity, modesty and simplicity that so commended Georgia Byrd to her fellow guests on her “Last Holiday”.


It seems that each of us here tonight has a job, my job is to talk; yours is to listen. The challenge for me is to finish my job before you’ve finished yours.

It was T. S. Eliot who sagaciously wrote that: We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

Here I am…back at Newman College where my adventures first began. Here I spent the most transformative years of my life. And it is here again where I find myself now: a familiar, not a stranger.

And joining with you for this beautiful meal, I know that you reunite tonight after a whirlwind first semester…that you have just enjoyed some space for grace over your semester break…and that you have perhaps just enjoyed the College’s most recent rendition of Oscar Wilde’s wickedly entertaining, The Importance of Being Earnest.

Which leads me to think of Lady Gwendolen’s reflection that: In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity is the vital thing.

As much as one does often pander to style, it is unlike Gwendolen, however, that I am very sincere in my regard and feeling for Newman: the things that really matter happen in the heart – and this place; the people whom I met; the mentors both obvious and less so – occupy a large space of mine.

As I mentioned earlier, this invitation to speak – to nostalgically reflect – allowed me to be still and distil… the wondrous, experiential time…the possibilities that presented themselves here…my emergent evolution in this ‘other world’…with no compass points…no coordinates…

And as the Scots would say: Some things are easier felt than telt…

I can recall that first day of Orientation week…not long after each parent slowly wheeled their car around in front of the chapel for that final glimpse of their child no-more…sitting with my orientation group on the Quad…being asked by my leader for my reason in choosing Newman…I remember then being unable to quite articulate my response…as we went around the circle, I heard the many and varied rationales: we chose because our family did so before us; or, because of our school background; for the Jesuit ethos imbued in its history and tutelage; and some of us, perhaps picked it out of the prospectus for its grandeur alone; and many of us, for all of the above…I can remember that innate feeling – that intuitive knowledge – walking down the cloister for the first time on Open Day and marvelling at this magnificent dome above us now…there was a cellular, gravitational pull…we all know that there’s just something about this place…

Even as I’m eavesdropping on myself telling this story, it’s reminding me more and more of the fondness that lingers to this day.

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire, said William Butler Yeats.

This place is a nexus for knowledge. It is not likely in any other forum that you would sit down to lunch next to a Professor Emeritus of English…or dine with dynamos from every discipline in the University. People come, and people leave; people return…it is the ebb and flow of intellect and inquiry that draws people back to the well and nourishes those in its residence at any point in time…often it is not until much later that we realise this. But it is constantly nurturing and navigating us toward a greater place.

COMMENCEMENT DINNER Semester 2, 2015

THE ADDRESS GIVEN AT THIS DINNER BY FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE STUDENTS’ CLUB,

ALEXANDER EASTWOOD.


After moving to Melbourne from secondary school in Bendigo, it was here that I began my architecture degree. From regional Victoria, with limited exposure to the professions, it is difficult for school-leavers to have a great sense of what they might like to study, or of what they are best suited to do. It was at Newman where I segued to Chemistry and, ultimately, Neuroscience.

It was here at Newman that the idea of applying for the Rhodes Scholarship was first seeded.

I was in Sean’s (Burke) office one day to discuss arrangements for an upcoming dinner…when we had finished, leaning back in his burgundy Burley-Griffin chair he said, ‘how old are you, Alex?’ Far from ‘what was my definition of wisdom’ – the type of interrogation that I had come to expect from Sean – I was stumped. ‘21’, I responded gingerly.

‘When will you graduate?’ ‘At the end of next Year.’ ‘Are you considering Honours?’ ‘Yes, I think so.’ ‘Good; you should,’ he replied.

Then that familiar prolonged pause…Sean had jotted down my responses on a bit of paper. He looked at it, spun it around and slowly but deliberately pushed it across that heavy wooden desk toward me. I could feel the apprehension… the tension building in my stomach…I was nervous as a butcher’s thumb… he looked up and said, ‘I think that you should apply for the Rhodes Scholarship when you’re done with all of that.’

Soon after that spontaneous meeting with Sean, I recall returning to my room to Google what this Rhodes Scholarship was all about.

Cecil Rhodes remains a controversial figure in Western and African histories – British Imperialist, businessman, mining magnate, and politician in South Africa.

Rhodes’ vision in founding the Scholarship was to develop outstanding leaders who would be motivated to fight the world’s fight and to esteem the performance of public duties as their highest aim, and to promote international understanding and peace.

It was originally for members of the then – Empire, now Commonwealth – as well as Americans, given his desire to breed an American elite of philosopher-kings who would have the United States re-join the British Empire. He also included provisions for Germany, borne of his respect for its people the Germans and his admiration of the Kaiser.

I then went on to read about the four tenants of the Will, that informs the selection of scholars to this day:

• literary and scholastic attainments;

• energy to use one’s talents to the full;

• truth, courage, devotion to duty, sympathy for and protection of the weak, kindliness, unselfishness and fellowship; and

• moral force of character and instincts to lead, and to take an interest in one’s fellow beings.

Intellect…character…commitment to service…leadership…

These four words resonated, again and again… they reminded me of one of Fr Bill’s own speeches at one of these very dinners at which he invited us to consider this place as a community of the mind… spirit… heart… and imagination.

Mind…intellect

Spirit…Character

Commitment to Service…heart

Leadership…imagination

1 2

1 Guest speaker, Alexander Eastwood

2 Harry King (Commerce 2, from Cobram) and Jordan Fasso (Science 1, from Bylands)


I suspect that it is no coincidence that these four tenants of Rhodes’ Will mirror – almost perfectly – these four charisms of the College. Newman seeks to fight ‘the world’s fight’…to ‘esteem the performance of public duties as their highest aim’…to promote international understanding and peace. In the wisdom of St Ignatius, Newman invites us to see God in all things.

There were two years intervening between that seminal conversation with Sean and putting my name in the sorting hat…I reference Harry Potter because, as an outsider, it really did feel like a game of roulette; a gamble. What followed was the stuff of dreams, nightmares, and reality television.

After submitting my hard-copy application at 4.45pm on the day of the deadline – to a very displeased Executive Officer, Joan – I was ecstatic to later discover that I was one of eight shortlisted for an interview. This was in the same week of the Old Collegian’s Dinner here in this Room. As I was innocently visiting some old friends at another tables during a break, I squatted down too quickly for the threads in my suit to accommodate. I split my pants and panicked… this was my only suit; the interview was in two days’ time on the Monday!

I could endure the rest of the dinner with an all-too-revealing gap in the back of my trousers, but I had destroyed my uniform. Very fortunately, a generous Old Collegian arrived at my house the following day, pressed suit in hand. Amazing. It appeared to fit; crisis averted. But it wasn’t until I walked out of that initial interview that Joan remarked that suit was rather ill-fitting and that a new one would be her best suggestion if there was an interview number two. There was time for repair by that time.

On the morning of the second interview, a breakfast was held at the Governor’s Residence in the Botanical Gardens. It was a ‘progressive’ breakfast, wherein we rotated between selectors for each course. It was interesting and it was intimidating. At the height of the tension, a crow fell through the chimney, landing in soot. It was hilarious, but one couldn’t laugh. After several Monty Python-esque attempts to catch the rogue crow as it fluttered about the Dining Room with the

waiting staff’s suit jackets, the crow gave up on its escapade, and voluntarily flew out the window. Everyone relaxed.

The announcement of the recipient the following day at Government House remains a blur. Soon afterwards, Dr Ben Lochtenberg – a Rhodes Scholar from WA who I’d known from the Newman College Council came up to me; another Newmanite – former Governor of Victoria, Sir James Gobbo, similarly congratulated me, imploring that ‘it’s Magdalen College or bust!’ (I did select Magdalen College as my residence at Oxford as it happened!).

But all for the preparation in the world didn’t prepare me for the most salient lesson to come. When interviewed that same day on ABC Radio, in a preliminary chat with the Producer about ‘what the announcement was like’ I described how, standing in a line, the Governor speaking to us as a group suddenly uttered my name… ‘like a reality TV show’. I will never forget those words leaving my lips. I was cued on for the segment later, the host led in with ‘Have you ever wondered what it must be like to be on reality television? Alex, tell us how receiving this scholarship was like being on The Bachelor?’

My gratitude extends far beyond – and backwards in time from – the Selection Committee; to Sean for planting the seed; to Fr Bill, Mitchell Black and others who helped me prepare; to the friends and acquaintances who barracked for and encouraged me along the way. It is gratitude that, for now, I pay forwards and which one day I intend to pay back.

And, so, I have an answer for you. An answer to that most frequently asked question by all Rhodes Applicants and, indeed, all recipients…am I good enough? Yes – if you have a passion for your area of study or research. Yes – if you want to harness that passion for goodwill. Yes – if you feel a pull to lead for good. You are good enough and you should apply. There are nine Rhodes Scholarships awarded annually in Australia – this year three Victorians from this University were recipients. There are countless other Scholarships that similarly enable study to Oxford and elsewhere abroad; that enfranchise excellence. Yes. Apply.

3


Life makes so much more sense backwards, but we must live it forwards – looking back, through my lens of hindsight, I have few regrets, because Newman did engineer – imagineer, even – a presentness.

It is a place where you are welcomed as you are….

A place where Shane the Gardener remembers you four years out…

A place where friends become kin; where lifelong friendships are forged. There is no knowing where that influence will go. Revel in this realm.

