Newman College - University of Melbourne

Transcription

The Newman College Newsletter
NEWM AN
Autumn 2014
Volu m e 4 6 • Nu m b er 1
Gardener
If it were England, and later in the day,
she might have met him, faded shirt,
scuffed leggings and all, partly shadowed
by long allees at, say, Chiswick –
everything turned to vista, seeking out
the Statue of Cain and Abel, the Domed
Building, the Rustic Arch, the Doric Column
Topped by Venus, the Bagnio,
the Obelisk, and the Deer House, and the rest.
As it was, the heart gone out of her with grief,
she picked her way through scrubby bushes,
expecting nothing but the nothing left
when love’s pegged up for the sun to eat.
It was peculiar, then, to round a rock
and find some idler, hands pinked
by spiky work, but the rest of him at ease,
liking the morning, nestling a crocus,
his wide mouth practiced about her name.
Peter Steele
John 20: 11–18
In this edition...
Gardener – Peter Steele SJ
2
Scholarships 2014
29
From the Rector
3
The SCR in 2014
32
From the Provost
5
The Healing Mind
35
Founders and Benefactors Mass 2013 8
College Ball
42
Valete 2013
10
From the NOCA President
43
Graduation
13
David McKenna 44
Diamond Jubilee Celebrations
14
John Kearney
46
Cardinal Newman Dinner
22
Weddings
48
Orientation 2014
25
News of Former Collegians
50
Commencement Mass and Dinner 2014
28
Remembering – Edmund Ryan
53
Good Friday
57
cover photo: A John Kauffmann photograph of the College, 1918.
inside front cover: The College gardens in 1950.
Other photograph in this publication come from: Michael Francis, Jenny Fiegel, Jack Fang, Sean Burke and Eileen Hu.
2
N e wman Au tumn 20 1 4 • Vo lum e 4 6 • Num b e r 1
from the
rector
the college in 2014
In 2014, we have 282 students in residence – the largest
the College has been in its almost one hundred year
history. There are also 18 non-residential members of the
College. The Junior Common Room is made up of 208
residents, about half men and half women, with nearly
60% coming from country areas in Australia,
predominantly from Victoria. The Senior Common Room
members residing in the College total 74, with slightly
more women than men. Most are engaged in Masters
Degrees (Coursework or Research), Professional
Degrees (predominantly in the Health Science areas),
Honours Degrees and eight in PhD studies. Almost
80% of the total student population are Catholics or
come out of the Catholic Schools System.
outreach 2014
We have already been the beneficiaries of three
outstanding after dinner speeches: Mr James Gorman
at the Cardinal Newman Dinner on the Global Financial
Crisis, Ms Kate Torney on the Australian Broadcasting
Corporation and her own career in media at the
Commencement Dinner, and Mr Michael McGirr, who
addressed us at our Council Dinner held in Holy Week
on “Healing”. We also heard an excellent address from
the Allan and Maria Myers Florey Institute Visiting
Fellow, Professor Vladimir Hachinski, on “Preventing
Stroke and Alzheimers”, and a panel, headed by
Professor Gerard Vaughan, on conserving Melbourne
and Victoria’s historic past and ensuring the future. This
last lecture is the first of three that Professor Vaughan
and Mr Shane Carmody are organising on this topic.
Seven Helder Camara lectures organised by Brother
Mark O’Connor, FMS, are planned for 2014. These
lectures will bring Dr Aoife McGrath (Pontifical
University of Maynooth), Archbishop Martinez
(Granada), Archbishop Diarmund Martin (Dublin),
Cardinal Louis Tagle (Manila), Cardinal Timothy Dolan
(New York), Bishop Robert Morneau (Green Bay),
and Dr Suzanne Mulligan (Pontifical University of
Maynooth) into our College. Along with this are the
continuing series of Irish Studies Seminars, and the
College Choir will present three concerts, one of which
in September will centre on the music of George
Gershwin and Cole Porter.
These “outreach” events continue to attract an
increasingly diverse audience, both religious and secular,
and enable the College to engage not only with
an academic and university constituency but also
with the wider Melbourne community.
N ewm an Au tum n 2 0 1 4 • Vo lum e 4 6 • Num be r 1
3
the allan and maria myers academic centre
It is now ten years since we opened the Allan and Maria
Myers Academic Centre. This Centre is a wonderful facility
enjoyed by the students of both Colleges. It also provided the
impetus for our remarkable Outreach Programme overseen
by Professor Manion IBVM. It is fitting at this time that we
again acknowledge those who brought this Centre into being.
Most importantly to Allan and Maria Myers who gave
$5,000,000 towards the cost of the Centre ($8,000,000),
to the architects, Peter Corrigan and Maggie Edmond, to
Sir James Gobbo who chaired the Appeal, to Mr Edmund
Ryan who managed the project from inception to finish,
on time and under budget, and to all the staff and the
contractors who worked tirelessly to ensure its happening.
It is a great blessing.
jesuit matters
Mr Kieran Gill, S.J., completed his Diploma of Education
studies at the Australian Catholic University at the end of
2013 and has left Newman to take up a teaching appointment
at St Ignatius College, Athelstone, in South Australia. Father
Christopher Horvat, S.J., continues in residence at Newman
while acting as assistant to the Australian Jesuit Provincial,
Father Stephen Curtin, S.J., at the Jesuit Provincial Office
in Hawthorn. Father Gerard Healy, S.J., has a 0.6 appointment
in the Graduate School of Education and has a special
chaplaincy ministry to Jesuit partner schools in Watsonia,
Drysdale and Hervey Bay (Queensland). In addition to my
rectorial duties I continue to serve on the board of the
University of Divinity and four ethics committees:
Royal Australasian College of Surgeons;
Melbourne Health;
Eastern Palliative Care;
Father Brian McCoy, S.J., who was resident at Newman
while completing his doctoral studies, has been appointed
to succeed Father Stephen Curtin, S.J., as Jesuit Provincial.
He will take up his appointment from July 31st, 2014.
We wish him well in his new appointment during these
volatile ecclesiastical times.
fees, scholarships and bursaries
In recent years, we have through careful management kept
our fees as low as low as possible. In addition, in 2014,
182 students are recipients of some sort of financial support
– the majority are in the form of a bursary. Our aim is to make
the College as accessible to as many families as possible.
We are extraordinarily fortunate in our benefactors, but it is
a still a relative few who contribute so generously to our
Scholarship and Bursary Fund.
Once again in 2014, we are blessed in having substantial gifts
from the Myers and Gannon Families. In addition, Cabrini
Health and the Eldon Hogan Trust continue to assist our
students. In 2013 and 2014, the Victor Fox Foundation have
made funds available to support students studying music;
the Italian Services Institute have made available funds
for the next three years to support students from an Italian
heritage in need; and, Ms Louise Arendsen, the niece of
former Rector, Michael Scott, has established scholarships
in his name. We are most grateful to them, and all our
benefactors.
Everyday in Mass, we give thanks to the benefactors past
and present. I ask all, who have are not at present donors
to the College, to consider a gift to the Scholarship Fund.
Providing an opportunity for others to attend this College,
and thus the University of Melbourne, is a great and good
blessing. All donations, large or small, help.
Kathleen Cunningham Breast Cancer Foundation.
W. J. Uren, S.J.
Rector, Newman College
April, 30th, 2014
4
celebrations
The start of 2014 provided us with a two memorable
opportunities for celebration.
from the
Provost
Sixty years ago, Bill Uren, at the tender age of seventeen,
was one of twelve who entered the Society of Jesus.
On Friday, 31st January, 2014, over 240 people gathered
at a celebratory Dinner in College to mark the Diamond
Jubilee of Father Uren’s joining the Jesuits.
The main address at the Dinner was given by Bishop
Greg O’Kelly SJ, who reflected upon Father Uren’s
commitment to tertiary education, his work in bioethics,
his active membership of many boards of directors, his
leadership roles in the Society of Jesus, his commitment
to exploring the boundaries of the sacred and the
secular, and his commitment to Jesuit cooperation with
the laity.
The Cardinal Newman Dinner was held on the
27th February, 2014, during Orientation Week, and to
coincide with a visit to Australia by former Collegian,
James Gorman, who agreed to be our guest speaker.
Academic Results 2013
Our results from 2013 were, again, most satisfactory.
Below is a summary of the undergraduate grades for
those attending the University of Melbourne in 2013.
H1
H2A
H2B
H3
P
F
26.7%21.9% 19.2% 13.7% 15.3% 3.1%
Four of our students appeared on the 2013 Dean’s
Honours List of the Faculty of Business and Economics:
Xiaowei Pan, Helen Zhou, Eduardo Riquelme and
Thomas Hennessy. Forty-three students – undergraduate
and graduate – achieved an H1 average for 2013.
My thanks to the Deputy Provost, the Senior Tutor, all
our academic tutors, the SCR mentors, and the General
Committee, who work together to create an appropriate
learning environment. Our tutorial programme for 2014
was up and running in the second week of the academic
term. Well over eighty tutorials are offered weekly to
undergraduates and graduates.
1
1 The Provost with SCR members: Alex Pham, Johnny Jiang
and Tracy Tian.
5
2
orientation 2014
All feedback, both formal and informal, suggests that
the 2014 Orientation Programme was most successful.
Providing a safe environment for learning and fun, managing
expectations, and giving a sense of the Mission of this
community, is a never-endingly complex and exciting task.
Many people need to be thanked for their support and
labours, the staff of the College, the students who assisted
in orientation under the leadership of Peter Catterson and
Alicia Deak, Senior Constable Nick Parissis, from the
North Melbourne Police, and Dr Jane Page and Ms Catherine
Gow from the University of Melbourne.
new scholars joining the scr
We are delighted that Dr Gerard Vaughan, former Director
of the National Gallery of Victoria, and Mr Shane Carmody,
former Director, Collections and Access, at the State Library
of Victoria, have accepted invitations to join the Senior
Common Room. Both Dr Vaughan and Mr Carmody, who
now have positions at the University of Melbourne, have
agreed to participate in our Outreach Programme, and Mr
Carmody is advising us on matters pertaining to fundraising.
the rotary club of melbourne
Two of our students were awarded Young Achiever Awards
by the Rotary Club of Melbourne. The Rector, the Deputy
Provost and I attended a lunch at the Windsor Hotel (soon
to be totally refurbished) where the Governor of Victoria
presented Awards to three young recipients – two from this
College, and the other to Ms Marita Cheng, a former student
of JCH, and the Young Australian of the Year in 2012. These
Awards are given for excellence and outstanding community
service for young folk between the ages 18-26. Vocational
excellence can be demonstrated through academic or
vocational education, business, sport or the Arts. Leadership
capabilities and broad interests are also common features of
future leaders.
