Australian Dominicans

Postcard from Hong Kong (Part 3)

2008-02-27T09:10:00.004+11:00

Br Karl Emerick is living in Hong Kong as part of a year-long novitiate with the Order. The Queensland man sheds some light on what the first six months of his experience has entailed in Queensland’s Catholic Leader. This is part three of three.

While living with family I have experienced the logistical nightmare it is to arrange to take four children, under 10, out for the day, food, change of clothes, nappies and on and on, also the experience of a small child only wanting you to comfort them when upset, the trust they have that you will always be there for them and be able to solve their problems.

So I believe that these experiences have helped me understand what I am giving up to enter into religious life, it has also assisted me in understanding why as a Catholic priest it would be very difficult to be married.

As a husband and father, I would want to dedicate as much time as I could to my family, to be with them and watch them grow and experience life, and this would conflict with what I would be called to do as a priest.

I know everyone has a job and at times must decide between work and family, however as Presbyterorum Ordinis states, “since every priest in his own way assumes the person of Christ he is endowed with a special grace. By this grace the priest, through his service of the people committed to his care and all the People of God, is able the better to pursue the perfection of Christ”

January 1, 2008 was the six-month mark of the novitiate.

In early June, my fellow novices and I will have to make a decision about whether or not we wish to apply to be accepted into simple vows with the order, then the community here will vote on how suitable they think we are to join the order.

All going well we should make our profession in late June or early July, and Br Thomas and I will then come back to Australia to continue our studies in Melbourne, continue our formation in the Dominican Order and attend World Youth Day in Sydney.

Australian Dominican in Hong Kong (Part 2)

2008-02-20T22:21:00.002+11:00

Br Karl Emerick is living in Hong Kong as part of a year-long novitiate with the Order. The Queensland man sheds some light on what the first six months of his experience has entailed in Queensland’s Catholic Leader. This is part two of three.

--

Most of us have will have had the experience of wanting something when we were young, a bicycle, or a stereo, and being told that we would have to earn it, as something you paid for yourself would have greater value for you.

In Australia we don’t have to work for our faith, for most of us it is given to us by our parents, and there is no hardship in saying we are Catholic.

For myself, I wonder if I could still profess my faith under the conditions that many Catholics throughout the world are professing their faith under.

At this point in our formation as Dominicans we are learning about the Order, the laws, history and spirituality, learning Latin and Hebrew (which for me is very difficult), fortunately the novice master is an Old Testament scholar who obtained his Licentiate at L’Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem and we are getting a thorough grounding in the Pentateuch (the first books of the Old Testament), and looking at Church documents on religious life and the priesthood.

As I was saying my rosary this morning (we say it together as a community before Divine Office and Mass, but I like to say it with more deliberation and meditation – my family will tell you that I like to say it slowly) I was contemplating my vocation and my life, so far.

I am 37, in comparison to the others here a late vocation, and have spent a number of years working and coming from a large family, to date 12 nieces and nephews and I have been fortunate to have had a wide range of experiences.

Dominican brother sheds light on Hong Kong experience

2008-02-01T09:08:00.000+11:00

Br Karl Emerick (right) is living in Hong Kong as part of a year-long novitiate with the Order. The Queensland man sheds some light on what the first six months of his experience has entailed in Queensland’s Catholic Leader. This is part one of three.

It was zero degrees the morning in late July last year when I left Brisbane to come to Hong Kong.

Since February I had been living in the priory at Our Lady of Graces, Carina, undertaking a pre-novitiate with the Order of Friar Preachers (Dominicans) and had been clothed in the habit of the Order at the beginning of July.

I along with a fellow novice, Br Thomas Azzi, was heading to Hong Kong to enter into a joint novitiate program with the novices of the missionary Province of Our Lady of the Rosary.

We got off the plane about 9pm Hong Kong time, it was around 30 degrees and high humidity. We had left Queensland in the middle of winter, and arrived in the middle of a steamy Hong Kong summer.

Thankfully, I had lived and worked in Darwin, so I had some preparation for the level of heat and humidity in Hong Kong.

The novice master is from Spain from the Province of Our Lady of the Rosary.

There are 10 other novices besides, Br Thomas and myself. They all come from Burma (Myanmar).

Apart from all our novitiate activities and duties, they have spent a major part of the last six months scanning news items for information coming out of Burma about what is happening, to their homes, to the church and especially to family and friends.

We have visiting priests from all over the world. They often give us lectures about what is happening in the Church and the Order around the world especially in the growth in some areas and the persecution in others.

It is at times like these that I find myself comparing this information with what I know of the Church in Australia.

In Australia we are fortunate that we have the freedom to practice our faith, and while there may be some ‘hardships’, getting out of bed on a cold winters morning to go to Mass, or fasting prior to mass, we are not being called upon to offer our safety, our lives, to profess what we say is our faith.

We are not persecuted, excluded from jobs, or even imprisoned for saying ‘I believe’.

In some ways I wonder if not having to suffer or give things up for what we believe, we lose what it really means to us.

Usque ad mortem

2008-01-13T12:30:00.000+11:00

We give thanks to God for the profession of Solemn Vows of Brother Vincent Magat, O.P. Today, in the hands of the Prior Provincial, Fr Kevin Saunders, O.P., our brother Vincent professed obedience to God usque ad mortem, until death.

I, Brother Vincent Magat, make profession,

and I promise obedience to God,

to blessed Mary, to blessed Dominic,

and to you, brother Kevin Saunders,

Prior Provincial of the Province of the Assumption

in place of brother Carlos Azpiroz Costa,

Master of the Order of Friars Preachers

and his successors,

according to the rule of blessed Augustine

and the Constitutions of the Friars Preachers

that I will be obedient to you and to your successors

until death.

Profession of Solemn Vows

2008-01-07T16:01:00.000+11:00

You are warmly invited to the profession of solemn vows of

Br Vincent Magat, O.P.

in the hands of the

Very Reverend Kevin Saunders, O.P.

Prior Provincial of the Province of the Assumption

St Dominic's Church
816 Riversdale Road
East Camberwell, Melbourne

11am Mass, Sunday 13 January 2007

Feast of the Baptism of the Lord

Please pray for our brother Vincent as he prepares to make

vows of obedience, poverty and chastity until death.

Election of the Prior Provincial

2008-01-03T17:18:00.001+11:00

With joy it is announced that there has been a successful election of the Prior Provincial. Confirmation was received last night from the Master of the Order that

Father Kevin Saunders, O.P.

was elected Prior Provincial of the Province of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Please pray for our brother Kevin as he accepts this office, and do continue your prayers for the Chapter’s deliberations.

--

Father Kevin Saunders was born in 1948 in Melbourne and grew up in Nathalia Victoria. After completing secondary education at Assumption College, Kilmore Victoria, he entered the Dominican Order and made first profession of vows in 1967. After completing his studies, including a Bachelor of Arts with honours, he was ordained a priest in 1975.

Fr Kevin was Vocations Promoter for the Dominican Order from 1977 to 1988 and later Prior of Blackfriars Prospect SA. He has been Master of two university colleges, St Albert’s College at the University of New England and Mannix College at Monash University.

At the time of his election, Fr Kevin was Socius (or Assistant) to the Prior Provincial and Prior of St Laurence’s Dominican community in North Adelaide. He is also Chaplain to Blackfriars Priory School in Prospect and priest-chaplain at Aquinas College at the University of Adelaide.

2008 Provincial Chapter

2008-01-01T09:00:00.000+11:00

Fourteen capitulars and two student observers have gathered in our Melbourne priory of St Dominic for the XIVth Provincial Chapter. The Chapter is the principal legislative body of the provinces of the Order and meets also to elect the Prior Provincial and his Council and the delegates (called diffinitors) of the province to General Chapters of the entire Order, and to assign the brothers their apostolates for the coming four years.