When I arrived here in 2010, a wide-eyed country mouse, I did not imagine that just six years later I would be readying for study at the University of Oxford. Newman is not just a springboard into the University, but a launch pad to an exciting future unrealised.

Newman reflected to me a version of myself that I had never before fathomed. My hope is that its transformative potential is realised for you and your trajectory.

Luceat lux vestra.

G. B. Stern reminds us that: Gratitude unexpressed is of no use to anyone. With that keenly in mind, I wish to thank Fr Rector, Sean and Guglielmo for this generous invitation; and you all. I set myself a challenge at the outset: to finish my job before you, yours. Thank you for listening.

4

5

3 Table 1: Meg Carroll (Biomedicine 2, from Geelong), Kathryn Azzopardi (D. Optometry 2, from Sydney), Adrianus Thio (MD 4, from Indonesia), Liam Tormey (Music 2, from Ocean Grove ), Cooper Moody (Biomedicine 1, from Barwon Heads) , Patrick Ryan (Arts 2, from Ballarat) and Turlough Crowe (Science 1, from Barwon Heads)

4 General Committee members, Sinead Ryan (Science 3, from Colac), Molly Voss (Science 3, Hamilton Valley) and Mickie Tanna (Hawthorn, Science 3)

5 High Table


The 2015 Daniel Mannix Memorial Lecture

The 35th Daniel Mannix Memorial Lecture was delivered by Michael McGirr, well known essayist, reviewer and short fiction writer. His topic was “Peter Steele – priest, poet and inspiration”. In a thoughful and beautifully crafted address, Michael McGirr reminded the large audience of the great gift that was Peter Steele SJ. Here are a few extracts from his address:

...His poetry was earthy, elusive, recherché, comic, erudite, sometimes difficult and often tender. It seldom gave itself to you all at once but, when finally it did give itself, it gave a lot more besides.

...He said that the whole purpose of reading was to engage with the imagination of another human being. He lived the Ignatian vision of a God in love with the never-ending circus of the world. Peter said that he was a conservative by temperament and a radical by vocation.

...I remember Peter telling me once that learning German, which has 80 million speakers, was a good thing to do. But learning Kukaja, which has maybe 800 speakers, was a peculiarly Jesuit thing to do.

...With all this in mind, I’d like to mention what a poet can bring to spiritual discernment and the articulation of a vision. I do this because so much of our spirituality is being suffocated under worthy mission statements and the like. Many of us recognise the problem. I could provide examples. So many Christian organisations have substituted clichés for the cross as spirituality has gradually becoming something like another form of marketing. Some of our bureaucracies are more likely to be grinding the sacred than grounding the sacred.

...He died in 2012 after struggling with liver cancer which, he was pleased to discover, owed nothing to drink. He was still a Jesuit, still enthralled by God, his temper seasoned by years in a world of people often too intelligent for their own good. Peter often said that intelligence was a risk factor for unhappiness, an interesting observation from a man so deeply committed to the life of the mind.

Paul Tillich spoke of God as the ‘ground of our being.’ Peter used language to dig at that ground, to plough it, to harvest from it. He often spoke of speaking the gospel ‘in season and out of season’ and Peter understood, with wry comedy, what it was to be out of season.

1 The Deputy Provost, Dr Gottoli, former Collegian, Sophia McQuillan, SCR President, Alicia Deak, former Collegian, Ryan Marsden Smith and Father Chris Horvat SJ, after the Lecture.

2 NCSC President, Mickie Tanna, Michael McGirr and the Provost.

1

2


From Paul O’Shea, 3rd Year Arts, from Cororooke near Colac, Victoria:

In describing my experience of the Camino to a friend, I explained that the best aspect of the pilgrimage was the opportunity to live simply, reflect quietly and eat communally. These three activities were for me the essence of the Camino experience.

The Camino offered me an unparalleled opportunity to experience a more modest, simple lifestyle. The life of a pilgrim requires reducing everything you need to live for three weeks into one pack. In the modern world this is novel enough. Yet the truly remarkable thing is that upon commencing the walk, I and almost all other pilgrims were convinced that even what we piled into this one pack was too much. For only when we put aside the material possessions on which we are dependent do we begin to rely on ourselves, on our fellow pilgrims and (for those who believe) on God.

This realisation is only one of many that come to the pilgrim on his or her way to Santiago. Of course, the reflections of each pilgrim concern different topics and reach different conclusions. While I was walking through the North of Spain, my thoughts were occupied by questions of purpose and fulfilment. I reflected that my measure of a successful life is not wealth or position nor anything else that belongs to myself alone. What I choose to study? Where I want to work? These questions that sometimes dominate the thinking of a student are for me peripheral to the more important question: how has my life touched the lives of others?

But talk of simple living and quiet reflection alone does not quite capture my experience of the Camino. Indeed both these things can be done alone, whereas I found

CAMINO DE SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA

Nineteen students from Newman College along with the Chaplain, Chris O’Connor and

SCR member and Jesuit Scholastic, Rob Morris SJ, have just returned from a three week pilgrimage

to Santiago in Spain. This is the third such pilgrimage that the College has arranged and supported over the last five years. The students

walked in two groups one day apart. Each day, time was set aside for a morning prayer, evening

reflections including the examen, and Mass where available. At a formal dinner in College, some of the students reflected upon their experience, and

others have subsequently written of their journey.

Here are parts of these reflections:


the Camino to be above all else a lesson in how to live in a community. On the Camino it was impossible to have a bad day without many people noticing and offering their help or even just their presence. I was particularly grateful for the generosity and concern shown by my fellow pilgrims when I suffered heatstroke on the way to Villafranca. We were all there to share each other’s pain, but importantly we were able to share in each other’s pleasures as well. Foremost among these pleasures were the communal dinners we shared together at the end of a day’s walk, particularly the dinners we cooked for ourselves. It is a simple act - eating together - but I think a meaningful one.

My reflection on what the Camino experience meant to me is by no means over and I am sure I could go on to say more. But for now I will restrict myself to expressing how glad I am to have been part of such a pilgrimage and how grateful I am to all who made this experience possible.

Cristina Molina, a graduate student (Master of International Relations) from Ecuador:

My story started one and half years ago. One month before coming to Australia, my mum was diagnosed with cancer in an advanced stage. I decided to stay and look after her, but both of my parents insisted that I should keep going with what I had planned. During that hard time, God never left us alone, I felt closer to my family, with my mom, dad and my two brothers, we learned to face difficulties with patience and happiness. With their support, I, with a heavy-heart, decided to come to Australia.

And now here I am, in Australia, standing in front of my new family, halfway through my master’s degree in International Relations. It has been a very exciting experience for me to live here. Coming from the other side of the world, I did not expect that I could find people that I can call my own family here and from the first month of my arrival.

For all of these things that have happened to me this past year, no words can express how immensely grateful and blessed I am. When Sean told me about the Camino de Santiago, I did not think twice. I considered this as a token of gratitude of everything that God has given me, to allow me to smile every day.

I think I did not make a bad decision. The Camino is one of the best experiences that I have ever had. Today I can say that we didn’t just do the Camino, but most importantly the Camino did something to us. This is because after that experience I am not the same person. The Camino taught me the practice of “living a day at a time”. You cannot be sure what are you going to do in a year, but you can be the best version of yourself every day, so make your day worth it, living with kindness.

The Camino taught me that with effort and perseverance you can reach your goals. It taught me that it is necessary to move on and to advance in life but it is also necessary to stop and look back to see the way that you have walked and the lessons that you have learned. In the Camino I could find myself, it gave me the opportunity to remember some things about my life that I had almost forgotten.

When I was really tired of walking, my heart used to motivate myself by thinking of my family. I used to tell myself “If my mom could win her battle, I can handle this”. Sometimes I thought that my ten kilo-backpack was really heavy, and then I used to relate this burden with the problems and negative attitudes that we often have toward people. Sometimes we carry in our hearts the weight of these negative feelings that are heavier than a backpack.

Finally the Camino taught us to put ourselves in others’ shoes. This is because as a pilgrim you could feel exactly what others were feeling. We worked as a team; we met amazing people struggling for their Camino. “Buen Camino”,

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that was something we say to other pilgrims, which means “Have a good Journey”. Now I know that I cannot live without a “Buen camino”, that is why I Invite you to live day to day in the “Buen Camino” way, leaving footprints of kindness wherever you go and without carrying unnecessary weight.

Ella Trimboli, 4th Year student (Bachelor of Environments and Diploma in Modern Languages), from Perth:

Since arriving back in Australia, I have had time to reflect upon the wonderful experiences I shared with this year’s group of Newman pilgrims. I had always been a little hesitant about walking the Camino for a second time with Newman, as I had gained so much from the first experience and wished not to compare both trips. However, I found that walking a second time provided a completely new and different experience, in every way, to my first. The weather, daily routine, people, group dynamics and physical struggles are all examples of these differences.

The second trip proved to be much more challenging and demanding than the first and I found myself at the end of every day completely exhausted and often sore. I realised during these tough days that I was not ready to walk the Camino alone and was grateful for the company and support of fellow Newman pilgrims. There is something really very special about walking the Camino with a diverse group of students, a few who I hardly knew. It was the Camino that united us. I very much enjoyed forming new friendships and gained much from the conversations along the way. It was clear that during my first Camino, I learnt a lot about myself and from myself. However, the second time I have learnt a lot from others and about others.