6
3
major maintenance, stonework and
refurbishment
Our stonework restoration continues on the Dome rotunda.
This phase of the project is scheduled to be completed in
May. Indications are that we are on schedule and within
budget. Over the summer, we completed a number of minor
and major maintenance projects and the full refurbishment
of ‘A’ Extension. We are also in the process of examining
options for the redevelopment of the Fleming House site.
the start of the 2014 academic year
I am writing this in the seventh week of the academic
year. The only problem is that it is not the seventh week!
The advent of the graduate programmes and summer
undergraduate subjects mean that some students have been
in classes from early January. So the notion of an ‘academic
year’ being distinct from a ‘calendar year’ is fast disappearing.
Some random thoughts at this time:
• A
fter discussions with Jesuit Social Services, we have
agreed to be in partnership with them in helping young
people from disadvantaged backgrounds acquire work
experience and training. In 2014, we are employing the
equivalent of one full-time person in this capacity.
• A
s the SCR now represent almost 30% of the student
cohort, we have more formalised the structure of the SCR,
and the President of the SCR will now present a report to
the Council.
• T
he University is fast approaching parity with respect to
graduate and undergraduate numbers. About 30% of the
University population are International students. One
suspects that if one just looked at the graduate cohort,
this figure would be higher.
• T
here is much enthusiasm and energy on committees both
in the JCR and SCR. Opportunities to engage in community
service, social, sporting, cultural, intellectual and spiritual
activities abound. Sometimes we have to remind them to
do less, better, but one constantly encounters the goodness
of so many.
• T
he fact that our tutorial programme was up and running
in the second week of the semester is a great tribute to
both the Deputy Provost and the Senior Tutor.
• T
he Choir this year has a record fifteen students who are
residents of the College, and two who are non-resident
students, and one who is a former resident. The Choir is
a great blessing to this community.
• In early 2015, we are to host the launch of Brenda Niall’s
biography of Archbishop Mannix. Some work on the
history of Newman College has started.
• P
ossibly some of the most important discussions we have
had in recent months have centred around faith. We have
an energetic young committee who are keen to encourage
faith development, building upon existing structures and
offerings, and developing further opportunities for growth
and development. The Rector is continuing his Catechism
and Ethics sessions and we are examining opportunities for
another Camino de Santiago, and a retreat, and all are keen
to develop a synergy between social justice and our
development of faith. Simple provision for fellowship after
our Sunday Masses has been reinforced, and a group of
students have undertaken to provide music at our Sunday
morning Mass to complement the wonderful work of the
Choir during our Sunday evening Mass.
4
5
• W
e have just concluded our Easter celebrations.
The Services were extraordinarily well attended. The
Choir wonderfully complemented the liturgy at all
the four Services.
thanks
This community works, and it works well, because of the
endeavours of many. They deserve our thanks. The Staff,
and in particular those in leadership positions – the Deputy
Provost, the Business Manager, the Chaplain, the Services
Manager and the Director of the Academic Centre – deserve
special praise. The Council Committees, with their advice to
the College through the Council, provide an invaluable service
to this College. The co-operation and support of the General
Committee and the Senior Common Room are important
elements in this community. As with any family, we have our
moments, but the level of goodwill, kindness and
understanding is significant. And, most importantly, our
thanks must go to Father Rector and our Jesuit Fathers for
their leadership, guidance and challenge. Every year we
challenge ourselves to move out of our comfort zone, to
change and to grow closer to God. It is good work, and we
tread on ‘enchanted ground’.
Sean Burke
1st May, 2014
6
2 After the Commencement Dinner – with the Provost, from the
left: Jack Fang, Kieran Iles and Josh Chang from the SCR, Hillary
Mansour (Arts 1 from Melbourne), Xiaowei Pan (Commerce 2
from China), Miranda Fenton (Arts 1 from Tasmania), Kingsley
Advani (Commerce 2 from Queensland), Monique Bulan (Arts 1
from the Philippines), Kamwende Gatende (Commerce I from
Kenya) and Elizabeth Gauw (Biomedicine 1 from Indonesia).
3 With the Rector, Provost and Deputy Provost, Rotary Young
Achievers of 2013, Dr Sarajane Ting and Ms Christina Jovanovic.
4 Choir members: Tom Attard (Science 2), Lily Nalder (Science 2)
and Matthew Thompson.
5 Harry Ukich from Barooga, NSW (Environments 3), Rebecca
Thwaites from Leongatha, Victoria (Science 3), Ella Trimboli from
Perth, Western Australia (Environments 3) and Mickie Tanna from
St Lucia, Queensland (Science 2).
6 More Choir members – Liam Headland (Music 1) and Matthew
Bennett (Science 2).
7
JOHN HENRY
NEWMAN
FOUNDERS AND
BENEFACTORS MASS
The homily given by the Rector at the Founders and
Benefactors Mass on October 20th, 2013.
John Henry Newman was born on February 21st, 1801.
He died on August 11th, 1890. His life, then, spanned nine
decades of the Nineteenth Century and all but eleven years
of the reign of Queen Victoria. He outlived five Popes
(Pius VII, Leo XII, Pius VIII, Gregory XVI and Pius IX). Forty
five years of his life were spent as a very committed, active
and controversial member of the Anglican Church, and the
other forty five years were spent as an equally committed,
active and controversial member of the Catholic Church.
Newman ministered as a priest of the Anglican communion
from 1825 to 1843, famously as Vicar of St. Mary’s, the
University church at Oxford, from 1828 to 1843. Subsequent
to his conversion to the Catholic Church on October 9th,
1845, he travelled to Rome where he was ordained as a priest
of the Oratorian Congregation on May 30th, 1847. He was
accused and convicted of libel in the famous Achilli trial on
June 24th, 1852, a conviction that was both contrary to the
manifest evidence and was an index of the depth of antiCatholic sentiment that his conversion to Catholicism seven
years earlier had provoked.
He was created a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church
by Pope Leo XIII on May 12, 1879, and he was beatified by
Pope Benedict XVI at Cofton Park in Birmingham on
September 19th, 2010. His feast day is October 9th, the day
in 1845 on which he was received into the Catholic Church
by the Italian Passionist, Father Dominic Barbieri.
These are some of the more salient facts of Newman’s life.
But who was this man who figured so prominently not only
in the religious but also in the academic, social and even
political life of Victorian England? He was first and foremost
a writer. The great Irish author, James Joyce, no mean stylist
himself, said of Newman that “nobody has ever written
English prose that can be compared with that of a tiresome
footling Anglican parson who afterwards became a prince of
the only true church”.
8
Newman wrote over thirty books, there are seven volumes
of his sermons and addresses, and there are thirty two
volumes – each of almost 500 pages – of his letters and
diaries. He wrote letters, he wrote sermons, he wrote critical
historical works, he wrote controversial religious tracts, he
wrote verse, mainly religious, of sufficient quality to be
included in most reputable anthologies of Victorian poetry.
He wrote philosophical and theological treaties of enduring
religious significance, he wrote two novels, “Callista” and
“Loss and Gain”, and he wrote the lyrics of the “Dream of
Gerontius”, which was set to music by Edward Elgar in 1900.
It is hard to overestimate the significance of Newman’s
contribution to English life and letters, not only in his own
lifetime but well into the Twentieth Century and beyond.
He was an exact contemporary of Charles Darwin – whose
“Origin of Species” he believed constituted no threat to
Christianity – and of John Stuart Mill, of Charles Dickens,
Thomas Carlyle and George Eliot, of Alfred Tennyson and
William Makepeace Thackeray, of William Ewart Gladstone
and Benjamin Disraeli, and he shared the Victorian stage with
all of these. At the time of the Modernist crisis in the Catholic
Church at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, Newman
was both invoked and pilloried as the source of some of
their ideas. And fifty years later he was hailed as the father
and the inspiration of the Second Vatican Council.
Among his theological works his “Essay on the Development
of Christian Doctrine”, his essay “On Consulting the Faithful
in Matters of Doctrine” and his “Letter to the Duke of
Norfolk” liberated many of the better-read bishops and their
advisers at the Second Vatican Council from the stifling and
narrow anti-Modernist theology that had dominated Catholic
thought during the first half of the Century. Whenever
the nature of university education is discussed, Newman’s
“Idea of a University” is sure to be cited, even if only in
disagreement because he did not advert to the important
of research in a university’s profile. His latest (1870)
substantial work, “The Grammar of Assent” is a serious
philosophical tract in the field of epistemology.
The distinction he draws between real and notional assent
and the priority he assigns to conscience continue to have
relevance to this day. His sermons, while perhaps more than
a little ponderous for modern taste, are generally
acknowledged as masterpieces of English prose and rhetoric.
And finally, of course, his “Apologia Pro Vita Sua” cedes pride
of place only to the “Confessions” of St. Augustine as an
expression of spiritual autobiography.
Granted, then, the eminence of John Henry Newman in the
Victorian age and his enduring legacy, it was not surprising
that when the founders of this institution in 1918 sought for
a name and a patron to signify this college of the University
of Melbourne, they chose the name of John Henry Newman.
He was not even beatified then, let alone a saint, and to some
degree he was under an ecclesiastical cloud for having been
invoked by the Modernists as a predecessor to some of their
alleged heretical views. But his outstanding intellectual gifts
as a theologian, as an historian, a philosopher, a poet and
a rhetorician, the holiness of his life and his willingness both
as an Anglican and a Catholic to enter into controversy – all
these made him a very appropriate, if somewhat surprising,
choice by the founding fathers of this new Catholic college
for its patron. Their choice has been more than vindicated
over the last ninety years.
It has been frequently said the Newman College was
fortunate in its choice of architect, Walter Burley Griffin.
Again it was a surprising choice – not a Catholic, not a
local architect, not even an Australian, already in 1918 mired
in controversy over his designs for the national capital. The
founding fathers of this College have been vindicated over the
years in the wisdom and foresight of their choice of architect.