The XIVth Provincial Chapter of the Province of the Assumption begins today, the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God.

Please pray for the Chapter.

Our new deacon

2007-12-22T10:30:00.000+11:00

With thanksgiving in our hearts and the praise of God on our lips, Brother Mannes Tellis was ordained to the diaconate by Bishop Anthony Fisher, O.P. today. He will preach his first homily at the Conventual Mass on the Fourth Sunday of Advent (23rd December 2007) at 11am in St Dominic's Church, East Camberwell.

Please pray for Br Mannes as he begins ordained ministry in the Church, and for an increase in vocations to our Province of the Order of Preachers.

Wittgenstein and God

2007-12-21T11:19:00.000+11:00

Br Vincent Magat, O.P. takes us on the road from the Tractatus to the Philosophical Investigations and back in the latest edition of New Springtime.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) was born into a rich Jewish family that had only recently converted to Christianity. The family was marked at once by an abundance of genius and an abundance of suffering, both of which are represented time and again in his own life. His own work in philosophy flourished only despite the wishes and plans of his parents, though the fate of some of his siblings was much more tragic.

His philosophical work can be roughly divided into two parts, the first defined by mathematical logic, the later by language. During both periods, Wittgenstein was concerned with the limits of what logic or language can in fact communicate, aiming to develop a methodology that could eliminate the kind of problems that arise in philosophy only when logic or language are stretched beyond their proper bounds.

As a logician, Wittgenstein’s brilliance quickly outpaced that of his master, Bertrand Russell, but his early work is clearly restricted by the narrowness and technicality of the subject matter and by a tortured inner life that sought absolute clarity or death. The Tractatus, the major work of the early period, presents a fascinating worldview of precision and accuracy based and organized entirely around the rigors and dogmatism of mathematical logic. In this context, morality, religion or the self only survive as the ‘mystical’, a precarious category occupying the limit of intelligibility, whose exact nature is disputed by commentators.

In the Philosophical Investigations, the major work of the later period, Wittgenstein switched his attention to language, which possesses a broader scope than the technicality of logic and which regulates and determines relation within areas of human life which mathematical logic rightly finds unintelligible. Many commentators however assume that by rejecting the narrowness of the tractarian world, Wittgenstein has also rejected the ‘mystical’, which no longer needs to specify the limits of intelligibility.

What I propose to argue however, is that while the first period of Wittgenstein’s philosophical work showed that scientific logic must be silent about (and before) God, in the second period, he set out to liberate philosophy from science and reassert once again a fruitful way for humanity to speak about life, universe and (nearly) everything, without thereby excluding the peculiar worldview proper to science developed in the Tractatus.

“The world is the totality of facts”[1] and “the world is determined by the facts, and by their being all the facts.”[2] Few books of philosophy begin with such frankness and certainty, especially if they are one of the first major works of the given author. It is perhaps in part for this reason, that Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus has too often been misunderstood as an exercise in metaphysics, the last hoorah of a now outmoded way of thinking that received here its final champion and, in Wittgenstein’s later works, also its final defeat. But does the seemingly radical reworking of Wittgenstein’s own thought in the Philosophical Investigations really refute the doctrine of the Tractatus? Or does it instead help to locate it better and thus in fact sharpen the focus on a number of leading ideas?

Quite apart from the intentions or disposition of the author, the most striking feature of the opening sections of the Tractatus is the immediacy of the facts Wittgenstein subjects to analysis. At once dissolved into their constitutive elements, yet instantly reformed, at once the smallest building blocks of reality, yet at the same time the totality of what is, Wittgenstein seems to have the world at his fingertips in a way that philosophy after Descartes has rarely dared to affirm at all and certainly not at the outset of the investigation. Without condescension, Wittgenstein’s manner may well remind one of a child enthralled with a collection of Lego pieces, because in the child’s hand and imagination each piece takes on the seemingly limitless capacity for being combined with other elements, as Wittgenstein himself affirmed. One is at once immediately in touch with reality as it is, but also, and with equal immediacy, open to all possible worlds, to the limits of imagination.

Wittgenstein’s philosophy naturally moves beyond the awareness of the child, though not in its technical brilliance, nor in finding new ways to combine or distinguish, but in being mindful of the transcendental conditions of such an awareness. Underneath his discussion of the facts of the world, Wittgenstein implicitly unravels another account marked also by the self-same immediacy. That is, in Wittgenstein’s mind, the world of contingent facts, of obtaining and non-obtaining states of affairs, functions only on the back of an analytic a priori logical structure that determines the character of reality. But, if Wittgenstein’s philosophy has a thoroughgoing immediacy about it that is entirely lacking in any edifice constructed atop Cartesian doubt or in Kantian idealism, it is because this structure, these transcendental conditions are recognised as ones that ought never to be put into words.

Language is thus affirmed as being able to communicate any and all of the contingent facts and obtaining states of affairs, but it also must reflect in some way the logical structure of the world. While the former aspect is essentially propositional, the later is proto-propositional, communicating in the very structure of language those things that are essentially unsayable, but which alone make language possible. Moreover, falling into the Wittgenstinian category of things that cannot be said strengthens rather than reduces their importance, for it implies that Wittgenstein accepted them for deeper reasons than claims about contingent factual truth. Since to put essentially true things into language is necessarily to imply the possibility of their being denied, thereby irrevocably falsifying them, Wittgenstein came to believe that “propositions cannot express anything sublime”,[3] and that the truly important things in life are not among those whereof one may speak. Thus in certain circumstances, language cannot but vulgarise what it attempts to capture, while silence can be pregnant with importance that surpasses the resources of language itself.

To make these points Wittgenstein did of course have to cross the boundary of what he considered sayable and he clearly realised the implications for his own book. Thus the sobering warning at the end: “… anyone who understands me eventually recognises [the propositions of this book] as nonsensical, when he has used them – as steps – to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) … and then he will see the world aright.”[4] However, far from destroying his project, this apparent own goal serves to highlight an important aspect of education and of the process of upbringing, while also perhaps elucidating the reason this brilliant logician and philosopher gave up his craft for a decade in order to become a primary school teacher. That is, the teaching of the principles of any science broadly conceived, involves the putting into words of truths that can be grasped only one step beyond the words of the teacher and beyond the science itself. Thus, when denied for whatever reason, including aimless rebellion, the science and its teacher ought to be brought to their knees in a most eloquent silence that shows what language can only express crudely as: these simply are things which cannot be denied.[5]

Here it is useful to distinguish the proto-propositional truths so far considered from extra-propositional flights of fancy, properly impossible thoughts made vaguely possible only by illusionary twists of language. It is the former that carry supreme importance in the tractarian world and from among the list of these that Wittgenstein proposes, two areas are especially relevant for this essay: Wittgenstein’s views on morality and religion.

Since neither morality nor the existence of God can be counted among the contingent facts of the world, neither are subject to being put into language. In the case of morality, it either means that morality does not exist and is therefore extra-propositional, making the word “ought” essentially meaningless, or it is elevated to the status of the unbreakable logic of the world. Morality either is not, or it is the same for all possible universes and all possible times, an element of the irrevocable order of the world that God himself cannot alter. Relativism of any sort is thus excluded as a matter of definition, but one does not thereby move a step closer to resolving the dilemma. Nor, it seems, can one actually move any closer, taking the nature of tractarian logic into account; though the celebrated own goal may well here function as the first intimation of a direction Wittgenstein was to embrace in his later work.