Chia Min Tan (Master of Management {Accounting}) from Malaysia reflects:

This is definitely the hardest yet the most amazing journey I have ever had. I still remember I kept asking myself during the first few days of the walk, “It’s so hard, and why am I doing this? I will definitely not do this again next time”. But now, it is so unbelievable that I find myself missing Camino life so much. There were so many touching moments on the Camino. All the local people we met are amazingly nice. We were never rejected any time we asked for “agua” (water) or “baño” (toilet). Besides, the companionship on the way was so precious even though most of the time we were just silent, walking side by side with each other. It was the companionship that gave me the strength and courage to continue the journey, as I knew there was always someone waiting for me in front. Every evening before our favourite time, dinner, all of us would sit together (sometimes beside the river) and share our moments of the day.

It is so inspiring to see that the Camino has strengthened all of us in so many ways, physically, mentally and spiritually. It is so good to see that all of us persisted until the end without choosing to give up. For me, I feel so proud of myself that I successfully accomplished the whole journey with my legs instead of taking a bus or taxi. There was also a moment I felt that I was a real explorer, singing heartily while walking on the highway by myself.

1 Dinner in Molinaseca: Martin Reinoso, Ella Trimboli, Lily McCaffrey, Amelia Ekkel, Johnny Jiang, Zita Liu, Penny Latham, Bridget O’Bree, Paul O’Shea, Rob Morris SJ and Cedrych Beh

2 Fresh grapes at La Posada de Gaspar, Rabanal

3 At Samos: Ikee Dimaguila, Chia Min Tan, Karen Liang, Justin Blankenship, Cristina Molina, Elsha O’Reilly, Carolina Townsend Arellano, Chris O’Connor, Jarod Haegel and Liam Tormey

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I miss all the places we had been to, all the nice people we met during the way, as well as all the companionship I had during the journey. I did not expect I would experience so much from the Camino - the most unforgettable trip I have experienced in my life. I will definitely do it again.

Lily McCaffrey, 1st Year JD student from Brighton, Melbourne:

It was a wonderful experience. I am not ordinarily very good at slowing down and reflecting and it was good for me to do so. It was great to have some interesting conversations with some lovely people about things I do not ordinarily think about.

Amelia Ekkel, a 3rd Year Arts student from Geelong:

The Camino de Santiago was for me a very humbling experience. From being called “Sir” by accident by an air hostess on the flight to Madrid, to eating warm canned sardines without utensils on the side of the road, my time in Spain forced me to settle into a more carefree way of life. Whether I knew it or not before I left, a few weeks of hard physical exercise, companionship, spirituality, reflection and simplicity was exactly what I was craving.

Walking for two weeks straight had its ups and downs. There were the great chats, the fresh figs on the trees, the gorgeous scenery, the 10-euro three course meals, the swinging of the incense at Santiago, the view from the cliffs of Finisterre, and the people we met along the Way…like the man and his donkey, or the Americans who ended up joining in with our prayer sessions; and, of course, the times when we stopped and ate food. Those were the best times.

Some of the places we visited were indescribably beautiful. The journey to Molinasecca and the town itself were really special. That morning we had risen at 5am and walked under the stars through the hills, watching the sky change colour and listen to the birds waking up around us. When we finally

reached Molinasecca, we swam in the cold water of the river and ate well-earned ice-creams in the shade. My siesta that afternoon was the deepest and most peaceful sleep of my life!

But of course, there were challenges in abundance. There were blisters, snorers, heat stroke and knee problems. For me, it was getting covered in itchy, red, bed bug bites.

Yet none of these significantly took away from the experience. In fact the reverse is perhaps more true. We look back and laugh at the blister-popping, the socks and sandals-wearing and the ache of the joints that turned us all into grandmas (though I already was one at heart). It brought our group closer together and forced us to adapt to whatever was thrown up in front of us.

For me, the Camino was a time where I was forced to slow down, to return to the simple things, to just be in nature and around other people, living out of a backpack. It’s rare that we really give ourselves a break in order to reflect and just live from one day to the next.

One of the people I met along the Way, Brendan, said to me “I wouldn’t do the Camino again. Instead I want to make my life more like the Camino”. And whilst I would like to do another pilgrimage like this, I really see what he means. I hope I can take the simplicity, the relaxation, the humility and the insights I’ve gained from others into my everyday life. Just maybe not the bed bugs!

Penny Latham, 3rd Year Music student from Malvern, Melbourne:

I think so often people plan these fabulous trips around the world, and they pack their days, running from art gallery to cathedral to some famous person’s house, and we call that a holiday, but we almost never get to just relax and enjoy life without having anything to worry about.

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And that was the best part of walking the Camino. Having the time to reflect on my own life, how I was travelling. What’s going well, what did I want to change? What do I believe in? And being able to share this with the others in the group was really special as well. Sharing time didn’t always run smoothly. There were certainly opposing opinions being thrown around but it was great to challenge ourselves and everybody else in the group.

Johnny Jiang, a graduate student (Master of Engineering {Mechanical}) from Shanghai, China, writes:

I committed, early this year, to joining the Newman College pilgrimage group walking the Camino de Santiago without too much thinking. This is something I’ve never done before; it should be fun, why not? The thing is I would never know at that time how the eleven days walking on the Camino would remarkably change my whole life.

The Camino taught me that being in a group or community is always better than being alone. I really appreciate the warm companionship from my Newman friends in my group during the time back in Spain. We walked, dined, chatted, shared and lived together; we were just like a family. The companionship and kindness from everyone else either on the way or at rest relieved my tiredness to a large extent. Quite often we need to start walking before dawn to avoid the burning sun in the afternoon so that walking through a completely dark forest was sometimes inevitable. I couldn’t imagine how much effort I needed to vanquish my deep fears in my heart if I was walking alone through the pitch-black wildness. I believe this must be the magical power of a group.

The Camino taught me that life can be simple. Walking, eating, thinking and sleeping were basically the only four things we did in Spain. It doesn’t sound exciting at all, but in some sense it was the best time. Life was so simple that every day we only had one goal which is getting to the town

we planned to reach. Although the Camino has finished and I’m back to my normal life now, it taught me to keep living a simple life no matter what I’m doing. Being kind to people around me, sticking to goals, being happy on the way to the destination, then life will become simpler.

The Camino taught me about perseverance and possibility. I have to say that walking over twenty kilometres every day was definitely quite demanding both physically and mentally. A couple of students in my group got heatstroke and almost everyone suffered a lot from their blisters. The endless uphills and downhills also freaked me out sometimes, but I told myself everyone is keeping going, why am I complaining. I was especially touched and inspired when I met some old people with burned skins who had been walking for three or four months. The Camino is just like our life; we may come across various challenges and difficulties on the way, but everyone can push on within their abilities, as long as we persevere with our goals, everything becomes possible to achieve.

Martin Reinoso, a final year graduate student (Master of Science) from Ecuador:

I wanted to talk, tonight, about following the yellow arrows, deep conversations, friendship, learning about each other, trust, bringing back what we learn and applying it to our lives, vocation, defining task for everyday and having your deserved

4 Rob Morris SJ

5 On the road near Mercado de Serra

6 Martin Reinoso, Cristina Molina and Ikee Dimaguila in Salamanca

7 The road to Foncebadón

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rest. I don’t want you to spend all your night listening to me, but what you learn on the Camino could keep me talking for hours!

Lucky for you, I want to focus tonight on just one topic, Happiness, and how going on Camino taught me how to be happy at all times. For this I will tell a magical story of my adventures in “España”.

I was lucky to be part of an amazing group. My group had only four more guys and we travelled with six gorgeous girls - sure I was happy. It is true that you can see God in the beauty of the creation.

This happiness wouldn’t last long; every day we had to wake up early (5:30 am), half asleep and tired we will start walking (sleepwalking really). We walked for more than six hours every day. I remember complaining that the blue sky is not beautiful any more if there are no clouds at all. Sweating, starving, tired, sunburned, too hot to walk, too noisy to sleep, it was really hard to be happy in these conditions.

On one day, we were on a never-ending hill. After the tenth time I said ‘this is the last corner’, I stopped counting them, the corners will not end, the uphill was everything in my mind. My knee was hurting, my legs were in pain, I just wanted to quit. At this point you start to complain and try to find someone responsible for all this pain and suffering. I did find who was responsible, it was me. I felt I was crazy; who in their right mind would choose to leave their peaceful and warm bed, to put on shoes, carry a backpack and walk.

I felt something inside me in that moment, a voice that said: ‘you came here because you wanted to, why are you not enjoying this?’ I then got my mind out of my own jail and opened my eyes to see the beautiful landscape, I heard the sound of nature, and smelled it. My burden was transformed into my happiness. I was so grateful for my legs, and the pain

I was feeling; it means I can walk. I was lucky to be able to do this, to do what I chose.

Thereafter, every day after we finished walking, I would feel really happy as the challenge for the day was complete. I could finally rest and I was exhausted. I learned that happiness and tiredness are not opposites, but they need each other. If you are exhausted, that means you have done something this day, and you should be happy about it.

I want you to remember these two ideas:We choose to be here, to study hard; there is no one to blame, but us, so let us stop complaining about it. We should be happy because we are doing what we choose. Let’s brighten these walls with our smiles and enjoy this beautiful time.

Finally I want to share something from my childhood which I was reminded of during the Camino: when you find something challenging, work hard at it. Because true happiness only comes when there is hard work.