May I suggest as we commemorate our founders and the
College’s many benefactors at this Mass today, that they are
at least equally to be congratulated for what was then in 1918
an especially bold choice of patron – John Henry Newman.
9
“For I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and
you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you made me
welcome; naked and you clothed me, sick and you visited
me, in prison and you came to see me” (Matthew 26:35)
Valete
Mass 2013
The homily given by Father
Rector at the Valete Mass on
Friday, 11th October, 2013.
On July 8th Pope Francis went to Lampedusa on his first
official visit outside Rome. The Pope said Mass in a sports
field which had served as a reception centre for thousands
who fled the Arab Spring unrest in North Africa in 2011. He
used a wooden chalice carved by a local carpenter out of the
wood of a migrant boat. His altar was a small painted boat.
And then he laid a wreath in the port in memory of the
thousands of migrants from Africa who have died trying to
reach this small Sicilian island. His words on the occasion
were direct and confronting:
“Where is your brother?” Who is responsible for this blood? In
Spanish literature we have a comedy of Lope de Vega which tells
how the people of the town of Fuente Ovejuna kill their governor
because he is a tyrant. They do it in such a way that no one knows
who the actual killer is. So when the royal judge asks: “Who killed
the governor?”, they all reply: “Fuente Ovejuna, sir”. Everybody
and nobody! Today too, the question has to be asked: Who is
responsible for the blood of these brothers and sisters of ours?
Nobody! That is our answer: It isn’t me; I don’t have anything to
do with it; it must be someone else, but certainly not me. Yet God
is asking each of us: “Where is the blood of your brother which
cries out to me?” Today no one in our world feels responsible;
we have lost a sense of responsibility for our brothers and sisters.
We have fallen into the hypocrisy of the priest and the levite
whom Jesus described in the parable of the Good Samaritan:
we see our brother half dead on the side of the road, and perhaps
we say to ourselves: “poor soul…!”, and then go on our way. It’s not
our responsibility, and with that we feel reassured, assuaged. The
culture of comfort, which makes us think only of ourselves, makes
us insensitive to the cries of other people, makes us live in soap
bubbles which, however lovely, are insubstantial; they offer a
fleeting and empty illusion which results in indifference to others;
indeed, it even leads to the globalization of indifference. In this
1
2
10
The island of Lampedusa is a tiny island in the Mediterranean
Sea about 120 kilometres off the coast of Tunisia. Traditionally
its only claim to fame was its fishing and tourism industries.
But in recent years it has become one of the main points of
entry into Europe for poor and desperate migrants willing to
risk the crossing from North Africa to Italy. They usually make
the crossing in overcrowded and unsafe fishing vessels and
small boats. Thousands are known to have died over the
years and numbers of others are presumed lost without trace.
Just last week somewhere between 250 and 300 lives were
lost when a boat carrying refugees capsized off the coast of
Lampedusa. Lampedusa is in effect Italy’s Christmas Island.
globalized world, we have fallen into globalized indifference.
We have become used to the suffering of others: it doesn’t affect
me; it doesn’t concern me; it’s none of my business!
Now, I would not want to underestimate the immensity of the
refugee “problem” – if that is the right word – nor do I think
there is an easy “solution”. But what I think the Pope is
reminding us as a primary consideration is that in addressing
the situation it is human beings and human lives – like the
man fallen among thieves on the road from Jerusalem to
Jericho – that are at stake. It is not a refugee or asylum seeker
“problem”. It is asylum seekers and refugees. And no
“solution” therefore is acceptable that is inhumane either in
whole or in part to people.
And what is true of asylum seekers and refugees off
Lampedusa and Christmas Island is true also of those people
who live on the margins, not on our borders, but within our
communities, too – the people Jesus invokes in the Gospel
reading we have just heard: the hungry, the thirsty, the
stranger, the naked, the sick, the imprisoned – they, too, are
people, not problems. And we, I submit, not just as
Christians, but as fellow human beings have a responsibility
for them. Jesus said these things because they are right; they
are not right simply because Jesus said them.
The Pope talks about us living in a bubble: “The culture of
comfort, which makes us think only of ourselves, makes us
insensitive to the cries of other people, makes us live in soap
bubbles which, however lovely, are insubstantial”. Those of us
who have lived at Newman College even for just a year know
that we do live in a bubble. Even compared to virtually all the
other students who attend the University of Melbourne, we
know that we are very comfortable and very privileged. It can
easily make us self-centred, it can make us insensitive to the
cries of other people, it can make us indifferent to the
problems that beset our society and, indeed, our world. Or it
can make us realize that the appropriate response to being
privileged at one time is being willing to accept responsibility
at another. The French have a word for it: “Noblesse oblige”.
But has living at Newman as a matter of fact made us
self-centred, insensitive and indifferent? There are signs even
now. Have you participated in community service or the
tutoring programmes conducted by the Students’ Club or in
similar activities within the University itself? Have you
befriended a stranger in College or have you stuck to your
own group? Have you in effect broken out of the bubble?
Have you changed? “To live is to change, and to be perfect is
to change often” as John Henry Newman reminds us.
Perhaps you have changed and broken out of the bubble.
Perhaps you haven’t. But even if you haven’t, there is still
hope. At this time of the year we are inclined to ask: “Has
2013 been a successful year at Newman?” May I suggest that
we will only know at the earliest ten or fifteen years down the
track. It’s only if our valetants this evening and all the rest of
us gathered together in this chapel are then devoting a not
insubstantial part of our time, resources and energy, whether
in our professional practice or in our leisure time, to feeding
the hungry, alleviating the thirsty, visiting the stranger,
clothing the naked, visiting the sick and the imprisoned that
we can affirm that 2013 has been a successful year at
Newman and that in one way or other some of us did manage
to break out of the bubble. Otherwise we will have just
exchanged the Newman bubble for another bubble. Perhaps a
corporate bubble, or a professional bubble, or a wealth
bubble, or a society bubble, or a fashion bubble, or a football
bubble or an entertainment bubble – the Pope’s words: “all
lovely, insubstantial…a fleeting and empty illusion”.
So, to those of you who are leaving – and, indeed, to those of
you who are staying – please don’t keep just bubbling along.
Like the Blues Brothers, I’m sending you on a mission. Make a
difference. Don’t let people perish off the coast of Lampedusa
or Christmas Island or on the streets of Melbourne, Sydney,
Brisbane, Adelaide or Perth, or, for that matter, those of
Mumbai, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur or Quito. Change
yourself, burst out of the bubble, change at least the little part
of the world you live in. Or, as the College motto has it:
“Luceat lux vestra” – “let your light shine”.
1 Valetants: Madeleine Lloyd,
Patrick Woods, Patrick Burke and
Dominic Gasparini.
2 Valetants Charles Li and Sarajane
Ting with the Rector.
3 Valetant Van Ngo with the Provost
and Rector.
3
11
Valete 2013
The following students, having met the necessary criteria, were formally farewelled
at our Valete Mass and Dinner held on the 11th October, 2013:
Emma Bechaz
Sean Keem
Ben O’Shea
Daniel Belluzzo
Genevieve Lawrence
Sandeep Pratap
Patrick Burke
Charles Li
Will Pridmore
Fei Diao
Madeleine Lloyd
Pratheepan Puvanakumar
Hana Fraser
Kimberley Malone
Emma Sevior
June Gabriel
Callum Maltby
Daniel Sinnott
Dominic Gasparini
Robert McCubbin
Miriam Storti
Julia Gorton
Rebecca McElhatton
Matt Thomas
Molly Hennessey
Felix Moeller
Sarajane Ting
Thomas Hennessy
Van Ngo
Rhys Wilkosz
Will Howard
Nathan O’Hanlon
Lachie Williams
Elspeth James
Larissa Ong
Patrick Woods.
At the Mass each were presented with a crucifix by one of the Jesuit Fathers
and at Dinner the Provost gave a brief reflection on each of the Valetants.
12
graduation
Every year students who are at the College, or who have previously been at the College,
graduate from the University of Melbourne. For example, at the Medical graduations in
December, 2013, thirteen current or formers students graduated from the University.
Here we feature but some of these graduations.
1
2
3
4
1 Arts (Honours) graduates Sophia McQuillan, Michael Francis and
Richard Lyons, with the Provost.
2 Charles Li after graduating with degrees in Medicine, Surgery and
Medical Science with the Rector and Provost. Charles spent six years in
College with another year away studying at Yale University.
3 Sarajane Ting after graduating with degrees in Medicine, Surgery,
and Medical Science (Honours) with the Rector, Provost and her
parents. Sarajane spent five years in College and a year away at the
University of Oxford.
4 2013 President of the Students’ Club, Dominic Gasparini with
his parents after receiving his B. Science. Dominic is reading for the
MD in 2014.
5 Graduating JD student Timothy Gorton with the Rector.
5
13
Diamond Jubilee
the Rector’s joining of
the Society of Jesus
14
1
Sixty years ago, Bill Uren, at the tender age of seventeen, was one of twelve who entered the Society of Jesus.
On Friday, 31st January, 2014, over 240 people gathered at a celebratory Dinner at Newman College
(University of Melbourne) to mark the Diamond Jubilee of Father Uren’s joining the Jesuits. Also at the Dinner
were Fathers Julian Slatterie SJ and Terry Kelly SJ, who also joined the Jesuits on the same day.
The main address at the Dinner was given by Bishop Greg
O’Kelly SJ, who reflected upon Father Uren’s commitment to
tertiary education, his work in bioethics, his active
membership of many boards of directors, his leadership roles
in the Society of Jesus, his commitment to exploring the
boundaries of the sacred and the secular, and his
commitment to Jesuit cooperation with the laity.
A graduate from the Universities of Melbourne, Sydney and
Oxford and the Melbourne College of Divinity, Father Uren
has lectured in moral philosophy and bioethics at Murdoch
and Edith Cowan Universities in Perth, at the University
of Melbourne and the University of Queensland. He was the
Foundation Director of the Goody Centre for Bioethics in
Perth and has been Rector of three Jesuit University
Colleges: Newman College, St Thomas More College in
Perth and St. Leo’s College in Brisbane. From 1991 to 1996
he was Provincial Superior of the Australian and New Zealand
Province of the Society of Jesus. He has served on over
twenty clinical and research ethics committees in hospitals,
institutes of medical research, universities and professional
bodies, and for three years worked as a clinical ethicist at the
Mater Hospital complex in Brisbane. From 2000 to 2006 he
was a member of the Australian Health Ethics Committee of
the National Health and Medical Research Council. He is
currently a member of the board of the Melbourne College of
Divinity, and was formerly a member of the boards of Cabrini
Hospital, the Queensland Institute of Medical Research and
Boystown Family Care. He was the foundation Chair of the
Xavier College Council.