In the case of the existence of God, similar logic must be embraced in the tractarian world: God either is, or is not and the possibility of any debate about this point obtains only on account of another extra-propositional trick of language. Perhaps here, Wittgenstein is in some way indebted to his Jewish heritage and its profound devout silence before God even when he does reveal his name. The Jewish philosopher Maimonides long ago argued that making God an element of mere human intellection and speech immediately falsifies the ineffable mystery, and similar arguments can be found in St. Thomas Aquinas and in the mystical writings of Master Eckhart and others. However, perhaps the most eloquent testament is given by the Carmelite saints John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila, both of whom were prolific writers on matters spiritual but whose eloquence failed at what may well appear to be the crucial point for justifying the whole edifice. The beauty and rigor of their teaching depends on the moment of silence, when, we believe, they beheld God face to face.

Nietzsche’s approach to the question of God fits surprisingly well into this context, because it makes explicit one crucial move in the logic of the Tractatus, whose importance could otherwise be missed. For Nietzsche, the nonexistence of God is a matter of instinct, because it is also the matter of a simple syllogism. As soon as one asks the question whether God is, one has already placed reason above God and then God must of necessity die of the will to truth, since as subject to reason, he can no longer retain his claim to the supreme metaphysical status.

The same pattern of logic is applied in the Tractatus to the question of the status of the ego, with the same conclusion. Since the self is the point of view from which all experience and reasoning proceeds, it cannot be a possible object within the world to be encountered. Nor can it be simply posited as waiting on the other side of a divide between experience and reality that finds no support in the tractarian world and must be discarded as yet another extra-propositional illusion. Instead, the ‘metaphysical subject’ is the inner limit itself, the unplaced point of view and, as Wittgenstein indicates, an empty point without magnitude.[6] In this context, the question of other minds cannot arise unless one begins to open up the tractarian world to elements of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy as Elizabeth Anscombe does. But even in her commentary on the Tractatus, the metaphysical subject, though divisible into individual persons speaking a common language, retains a strange, but crucial unity thus making the tractarian world a whole that is fully and immediately knowable (though not fully or immediately known) in all its aspects from a unified perspective.

The dilemma concerning morality and God can now be partially resolved in this direction: The tractarian world has sacrificed all obstacles for the sake of absolute knowability, which other forms of philosophy have obscured or rejected. Wittgenstein is correct to reintroduce it forcefully into contention by restating its rigor and respectability that were lost under the influence of Descartes. Moreover, unlike materialism, naturalism and other forms of reductionism, those elements that were sacrificed for the sake of absolute clarity are not discarded but exulted by Wittgenstein. Although they do not find a place in the tractarian world and although one must pass over them in silence (that which cannot be said cannot be whistled either), they are nonetheless present. They are neither in the world, nor on the other side of an impossible divide, but in that point without extension, in the subject that remains to float freely above the collections of objects, states of affairs and facts. This is, I believe, not only the direction the Tractatus makes its own, but also the direction in which Wittgenstein’s critique of the Tractatus in the opening sections of the Philosophical Investigations leads.

In at least six general theses covering roughly the first one hundred sections of the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein criticises the narrowness of the tractarian world and seeks to open up philosophy to, or rather remind it of, the richness of human experience in the world. Perhaps it was the ten years spent as a primary school teacher that opened up Wittgenstein’s mind to elements of human life which needed to be taught besides the natural sciences in order to furnish a child with the capacities necessary for human flourishing, but which analytic philosophy under the guidance of Wittgenstein’s mentor, Bertrand Russell, had prevented him from exploring. The common thread throughout his critique of the Tractatus is the ‘unnaturalness’ of the assimilation and simplification forced upon many aspects of human life for the sake of clarity. Even if these elements are retained in the exalted transcendental form I argued for above, their status is nonetheless obscured by the many faced nature of silence. Sadly, the devout profundity of the Jews (mirrored in an interesting way in Raymond Gaita’s ethical philosophy) and the silent eloquence of the teacher are comparatively rare occurrences in contrast to indifference, ignorance and outright stupidity.

Here however, we are already moving along lines contrary to Saul Kripke’s interpretation of the Philosophical Investigations that significantly influenced the first few decades of Wittgenstinian scholarship and to a large extent determined Wittgenstein’s reception in analytic philosophy. For Kripke and other anti-metaphysicians, the metaphysical subject and its resources hinted at above are replaced in the Philosophical Investigations by communitarian models of rule followers that revolve around assertion rather than the immediacy of contact with reality as Wittgenstein had hitherto argued for. If there is a richness in humanity, this approach in effect argues it is built entirely on wilful differentiation and cultural relativism.

Wittgenstein’s self-criticism does not, however, have to be read in this light. Far from relativising everything, Wittgenstein may well be interpreted as adding substance to those issues which in the Tractatus were shunned for the sake of clarity. What has pushed the ego, morality, God and other issues into the realm of the metaphysical has been the fact that they are not objects of a particular kind of experience and thus cannot be expressed in the kind of language that retains the immediacy of experiencing the material objects of the world. But inasmuch as they nonetheless are objects of human experience broadly defined, Wittgenstein now finds room for them by redefining language away from a uniform picture theory to a many layered approach that can sustain its application to varied sui generis spheres or language games. That is, on the one hand, what was once impossible to speak of in the tractarian world is now speakable in its own specialised area of language, without though on the other hand, discarding completely the idea of an essential limit. Contrary to Kripke, Wittgenstein’s methodology ought to be interpreted along quietist lines, a methodology that seeks peace and at the point of the resolution of all problems, seeks also the end of philosophy. In this way, the silent immediacy of the ‘metaphysical’ indicated in the Tractatus can be found even in Wittgenstein’s later works.

Without exploring this area fully (for it deserves its own treatment in another article), it is useful to illustrate this point by a simple, but often forgotten example: the purpose behind being raised in a tradition or a culture is that one affirms and makes one’s own the traditions one is initiated into. As the principle behind education is affirmative acquisition, so cultural formation, in the midst of which alone can critical faculties be acquired, is a gift given which must not be spurned easily or at all, extreme examples apart. The ideal governing culture is that each child initiated into it can safely make it his or her own without fear, without the need for continual questioning and with the distinct possibility of enriching and bettering it further. It can thus be said, that it is where philosophy ends that one’s engagement with culture really begins.

The richness of the world opened to philosophy in the Philosophical Investigations does not, however, ipso facto exclude the stern rigor or the narrow scope of the tractarian world. Although it is made difficult by those who misinterpret the Tractatus as an exercise in metaphysics, it is in fact possible to argue that Wittgenstein’s first book instead outlined the philosophy of the scientific method with which analytic philosophy has been, and continues to be, pre-occupied. The narrowness, immediacy, rigor and single-mindedness which duly borders on solipsism in the scientific search for the ‘view from nowhere’, are proper to physical sciences and their methodological denial of semantics. John McDowell underscores this fact well by attempting to enrich analytic philosophy in respect of the breath of human and thus philosophical endeavor, while retaining unchanged the scientific attitude, the dehumanised first nature worldview. The richness of the Philosophical Investigations thus complements and locates the rigor of the Tractatus as a subsection of the total field of excellence proper to man, without forcing semantics onto physical science, or physical science onto semantics.

This leads to the inescapable conclusion that the natural sciences rightly look upon God with total incomprehension and with all the reservations Wittgenstein expressed in the Tractatus. All propositions of science are of equal value and there is thus no value to speak of in the world, nor can God reveal himself in the world without thereby silencing science.[7] The dilemma concerning his existence, partially resolved by the rediscovery of the ‘metaphysical’ locus of the subject and brought to its completion when Wittgenstein’s philosophy opened its eyes to all aspects of the human world, remains unsolved for the scientific world and rightly so. On the one hand science can indeed boast of its immediate access to the world and its technical proficiency, but on the other, it must be wary of invading or denying areas that are not properly its own. In the later cases, the apparent wisdom of the scientist does nothing but reflect the bruises of his futile attempts to run against the walls of his own methodology, failing to realise the true wisdom Wittgenstein went back to primary school to rediscover. It is only in light of the Philosophical Investigations then, that the vanishing of the problem of life[8] at the conclusion of the Tractatus can be seen in its proper light: at once excluded from the view of natural sciences, yet retaining undiminished importance for human life as a whole.