Bridget O’Bree, 3rd Year Arts student from Piangil, Victoria:

As a person lucky enough to go and attempt part of the Camino de Santiago, my feelings looking back on the trip are all infused with gratitude. Setting out I, and I’m sure many of us perhaps except for Chris O’Connor, had no idea what to expect. I knew it would be a physical as well as emotional challenge, but I had no idea just how tough it would be! By day two I had the biggest blister imaginable on my heel from my hiking boots, every step was excruciating, and by day four I was making the hard decision whether to bus to the next town or carry on with no skin on my feet. Thankfully, I was able to buy a pair of extremely ugly, yet functional, sandals and continue the rest of the walk. Others in my group were so inspiring; many were suffering early in the walk from heat and pain but to everyone’s credit and through mutual support we all made it to Santiago, relatively intact. I think, looking back,

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I would’ve benefited from having more time to reflect by myself, but the camaraderie of the group was one of the best things about the trip. It was a real comfort knowing your friends would be there to help you if you needed it. The Camino for me was a personal journey, one that I hadn’t pre-defined before setting out, and looking back now I do feel a real sense of personal growth. I feel like I have a better knowledge of myself and of what I’m capable, and that, to me, is a great feeling.

Karen Liang, a graduate student (Master of Global Media Communication) from Guangdong, China:

I remember the day when we started from Leon, we hugged each other, blessed our friends, and then walked to the train station with the heavy backpack, our closest companion.

On the first day from Astorga to Rabanal, I hurt my ankle, which depressed me. The second day was 26 km, not too far compared to the following days but with a lot of uphill routes. From the second day, I began to experience very negative emotions about the walking. I could not help blaming myself about the stupid choice to come here instead of staying with my family at home during the break. I arrived at the Albergue in Molinaseca at about 4 pm, about an hour later than other people in my group, which made me even more despairing. However, the way from Molinaseca to Cacabelos was a turning point for me. I was well behind before we met up for lunch. The rest of the group kept waiting for us for about thirty minutes. Due to the extremely hot weather, the whole group decided to change our destination, stopping at Cacabelos instead of Villafranca. At the end of that day, while we were doing the reflection, I told the group I felt exhausted on the way. I decided that I would try to start earlier the next day and from then on, I always got up earlier than others and finished packing and tried my best to keep up with the group. The more positive I was, the less tortured I felt. I thought of

my family, my friends and, most of myself, while walking alone. The time passed very slowly, but thinking distracted me from staring at my watch. Sometimes when there was no one nearby, I would sing aloud. When I met other people again, I would try to talk to them and even took selfies with them. Sometimes Chris said to me, Karen, you look like a tourist. I told him I was learning to admire what I have seen on the way. And the feeling of being calm and focused on my steps freed me from the anger.

At almost every reflection, Chris emphasized we could choose to take a bus if we did not feel comfortable walking. I was surprised that despite hating the beginning so much, I did not think of giving up the walking. The most difficult moment was the mountainous path to La Faba. We walked, and maybe crawled to the top. We lived in a cave-like Albergue that night, which was also a special experience for me. Before I walked the Camino, I didn’t realize I could adapt and get used to the pilgrim/backpacker/nomad life. After eleven days of walking and living in Albergues and eating pilgrims’ meals, this kind of life-style became normal and regular to me. While being in that position, it seemed I would not ask for more than a simple life, but when things were getting better, I would become more grateful and would like to cherish it.

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8 Johnny Jiang, Ella Trimboli and Zita Liu at Astorga

9 In the river at Molinaseca

10 & 11 Cruz de Ferro


Liam Tormey, a second year Music student from Ocean Grove, Victoria:

Since returning from Spain I have been asked countless times to describe and recall my experience of the Camino. This is extremely difficult to summarise within the confines of mere small talk and casual conversation. Of course, it was a fantastic experience, the weather and scenery were beautiful, the wine good, though the food not quite as good as the Spanish don’t quite comprehend vegetarianism. Patatas con uveous – fried egg and chips – were the monotonous staple of my pilgrimage cuisine. I joked if I would ever eat anything that wasn’t a primary colour.

However, I digress. For me the true blessing of the Camino was movement. The constant physical activity, the daily repetition of walking, the appreciating of space and time, as step follows step, hill follows hill. The days feel longer, the food tastes better and the rest feels deeper. After about 4-5 days of walking your body begins to change physically - you feel stronger, your legs sturdier – which stimulates a metaphysical catharsis (although you can be surprisingly succinct in dealing with what problems you carried across from Australia). For me, a big problem is inactivity, which has a tendency to result in restlessness and anxiety. This was of course easily solved after day one of walking the Camino. Unfortunately, since returning I have begun to regress to a similar state, more pent up, less youthful. But the Camino has shown I am only a day or two walks away from the tremendous energy I felt across the whole trip.

Albeit, that this is only one small fragment of the entire experience, I could also have written about the great architecture, or the company or how I now understood the café culture Hemingway was talking about in ‘A Movable Feast’.

However the idea of ‘Movement’ I believe, is the reason the Camino is so important; through the journey, one is able to

appreciate the simplicities of life, reflect on one’s own life, spirituality and future and simply grow. Across the entire trip I can honestly say I was never bored, and always happy, or more accurately, rather content and fulfilled. I hope dearly the college continues to support the trip and would encourage anyone to do it. It was my first taste of Europe and I am very eager to return and visit the great cities and museums, and to walk the Camino again. Without the College’s support I would not have been able go overseas and may never have had such an important experience. Sincerely I thank you. Buen Camino!

Elsha O’Reilly, a 2nd Year Arts student from Warragul, Victoria:

I decided to walk the Camino de Santiago because I love the idea of travelling and seeing as many places around the world as I possibly can. Having never been to Spain before, I thought this would be a great way to not only see a foreign country on the other side of the world, but experience the rich culture as well.

I found the walking very difficult, especially for the first few days. It was always such a relief to arrive at our destination, as my muscles would be so tight and sore that I felt almost unable to continue walking any further. But of course, after a good night’s rest we would all be ready to go again early in the morning.

It was amazing seeing so many different landscapes along the way, and I was surprised to see that often the countryside reminded me of Australia in a hot summer. Spending each night in a different town was an incredible experience, as some were so small and with such a friendly and relaxed community. It helped me to think about how busy our lives are back in Melbourne, and I think it’s important to remember to stop and rest every now and then, and appreciate the small things rather than rushing through life.

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The fact that we could observe the culture in small rural Spanish towns makes the Camino de Santiago quite a unique travel experience. I very much enjoyed this aspect, as it was so different from simply going to major cities and seeing the famous tourist attractions.

The Camino de Santiago was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had, and I’m so glad I made the decision at the end of last year to go on this trip. I would absolutely love to go again someday, and possibly walk a different route to see other parts of what is such a beautiful country.

Zita Liu, a graduate student (Master of International Relations) from the Guangdong Province, China:

When I decided to walk the Camino, I considered it to be an adventure, to prove to myself that I can go beyond my perceived limit, like any other adventure I have taken before. When we just started walking, I kept imagining how excited I would be when I arrived in Santiago, the final destination of my adventure. However, with the remaining days of walk counting down, my eagerness to reach the end went off gradually. When I first saw Santiago from a distance on the last day of walking, a feeling of disappointment occupied me

because I knew it was the last moment for me to have that unique lifestyle.

It is a lifestyle where I always feel grateful for being rewarded by finding a fresh spring after a long thirsty day, by seeing the cold mist clearing at sunrise, by sharing food with others, by walking shoulder to shoulder in the dark, by every single thing that happened in the journey. It is a lifestyle in which I learnt to be humble, focusing on reflecting and finding answers to my questions. It inspired me to re-think the past “hard time” in my life from a different aspect – a 7kg backpack actually proved to be more than sufficient for me to live happily for three weeks. After walking the Camino, I have a much better understanding of having a positive mindset and not fearing what is ahead.

Ikee Dimaguila, a graduate student from the Philippines writes:

For me, the Camino was a perfect, well-rounded blend of experiences. It was an adventure, a cultural immersion, a great tourist opportunity, a way to meet countless new people, and a time to know more closely my fellow Newmanites on the trip. It was also a moving spiritual experience, and a space to reflect on my life and relationship with God. One of the things that naturally happen when you take long walks is, you start thinking about your life. And the

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12 Cristina Molina and Justin Blankenship in Leon

13 Jarod Haegel and Liam Tormey on the road after leaving Molinaseca

14 In Santiago: Jarod Haegel, Carlina Townsend Arellano, Cristina Molina, Chia Min Tan, Chris O’Connor, Liam Tormey and Ikee Dimaguila.

15 Resting at Ribadiso da Baixo: Ikee Dimaguila, Liam Tormey, Cristina Molina, Carolina Townsend Arellano, Elsha O’Reilly, Justin Blackenship and Jarod Haegel


Camino was, as you can imagine, a really long walk!

It stretched me not only physically, but psychologically as well, and as what normally happens when you are positively stretched to your limits, I was molded – molded into something tougher and yet more balanced. I now treat my University work with more hurried calmness than I have before. What’s more, I now understand how great it feels to have regular times for work, rest, play and prayer – something which used to happen all over the place for a student like me.

A memory, from a rather unsafe self-imposed adventure. The last, optional stop, in the Camino is in Finisterre, the end of the old world. It’s normally a four day walk from Santiago de Compostela. Martin, Cedrych and I, however, decided that we could cycle it in one day. And to make it even better, take the longer route along the coastline for the fantastic cycling view. It was crazy. We left at 7:30am and arrived 9:30pm – a total of 14 hours. We cycled 135 kilometers in never-ending ups and downs in the road. We were dying along the way. When we did arrive, we were so fulfilled and, well, proud of ourselves.