Father Uren has published widely on issues such as the law
and abortion, moral and ethical aspects of assisted
reproduction, euthanasia, stem cell research, treatment of the
human embryo, gene therapy, ethical dilemmas in rationing
the health dollar and informed consent for research. He is a
much respected Catholic voice in the secular environment.
Also speaking at the Dinner were the Provincial of the Society
of Jesus, Father Steve Curtin SJ, the Provost, Mr Sean Burke,
and Dr John Uren, the Rector’s brother. Archbishop Denis
Hart brought the evening to a close with the final blessing
and Grace.
1 The Rector with Archbishop Denis Hart
and Bishop Greg O’Kelly SJ.
2
2 At the Rector’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations
a trio of Jesuits: Bishop Greg O’Kelly, Provincial,
Father Steve Curtin, and Father Michael Stoney.
15
the address given by father rector at
these celebrations:
Your Grace, Bishop O’Kelly, Father Provincial, Reverend
Fathers, Brothers, Sisters, Ladies and Gentlemen:
First, a word of thanks to Father Provincial, Steve Curtin,
to my brother, John, and to my friend and Jesuit colleague,
Bishop Greg O’Kelly. Yes, despite some of the things he has
just said, he is still my friend. Being appointed a bishop,
Australia’s first and only Jesuit bishop – and setting a
precedent, one might say, for a parallel first appointment of a
Jesuit to the Papacy – this being a bishop hasn’t changed
Greg a bit. Whenever he comes to Melbourne he still drinks
my whisky!
3
Second, thanks to the Provost, Sean Burke, for organising this
evening, and to our Business Manager, Becky Daley, our
Services Manager, Eugene Spanti, and our chefs and dining
room staff for implementing Sean’s initiative. Sean really likes
celebrating anniversaries and having a party. Great venue,
sorry about the weather! Thanks, too, to John Funder who has
provided the wine for tonight’s celebration from his own
vineyard.
Thirdly, thanks to all of you for coming this evening, especially
during the oppressive weather we have been experiencing
recently in Melbourne. Your presence is most appreciated
and, I can assure you, is really quite overwhelming.
And fourthly, a small correction to the invitation which the
College sent you. It was my oversight entirely. It said on the
invitation that I had eleven companions on the day I entered
the Jesuit novitiate at Loyola College, Watsonia, on February
1st, 1954. As a matter of strict fact there were thirteen of us,
not twelve – six from Xavier College, three from St. Ignatius
College, Riverview, in Sydney, two from St. Louis School in
Perth, one from Gregory Terrace in Brisbane and one from the
Jesuit parish of Sevenhill in Adelaide. But one of our number,
a very quick learner – he was dux of Riverview – left the
novitiate the next morning. Hence, very quickly, we were
twelve instead of the original thirteen of the night before.
4
16
We were joined by two others in the course of 1954, so we
were fourteen novices altogether at one stage. Of these, two
further left as novices, two left as scholastics, and three left
subsequently as priests – so a 50% survival rate! Of the
seven who survived, two have died, Tony Walsh and Tim
Quinlan, so there are five of us left. Terry Kelly and Julian
Slatterie are here with me at High Table this evening, Bob
Bruce is at St. Aloysius College in Sydney, and Tom Keogh has
been for over fifty years in the Australian Jesuit Mission in
Hazaribagh in India. Tom is the real hero of the 1954 cohort,
contributing mightily to Jesuit education in India at the
highest levels.
5
When we entered the Jesuit novitiate on February 1st, 1954,
there were 347 Jesuits in Australia, and 123 of these were in
training either as novices or as scholastics/seminarians. The
numbers peaked for the Australian Province in 1963 when
there were 404 Jesuits, of whom 156 were in training. Today
there are 133 Jesuits in the Australian Province, only 11 of
whom are in training. We have two young men entering the
novitiate in Mount Druitt, Sydney, on Sunday, Joshua Choong,
37, and Brett O’Neill, 32, not quite as young as most of us
were in 1954. So, let’s pray for them and let’s pray and hope
for a further increase in vocations to the priesthood and the
religious life.
The extraordinary thing, however, is that, despite the dramatic
decline in manpower, the Australian Jesuit Province is
involved in about twice the number of ministries it was
involved in in 1954. When I was at Xavier in 1953 there were
26 Jesuits and 18 lay teachers for a total school population
– Xavier, Burke and Kostka Halls – of just on 1000 students.
Now there are 200 lay teachers and only two Jesuits in a
school of over 2,200 students. In this, as in so many other of
our Jesuit ministries, the laity have taken up the slack. It has
been the most significant transition not only in Jesuit
ministries but in the Australian Church as a whole over the
last 60 years.
I know I speak for all my Jesuit confreres when I say how
grateful we are for the way in which we have been supported
by the laity not only in the actual ministries themselves – in
education, social welfare and pastoral care – but also in
various lay/Jesuit boards and councils, in offering advice and
expertise and, of course, in financial support. As an eminent
predecessor of mine at Newman, Father Gerald Daily,S.J.,
3 The Jesuit Provincial addressing the Dinner.
4 The Reverend Canon Professor John Morgan with the Provincial
of the Society of Jesus, Father Steve Curtin SJ.
used to say – and he said he was quoting that most practical
of women, St. Teresa of Avila – “Very little good and very little
evil can be done without money.”
I know personally that, apart from the ten years I have spent
in seminaries in ecclesiastical education and the ten years in
universities and secular education, I have hardly ever worked
in a ministry that has involved more than two or three Jesuits.
My lay colleagues have done the heavy lifting, and I am
profoundly grateful to so many of you out there tonight with
whom I have had the privilege of working. If the Jesuit
enterprise in Australia is alive and flourishing – and I think
that it is – it is in large part due to so many dedicated and
expert lay colleagues who, often at no small personal cost,
have joined themselves to us. May I take the opportunity of
this 60th anniversary to salute and thank you all.
John Henry Newman, the patron of this College, once wrote:
“To live is to change, and to be perfect is to change often.”
If this is the case, this is my sole claim to perfection. I’ve
changed Jesuit communities many times over the past 60
years – just on twenty times to be exact. Most of these
changes have been regular and predictable, but about once
every decade or so something quite different has emerged
more or less out of the blue. Although initially this has been
more than a little disconcerting, in the end I have been
profoundly grateful. I mean no disrespect to my erstwhile
Provincial Superiors and their consultors who made these
decisions, but on most of these occasions I may, at least
initially, have said to myself: “Here we go again. This must be
the will of God, because no sensible human being would have
made this particular decision!” It usually takes me about
eighteen months for me to realize that the decision might
also have been sensible from a human point of view!
When I entered the Jesuits all I wanted to do was to go
back to Xavier College, join the Jesuit community there,
teach a few classes and coach cricket and football. At the
end of two years in the novitiate and three years studying
scholastic philosophy, I was scheduled to go to the university.
5 Ray and Margaret Wilson with Chris Marshall and Jane Page.
17
6
I was initially enrolled, precisely in view of a career in
secondary education, in English, History and Ancient Greek
and Latin. But about a week before the first term began,
Father Noel Ryan,S.J., who was in charge of Jesuit university
studies at the time, made the mistake of going to a
Melbourne University Philosophy Conference at Portsea. It
was the height of British linguistic and analytic philosophy,
and Noel was both bedazzled and challenged by it. So I was
withdrawn from English, History, Greek and Latin – and in
effect from secondary education – and launched on
Philosophy Honours. “It must be the will of God” I’m sure I
would have said, as then at least I was a pious and obedient
Jesuit scholastic!
they call it?” I thought:”This is a strange question for a
distinguished prelate and a knight of the realm to be asking
a celibate male religious.” So, I replied very circumspectly:
“Not much.” it was less than three years since the first IVF
baby, Louise Brown, was born in July, 1978. “Well, neither
does anybody else,” the Archbishop replied, “but the
Western Australian Government is setting up an IVF Ethics
Committee and they want a Catholic representative. You’re
it.” So, I moved from moral philosophy and jurisprudence to
bioethics, and thirty odd years later and membership of over
twenty clinical and human research ethics committees in
universities, hospitals and research institutes, I’m still at it.
It, too, must have been the will of God!
Then, ten years later, in 1970, when I had managed to make
some headway in Philosophy, mainly in the Philosophy of law
and the relation of law to morality, and I had completed
theological studies and was ordained, I was appointed to
Canisius College in Sydney. From there I was to take up a
research fellowship in jurisprudence at the University of Sydney
Law School. During theology I had completed a Diploma of
Jurisprudence at the Law School, where there was a flourishing
school of legal philosophy under the leadership of Professor
Julius Stone and Tony Blackshield. I had moved to Sydney,
books and all, when there was a call from the Provincial, Father
Peter Kelly,S.J., to return to Melbourne. There was a vacancy as
Dean of Newman that Gerald Daily, the then Rector, said must
be filled by a Jesuit. Thus began a career of twenty eight years
in four university colleges, fifteen years of which have been at
Newman. So, once again, it must have been the will of God!
I could go on. Ten years later, in August, 1990, when I was
Rector of Newman and we were celebrating the centernary of
the death of Cardinal Newman in the Great Hall of the
National Gallery with John Funder as the guest speaker, Peter
Steele, the then Provincial, drew me aside and said: “You are
to be the next Provincial.” I’m not sure that was the will of
God. I was once at a meeting of Jesuit Superiors subsequently
and we were talking about some of the difficulties a Superior
encounters in exercising that role, and I said that I quite
enjoyed being Jesuit Provincial. There was a general sharp
intake of breath, and then one of the assembled brethren said
not exactly sotto voce: “You would!” He evidently thought it
was the permissive, rather than the active, will of God – like,
“Why does God let the innocent suffer?”
Then, again a decade later, in 1980, I was happily ensconced
as Rector of St. Thomas More College in Perth, also Chaplain
to the University of Western Australia and lecturing in moral
philosophy at a couple of Colleges of Advanced Education,
when I had a ring from the Archbishop of Perth. He rejoiced in
the wonderful Arthurian name of Archbishop Sir Lancelot
Goody. Could I make an appointment to see him? When I
arrived he was, as usual, blunt and to the point: “What do you
know about this IVF,” he said, “ in vitro fertilization, I think .