Notes
[1] Tractatus, 1.1
[2] Tractatus, 1.11. emphasis proper.
[3] Tractatus, 6.42.
[4] Tractatus, 6.54.
[5] To even consider relativism at this point is already to sin against the world.
[6] Tractatus, 5.64.
[7] Tractatus, 6.4, 6.432.
[8] Tractatus, 6.521.

Students' Retreat 2007

2007-12-16T12:07:00.000+11:00

Gaudete Sunday sees our students and their Master depart for Pallotti College, Millgrove Vic. There they undertake their annual retreat. This year's retreat will also be part of Br Mannes' spiritual preparation for his ordination to the diaconate.

Fr Joseph Vnuk, O.P. is preaching this year's retreat. Fr Joseph is Dean of Studies at Catholic Theological Institute, Bomana P.N.G. and Master of Students. His retreat is entitled:

Women in the Bible: Murderers and Mothers.

Please pray for our students that this is a fruitful time for them.

Preaching the Blessed Light for 50 years

2007-12-12T12:32:00.000+11:00

On the Memorial of Our Lady of Guadalupe, our brother Aquinas McComb celebrated his Golden Jubilee of Priestly Ordination.

Congratulations, Fr Aquinas!

* * *

Having been an electrician's apprentice, I saw the light and entered the Novitiate in Melbourne in 1952. After four years I was transferred to Holy Name Priory in Sydney for theological studies and then after two years was ordained in my home city of Melbourne on 12th December, 1957. After two more years in Sydney to complete those studies I was assigned first to Adelaide, then to Perth, to Adelaide again, to Sydney again, to Armidale, to Brisbane, to Auckland, to Washington for the licentiate of Canon Law, to the Solomon Islands mission, to Auckland again, to Perth again, which preceded my first official assignment for ministry in my home city of Melbourne.

I want to point out that not merely was I given the opportunity of a diversity of geographical placements for priestly ministry, but also a variety of types of ministry. This ranged from parish ministry, either as a parish priest or assistant priest through school and university ministry or Canon Law (Matrimonial Tribunal) ministry and also missionary ministry. I remain extremely grateful for this richness and diversity of pastoral opportunity not merely to my Dominican superiors but to the Fathers, brothers and sisters (Dominican and otherwise) with whom I had the privilege of sharing these ministries.

However, it has become increasingly clear to me that I could never have completed my 50 years of priesthood had it not been for the support of my family and friends and the many ministries of lay people in the various assignments which were given to me. It has been a source of constant consolation and encouragement to me to be associated with people who without any sense of rivalry but with a sense of fellowship and mutual caring reach out to one another through the various services of the parish or school, university or mission community.

I want therefore to thank all who read this for your contribution to my survival. Thank you for your dedication and example.

We have seen Jesus' total self-giving for us and through this we are able to recognise our own vocation in the example he gives us.

Ordination

2007-12-03T12:04:00.000+11:00

You are warmly invited to the ordination of

Br Mannes Tellis, O.P.

to the Order of Deacons by

Bishop Anthony Fisher, O.P.

Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney

St Dominic's Church

816 Riversdale Road

East Camberwell, Melbourne

9am, Saturday 22 December 2007

Please pray for our brother Mannes as he prepares to receive the grace of ordination.

This is Welcome News

2007-12-01T16:11:00.000+11:00

This is Welcome News: When the Church Speaks in the Public Forum was given by Br Paul Rowse to the N.S.W. conference of the Australian Catholic Students' Association, 20 October 2007 and to Lumen Verum Apologetics, 30 November 2007.

* * *
The month of June this year was an exciting time for the Catholic Church and the State of New South Wales. Not only did one of the most extraordinary pieces of legislation ever before the Houses of Parliament in this State pass, but we also had the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, George Cardinal Pell, accused of Contempt of Parliament for his comments. The charge went that he had used intimidation and threatened members of parliament in trying to inform Catholic politicians of the Church’s position on the defence of human life. He had reminded Catholic parliamentarians of their obligation to examine their consciences before presenting themselves for Holy Communion and repeated Pope Benedict’s statement that killing an innocent child is incompatible with going to Holy Communion.[1] The investigation of the Cardinal’s statement by the Privileges Committee of the Legislative Council provided and led to many excellent opportunities for politicians and the public to be more familiar with the Catholic position on the then-proposed legislation. Catholic teaching was on the public record from the Cardinal’s mouth in every major newspaper and news website in NSW and some others elsewhere, on ABC and commercial radio and television, in the Catholic Weekly, and, with sincere thanks to Fr Frank Brennan, even in Eureka Street.

When the Cardinal was cleared of the charge of Contempt of Parliament, he released a statement which said in part:

This is welcome news, no surprise, and a win for religious freedom ... Christians in Australia have long played an important part in ensuring that fundamental human rights are respected. My contribution to the public discussion on human cloning was made in this spirit and tradition. To prevent religious leaders from publicly stating their claims to truth would stifle religious freedom and hamper open debate on matters of public interest. This would not be the Australian way.[2]

Those first few words of the Cardinal’s statement, This is welcome news, I have chosen as the title of this talk in which I intend to set out a little of the Church’s teaching on her involvement in the public forum. In so doing, I will propose to you three reasons why the Church does and must speak in the public forum.

The people of God belong to the human family

Among the many great documents that the Second Vatican Council produced is the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (1965). It is perhaps the only document of the Council which is entirely outward in its focus and concern. Other documents, while wonderful for those within the Church, of their very nature are concerned with matters internal and consequently do not attempt to assure the world that the Church is interested in it. The issues with which the Council was concerned included the nature of the Church and her sacred liturgy, divine revelation and the ministry and training of priests. However, it was not until the year the Council began, 1962, that discussions were taking place about a response from the Church to the world in which she dwells. One of the catalysts for Gaudium et spes was Helder Câmara, who was Auxiliary Bishop of Rio de Janeiro at the time of the Council. Concerned with the excessively internal nature of the Council’s deliberations, he asked, “Are we to spend our whole time discussing internal Church problems while two-thirds of mankind is dying of hunger?”[3] In truth, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World is an eloquent attempt by the Council Fathers to speak to the members of the Church, and indeed the whole world, about how she understands herself in relation to the concerns of the human family. At the time of the Council there was a growing awareness of human interdependence and concern for the common good as advances in technology, travel and communications brought people and cultures into closer contact. The Council identified the need for a corresponding increase in the understanding of the spiritual dignity of the human person to match these modern advancements (GS 23). The Latin title of the Pastoral Constitution, Gaudium et spes, reveals much of what the rest of the document announces:

The joy and hope, the grief and anguish of the men of our time, especially of those who are poor or afflicted in any way, are the joy and hope, the grief and anguish of the followers of Christ as well.[4]

In these first few words of Gaudium et spes, there is an identification of solidarity by the Council Fathers of the followers of Christ with the entire human family. This is not because the Church on a particular issue moves from a position of splendid isolation from the human family to one of solidarity with it, as if they were two separate groups at work in the world. Catholics are human beings (all evidence to the contrary, including Adrian Simmons, notwithstanding). It is rather the case that one group (the followers of Christ) is drawn from the other (the human family) and so the followers of Christ share the same joy and hope, grief and anguish as neighbours, if not then brothers and sisters, of the one human family. As for the state, like the Church, it is an organisation at work for the common good. We cannot make the mistake of identifying (or proposing the identification) of the state with the world, or the church with the world, or the church with the state. With Pope Benedict, we must say that the Church remains something other than the state: “Like the state, the Church too must remain in its own proper place and within its boundaries. It must respect its own being and freedom, precisely in order to perform for the state the service that the latter requires.”[5] So, we need to be subtle in a distinction here and say that the Church is part of the human family, and is free to express solidarity with the poor, weak and suffering members of humanity in the public forum which is governed by the state.