The next day, we went to the lighthouse, to the very end of the road, and there we met an old man named Jean Pierre. He was really nice, and of course, we shared our heroic story of cycling the trip in one day. He was happy for us. Then Martin asked: “When did you start walking?” and he replied, “On the 3rd May.” This was surprising as it was already the end of July, so we asked him where he started walking. He said: “In my home in Geneva, Switzerland.” He had walked a total of 2000+ kilometres, and so our pride at cycling 14 hours in one day quickly fizzled out.

It was humbling, but what he said next was inspiring. When I asked what motivated him to walk, he replied: “Well, I have only just retired, and I didn’t want it to be the end.” I have only just retired, and I didn’t want it to be the end. For me, this sums up one very important Camino lesson: When I think

that the end is near, indeed when life itself seems to close down upon me, I can always choose that it not be the end yet – and with the grace of God, keep walking.

And finally from Jesuit Scholastic, Robert Morris SJ:

In July I was fortunate to participate in the Camino to Santiago de Compostela with members of the junior and senior common rooms. Upon reflection, and as I make the transition from Melbourne to Boston to complete my theology studies, I am increasingly conscious of the way in which the act of pilgrimage is replete with much needed rituals and symbols for our life journey.

One such symbol is that of burdens; the burdens we carry, the burdens we desire to be rid off, and an awareness of the burdens we did not realize we had. The daily Camino ritual of repacking and hoisting on a back pack in preparation for another 20km plus walk served as a useful reminder of the burdens I carry in my life. This reality was captured poignantly early on in the pilgrimage through the tradition of carrying a rock to what is called the Cruz de Ferro, or Cross of Iron, a simple iron cross mounted atop a pile of stones deposited by pilgrims across the years. The rock one carries is meant to symbolize a burden you desire to be freed off. The placing of it at the base of the cross represents the desire to hand this burden, or at least share it, with God. In a culture which is increasingly bereft of meaningful symbols and rituals this simple act of placing a stone beneath a cross can be a source of catharsis or at the very least an invitation to look deeper into the things which weigh upon our life and impede growth.

The popularity of the Camino today suggests that the ancient ritual of pilgrimage is as relevant today as ever before. While a post Christian culture may struggle with the idea of religious pilgrimages to sacred shrines, the popularity of the Camino seems to indicate the innate searching within the human heart for the Other. Something about the physical act

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of journeying with our burdens mirrors our sense of interior restlessness in life in search of a deeper source of peace and freedom. This existential journey is best captured in the words of St Augustine; ‘our hearts are restless O Lord until they rest in you.’

The Camino does not resolve this inner searching; while pilgrims undoubtedly have Camino moments and receive great consolations and insights, including liberation from pressing burdens, the Camino to Santiago does eventually end. Its greatest gift is to remind the pilgrim that the whole of life no matter how mundane and ordinary it may seem, is a journey infused with deeper meaning. It also reminds us that we are not alone on this journey, that we need others to share the journey of life with.

This brings me to my Camino moment. This was nothing profoundly religious or mystical. It was the simple experience of sharing in the companionship of the ten Newman students I walked with, ate with, and prayed with for eleven days along The Way. Their company brought into focus the reality that it is in our relationships with others that we are most likely to meet God who desires to be in relationship with us.

Buen Camino!

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16 Amelia Ekkel and Cedrych Beh, Murias de Rechivaldo

17 & 18 Ikee Dimaguila, Cedrych Beh and Martin Reinoso at Finisterre


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A dinner to honour Professor

Margaret Manion IBVM AO

On Thursday, 27th August, 2015, a dinner was held at Newman College to honour long-time Senior Common Room member and Visiting

Scholar, Professor Manion. The Dinner followed the annual Margaret Manion Lecture held at the University of Melbourne where a large

audience turned up to hear a fascinating and thoughtful lecture given by Dr Christopher

de Hamel, the Gaylord Donnelly Fellow and Librarian at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

This lecture, entitled: The Hours of Jeanne de Navarre, Three Medieval queens and

Herman Goering, and this dinner were part of the celebrations that surround the extraordinary

exhibition in the Ian Potter Museum of Art at the University of Melbourne entitled:

An illumination: the Rothschild Prayer Book & other works from the Kerry Stokes Collection

c 1280-1685. At the Dinner, tributes to Professor Manion were given by Associate Professor Alison Inglis, Dr de Hamel and

Kerry Stokes. Professor Christopher Willcock SJ wrote a special piece of music dedicated to Professor Manion based upon a poem by

Father Andrew Bullen SJ, titled, Madonna, Child and Parakeet; this was performed at the Dinner.


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1 Alicia Deak and Father Michael Head SJ with Professor Tony Coady in front.

2 The Rector with Kerry Stokes

3 Sir Gus Nossal, Professor Margaret Manion and Ms Christina Simpson Stokes

4 Astonished!: Professor Chris Willcock SJ, Father Chris Horvat SJ and Professor Manion

5 Julie Ann Cox, Chair of the Ian Potter Museum of Art, Professor Mark Considine, Dean of Arts, University of Melbourne, Lady Potter, Father Peter L’Estrange SJ and Joshiua Puls.

6 Margaret Manion IBVM, Margaret Noone IBVM and Mary Wright IBVM

7 Sarah Bowyer, Christina Manion, Phyllis Knaggs, Maggie Knaggs, Margaret Manion and John Knaggs


THE COUNCIL DINNER

SEMESTER 2

Twice a year, following a meeting of the Council of the College, a dinner is held in the Dining Room where some students and their parents are invited to join the Council for dinner. The second such dinner for 2015 was held on Wednesday 19 August. At the Dinner six students, along with the Chaplain, made brief reflections on their recent pilgrimage in Spain – the Camino de Santiago. Reproduced below is the closing reflection from the Chaplain, Chris O’Connor. The other reflections are produced elsewhere in this newsletter.

This year was my third Camino pilgrimage with Newman students in five years. Each time the Camino surprises me with the gifts, challenges and blessings it provides. A pilgrimage implies a journey with hopefully an accompanying sense of serious inner reflection which helps distinguish it from mere sightseeing. A pilgrim is distinctly different from a tourist as their journey is ultimately an intensely personal and contemplative inner journey. It is a journey of surprises.

The journey from Astorga to Santiago is an outer journey but also more significantly an inner journey, hopefully a journey that sees one undergo some form of personal growth and change. To undertake the experience of being a pilgrim, a person undertaking a journey for some spiritual purpose and not to change, is to have failed at the fundamental task and purpose of pilgrimage: to change and to grow in your relationship with God. The slow process of walking every day from before sunrise, with no other task to fulfil than to reach a place to rest for the night, exposes the pilgrim to a slow, sacred metamorphosis, realizing that the hardship of heat, cold, rain, blisters, fatigue and aching muscles and joints can open up the mind to old memories and new possibilities, and can effect an emotional and spiritual purification. The destination signifies not the end of the journey, but the start, a portal into a new way of being, of seeing life afresh with spiritually cleansed eyes. Going on pilgrimage is a metaphor for the spiritual journey taken

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Clockwise from top left: Chaplain, Chris O’Connor, Martin Reinoso, Graduate student, Ikee Dimaguila, Third year arts student from Colac, Paul O’Shea


by each person. We undertake an inward journey to Christ and an outer journey toward each other every day. God is present to the pilgrim, not only through the beauty and majesty of creation, but also through the people and fellow pilgrims who they meet on their journey. As we followed the pilgrim path marked by scallop shells, the symbol of the Camino, we learned to be alert to the signs of God’s guidance and presence in our lives in the small events and meetings of every day. The journey to Santiago must be Christocentric; otherwise it is just an indulgent journey for cultural reasons, a “bucket list” journey. But we are pilgrims not tourists in life!

In the busyness and normality of our daily lives it can be difficult to discern the divine. The Camino gives the participants not only time and space to reflect on their lives and to face their personal difficulties; it also most importantly provides them with the opportunity to encounter the divine. The Camino strips us bare of all that we know and really brings us back to who we are. We see ourselves warts and all, but more importantly and fundamentally, as a creature loved beyond all measure by our creator God. The Camino provides an opportunity to recognise our gifts and our shortcomings, to accept ourselves as loved by God, to recognise the possibilities for further growth and change, and the opportunity to choose life. The litany “Lord you search me and you know me and yet you love me”, was a mantra that was tattooed on my heart every time I walked the Camino.

Pilgrimage has inherent challenges and demands, highs and lows, and each pilgrim, much like a marathon runner, hits ‘the wall’ where they question their ability to continue. Each Newman pilgrim at one time or another hit their personal wall. Fortunately, through their own inner resolve, God’s grace and the support of their fellow pilgrims, they all completed the journey.

We returned to College the day before second semester commenced. A few looked different, wearing their “pilgrim beards’, and a few came back a few kilos lighter, but the exterior changes that were evident merely hint at the deep individual personal changes that had developed. The road to Santiago had allowed us all to grow, to change and to develop a sense of the sacred in our daily lives. The contemplative silence of the Camino remains with me today. We left as individuals, we returned as pilgrims; changed in mind, heart and spirit, different but the same; refreshed but exhausted, strengthened in our faith and doubt.