18
And then finally in 2003, I was living at the Jesuit presbytery
in Toowong in Brisbane. I was gathering some first-hand
bioethics experience working as the hospital ethicist at the
Mater Hospital complex in South Brisbane – paediatric
intensive care rounds on a Tuesday, private hospital intensive
care rounds on a Wednesday, public hospital intensive care
rounds on a Thursday and neonatal intensive care rounds on
a Friday. Mark Raper, the Provincial, took me out for a cup
of coffee. He seemed very interested in, and supportive of,
the coalface ethical experience I was having at the Mater.
7
Then he sprang the surprise: “Andy Bullen has been ten years
as Rector of Jesuit Theological College. He needs a break. I’d
like you to succeed him in mid-year.” I was flabbergasted.
Then he added: “ And Peter L’Estrange has been thirteen
years at Newman. He also needs a break. There’s a new chap
at Newman as Deputy Rector, Sean Burke. I hear he’s very
experienced and very competent. Could you also fill in as
Acting Rector at Newman – a figurehead?” So, in the
mornings I’d walk from Jesuit Theological College to
Newman, and after lunch I’d tread the same path back from
Newman to JTC, thinking of all the exercise I was getting and
not exactly muttering: “ The will of God – must be – no
sensible human being would load you with two Rectorships,
let alone with Sean Burke as well!”
So, more or less every ten years of my Jesuit life a significant
change has happened. In 1960 the change was in effect from
a career in secondary education to a career in tertiary
education. In 1970 I left Sydney and the Law School for
Melbourne and Newman College. In 1980 the change was
from legal and moral philosophy to bioethics and to clinical
and human research ethics committees. In 1990 I left the
students of Newman College for the Jesuits of the Australian
Province. As Pat O’Sullivan is reputed to have said: “Being
Provincial is like being the driver of a truckload of drunken
footballers.” So, Newman was a good preparation! And finally
in 2003 I exchanged the intensive care wards of the Mater
Hospital for Jesuit Theological College. Again, not a bad
preparation!
6 Father Chris Willcock SJ with Sally and
Francis Moore.
7 Allan and Maria Myers with Father Andrew
Hamilton SJ.
8
So, I do recall frequently John Henry Newman: “To live is to
change, and to be perfect is to change often.” The next
instalment is just about due. I hope the Provincial is not
listening!
A very good friend of mine, Kay Cole, sent me a book this
week. It’s called: “You Only Get One Innings.” It’s by a South
Australian schoolteacher turned journalist, Barry Nicholls.
The blurb on the back cover says it is “a backyard memoir on
how cricket can change your life.” Some of the chapter
headings are very pertinent – I’m sure Kay knew what she
was doing when she sent me the book. They read as follows:
Prologue:
The shadow shot.
One:
Slow is good.
Two:
Appreciate your generation.
Three:
Trust your instincts.
Four:
Respect what has gone before.
Five:
Dream big.
Six:
We all need a community.
Seven:
Value work, however menial.
Eight:
Take risks.
Nine:
People make things happen.
Ten:Hope.
Eleven:
Build good partnerships.
Twelve: Develop a love of reading.
Thirteen:
Keep it simple.
Fourteen:
Know your limitations.
Fifteen:
No pain, no gain.
Sixteen:
You only get one innings.
Seventeen:
Know when to quit.
Eighteen:
Play like you’re a kid.
Nineteen:
Don’t drink too much.
Twenty:
Everything is not as it seems.
Twenty-one: Leave sporting heroes to childhood.
Twenty-two: Enjoy where you’re at now.
Twenty-three: T20 isn’t cricket.
Twenty-four: Cricket’s not that important.
8 Carole Hart and Professor Jack Martin.
19
9
12
After sixty years as a Jesuit I’ve had a very good innings. I’ve
been lucky enough to be dropped a number of times in the
slips and have LBW decisions reversed on appeal. As I’ve
indicated, there have been more than a few surprises – shortpitched Mitch Johnson bumpers aimed at the head – but, as
Ian Chappell would say, you either learn to hook or you get
hurt. I’ve had some bruises, one or other ecclesiastical
missiles in mid-innings that I didn’t quite avoid! But if I have
survived, there are so many people in the team that I have to
thank – forgive me, it’s a long list.
First of all, may parents, Bill and Mary, and my family, Mary,
my sister who died much too prematurely in 1987, and my
brother, John, his wife, Fay, and their family – seven of them
with their spouses and children, all there on Table 1. I’ve even
had a grand-nephew here at Newman, Lachlan. For the most
part he managed very wisely to conceal the relationship from
the other students!
10
11
20
Secondly, my teachers and supervisors: school, seminary,
university. In the first instance, the Sisters of St. Joseph at St.
Roch’s School, Glen Iris. thanks to them I’m very good at
spelling, I’m a pedant at punctuation, I still know how to parse
and I know the difference between a direct object and a
complement – very important for foreign languages! Then,
there are the Jesuits and lay teachers at Xavier College, to
whom above all, under God, I owe my vocation as a Jesuit:
Paul Keenan, Jerry Owens, Dan Fitzpatrick, Walmsley Smith,
Jimmy Dynon, Paddy Stephenson, Lud Van Baer, Joe
O’Dwyer. My guides and lecturers in the seminaries at
Watsonia and Pymble: Ned Riordan, John Begley, Pat
McEvoy, Jim Flynn, Tony Finn, Bill Dalton, Peter Kelly, Dermot
Hogan, Bill Daniel, Peter Kenny, Phil Gleeson, Noel Ryan,
Des Durnin. The lecturers and supervisors at the Universities
of Melbourne, Sydney and Oxford: at Melbourne Max
Charlesworth, here tonight, Eric D’Arcy, David Armstrong,
John and Mary McCloskey, Camo Jackson (whose son, Frank,
is also with us tonight); Ilmar Tammelo, Tony Blackshield and
John Traill at Sydney Law School; and Tony Kenny, Richard
Hare, Justin Gosling, John Ackrill and Philippa Foot at Oxford.
13
Three very special diocesan priests: Tom Considine at East
Malvern and Patrick Loughnan and Vin Arthur at Glen Iris,
where I was an altar boy for many years.
Then, there are the people I’ve served with, and learned from,
on so many boards, councils, Heads of University Colleges
and ethics committees, and the groups whom I’ve been
privileged to serve as a chaplain in the Teams of Our Lady and
the Christian Life Community.
There are the Jesuit and lay staff with whom I’ve worked
mainly in university colleges; here at Newman especially, but
also at St. Thomas More College and St. Catherine’s College
in Perth, and St. Leo’s College in Brisbane; also at JTC and
Toowong.
And don’t forget the students – God bless them – both
graduate and undergraduate with whom I’ve lived in
university colleges for almost thirty years – always
challenging, at times exasperating, but mostly delighting.
Finally, my friends: men and women – I need say no more
– and my Jesuit brethren – as Chapter 6 said in “You Only Get
One Innings”: “We all need a community.”
Thanks to you all once again for coming this evening,
especially to my fellow novices, Terry and Julian. Thanks to
Steve, Father Provincial, to Bishop Greg and to my brother,
John, for their (mostly) kind words, and to Archbishop Denis
Hart, who has graced us with his presence. Denis and I were
together at Xavier, albeit separated by about five years, and
he is now the very supportive chairman of the Newman
College Council. And finally, of course, thanks to the Provost,
Sean Burke, and to the staff at Newman for making this
happen. I feel and know that I am very privileged.
I never thought in those 60 years that I have been a Jesuit
that I would live to see a Jesuit Pope. But it is another one of
those surprises that overtakes us. He said recently about
being a Jesuit: “Being a Jesuit means being a person of
incomplete thought, of open thought – because he is always
thinking by looking at the horizon of the even greater glory of
God who surprises us endlessly.”
Sometimes I think that I have had enough of surprises. But in
my better moments, even after 60 years, I look forward to
those new horizons Pope Francis commends to Jesuits.
9 Cherry Collins, Gonni Runia and Professor Hugh Collins, former
Master of Ormond College.
10 Fellow Diamond Jubilee Jesuits, Father Julian Saltterie SJ and
Father Terry Kelly SJ, with former Collegian, Dr Richard O’Bryan.
11 The brothers Uren, John and William, with Professor Gabriel
McMullen.
12 Former Collegians Alice Mulhebach, Naomita Royan and
Louise McInerney with Alistair Pound.
13 Aneleise Gannon and Will Bell with Noa Ascheich
and Liran Haim.
14 Professor Margaret Manion IBVM with Professor Andrew McGowan,
Warden of Trinity College and Dr Felicity Harley-McGowan.
14
21
1
2
Cardinal
Newman Dinner
27 february 2014
The Cardinal Newman Dinner was held on the 27th February, 2014,
during Orientation Week, and to coincide with a visit to Australia by former Collegian,
James Gorman, who agreed to be our guest speaker.
Mr Gorman is the Chairman and Chief Executive officer
of Morgan Stanley, a global finanical services firm. Mr.
Gorman joined Morgan Stanley in 2006 and held a variety
of executive positions before being appointed CEO in 2010.
Before joining Morgan Stanley, Mr. Gorman was a senior
executive at Merrill Lynch. Prior to Merrill Lynch,
Mr. Gorman was a senior partner of McKinsey & Co. based
in New York. Earlier in his career, Mr. Gorman was an
attorney in Melbourne, Australia. Among his civic activities,
Mr. Gorman serves on the Federal Advisory Council to the
U.S. Federal Reserve Board, the Board of Overseers of
the Columbia Business School, the Monetary Authority
of Singapore International Advisory Panel, the Financial
Services Forum, and the boards of the Partnership for
New York City and Institute of International Finance.
He formerly co-chaired the Business Committee of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art and served on the board
and as Chairman (2006) of the Securities Industry and
Financial Markets Association in Washington, D.C. Born
in Australia, Mr. Gorman earned a B.A. and Law degree
from the University of Melbourne, during which time he
was a resident of Newman College, and an M.B.A. from
Columbia University.
22
Well over 200 students, former Collegians and friends of
the College attended the Dinner. At the conclusion of his
address, which centred around the recent global financial
crisis, Mr Gorman took a number of questions from the
audience. Former Collegian, and current member of the
Council, Ms Alice Muhlebach, gave the ‘vote of thanks’ to
Mr Gorman.