In a homily to the priests of the Archdiocese of Sydney shortly after his installation, then-Archbishop Pell restated the Council’s teaching thus: “...it would be a bad sign if the Catholic community ... were so concerned with one another, with our internal issues, that we wanted the world to pass us by, undisturbed.”[6] The followers of Christ must speak on issues which concern our brothers and sisters, whether or not they are Catholic. So, it is a good thing that the Australian Catholic Students on the 8th of October this year released a statement asking for prayers and a peaceful end to the crisis in Burma, and on the 26th of August expressing total opposition to RU-486 when it was first used in an Australian hospital. Beginning with the poor with whom our Lord identified so strongly, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are my brothers, you did it to me (Matthew 25:40), and next those most at risk of becoming poor, Catholics are to make their presence felt; by this I mean in the public sphere, using the popular media and modern means of communication. The Church embraces all these forms of communication as potentially helpful for expressing our position of unity and solidarity with our weaker brothers and sisters:

The joy and hope, the grief and anguish of the men of our time, especially of those who are poor or afflicted in any way, are the joy and hope, the grief and anguish of the followers of Christ as well.

But the Church does not stop at the poor and vulnerable in speaking in the public forum, though it must be said that the human embryos for whom the Cardinal spoke up fall into that category. The Church seeks to engage with and foster relationships with various professions so that they can contribute good things to society. So, the Cardinal himself usually celebrates the annual Red Mass to begin the legal year. In some places, there is an annual White Mass for physicians. While I have yet to hear of the Somewhat Dark Green Ooze Coloured Mass for garbage collectors, I am sure we could arrange something for them. And I remember reading that shortly after the 2003 assassination of the Apostolic Nuncio to Burundi that even though the trouble in a particular country makes it nearly impossible for the nuncio to do his job, the Holy Father leaves his delegate where he is to show that the Church does not abandon the people. The Church contributes and witnesses to the society in which she dwells.

I love the story of how the then-Cardinal Wojtyla during the Communist regime in Poland, before his election to the See of Peter, used to gather Krakow’s leading professionals and academics around him over a meal. Not only did the meals promote fraternity across the professions, but also made certain that the Church was at the table, quite literally, as an interested party in the discussions in the person of the Archbishop of Krakow. As an icon of the local Church, Cardinal Wojtyla was identified as the face and voice of Christ in that place. There he witnessed to the goodness that the Church has to offer simply by his presence and dialogue with these high-flying people. In a very public way among the doctors and teachers, as his Lord did in the Temple as a young man (Luke 2:46), Cardinal Wojtyla participated in the joy and hope, the grief and anguish of the men of his time who were suffering under Communism.

When he attended his first session at the Second Vatican Council, Karol Wojtyla had been Auxiliary Bishop of Krakow for about four years. At the end of the Council, he was Archbishop of Krakow, and not long after its close Pope Paul VI created him a cardinal. He remembered being seated very close to the main doors of St Peter’s when he was but an Auxiliary and moving up the stalls during the course of the Council when he was appointed Archbishop and gained a little more gravitas. His hand is heavy in Gaudium et spes, and much of chapter four of the Pastoral Constitution, the Role of the Church in the Modern World (GS 40-45), is influenced by him.

In Lumen gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, the Council Fathers taught that in the person of the bishop, the Lord Jesus Christ is present in the midst of the people of God (LG 21). Possessing the fulness of the Sacrament of Holy Orders, to the bishop is entrusted the task of care and solicitude for the local church and contributes to the welfare of the rest of the Mystical Body of Christ (LG 23). He is the minister of truth, the minister of the Truth, and who is ordained for service of the portion of the body of Christ entrusted to his pastoral care. Our bishops encourage and advise us, teach and exhort us, and give us their example in the following of Christ. So, when a bishop speaks in the public forum, it is an exercise of his office as a vicar of Christ to show forth the interest and concern Christ and his Church have in that particular issue or field. It is part of his duty as a Christian and as a successor of the apostles, and also he seeks to advance the sanctification of the public forum by his presence within it. He is a consecrated person, set aside in the sacrament of Holy Orders for the spread of the Gospel and the spiritual welfare of the people. We pray for our bishops who enter the public forum on various issues that those they encounter would be moved by Christian charity and seek the truth. In Cardinal Pell’s case last June, for example, he was expressing support both for the unborn children who will be killed as a result of the legislation and for those who will be otherwise affected. In Karol Wojtyla’s case around the Krakowian dinner table, he was speaking from the Church to every profession.

Human flourishing

The Catholic Church’s teachings are not for her own sake, but for the sake of the flourishing of the human person in this life and the obtaining of eternal life by the grace of God. Let me give you an example concerning this life.

On the 10th of July this year, the Centre for Social Justice, a think-tank of the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom, delivered a report entitled Breakthrough Britain. The fruit of 18 months of research and consultation, it is a report which investigated how poverty in Britain might better be tackled in the future. For our purposes this afternoon, I’d like us to note just three points it makes.

First, Breakthrough Britain identified a strong relationship between crime and family breakdown.[7] The report notes that 70% of young offenders were from single parent families. Second, the public cost to the state of family breakdown is estimated to be in excess of £20 billion per year.[8] Third, children who are not nurtured sufficiently in their first three years can develop mental health problems later in life. Parents who are themselves from broken homes were often found to struggle with providing nurturing.[9]

The breakdown of a marriage between a man and a woman is always a sad and distressing event, whatever the circumstances. What Breakthrough Britain and other similar studies around the world are beginning to show us is that it is, more often than not, the family which provides the best possible environment for the flourishing of the spouses, for the raising of children who are well-adjusted and productive members of society later in life, and who form more stable relationships with others, especially in marriage.

The family as the foundation and beginning of all human relationships is not a new concept, nor is it exclusive to the Conservative Party or one that they have engineered for their own purposes. The family, consisting of a heterosexual union and children is supported and promoted by the Church too. It is good to mention at this point two papal documents which do this eloquently and which ought to be better known in the public forum. They are Humanae vitae (1968) of Pope Paul VI and the Letter to Families (1994) of Pope John Paul II, and there are others too. Unfortunately in the public forum, Humanae vitae is infamous rather than famous and the Letter to Families is as mysterious as transubstantiation. In both documents there is mentioned the concern for the advancement of the human family in a way which is ordered to its welfare properly understood. So, I make the point here that if the Church is right on the family from a sociological point of view, then it can be argued that the Church could be seen to be right on other issues, including embryonic stem cell research and human cloning. On this point Pope Benedict has said:

Christian faith has proved to be the most universal and rational religious culture. Even today, it offers reason the basic structure of moral insight which, if it does not actually lead to some kind of evidential quality, at least furnishes the basis of a rational moral faith without which no society can endure.[10]

If the Church’s teachings are for the best, then good debate in the public forum must be not with the Church as a teaching institution (as in the case of the Cardinal’s Contempt of Parliament charge) but as a source of a particular sociological position, which is also known by the light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Serving the common good

This year, the television series Californication has been aired on a free-to-air network. The main character, Hank Moody, is a 40 year old author and father of one daughter, and regularly in contact with drugs and alcohol. Hank is also promiscuous. The first episode of the show depicts a dream sequence in which he engages in a sex act with a nun in a church. Along with a few journalists and critics making negative comments about the programme, quiet and prayerful demonstrations have also occurred. One of those demonstrating not so long ago said: “The message [that is depicted on the show] that women are to be treated as objects of lust and then be discarded is a really bad message.”[11] Of course, that demonstrator was right. Any message which portrays the human person as an object of disordered affection is the wrong one. However, the large majority of responses to the news that there were protests about the show were negative towards the Church. Many were outraged that the Church was yet again sticking its nose into an area which they perceived was not its concern. Others accused the Church of not dealing with the important issues like clerical sexual abuse of children and the relief of poverty. These others may be forgiven for not being aware of the Church’s undertakings in both of those areas and many others. So, the criticism of the Church as missing the issue and neglecting its proper role is misplaced. The Church speaks and acts in the interest of the common good. In this example, treating all others with the respect which is their due is not an exclusively Catholic teaching, but rather one which should be evident to all: do unto others...