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1 Senior Common Room members: Zita Liu, Chia Min Tan, Chuchu Wang, and Cristina Molina.

2 Gabe Higgins, Bish Hanna, Uma Guntupalli and Dominic Guerrera

3 Katelyn Millard with Rob Muirhead and Tom Attard

4 Matthew and Anthony Bennett, Catheryn O’Brien , and Darcy Bennett

5 Liam Tormey with his parents, Daryl and Terri

6 Elizabeth Baker with her parents, Stuart and Marie

7 The Kavenagh Family: Millicent, Terry and Danila


Amelia Le’Plastrier If music be the food of love, Purcell Voice

Penelope Latham Sonata for clarinet and piano, Mvmt II. Romanza, Poulenc Clarinet

Millicent Kavenagh Your Daddy’s Son, from “Ragtime”, Flaherty Voice

Amelia Ekkel Partita No. 2, Allemanda, J.S. Bach Violin

Hannah Irvine Ei! Wie schmekt Der Coffe süße from “Schweight stille, plaudert nicht”, J.S. Bach Voice

Esther Crowley Gramata Cellam, Mvmt II, Vasks Cello

Liam Headland Die, Biden Grenadier, Schumann Voice

Jacklyn Li At First Sight Flute Sonata, Mvmt I, Darmody Flute

Elizabeth Baker Variations on one string, Paganini Cello

Rob Muirhead The Town I Loved So Well, Coulter Voice

Michael Smith Prelude Op.3 No.2, The Bells of Moscow, Rachmaninov Piano

Ellan Hyde Danse Bouffonne, Lantier Bassoon

Sarah Parkin Dein blaues Auge, Brahms Voice

Ryan Bentley Later from “A Little Night Music”, Sondheim Voice

The 2015 Peter L’Estrange SJ Music Soirėe

The 2015 Peter L’Estrange SJ Soirée once again highlighted some of the music talent that abounds in the College. A number of students, drawn from the many soirées held in College during the year, are invited to perform at this Soirée. Dr Gary Ekkel was the

adjudicator for the evening. Esther Crowley, a second year music student from Ballarat, was named the recipient of the Peter L’Estrange SJ Prize for 2016. The programme was:


Commenting on the winners, Jenny McMillian wrote: Jack Bennett undertakes what is, perhaps not even consciously, homage to Shelley. His three-part Ode is impressively shaped, and massively intelligent. The poem creates a dark and stony world and focuses it around a pathway winding its way through the riddling terrain of creativity and writing itself.

On Erin Connelan’s play, Jenny noted that, Here we have satire – a wonderfully funny Murder Mystery. Erin’s play with its rapier wit and sharply condensed dialogue dramatizes the share-house world with all its inevitable agonizing social dilemmas. I liked the deftness of Erin’s dialogue and the pace and cut of its kitchen debates. Erin knows how to write.

On Ellan’s work, entitled, Horizon, Jenny wrote that: Its voice was powerfully engaging, confident and uniquely her own. The prose was supremely in control, sensitively paced and it captured the interior emotional world of the young girl eloquently. The writer weaves between internal and external worlds. At the opening, for instance, is the music lesson with its giant struggle both internal and external. This engages the reader from the start and at every level in the complex demands of any creative performance. The piece literally sings its world into being.

Peter Steele SJ Prize for Poetry and Prose

The 2015 winner of the Peter Steele Prize for Poetry and Prose was Ellan Hyde from Ballarat. In joint second place were Jack Bennett and Erin Connellan. The judges in 2015 were former Dean of the College, Jenny McMillan and Geraldine Woodhatch,

member of staff at the Academic Centre.

Peter Steele Prize winner Ellan Hyde


western kingdoms of India. When he died his empire reached from the Adriatic Sea in the West to the Indus river in the East.

After his death, Alexander’s empire was divided among his twelve generals. Within a couple of years, however, the unity of the empire was destroyed. Then, after almost forty years of internal dissension and civil strife, two main dynasties finally emerged: the Lagides and Ptolemies in Egypt and the Seleucids in Syria and Babylonia. Judaea, and Palestine generally, for almost ninety years fell within the Egyptian sphere of influence. But in 198 BC the Seleucid king, Antiochus the Great, defeated the army of the Egyptian king, Ptolemy V, at Panias, and Judaea became subject to the Seleucid kings for the next sixty years.

For the most part the Jews enjoyed a fair degree of political and religious independence under Antiochus and his successor, Seleucus. But when Antiochus IV Epiphanes succeeded Seleucus in 175 BC he embarked on a culture war to hellenise the whole of his empire. Inevitably this imposition of Greek culture was strongly resisted by the Jews. It culminated in the Great Jewish Persecution (167 – 164 BC). There were massacres in Jerusalem, decrees were instituted abolishing Jewish religious practices, the cult of the Greek God, Zeus, was established in the temple of Jerusalem, and pagan sacrifices were performed even on the altar of the temple.

The Jews resorted to guerrilla warfare and inflicted a series of heavy defeats on Antiochus’ armies. Eventually a truce was negotiated. Then the temple was restored to exclusive Jewish use and the attempts to hellenise the Jews if not altogether discontinued, were at least in most instances, moderated. But it was a uneasy truce, and the Jews had to be very watchful to maintain their rituals and traditions.

It was in the aftermath of the Great Persecution that the Jewish sects of the Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Essenes emerged in the latter half of the second century before Christ. They were all concerned to maintain the religious integrity of the Jewish nation in an environment that was, more than occasionally, hostile to Judaism. But while the Essenes were primarily concerned with what is called eschatology – the end of days and the battle between the spirit of light and the spirit of darkness - the Pharisees and the Sadducees focussed on the Jewish law. The Sadducees, however, only admitted as valid the first five books of the Bible – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy – whose authorship they

HOMILY: Twenty Second Sunday

in Ordinary Time

THE HOMILY GIVEN BY THE RECTOR ON SUNDAY, 30th AUGUST, 2015,

IN THE CHAPEL OF THE HOLY SPIRIT, NEWMAN COLLEGE.

“For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it” (Mark 7:22)

When Alexander the Great died in Babylon in 323 BC possibly from poisoning, more probably of a fever, he was just thirty three years of age. He had succeeded his father, Philip of Macedon, in 336 at the age of twenty. In the following years, having first al all imposed unity on Greece, he embarked on a series of brilliant military campaigns that conquered in turn the empires of Egypt, Persia and Asia Minor and finally even the


attributed to Moses. The Pharisees, on the other hand, also accepted the oral traditions of the elders. These elders were the commentators who had taken upon themselves the responsibility of interpreting the books of the law from the time of Moses onwards and included even contemporary rabbis. These traditions erected, as it were, a fence around the law. The elders believed that exact observance of these traditions was a safeguard against even accidental violations of the law itself.

Inevitably over the course of two centuries these traditions of the elders multiplied, and by the time of Jesus there was a veritable library of prescriptions dictating the behaviour of pious Jews in all aspects of their lives. Some of these prescriptions were aimed, as it were, to updating the Mosaic laws to respond to a contemporary situation. But others had degenerated into mere formalism and legalism, like these mentioned in today’s Gospel concerning clean and unclean foods and the detailed rituals of hand-washings. In many instances in the Gospels Jesus was dismissive of these accretions to the law, and on other occasions he accused the Pharisees of concentrating on these additions and details and ignoring or reinterpreting the central values and ideals that the law truly proposed.

It was only a matter of time before the Pharisees came to recognise Jesus as their number one enemy. They began to plot not only to undermine his authority with the people, but eventually to accuse him of blasphemy and deliver him into the hands of Jewish authorities in the first instance and ultimately the Roman governor, Pilate.

This was a tragedy. The Pharisees with their insistence on religious integrity, often heroically maintained during times of persecution, should have been Jesus’ natural allies in his focus on the coming of the kingdom of God. Instead formalism, legalism, and literalism had diminished or even destroyed their prophetic voices. They had become in effect reactionaries. They were fearful of a vision like that of Jesus that threatened their status and security and called them once again to the original radical commitments and ideals that were forged in times of persecution. So, they were Jesus’ most severe critics, always attempting to cut him down to size and to belittle his followers. It was, as I say, a tragedy.

But it was not only a tragedy – it is also a lesson for us. There is always a danger for institutions, and for institutionalised religions in particular, that they will become legalistic and formalist, focusing on the detail rather than the main picture. The historian, John O’Malley, in his book, “What happened at Vatican II”, describes the transition that the Second Vatican Council effected in the Catholic Church when it was showing the signs of a formalism, literalism and legalism akin to that

which characterised the Pharisees of Jesus’ time. Comparing the preconciliar to the postconciliar Church he suggests that:

…at stake were almost two different visions of Catholicism:from commands to invitations,from laws to ideals,from definition to mystery,from threats to persuasion,from coercion to conscience,from monologue to dialogue,from ruling to serving,from withdrawan to integrated,from vertical to horizontal.from exclusion to inclusion,from hostility to friendship,from rivalry to partnership,from suspicion to trust,from static to ongoing,from passive acceptance to active engagement,from fault-finding to appreciation,from prescriptions to principles,from behaviour modification to inner appropriation (307).

And there is always the temptation to slip back, not only institutions but also personally, to retreat behind the ramparts of our securities and the traditions of the elders rather than to engage with the challenges that confront us when we try to live the values of the Gospel in our secular world – telling the truth even when it disadvantages us, keeping promises, really listening to opinions other than our own, having a special respect for migrants and refugees from other cultures, and reaching out generally to the marginalised and disenfranchised, being faithful, generous and forgiving in our personal relations, and, as Pope Francis has recently so emphatically reminded us in his encyclical, caring for the whole of God’s creation.