1. Father Rector with Maria Myers and Melissa Byrne.
2. Emmeline McFadyen, Keith Grabau and Moira Peters.
3. The Provost with Professor Ed Byrne, Vice-Chancellor of Monash
University and Professor Jim Best, former Collegian, current member
of the Newman College Council, and Head of the Medical School
at the University of Melbourne.
4. Former Collegians, Alice Muhlebach, Ben Kiely and Naomita Royan.
5. Professor Doris Young, Father Gerry Healy SJ, and former Collegian,
current member of the Council of the College, and Federal Minister,
Kevin Andrews.
6. James Gorman with second year Commerce student, Helen Zhou.
7. Former Collegians Gerardine Dillon and Joseph Butler with
Michael Gannon.
3
4
5
6
7
23
8
9
10
11
12
13
8. Phil Lukies with former Collegians Janet Whiting (also
a current member of the College Council) and Justice
Bernie Bongiorno.
9. Dr Mark McCombe and James Gorman.
10. James Gorman with former Collegian and current member
of the College Council, Alice Muhlebach.
11. Justice Susan Crennan, Justice Leo Hart, Michael Crennan
and Justice Joseph Santamaria.
12. Helen Gannon, Sue Cunnigham, Vice Principal, University
of Melbourne, and Mark McCombe.
13. Former Collegians Professor Jack Martin and James Gorman
with Father Gerry Healy SJ.
14. Former Chaplain and SCR member, Josh Puls, with former
President of the Students’ Club, Alex Eastwood.
14
24
During Orientation Week this year, at our first
Formal Dinner, two students addressed the
gathering; a student who is in his fourth year in the
College, and another who has only been here a few
weeks. Here are extracts from their speeches:
Orientation
2014
Good evening Father Rector, Mr Provost, Ladies and
Gentlemen. Sean has very kindly invited me to speak
tonight on the topic of what makes Newman special…
if anything. A difficult topic and one that I really hope
I can do justice.
First, a little bit about myself. I started at Newman in the
O-Week of 2011. I had just completed two years in the
boarding house at Xavier College – a place where I felt
I survived by withdrawing as much as possible to the
safety of the ‘boardo’. So much so that on my last day
of Year 12, I still wouldn’t have felt comfortable walking
into the Year 12 common room at lunch time. That is not
to say that my time there was miserable by any means.
I received a wonderful education, and boarding life was
never boring. But it wasn’t until I became a part of
Newman College that I felt truly happy.
But it didn’t happen straightaway. O-week was awkward.
It was week of forgetting people’s names, forgetting
dance moves, and forgetting my keys. First semester at
university was also a shock to me. No longer could I
coast along on the bare minimum of study – and it really
wasn’t until the latter stages of my first year here that I
realised I was beginning to feel at home here – my new
friends and I were starting to talk about things more
important than just our favourite sporting teams or class
results. I began to realise that this place is special.
When I was told that the measure of success here was
based on how we changed as individuals, I treated it
with suspicion. Somewhat arrogantly I thought that
I was doing alright for myself and that I had enough
maturity to last me a lifetime. I now cringe at my naivety.
Now that I am embarking on postgraduate study I feel
that it is the right time to reflect on what I have learned
in the past three years, and although I profess no great
knowledge, I will attempt to answer the question, what
is it about this institution that makes it so special?
Here are a few of my thoughts about what Newman is.
When you are feeling confident, Newman is a
springboard. It is every opportunity you could wish for,
with a safety net underneath waiting to catch you. When
you are feeling lost and overwhelmed, it is a refuge.
25
1
A safe haven with all the professional and academic support
to get you back on your feet. And when you are simply in
need of a friend, it is over 300 of them.
A smarter man than I once said that when your time here
comes to an end, not only will you have been changed by
Newman, but Newman will have been forever changed by
you. He wasn’t talking about scratching your name on the
back of your wardrobe door, nor writing your achievements
and accolades in the book of Valetants. What he was talking
about was the lasting effect each of us have on the lives of
our neighbours, and our role in shaping the culture of this
community.
If God were to take away these fine walls one night, and
instead should He see fit that we should live in a simpler
dwelling, I would not weep. This College is special. But it has
nothing to do with the genius of our great American architect.
It is the College of beating hearts and inquisitive minds that is
truly special. It is the fundamental belief we have that each
person has an innate dignity and undeniable importance that
commands our love, respect, and our curiosity. This is what
matters, and it transcends gender, race and religion.
Our heritage and personalities are the decorations of our
College but it is our shared humanity that is the stone upon
which everything we do is built.
Now, in your time in this place, you won’t hear every story
there is to be told. Nor will you bear witness to every gift this
community has to offer. But keep your ears peeled and your
mind open, and it will be an unforgettable journey.
Lastly, I appreciate that I may be describing a College that
you don’t yet know. All I can say is, throw yourself into
everything you do with gusto, and in the peripherals this
place will work its magic.
“You have no idea what I’m talking about I’m sure...
But don’t worry…You will someday”
{Lester Burnham, American Beauty (1999)}
Patrick Woods
26
Good evening Father Rector, Sister Manion, Mr. Provost,
Ladies and Gentlemen. It is a great honour for me to take part
at this long lasting tradition in Newman College and to speak
at the first Formal Dinner this year.
My name is Noa Alsheich, and I am a new resident here at
Newman. I have come here to write my PhD thesis at
Melbourne University under the MILA scholarship given to
me in light of a unique collaboration between the Melbourne
Law School and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. My PhD
is in the field of comparative criminal law and focuses on
offences against property.
I came to Australia from the state of Israel. For those of you
who heard about my country it probably can be best compare
to a Royal Baby – as much as it is little, it gets a lot of
headlines. But for those of you who heard only a little if
anything about Israel, I will begin by saying that Israel and
Australia have several things in common. I am not talking, of
course, about the size of the country or the kangaroos and
koalas. Rather I mean that Israel also is a very multicultural
country. Since I arrived here I heard wonderful, special and
enlightening stories about the routes and culture of many in
this community. In the few minutes I have I would like to
briefly share with you my own story, as I believe it is an
example of the importance of multicultural openness and
mutual understanding. I choose to share it with you as I was
asked to talk about myself and I believe that this story defines
who I am.
I was born in Jerusalem which is the Capital of the State of
Israel. My family’s Jewish roots – the families of Alsheich,
Rozenshain and Shaomer – are the paradigm story of the
nation of Israel.
My father name is Eliyahu. His family immigrated to Israel
from Spain more than five hundred years ago. As my family
was Jewish, they were asked by the Spanish authorities at
that time to choose whether to convert to Catholicism or to
leave Spain. They chose to leave and arrived in the land of
Israel. As it was life-threatening for Jewish people to live in
2
Israel before it became a state in 1948, my father’s family
suffered many casualties over the years; from what was quite
a large family, only a few have survived.
My mother name is Zehava. The origin of her family is from
Poland. My grandparents were the only survivors to their
families after the Holocaust. As opposed to my father’s
family, my mother’s family never got the chance to leave
Poland. My grandmother’s family were well-known Jewish
scholars and Rabbis from the city of Krakow. My grandfather
was from the city of Lodge. He was married and had one
daughter. Both of those great families perished at the
Holocaust along with other six million Jews. My grandparents
met each other when the war was over in Bergen-Belsen,
which was one of the worst Nazis camps on German soil.
Before, they were in camps outside of Germany as
Auschwitz, Birkenau and Theresienstadt – they survived
them all.
3
us the possibility to talk and learn from each other. There are
great things to cherish in our history, and others to make sure
that will never happen again. My personal view is to listen,
learn and respect other people, nations and countries. From
my experience you can learn a lot on yourself in this process,
whether the matter is you, your roots, your state, or even your
legal system.
I wish us all a wonderful academic year.
Noa Alsheich
IN 1947, they attempted to go to Israel in what is considered
today as one of the most heroic and famous immigration
stories – the story of the ship Exodus. As Israel was a British
colony at that time, they were not allowed to land in Israel
and after a long fight they were transferred back to Germany.
They did make it a year after, in 1948, when the state of Israel
was established as a national home to all Jewish people from
around the world.
In light of my personal story, which is in fact the story of
many Israeli families, I also had no doubt that Newman
College is the right place for me to reside in Melbourne.
Before I came here, but much more today, I greatly appreciate
the respectful tradition of the Catholic community here,
which emphasizes the strong connection between religion,
education, and respect for other religions of all kinds. I am
honored and thankful to be part of a community that
cherishes these values.
I really appreciate Australia for being so hospitable to all
nations; this is not a thing that should be taken for granted.
I also thank Father Rector, Sean, and Gugliemo, for giving
1 Students first meeting in small groups during Orientation.
2 Noa Alsheich with the Deputy Provost, Dr Guglielmo Gottoli
and Dr Liran Haim.
3 Patrick Woods with Michael Francis on his right, and Hana Fraser
on his left.
27
1
2
Commencement
2014
7 march 2014
On Friday, 7th March, 2014, all of the College gathered in the Chapel for our
Commencement Mass which was followed by Dinner in the Dining Room.
Over 300 sat down for Dinner, where our guest speaker
was former Collegian Kate Torney. Ms Torney, was
appointed Director of News at the ABC in April, 2009.
Prior to that, she was Head of Asia Pacific News. She
has been instrumental in establishing Insiders, Offsiders,
Inside Business, Newshour (for AustraliaNetwork) and
ABC News Breakfast. Under her leadership ABC News
launched News 24, the country’s first free-to-air 24-hour
television news channel.
3
28
In a most thoughtful and thought-provoking address,
Ms Torney spoke about her career in media, the
relationship of the ABC with government and with the
public, and about leadership.
1. The Entrance to Commencement Mass.
2. Our guest speaker at the Commencement Dinner, Ms Kate Torney.
3. Arriving for Mass.
4. President of the Senior Common Room, Alicia Deak –
Commencement Mass.