In this talk I have been referring to Gaudium et spes. This document has much to offer our reflection today on the Church in the public forum. The Council Fathers noted the service to the human family which the Church provides: “The Church, for her part ... contributes towards the spread of justice and charity among nations and within the borders of the nations themselves.” (GS 76). The Council Fathers were saying that the mysteries which the human family encounters in its advancements in every field are to be worked out in dialogue with the Church who comprehends the mystery of the human person in the light of natural reason and of the perfect man, Jesus Christ. The Church communicates her teachings, which she has received from the Lord, as a service to the society in which we live and on which we are inter-dependent.

In the first Christian centuries, an early argument for the Roman persecution of Christians was that they are a subversive influence on society and culture. They did not share the same values as the rest of the polis. The early Christians seemed to dwell here, but their home lay elsewhere. I’d say that’s a compliment. But nonetheless, the criticism of Christianity was that its adherents do not make good citizens. The same argument against Christianity still lurks in Australian homes, as the Cardinal’s Contempt of Parliament charge demonstrates. But good citizenship, that is being a responsible member of the general public, requires virtue on the part of the individual. [12] The best citizens are those who act out of concern for others, especially the poor and vulnerable, as well as for themselves. The better politicians are those who also look to the welfare of those who will be affected by the decisions they make. So, Tony Abbott’s recent comments[13] about how the Church should be encouraging virtue among her members rather than sticking her nose into politics is an unfortunate go-nowhere statement. The Church encourages virtue in her members so that they will be faithful Christians who are by their fidelity good citizens too. The Kingdom is not very far from you, Mr Abbott. Indeed, it is in your midst. When the common good is at stake and the dignity of the human person is called into question, the Church offers the teachings she has received for the good of the rest of society.

Conclusion

To conclude: I have discussed three reasons for the Church’s speaking out in the public forum. First, the followers of Christ, who comprise the Church, are part of the human family. The Church takes an interest in every field and aspect of human life because these are the interests of the entire population. When the Church dialogues with the world in public, this is so the weak and vulnerable members of the human family have an advocate in solidarity about whom they are able to say, ‘They are with me’. Second, the principles the Church proposes in the public forum are for the flourishing of human persons in this life and also for their welfare in the next. The Church encourages the state to build the best possible environment and conditions for the living of one’s life with others in the community. Third, the Church is at the service of the common good, which is never at the expense of the human person. So, the principles which she puts forth are ordered to the proper advancement of all people of whatever religious persuasion or none.

It is good to encourage others to see the profound goodness that the teachings of the Church have to offer to the world. This means you. Being a part of the Church means that we are a part of the human family and its institutions, including the state. You and I alike have the responsibility and the privilege of informing our representatives in the light of natural reason of the things that really matter in public debate. The light of the Gospel need not be known as such in order to illumine the minds of our leaders. Our leaders are still capable of ‘getting it’ even if they subscribe to another belief or none at all. What we have to offer are principles which are for the good of the individual person and for the common good. This is good news. So, I remind you all to let politicians know what you think, what we think, by patiently and prudently offering them advice on the best course of action and letting them know our position, building an argument founded on natural reason. Talk and engage others who do not share our positions and charitably encourage them to see the deep goodness in these Catholic principles.

Allow me to finish with some final words from Pope Benedict:

The Church must exert itself with all its vigour so that in it there may shine forth the moral truth that it offers to the state and that ought to become evident to the citizens of the state. This truth must be vigorous within the Church, and it must form men, for only then, it will have the power to convince others and to be a force working like a leaven for all of society.[14]

Endnotes

[1] Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney, Media Release: “It’s all about human life: don’t miss the real message in the stem cell debate” (8 June 2007) http://www.sydney.catholic.org.au/Archbishop/Addresses/200768_1293.shtml, accessed 18 October 2007; and Sunday Telegraph Column: “Church and State” (10 June 2007), http://www.sydney.catholic.org.au/Archbishop/STC/2007/2007610_534.shtml, accessed 18 October 2007.
[2] Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney, Media Release: “Parliamentary Report Clearing Cardinal Pell of Contempt of Parliament” (20 September 2007), http://www.sydney.catholic.org.au/News/MR/2007920_236.shtml, accessed 18 October 2007.
[3] Herbert Vorgrimler (ed.), Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, volume 5: Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, [London: Burns and Oates, 1969], 11.
[4] Second Vatican Council, “Pastoral Council on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et spes (GS) (7 December 1965)”, n1, in Austin Flannery (ed.), Vatican Council II: the Conciliar and Post-Conciliar Documents, [Bombay: St Paul, 1988], p811.
[5] Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), “What is Truth?” in Values in a Time of Upheaval: The Significance of Religious and Ethical Values in a Pluralistic Society, [San Francisco: Ignatius, 2006], 69.
[6] Cardinal George Pell, “The Church and the World” in Be Not Afraid: Collected Writings, Tess Livingstone (ed.), [Sydney: Duffy and Snellgrove, 2004], 244.
[7] Social Justice Policy Group, Breakthrough Britain: Ending the Costs of Social Breakdown, volume 1: Family breakdown, http://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/client/downloads/family%20breakdown.pdf, p3, accessed 18 October 2007.
[8] Breakthrough Britain, p3.
[9] Breakthrough Britain, p5.
[10] Cardinal Ratzinger, Values in a Time of Upheaval, 69.
[11] News.com.au, “TV smut protesters hanging on,” http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22556513-2,00.html, accessed 19 October 2007.
[12] Cardinal George Pell, God and Caesar: Selected Essays on Religion, Politics and Society, M.A. Casey (ed.), [Bacchus Marsh: Connor Court, 2007], 25.
[13] Annabel Stafford, “Church Leaders Give Abbott Moral Lessons,” in The Age (12 October 2007) http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/church-leaders-give-abbott-moral-lessons/2007/10/11/1191696082655.html%3CBR%3E Accessed 19 October 2007.
[14] Cardinal Ratzinger, Values in a Time of Upheaval, 69-70.

The Dominicans: Preaching the Word in All Its Power

2007-10-06T08:55:00.000+10:00

Br Vincent Magat, O.P. wrote this article for New Springtime, the Journal of the Australian Catholic Students' Association on St Dominic and the ongoing response of his Order of Preachers to an ever present need.

The inspiration for the Dominican Order can be traced back to the early thirteenth century, when Dominic de Guzman, a canon of the cathedral of Osma, accompanied his bishop on a diplomatic mission. En route, the two saintly men crossed territories occupied by Cathar heretics and there encountered papal legates sent to convert those who strayed from the Catholic faith. The legates however achieved little success, for their pomp and style of life was no match for the zeal and poverty of the heretical preachers who better reflected the life of Christ. In this context, Dominic was moved to realize, as many did before him, that the Gospel does not enter men’s hearts because of worldly power, authority or prosperity of ordinary men. The Gospel is not an ordinary science and the economy of salvation cannot be reduced to a natural process with utilitarian value within earthly life. It is Christ crucified for our sins, risen from the dead and still living among us that causes the Gospel to enter men’s hearts. The preaching of the Gospel therefore is not the preaching of middle class affluence, upward social mobility or quasi-spiritual affectation, but of a life that takes a complete hold on hearts and minds.