There were good Pharisees in Jesus’ time and in that of the early Church – men who engaged with Jesus personally like Nicodemus, and men who recommended freedom of speech when the apostles first boldly proclaimed Jesus teaching in the marketplace. And there were Pharisees like Paul, originally a persecutor of Christians, who recognised the errors of his ways and came to understand that Jesus was not a blasphemer but the fulfilment of the law and the prophets. Of course, it did require a vision on the road to Damascus. Let us hope that the bishops who attend the Synod in Rome in October have had similar visions!


NEWMAN IN PICTURES

SEMESTER 2, 2015

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1 Michael Scott Art Prize winner for 2015, Shiran Geng

2 The first race – inter-collegiate regatta 2015

3 Chiebuka Nnamoko and Penny Latham – listening

4 Former Collegian, Alexander Eastwood, with Professor Margaret Manion IBVM

5 NCSC Dinner in September: Robert Muirhead, Maddie Smith, Mai Mitsumori-Miller, Sinead Ryan, guest speaker and former Collegian, Sophie Li, Mickie Tanna, Janet Watt, Molly Voss and Ben Carmody.

6 SCR Committee 2015 - Jack Fang (Treasurer), Alicia Deak (President), Michael Keem (Vice President) and Michael Francis (Secretary)

7 A SCR outing in Carlton


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8 The 2015 Women’s Football team

9 At the inter-collegiate regatta on the Yarra River

10 The Women’s Ist VIII

11 Inter-collegiate hockey

12 At the NCSC Dinner, first year students Jasmine Sloan from New Zealand, Catherine Mercer from Inverloch, and Olivia Hall from Maimuru, NSW

13 Inter-collegiate women’s football

14 At the inter-collegiate swimming

15 Inter-collegiate soccer


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16 The Business Manager, Rebecca Daley, and the Director of the Allan and Maria Myers Academic Centre, Angela Gehrig

17 Cristina Molina

18 Maryanne Lia, Ella Trimboli, Sarah Millard, James Tapa and Andrew Wang

19 Nikki Cheng, Sarah Dunlop, James Waterfall and Percy Morphy

20 Former Collegians Timothy Gorton and Isaac Demase with Jesuit Scholastic, Justin Glyn SJ

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2015 NEWMAN COLLEGE ADVENT FESTIVAL

NOVEMBER 28–29, 2015

If you have ever imagined yourself in the cloisters of a medieval monastery – surrounded by the peaceful sounds of Gregorian chant, splendid architecture, and beautiful manuscripts – then the Advent Festival will open this world to you. The festival offers the opportunity to side-step the Christmas rush and pause in Melbourne’s culturally rich oasis of Newman College.

Following the success of the 2009, 2011 and 2013 Festivals, the 2015 Advent Festival features a diverse series of concerts, talks and imagery drawing their inspiration from the cycle of eight services celebrated each day in a medieval community or cathedral. This year’s Festival has a distinct French flavour ranging from an intimate 13th-century Fleury play to Charpentier’s sumptuous Mass for Four Choirs. The music is performed by leading Australian ensembles such as e21, Ensemble Gombert, Gloriana and the Consort of Melbourne. Soloists, Laura Vaughan (viol), Rosemary Hodgson (lute), John O’Donnell (organ) and David Macfarlane (harpsichord, organ) will weave their magic around Gregorian chant sung by the Schola Cantorum of Melbourne and Canticum Feminarum.

The Festival will be held at Newman College, itself designed by Walter Burley Griffin with a set of cloisters around a courtyard. The concerts will be held in the College’s high-roofed Chapel, the domed Dining Hall and the Oratory.

The aim of the Festival is to allow you to experience sacred music and art as part of daily life – as it was for those in a medieval community – rather than simply attending a concert. To facilitate this, meals and accommodation are available at the College, and subscription tickets have been arranged to provide you with the opportunity to experience a series of concerts, services and talks over the course of a day or a whole weekend.

Advent is traditionally a time of contemplation and anticipation. We warmly invite you to celebrate the beauty of this pre-Christmas period with us.

Dr Gary Ekkel

TICKETS AND BOOKINGSTo book tickets for the Advent Festival, visit the College website www.newman.unimelb.edu.au or telephone 03 9347 5577. There are a number of passes available for the Festival:

Residential festival pass: The residential festival pass provides entry to all concerts, services, talks and meals (Saturday lunch and dinner, Sunday breakfast and lunch) and accommodation in Newman College on the evening of Saturday, November 30. For the full flavour of a community experience, we encourage you to consider staying at the College for the whole weekend.

Non-residential festival pass: The non-residential festival pass provides the same access to events and meals as the residential festival pass but does not include bed and breakfast.

Day passes: Day passes are available for Saturday and Sunday from 9:00am to the close of the final event on each day. The Saturday day pass includes lunch and dinner in the Newman College Dining Hall. The Sunday day pass includes lunch.


From the President of N.O.C.A.

1995 Reunion Former Collegians who joined the College in 1995 gathered for a reunion at the Clyde Hotel. Prior to dinner many undertook a tour of the College - shown here photographed on the Chapel steps.

Over recent years numbers attending the Annual Dinner have varied between 80 or 90 to as many as 190. At the same time there have been a number of informal gatherings of year groups away from the College such as the early 1970’s reunion which was reported on in the last Newman News. In the light of these developments the Committee has been giving consideration to a range of options which are designed to increase the number and variety of functions which bring Old Collegians together each year. Whilst some of these events would be designed for particular year groups we think that it is important to facilitate exchanges between groups so that there is scope for social interaction, mentoring and professional networking between members. Among the type of functions being considered are cocktail parties in the quad, lunches in the College dining room and a “black tie” ball.

There will still be an Annual Dinner, but in an effort to attract greater numbers, a move away from the racing season to May or June is being considered.

Before making any final decisions the Committee would welcome feedback from members about these proposals. Any comments can be sent to the Association’s Secretary at: [email protected] I would also like to take this opportunity of thanking Patrick Crabb and Leon Doyle (amongst others) who organised a significant Newman presence at the fundraising dinner in honour of Old Collegian Neale Daniher. The dinner raised a substantial sum for research into motor-neurone disease. It was wonderful to see so many Old Collegians rallying around one of our number and supporting such a worthy cause.

Could I remind you that this year’s Founders and Benefactor’s Mass will take place at 7:00 pm on 18 October 2015 in the College Chapel. This will be an opportunity for us to remember all deceased Old Collegians and to pray particularly for those who have died during this year.

Sincerely

Richard Tracey President


NEWS OF FORMER COLLEGIANS

Former Collegians who are now office bearers as part of the Victorian Bar: Michael Wyles QC, Chairman of Barristers Chambers Limited, James W. S. Peters QC, President of the Victorian Bar, and Daniel Crennan, Assistant Treasurer.

Photographs from the wedding in Tel Aviv of former Collegians, Noa Alsheich and Liran Haim.


NEWS HAS REACHED THE COLLEGE OF THE PASSING OF THESE FORMER COLLEGIANS.

MAY THEIR GENTLE SOULS REST IN PEACE.

VALE

They whom we love and lose are no longer where they were before. They are now wherever we are.St John Chrysostom

Isobel Anne Prowse, who died on the 30th July, 2015. Isobel was a non-resident member of the

College in 2013.

Charles Pashula, who died on the 9th December, 2014. Originally from Ararat, Charlie was a member of the

College from 1968 to 1971.

Michael Mellor McIndoe, who died on the 29th July, 2015. From Ballarat,

Michael was a member of the College in 2010 and 2011.

Early EcumenismWe have recently received this photograph

showing the then Rector of Newman College, Michael Scott, with the Anglican Archbishop

of Canterbury, Michael Ramsay. (Courtesy of Louise Arendsen, a relation

of Michael Scott)


KEVIN GORMAN

Richard Kevin Gorman was born on the 9th November 1921. He was the eldest son of Richard and Kathleen Gorman and brother to Gerald, Betty, Michael and Adrian. The family’s early years were spent on a property ‘Galtee Park’ near Berrigan, NSW, but when Kevin was seven they moved with his two uncles, Brendan and Bill, to Meilman Station, a grazing property running along the Murray River in the west of New South Wales. The house was nine miles from the main road and the nearest town of Euston was an hour away. There was a mail drop at the main gate twice a week, but otherwise, the family was effectively isolated.

Meilman carried sheep and much of the work revolved around these. In between stock work, fences had to be maintained, rabbits controlled, and general maintenance carried out. A governess ran the little family school and taught the children the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic, but Kevin said that a large source of their education came from books and discussion. In later life, he spoke on many occasions about the importance of language and conversation, as this had been so prevalent throughout his childhood.

It is difficult to imagine what life must have been like for this young family growing up in such a remote location. There was no electricity for many years, and the boys slept in a sleep-out which was fine in summer but freezing in winter. Kevin kept a diary which he wrote each night by candlelight. It provided great insight into the harsh realities of their lives - he wrote of how the older children were given a razor blade in case of snake bite, and the not uncommon plagues of grasshoppers and mice, to name a few.

The river played a large part in their daily lives and during summer, under the supervision of their uncles, the children would swim twice a day. However, the dangers of swimming in the mighty Murray, with potholes and currents were ever present. To pass the time they would also catch big crayfish, turtles and even water rats.