4
Scholarships
2014
Old Collegians Scholarships:
Joseph Curran Xavier College, Kew (Science 2)
Geng Zheng Aranmore Catholic College, Western Australia
(Biomedicine 1)
Myers Family Scholarships:
Sam Dent, Monivae College, Hamilton
(Science 3) Courtney Essex, Xavier High School, Albury
(Science 2)
Laura Field, Canberra G.G.S., ACT (Arts 2)
Undergraduates
The Archbishop’s Scholarship:
Eileen Hu, Wilderness School, South Australia
(Biomedicine 1)
Daniel Lee Guilford Young College, Hobart, Tasmania
(Commerce 1)
Stephanie Li, Abbotsleigh, NSW (Science 1)
Jesuit Scholarships:
Daniel Roberts, Monivae College, Hamilton
(Science 2)
Chloe Pan High School of Peking University, China
(Commerce 2)
Tiffany Pang Walford A.S., Adelaide, South Australia
(Science 1)
Esther Chen PLC, Burwood, Victoria (Commerce 1)
Robert Medland Somerset College,
Queensland (Biomedicine 1)
Jenny Pham, Pulteney G.S. Adelaide (Biomedicine 1)
Frank & Joan O’Collins Scholarship:
Maryanne Lia, Marist-Sion College, Warragul (Science 3)
George Timothy Ryan Scholarship:
Michael Wei, Brisbane State High School, Queensland
(Science 1)
Simon Farley Scholarship:
Mark Zhang Brisbane State High School,
Queensland (Biomedicine 1)
Sebastian Reinehr, Xavier College, Kew (Arts 3)
Mary Carmel Condon Scholarship:
Georgia Chisholm, Assumption College, Kilmore
(Environments 3) Meg Carroll Sacred Heart College, Newtown, Geelong
(Biomedicine 1)
St Thomas More Exhibition:
Ben Carmody Xavier College, Kew (Science 1) Peter Norris Scholarship:
Helen Zhou Norwood High School, Magill, South Australia
(Commerce 2)
Father Brian Fleming SJ Scholarships:
Sam van den Nieuwenhof Darwin High School, Northern
Territory (Arts 3) Paul O’Shea Trinity College, Colac (Arts 2)
Cabrini Scholarships:
Faolan Ayres, X
avier College, Kew (Science 1)
Gina and Mark Ryan Scholarship:
Michelle Clark Kilmore International School (Biomedicine 3)
Michael Scott Scholarship:
Amelia Ekkel Sacred Heart College, Newtown (Arts 2)
Italian Services Institute Scholarships:
Eliza Short Tennison Woods College,
Mt Gambier (Science 2)
Olivia Franco Marian College, Griffith, NSW (Commerce 1)
Father John Begley SJ Scholarship:
Tessa Marshall Westbourne Grammar School
(Biomedicine 1) N ewm an Au tum n 2 0 1 4 • Vo lum e 4 6 • Num be r 1
29
Margaret and Brendan Dooley Scholarship:
Tim McOwan St Patrick’s College, Ballarat (Biomedicine 3)
Graduates and Postgraduates
Archbishop Mannix Scholarship:
Peter Steele SJ Scholarship:
Michael Francis Canberra, ACT (MA)
Imogen Moore St Michael’s G.S., Hobart, Tasmania
(Fine Arts 3)
Daniella Zavatti Memorial Scholarship:
Frank and Lina Cinotta Scholarship:
Melvan Selvamahesan Melbourne High School
(Commerce 3)
Kate Funder Scholarship:
Tom Smardon St Patrick’s College, Ballarat (Science 3)
Ellen Wren Scholarship:
Micki Tanna Genazzano FCJ College, Kew (Science 2)
William John & Mary Cross Scholarship:
Charlotte Kavanagh Colac, Victoria (Grad Dip Education)
Gannon Family Scholarships:
Christina Jovanovic Kingsgrove, NSW (DDS 4)
Ali Teasdale Bendigo, Victoria (M Nursing 2)
Kate Funder Scholarship:
Nathaniel Huynh Melbourne, Victoria (MD 2)
Myers Family Scholarships
Mitchell Black Benalla, Victoria (PhD)
Ella Trimboli MLC, Perth (Environments 3)
Ariane Florent Melbourne, Victoria (M Clinical Psychology)
Eldon Hogan Scholarship:
Iee Sun You Auckland, New Zealand (DDS 1)
Michael Woodburn Xavier College, Kew (Science 3)
Daniel and Margaret O’Connor Scholarship:
Gannon Family Scholarship:
Daniel Sinnott Warnambool, Victoria (MD 1)
Hadley Black Benalla S.C., Benalla (Science 2)
Margaret and Brendan Dooley Scholarships:
Sir Michael Chamberlin Scholarship:
Nicholas Goulding Greensborough, Victorai (MD 1)
Conor Dickson St Patrick’s College, Ballarat (Biomedicine 2)
Michael Keem Ballarat, Victoria (MD 3)
The Victor Fox Foundation Music Scholarships
Ben Wong Perth, Western Australia (D Optometry 4)
Liam Torney St Ignatiius College, Drysdale (Music 1)
Stephanie Pidcock Loreto, Mandeville Hall (Music 1)
Amelia le Plastrier Hunter Valley Grammar School,
NSW (Music 1)
Peter Steele SJ Scholarship:
Sophia McQuillan Geelong, Victoria (M Teaching 1)
Frank Maher Prize:
Paul King Ballarat, Victoria (JD 2)
Liam Headland St Joseph’s College, Geelong (Music 1)
Nat Bonnaci Scholarships:
Claire Block Monivae College, Hamilton (Music 2)
Sannan Ijaz Lahore, Pakistan (M Engineering 1)
Penny Latham Lauriston Girls School, Armadale (Music 2)
Patrick Woods Wagga Wagga, NSW (M Engineering 1)
Robert Muirhead Home Schooled (Music 2)
O’Dwyer Family Scholarships:
Maximilian Rudd St Joseph’s College, Geelong (Music 2)
Ryan Marsden-Smith Bendigo, Victoria (M Engineering 2)
Guillermo Aranguren Venezuela (Commerce 3)
Jim Peters Scholarships:
Sean Keem Ballarat, Victoria (MD 1)
Jessica Beh Singapore (MD 3)
30
rector’s exhibitions
Charis Kho Singapore (MD 1)
Noa Alsheich Jerusalem, Israel (PhD – Law)
Paul King Ballarat, Victoria (JD 2)
Jorge Andrade Ecuador, (M Urban Planning 2)
Abigail Leong Singapore (MD 1)
Kathryn Azzopardi St Clair, NSW (D Opt. 1)
Herianto Lim Indonesia (PhD – Physics)
Tristan Beale Melbourne, Victoria (JD 3)
Michelle Mannering NSW (M Global Media & Comm. 2)
Emma Bechaz Warragul, Victoria, (JD 1)
Arshiya Mediratta India (M Global Media & Comm. 1)
Jessica Beh Singapore (MD 3)
Kira Merigan Melbourne, Victoria (MD 1)
Patrick Burke Melbourne, Victoria (JD 1)
Di Miao China (JD 1)
Aravind Burla India (M Management 2)
Shakti Nambiar India (JD 1)
Wee Chaimanowong Thailand (M Science {Physics} 1)
Ben O’Shea Ballarat, Victoria (B. Biomedicine {Hons.})
Johnny Chen Jiang China (M Eng. {Mechanical} 2)
Dulanjalee Panagodage Canada (DVM 1)
Yik Sheng Cheng Malaysia (MD 3)
Alex Pham Singapore (DVM 2)
Sebastian Cheung Artarmon, NSW (D Opt 3)
Patorn Piromchai Thailand (PhD – Medicine)
David Clifford Melbourne, Victoria (MD 2)
Nicole Plati Canada (M Audiology 1)
Alicia Deak Melbourne, Victoria (B. Arts /
B. Theology)
Gaille Ramos Philippines (M. Music {Performance
Teaching} 2)
Mahesha Dombagolla Auburn, NSW (MD 1)
Jay Son South Korea (PhD – Computer Science)
Phillip Dowling Canberra, ACT (M Eng. {Electrical} 1)
Rachel Taylor Townsville, Queensland(MD 1)
Alex Duan China (M Science {Physics} 1)
Adrianus Thio Indonesia (MD 3)
Jenny Fiegel Illinois, USA (JD 2)
Tracey Tian China (M Finance 2)
Michael Francis Canberra, ACT (MA {History})
Patricio Vera Castillo Chile (M. Applied Linguistics 1)
Hana Fraser Victoria (B. Biomedicine {Hons.})
Doreen Wang China, (Arts 2)
Jayami Ganepola Auckland, New Zealand (D Opt. 3)
Andrew Wang Auckland, New Zealand (MD 2)
Haylene Goh Bunbury, Western Australia (M. Audiology 1)
Jessica Woods South Morang, Victoria (DDS 1)
Nicholas Goulding Greensborough, Victoria (MD 1)
Patrick Woods Wagga Wagga, NSW (M. Eng.
(Electrical} 1)
Tamara Gunasena Sunnybank, Queensland (DDS 1)
Bishoy Hanna Wahroonga, NSW (MD 1)
Eugene Ho Edinburgh, Scotland (M. Engineering)
Poh Hui Ho Malaysia (M. Architecture)
Yu Xia China (M. Management {Accounting} 2)
Joel Yong Singapore (PhD – Engineering)
Xiaoping Zhu China (M Public Policy Management 1)
Gen Holland Boort, Victoria (B. Radiology)
Kieran Isles Maribyrnong, Australia (PhD – Earth Sciences)
Michael Keem Ballarat, Victoria (MD 3)
31
Senior
Common Room
2014
The Senior Common Room of 2014
includes seventy-nine students, of whom
seventy-four are in residence. Fifty-two
of these students are returning to the
College in 2014. Most of the students are
engaged in graduate studies (coursework
or research) and eight are PhD candidates.
Here we feature some of the SCR.
Mitchell Black, Liran Haim and Noa Alscheich. Mitchell Black
joined the College in 2006 from Benalla Secondary College.
He has completed, with distinction, a BSc, BSc(Hons), and
MSc at the University of Melbourne and is well on his way
towards a PhD. The recipient of numerous scholarships and
bursaries (Donovan, Madiros and Myers Family) in his time in
College for academic excellence, Mitchell is now the Senior
Tutor at Newman College. Over the years, he has played
a major role in organising many of our community service
projects. From Jerusalem, Noa Alscheich is with us in 2014
enrolled in PhD studies at the Hebrew University as part of
their exchange programme with the Law Faculty at the
University of Melbourne. Her husband, Dr Liran Haim, is a
member of the Faculty of Law, University of Haifa and
Bar-IIan University. In 2014, he is lecturing in the Law Faculty
of the University of Melbourne.