Dominic was inspired to seek a solution to a need felt particularly in that time and place, but a solution that nevertheless was common to all ages and all places – that the Word of God should be preached with power and authority derived solely from the life of Christ active in the preacher. Though limited by the weakness of his humanity, the preacher becomes the active sign of the beloved Son in imitating the lives of the saints and in searching, contemplating and preaching the Wisdom of God by all means possible. It was for this purpose that Jesus called the apostles and he continues to call men to join him in this heroic service.

As the apostles were educated by the words and deeds of Christ during their time following him, which served as the preparation for years of service, so Dominic thought to combine the monastic tradition and its dedication to prayer and spiritual excellence with the rigors of study. The former was to be the spiritual wellspring from which the brethren first drink the Word, the latter as the harnessing of the best that God-given reason has to offer. In this way, one could hope to unite the contemplative monk attuned to the rich mystical tradition contained in the treasures of the Church with an active preacher in the one person; to first plumb the depths of what the Spirit has revealed through the ages, and then make it known to every generation. The Dominican is thus meant to drink ever from the wellspring of grace as he works out his salvation in fear and trembling, while at the same time bringing the salutary benefits of God’s promises and presence to men and women everywhere.

When already in its infancy, Dominic did not hesitate to spread the Order across the known world, sending the brethren out two by two to set up new foundations, to study and to preach. Dominicans settled in university towns, studying as well as teaching, matching the best that intellectual life had to offer. Thus, through the centuries, Dominicans have been intimately involved in developments and controversies in theology, history and philosophy. They travelled to the ends of the earth to preach and to be missionaries, to recommend themselves always by their simple apostolic life as Dominic did in the beginning of the Order. Whether in Eastern Europe, America or Oceania, the doctrinal preaching of the Dominican Order contributed to the intellectual foundations of the local churches, so crucial for their continued survival and growth.

The friars brought the appeal of their way of life to every place they visited. Young men along with university professors flocked to the Order in its beginnings and its power to attract has not diminished. The world is the Dominican’s cloister, his prayer is his food and his study his labor. Held together by the gentle bonds of evangelical freedom, the elements of his life allow the friar preacher to spend himself in the work of bringing mankind to God. Who could not at least acknowledge the attraction of a life so well-ordered, making possible the supernatural dedication to prayer, giving room to study with its joys and challenges, and finally spending the gifts so acquired for the benefit of the Church and all humanity?

Not everyone of course is called to the apostolic way of life after the same manner, and thus the Dominican Order from its beginnings incorporated contemplative nuns, co-operator brothers and later the active sisters. These make the friars’ way of life possible and by their prayer and example they support and make fruitful the work of preaching and the life of the Church writ large.

It is impossible to determine precisely what the influence of the Order has been within the Church, but the Dominican way of life has produced saints among theologians and philosophers, artist and mystics, preachers bringing the living Word of God into every century and martyrs who consecrate the missionary lands by their witness. In Saint Thomas Aquinas, the Order received the most exquisite flowering of its traditions and his unmatched spiritual as well as academic excellence continues to influence the Church today and will continue to do so in the future. Saint Catherine exemplifies the quiet and contemplative life of intimacy with Jesus that burst forth into an action that moved the most powerful of men. And finally Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati is a model for lay Dominicans, people not called to the full observance of the preachers’ way of life, but in whom the Dominican ideal nonetheless exercises tangible influence in bringing God to the world and the world back to Him.

Today, almost eight hundred years after its foundation, the Dominican Order still continues to answer that ever present need for the Word to be preached in all its power.

Silver Jubilee of Priestly Ordination

2007-09-11T12:43:00.000+10:00

On the 11th of September this year, our brother Martin Wallace celebrated his Silver Jubilee of Priestly Ordination.

Fr Martin is originally from Sydney. He was ordained by the Most Rev. Eusebius John Crawford, O.P., Bishop of Gizo in Holy Name Church, Wahroonga. Fr Martin was Headmaster of Blackfriars' Priory School, Prospect S.A. prior to becoming Master of Students in 2003. He is presently assigned to St Dominic's Priory, East Camberwell Vic and is chaplain to Siena College, Camberwell.

Congratulations, Fr Martin!

Pastoral Semester for Two Students

2007-08-05T16:40:00.000+10:00

While the feast of St Dominic was being celebrated in these parts, two of our student brothers, Brs Paul Rowse and Dominic Joseph, were beginning their pastoral semesters in Sydney and the Solomon Islands respectively. The brothers will spend the next five months assisting with the existing Dominican works in those places: parishes, school and university chaplaincies, lay groups and retreats.

The pastoral semester during initial formation provides a brother with an extended period of time whereby he may develop his pastoral skills and experience without compromising his studies. It is also a time when a brother is placed in a house of the Province which will give him the experience of living in another community that is neither the Novitiate nor the Studentate. The pastoral semester also gives the brother and the Formation Team a better idea of the areas of his formation which require further development.

Almighty God, Lord of the harvest of souls,

We ask You to guide and bless all

who have gone forth to preach the gospel.

Endow them with the gifts of generosity and concern.

Send your Holy Spirit on them,

that He may strengthen them in weakness,

comfort them in trials and direct their efforts.

May He open the hearts of their hearers to receive Your message.

We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Sacred and the Secular in the Modern World

2007-08-01T09:28:00.000+10:00

Br Vincent Magat, O.P. wrote this article for the Australian Catholic Students' publication, The Sentinel, July 2007.

Have you ever wondered what the difference is between the roll of a dice at a casino and the drawing of lots that replaced Judas Iscariot among the apostles? What is it that makes the one mundane, while the other sacred? Look through the prophetic books of the Old Testament and see what difference you can find between the river Jordan and any other river. Yet it was bathing in the Jordan that washed away leprosy at the word of a prophet. Or consider the religious implications of a game of football. Although many a coach would fancy otherwise, winning or losing a game, or even the premiership, does not demonstrate a moral superiority or a lack thereof, nor does it hold import for our salvation.

What these examples hopefully demonstrate is that the supposed binary opposition between the sacred and the secular needs clarification. We call those things sacred, which draw on the cult, the communal acts of worship, and which define us as the people of God. They are what consecrate our days and our lives, they bring to mind the history of salvation and express God’s will. The sacred always has a touch of solemnity and formality about it, because it concerns direct contact with God, being face to face with his majesty.

But must one’s mind be on God when driving through a busy intersection? Of course we believe that nothing is removed from the presence of God; that neither the brightness of the day, nor the dark of night fail to bear his image, that all our acts, heroic or mundane, proceed with the blessings of his grace alone. God sustains the world, and without him nothing that is can be. The secular therefore cannot represent a denial of the place of God in creation. Rather, the secular is the expression of that human capacity, which, though finding its highest form in filial worship, is the God-given power to order our lives in freedom.

Yes, religion informs everything; baptism creates in us a character that through the theological virtues of hope, faith and charity influences our every action. But when it comes to running with the ball or passing to a teammate, when the question is the choice of one business strategy over another, vanilla ice cream over chocolate, the role of religious insight has a peripheral function. As long as one plays fairly, does not exploit one’s workers or business partners and does not engage in gluttony, the choice is our own to make. Certainly, in the decisive moments of our lives we ought to turn to prayer and use the means our religion affords us for finding our direction, but the Church’s expertise in humanity does not extend to the color of the evening dress, though it might have something to say about the cut.