At the age of fourteen, Kevin, with his brother Gerald, was sent to board at Xavier College in Kew. He was very capable intellectually but socially quite under-prepared - he had not interacted with boys of his age before nor had he participated in team sport. At the outset, life was sometimes challenging. And, like many young boarders, his world was dominated by the weather, sport, food, classes and the temperature of the showers.

9th NOVEMBER 1921 – 29th JULY 2015


One of Kevin’s earliest diary entries reads: ‘The shower was the coldest yet. I am the worst cricketer here. We had a rotten sum to do in study… took me nearly an hour’. But things improved and he wrote: ‘Hot shower tonight. It was lovely. School is interesting. I am playing in a team tomorrow. Our sausages had cheese in them’. He soon started to roll with life in a big school.

Although his early schooling may have been somewhat unconventional, by the end of his second year at Xavier, Kevin was Dux of his Year 10 class. However, despite his academic success, he was not able to undertake his final year. With other siblings also at boarding school, he was needed at home.

Kevin’s career took some unusual turns. On his way to Melbourne to study medicine at Melbourne University, he visited his Uncle Jack in Bendigo. Kevin confessed to Jack, who was a doctor, that he didn’t much like cutting open animals let alone the thought of people. Jack said: ‘Kevin, you are good with things, so why don’t you do engineering’. And so he did, changing his University application by the time he arrived at Newman the next day. In 1940, he undertook

a cadetship with the Ministry of Munitions and, in 1944, he worked in an ordinance factory constructing gun turrets for Tribal Class Destroyers. After the war, he found himself employed by the giant engineering firm, English Electric.

Kevin loved the years at Newman College which he shared with his brother Gerald. Along the way, he made lifelong friends including Gerry Little, Esmond Downey, Maurice Ryan, Paul McGowan and Jim Strachan. He was a member of the General Committee and stroked the College’s Second Crew.

It was also during those university years that Gerry Little introduced Kevin to Joan Lohan, the young nurse who would become his wife. They were married in the Newman College Chapel on the 26th February 1949. They would go on to have six sons and six daughters, and ten of their children have survived them.

In typical style, Kevin formed his own consulting engineering firm at the age of 37, with 7 children at home. Fortunately, this venture was a success and his professional life continued until he was well into his 70s.

Richard Kevin Gorman, who died on 29th July, 2015, Kevin joined the College in 1940 and departed in 1944.

Pictured here: The General Committee of 1943. Standing: J. K. Strachan, E. J. Downey, R. E. Seal. Front: R. K. Gorman, R. T. J. Galbally, A. S. Jones. Absent: F. X. G. Hurley


He was a man of Christian faith, but not an admirer of excessive religiosity. He believed the measure of a person’s character was defined by one’s willingness to do the right thing. Strongly influenced by his Jesuit education, his pragmatic approach focussed on the big picture more than the detail.

In recent years, Kevin wrote a family history. Such things would typically begin with a sensible starting place such as arrival in Australia. His history of the Gormans went back to 6,000 BC, taking one through the Bronze Age, the early years of Christianity, the British subjection of Ireland, the Viking invasions, and ultimately emigration in 1839 and life in Australia since. Proud of his roots, he kept a plaque of his family’s arrival on the ‘William Metcalf’ by the front door.

Kevin had a great love of everything French, from berets to Peugeots, baguettes to French cooking. For several years he sported a goatee beard and he even subscribed to L’Express, though his French was minimal. He was a true Francophile. After he retired he wrote a cookbook which contained many French recipes, and is still put to good use by family members today. He was particularly pleased that Joan was so accomplished in French and together they shared many happy holidays overseas which so often included time in Paris.

Reasonably proficient at sport, Kevin’s greatest passion was for the game of golf. In typical fashion, he approached it with his engineering mind, and though a proposed book, ‘Golf Engineering’, never eventuated, he still played a competent game. He was so proud when he won the Riversdale Cup on a 19 handicap with 80 off the stick.

A man of intellectual depth, Kevin was highly original and broadminded and displayed an insatiable curiosity in all matters scientific and historical. He always had some theory on the go, with multiple pages of calculations a common sight beside his chair. In recent years, his attempt to refine Isaac Newton’s ‘Theory of Universal Gravitation’ occupied most of his time. He was happy to find an audience and a demonstration of the slightest interest would provoke a dissertation on the importance of universal background radiation. To the end, his remarkable mind remained active.

Kevin was blessed to have Joan by his side for 65 of the last 66 years. He leaves his children, 31 grandchidren and 19 great grandchildren.


Newman College at Night – 2015

GRADUATE STUDENT, IKEE DIMAGUILA, SHARES THESE IMAGES OF THE COLLEGE TAKEN ONE EVENING.



FOUND IN THE ARCHIVES

NEWMAN COLLEGE 1916

In early 1916, Archbishop Thomas Carr laid the foundation stone for Newman College.

Recently, tucked away in an envelope, these images (c 1916) of the early stages of the building

of Newman College have come to light. They are not in wonderful condition but do provide a glimpse

into the site and early Carlton.



Somewhere about our bodies, or about our clothes, are the instruments of fear. They are not usually designed for such purposes, but there they are. The watch on your wrist may keep you in touch with the pacing of the rest of the world, but it may also remind you of the deadlines within that world: and so it goes with cell phones or with laptops. Even uniforms and costumes imply a degree of strength, and of self-sufficiency, which can be mustered to help us at need, if need arises. The uniformed arm of the police officer may have to be invoked by the casual student who has left a laptop within all-too easy reach.

This must always have been so, ever since power relationships became frequent. And it is no great surprise that when a sacred figure, in the Older Testament or in the Newer one, comes upon the scene, the hearers are told, ‘do not be afraid’. In the Gospel passage today, the risen Lord says to his stricken followers, ‘Peace be upon you!’, that ‘peace’ which can make for a bold heart and for a tranquil spirit.

What is Jesus’ warrant for enjoining such a heart, for broaching such a spirit? It lies in his wounded-ness. A long time ago, I wrote a poem about this appearing of the Risen Lord, a poem in which the demand is put to him, ‘Show us your hands and say it again’. He does just that certifying, if you like, the fairness of the demand. In his time as in ours there was plenty of idle boasting: but this time, the claims of the old man made new are not to be doubted, given the savagery which has been visited upon the man tortured to death.

It is remarkable how quickly fresh news can go stale on us. And so it is ‘eight days’ before the next visitation, this time to the full group, from which the moody and skeptical apostle Thomas had been absent. I think that it was a theologian of the last century, Charles Williams, who said that if he were ever given the task of naming a church, he would call it ‘St Thomas the Skeptic’. There is a large deal of the subjunctive in all such choices, and why should there not be? Williams was facing the fact that faith does not necessarily come to us in a gift-wrapped parcel. Rather, it comes to us in modes which have seemed good to the Holy Spirit, but not necessarily to us.

Students of human speech assure us that no two people in the world speak in exactly the same way - just as finger-prints or hand-prints have their own distinctiveness, making it possible for such imprints to be able, say, to open bank-vaults, if that is your idea of a good time. Poets, and some other artists, know intuitively that when they are at work, they are questing for an originality of utterance which, though recognized when seen, is, so to speak. God’s secret until that moment.

In the first of Jesus’ appearances to his followers, he says that he has been ‘on an errand’ from his Father, and that now he is commissioning them himself - commissioning them to bring the good news that God’s very Spirit is given to those who will accept him. Unless I have got it all wrong, this allows for exactly as many people as God creates to be welcomed and blessed, in all their ungainliness and in all their gentle piety.

As I see it, this is hard for many of us to believe. I think that many of us are hagridden by the notion of accomplishments by which, as we hope, we will be vindicated. I am all for talents and their use, all for bold and even heroic exertion, all for self-surrender when it is apparent that that is what it truly is. What I’m not on for at all - and I hope that you’re not on for it either - is that coarseness of spirit which is a mode of triumphalism is a joke in bad taste. May we, and all those we love, be spared that - in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

Peter Steele SJ April 13, 2012; Newman College

ST THOMAS THE SCEPTIC


Song to the Son of Man

Show us your hands and say it again, As the lake dries and the mud is caking, As the guns jerk and the bodies flounder, Show us you’ve nothing to hide or to sell, Show us the wounds to match our own, Talk about healing when healing is over, Show us your hands and say it again.

Show us your hands and say it again, As the skin tightens with fear and with age: As the blood in our eyes congeals and freezes, Show us you’re talking with nowhere to go, Show us you’re poor, and poor for ever, Talk about blessing, but do it bare-handed: Show us your hands and say it again.

Show us your hands and say it again. Peace on your lips and scars on your palms: Watch us and wait for us, armoured and edgy, Show us you mean it, by noon or by night: Show us you say it because you believe it, Talk about rising, talk about shining: Show us your hands and say it again.

Peter Steele SJ

Photograph on back cover is of a Newman College student at Foncebadón on the Camino de Santiago

EnquiriesFurther information can be obtained from Newman College www.newman.unimelb.edu.au

or from The Provost, Newman College 887 Swanston Street, Parkville VIC 3052

p: 03 9347 5577 f: 03 9349 2592 e: [email protected]

Documents

The Newman College Newsletter NEWMAN · 2017-09-28 · Homily: Twenty Second Sunday in Ordinary Time 52 Newman in Pictures 2015 54 2015 Newman College Advent Festival 59 From the