The secular realm to the mind of the believer does not retard the progress of religion, but rather presupposes our daily consecration to God. It is where Catholics can reasonably differ in opinion and where God’s name ought not to be invoked to sanction one course of action over another, moral law permitting. It is also where we can meet our brothers and sisters who do not share our faith. Though they might not be informed by the theological virtues, their God-given power of insight into the immanent workings of the world is not intrinsically worse than our own, nor may their refusal to abide by the fullness of the moral law make them more likely to succeed.

This marks an important feature of the secular, namely that it has its integrity wholly in itself. For instance, one does not need to invoke God and theological virtues in order to play according to the rules of football. God is not an enforcer of what otherwise could be broken to one’s benefit. It is in the very nature of rules that when they are broken the game does not benefit and the interests of all who participate in it are undermined.

The administration and support of secular activities belongs properly to the political life, to elected government and secular rulers. On the principle of participation exercised in democracy, our representatives enforce the rules, apply them to present needs and ensure that none of the players claims a special privilege that the others do not agree to. The government must represent the neutral arbitrator, the judge of legitimate forms of creativity and flourishing.

But where is the limit of political power? As we have already seen, the secular has its own integrity, but only in the wider context of the moral life. The modern government however finds itself in the curious position of being alike to a committee that determines the rules of a game: it may so happen one day that spear-tackles and bumps to the head may be approved as legitimate parts of the game. In the same way, the government has before it the capacity to legalize and to ban and of necessity exercises it in the most complex and equally important areas of the community’s wellbeing: life, business, science and education.

Here, the position of the neutral judge begins to look shaky, because we are no longer dealing with purely secular matters. The judge however must persevere in his duty for the sake of the community. Whereas ideally he is concerned with excluding such appeals to the religious sphere which are illegitimate even from the point of view of religion itself (as when someone tries to claim the divine right of Collingwood to win the premiership), in the modern society the judge excludes any religious appeals as such. Since we are no longer dealing with games, but literally with issues that concern life and death, the judge cannot do otherwise but to present a view of life and death and to become concerned with the value of life; simply to occupy the place of God as traditionally conceived. The government is thus no longer concerned with administering the secular within the context of a moral law, but with promulgating a secularist version of the moral law.

Many a politician and ethicist has attempted to hide behind the banner of tolerance and preach his view as the neutral standpoint needed for government to continue and society to live as one. But the issues they hold sway over often do not admit of such middle ground: the embryo for instance either is a human child with full rights, or it is not. Thus, when the government decides one way rather than the other, it affirms one worldview against another.

In some important contexts then, the government cannot be a neutral arbitrator and wherever it has attempted to exercise such a function, it has been forced to search for the lowest common denominator, which in a debate between a Christian and an atheist often does not amount to much. Since the Christian wants to affirm higher standards of arbitration and the atheist to deny them, the government can do neither, and the practical result of abstaining is parallel to denial. Of course once religious insight is denied its role in public life (though affirmed in the life of private individuals), the government often plays the role of a permission giver in the cases where the atheist wishes to affirm and the Christian to deny. Daring not to venture into any theological or metaphysical discourses of its own, the supposedly neutral arbitrator is inevitably swayed by the rhetoric of liberating humanity from under the yoke of superstition and promoting progress. Having already decided that religious insight has no place in public life, the public person enters onto the slippery slope.

The difficulty of mending this breach between secularism and the sacred must begin by acknowledging that the two, in a sense not to be taken too lightly, live in a different world. The bulk of the critique directed at religion in general and Christianity in particular by philosophers and scientists alike stands on the presupposition that God does not exist and that this issue had been settled at the Enlightenment. Nietzsche, Onfray, and Dawkins all suppose that one must be deluded to believe in God exactly because this world is supposedly all that there is. Their hypothetical excursions into pre-history to trace the origins of the religious illusion all suppose that the human person is simply this body, this flesh looking for some extra security in his miserable life. But by conceiving the human person thus they have already implicitly denied the soul and therefore God. Their critique is little more than a justification of the worldview they espouse and it fails to seriously engage the living faith. Whether it is the accusations of narcissism, pathological guilt, or irrational illusion, all of them serve to elucidate the state of a Christian in a Godless world. But that is not the world as we know it.

The crucial error at the heart of modern atheism is the presupposition that God is something extra added on to the world, that when the believer uplifts his soul, he transcends the limits of a self-sufficient world and tries to add an unnecessary principle over it. If we keep our analysis of truly secular affairs in mind, this is, in a limited sense and only concerning a limited number of things, actually true. This is the grain of truth at the heart of modern secularism. But what the children are taught in popular culture and to some extent at schools is the illusion of a self-sufficient world to which God is an extra for those so inclined.

Moreover, the atheist’s trump card, the sovereignty of scientific reason, has legitimate force to it: we are indeed violating reason when we attempt to speak of God, but only reason as conceived by the atheist. What he fails to see is that his ideological position is a worldview like other worldviews; it is a way of seeing and thinking that cannot claim to itself neutrality over issues of life and death, because no such neutrality is possible.

The fullness of Christian message invites us to see the world in a particular way and it needs not be ashamed of being a belief, because in the most crucial areas of public life, a view entirely devoid of a belief is impossible. Even if we were to invoke the natural law and the methods of philosophy, which according to our belief all human persons can assent to, we would already be presuming that selfsame belief and its valuation of the world.

But if the worldviews are so different, how is debate and conversion possible? Perhaps the first inkling of a possible solution can be found in the way in which the world propagates its own agenda. Take for instance the global warming movement or the fight against world poverty. What both of these want to achieve is that when one considers buying a new car, one must also necessary think of the pollution factor and whether the money would not be better spent helping the poor. In other words, one is educated to transcend the limits of the strictly obvious and the strictly necessary.

Religion is neither obvious nor necessary in the sense that it does not force itself upon us. Coming to faith can in one way be compared to undergoing a paradigm shift, it means learning to see the world in a new light. If our religious practice is limited to one hour on Sunday and perhaps one lesson of religion education a week, what hope have we of acquiring what the Scriptures have called “the mind of Christ”? Again, religion is not a matter of positing new entities over a self-sufficient world; it is seeing that God is in fact present everywhere to everyone, as the dawn that comes down from on high.

For further reading:

John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles Laici (1988).

Two New Novices

2007-07-02T14:00:00.000+10:00

Two men, one from Bundaberg (Queensland) and another from Sydney, have begun their novitiate in the Hong Kong priory.

Brs Karl Emerick and Thomas Azzi (pictured here with Cardinal Zen, Bishop of Hong Kong) will spend the next year in prayer and preparation for their first profession in the middle of 2008.

Please pray for our novices!

Australian Dominican at Jerusalem Summer School

2007-06-01T13:41:00.000+10:00

The Dominican-run university in Jerusalem, L'Ecole Biblique et Archeologique Francaise, is conducting a summer school for two weeks in June. Designed for English-speaking Dominican students, the session is incorporating lectures by some of the faculty there. It is hoped that the exposure to the historical and archeological sites of interest to biblical scholars in the Holy Land will encourage these Dominicans to take up biblical studies as an area of specialisation in the future.

Founded by Fr Marie-Joseph Lagrange, O.P. in 1850 and based at St Stephen's Priory, L'Ecole is the oldest research institute in the Holy Land. Among other works, it was responsible for the production of the Jerusalem Bible, the 1985 translation of which is the translation of choice for the Lectionary.

The Assumption Province is sending Br Paul Rowse, O.P. (not pictured!) to participate in the summer school. Br Paul is presently working on a research paper on the Holy Spirit's presence to people in Luke and Acts. Once he's packed his bags, all that remains for Br Paul before he leaves for Jerusalem is to get his essays in two weeks' early!