Joel Yong and Herianto Lim. Joel Yong, from Singapore,
arrived at Newman College in early 2013. He has a Bachelor
of Chemical Engineering from the National University of
Singapore and a Masters in Environmental Engineering from
the University of Illinois. He is a PhD candidate at the
University of Melbourne in the area of Chemical and
Biomolecular Engineering. Herianto Lim joined Newman
College in 2012. From Indonesia, Herianto has a BSc and
MSc from the University of Melbourne and is now engaged
in PhD studies in Physics.
32
Jorge Andrade and Gaille Ramos. Jorge Andrade joined us
in 2012 and will complete his Master of Urban Planning
this year. From Ecuador, he was awarded a scholarship from
the Secretariat for Superior Education of the Ecuadorian
Government to undertake graduate studies in Australia.
He has an architecture degree from the Pontifical Catholic
University of Ecuador, Quito. All were delighted that
Jorge’s wife, Veronica, joined us in the College in 2014.
They were married at Christmas. Gaille Ramos will complete
her Masters in Music Performance degree later this year.
From the Philippines, Gaille has a Bachelor of Music from
St Scholastica’s College, Manila.
Patorn Piromchai, Michael Francis with the 2014 President
of the Students’ Club, Peter Catterson (Commerce 3).
Dr Patorn Piromchai came to us from Thailand in 2012 from
the Department of Otorhinolarynglogy, Faculty of Medicine,
Khon Kaen University. He has a MD from that University.
He is now engaging in PhD studies at the University of
Melbourne. Michael Francis joined Newman College from
Casuarina Senior College, Darwin, in 2010. He was awarded
his BA(Honours) in 2013, and is presently engaged in a MA
with his research on Archbishop Mannix and the issue of
conscription. Michael has been the recipient of numerous
scholarships during his time in College including the
Archbishop Mannix Scholarship and the Peter Steele SJ
Scholarship.
Patrick Burke, Tim Gorton and Jack Fang. Patrick Burke is
from Xavier College in Melbourne and is in his fifth year in
College. Patrick completed a B. Commerce and Diploma in
Mathematics last year and is in first year of the JD. Patrick
was Treasurer of the Students’ Club in 2012. Jack Fang was
born in China, and his family migrated to Australia when
he was three. Jack joined Newman College in 2009 and
completed his B. Commerce (Honours) in Actuarial Studies
and is now working with a firm in the City. At the start of
2014, Jack moved out of College and is now a non-residential
member. He is Treasurer of the SCR and a long-time member
of the Choir.
Shakti Nambiar, Haylene Goh and Jayami Ganepola. Shakti
Nambiar was educated at St Xavier’s College in Mumbai and
at the University of Mumbai (BA). She joined the College this
year to read for the JD. Haylene Goh comes from Dalyellup in
Western Australia. She completed a Science degree at the
University of Western Australia, and joined Newman College
and the University of Melbourne at the start of 2014 to read
for a Masters degree in Audiology. From New Zealand, but
born in Sri Lanka, Jayami Ganeploa joined Newman College in
2012 to read for a Doctor of Optometry at the University of
Melbourne. Her undergraduate studies were at the University
of Auckland.
33
34
Third year Music student from Ballarat, Ellan Hyde, SCR
member, Tristan Beale and Father Chris Horvat SJ. Tristan
Beale joined the College in 2011. A long-serving member of
the Choir he has degrees in Engineering (RMIT University),
a Masters of Engineering Structures from the University of
Melbourne and is now in the JD programme.
First year Biomedicine student Mark Zhong from Brisbane
State High School, with SCR member, Paul King. Paul joined
Newman College in 2010 from St Patrick’s College in Ballarat.
After an undergraduate degree in Journalism from the RMIT
University, Paul is now in the second year of the JD
programme at the University of Melbourne. Paul, a recipient
of numerous scholarships over the years, was a member of
the General Committee in 2012, and was awarded the Frank
Maher Prize in 2014.
Josh Chang, Timothy Gorton and Alicia Deak. From
Brunswick Secondary College, Josh Chang joined the College
at a non-residential member in 2011 at the age of fourteen!
He has completed a BA degree and is now engaged in
Honours studies. Josh has experienced two periods of study
in Italy. The last, in Semester 2, 2013, where he was engaged
in studies at the Università per Stranieri di Siena. Josh is
the recipient of the Dante Alighieri Scholarship from the
Dante Alighieri Society and the Father G. Daily SJ Travelling
Scholarship from the College. Josh is a major contributor
to our music programme in the College. Timothy Gorton has
spent five of the last six years as a resident of the College.
Firstly as an undergraduate (BArts), and latterly as a
JD student. He graduated in 2013. From Xavier College in
Melbourne, Tim was a member of the General Committee
in 2010. Alicia Deak, the 2014 President of the SCR, is
in her final year of a double degree in Arts (University of
Melbourne) and Divinity (University of Divinity).
She was a member of the General Committee in 2010
and is a former student of Loreto, Mandeville Hall.
Yik Sheng Cheng, Jenny Fiegel and Sebastian Cheung.
Yik Sheng Cheng is in his third year of the MD at the
University of Melbourne. He joined the College in 2012 after
spending his undergraduate years at St Mary’s College whilst
reading for a degree in Biomedicine. In recent years, Yik has
been instrumental in organising the Michael Scott Art Prize
and tutoring for disadvantaged school students in the
surrounding areas. Jenny Fiegel came to Newman College at
the start of 2013 to read for the JD at the University of
Melbourne. From Illinois in the USA, she has a BA from the
Loyola University, Chicago, and prior to her arrival in
Australia, worked as part of the Teach for America
programme. In the last summer break, Jenny undertook an
internship at a large law firm in Shanghai. From Sydney,
Sebastian Cheung joined the College in 2012 to read for the
Doctor of Optometry at the University of Melbourne. He has
an undergraduate degree in Biotechnology from the
University of Technology, Sydney and was schooled at St
Ignatius College, Riverview
N ewm an Autumn 20 1 4 • Vo lum e 4 6 • Num ber 1
The address given by Michael McGirr at the
Dinner held for the Council, some parents and
students of the College in the Dining Room on
Wednesday, 16th April, 2014.
The healing
mind
It is great for us to be able to come together like this on
Wednesday night during Holy Week. In a couple of days,
on Good Friday, most of us will gather more quietly to
hear once again the story of the passion and death of
Jesus. When I say ‘again’, I don’t mean this in any tired
sense. The passion story is inexhaustible. With every
year, I find it more confronting and in some ways more
confusing. I sometimes tell the teenage students whom I
teach at school that one of the main reasons I am still a
believer after all this time is that I don’t understand
Christianity yet. If I did, it would mean my God was too
small and too much under my control. The death of
Jesus was, in its time, a tiny historical event, yet one
which reveals the incalculable scale of God’s love. It is
the most important thing that ever happened in the
entire human story. Yet it almost passed unnoticed.
We do need to find fresh heart for the passion story. The
world of which we are a part has become desensitised to
it. One reason for this is that we are habituated to so
many images of violence. We live in a visual culture, one
in which our eyes are expected to do work which should
be borne by our whole being. The pornography of
violence makes it harder to stop and appreciate what
Jesus experienced. At least this is one thing we shared
with Jesus’ contemporaries. If they noticed what was
happening on that grim afternoon, it was perhaps as a
form of entertainment, a momentary distraction from
more important realities. As I took teenagers through
Mark’s story this year, I was struck by the repeated use
of the phrase ‘passer by.’ It seems that nobody was there
by choice, least of all the soldiers.
There is no escaping the poignancy of the words of the
centurion at the end of Mark’s crucifixion: ‘Surely this
was God’s son.’ If you were a Roman soldier in those
days, a posting to Judea, the last province of the empire,
was hardly a status symbol. These soldiers were on the
way to nowhere. They were nothing if not crude. They
performed hundreds of crucifixions and were good at
creating entertainment out of routine violence. The
centurion was their ringleader. To put it mildly, he was
not a nice guy. Heaven only knows what experiences in
life can lead to someone inflicting such wilful damage on
a fellow human being. Yet the story shows that, by the
end, this man had experienced something that could
35
1
only be called healing. His mind and heart were open; he had
become sensitive to the reality of another. Not only that, but
the community of Mark, struggling in Rome sometime in the
60s and no stranger to Roman oppression, chose to honour
this story. The community had experienced such healing that
they were able to give the crucial moment in their crucial
story to the voice of a man from whom they had much to fear
and dread.
Our own need for healing can help us experience the passion
of Jesus as something we have never quite heard before.
A vision of healing is very much at the foundation of this
wonderful community at Newman College. Newman College
opened its doors in 1918, in a world that had been deeply
brutalised by the trauma of World War I. As we approach the
centenary this August of the outbreak of that war, our
thoughts will all be turned to one of the most tender sores in
western history. Newman College was planned and envisaged
well before World War I even started, but 1918 was a
providential year for new beginnings. This community was an
expression of more than Catholic social aspiration and more
than a facility at the service of individual careers. It was an
embodiment of the belief that healing owes a great deal more
than we often recognise to the life of the mind. We often
imagine that our minds are at the service of our egos. That is
ultimately to suffocate them.
I sometimes think that that tweedy Oxford don, J R R Tolkien,
would have been at home here, although, these days, he
would have been asked to take his pipe out to Swanston
Street where he could have chatted with the ever-watchful
parking inspectors. Tolkien is emerging for me as a central
figure in the story of the twentieth century. He was always
interested in languages and as passionate about their
preservation as other people are about protecting endangered
species. Two things happened to him in 1916 when he was
24. The first is that he married Edith who, like him, had been
an orphan. They found sanctuary in each other. The second is
that he signed up and took a commission in the Lancashire
Fusiliers. He and his regiment were behind the lines of the
36
2
first day of the Somme, July 1, 1916. Tolkien did not see action
on the Somme until July 14. But that fortnight of waiting left
a significant mark. Tolkien saw the injured and heard tales of
despair about the carnage that he never forgot. Years later,
when He came to create one of his most lovable characters,
Sam Gamgee, he said that he was paying honour to the
good-natured vulnerability of the ordinary soldier.
Tolkien was lucky, if you could call it that, to contract trench
fever and be repatriated. He spent a good part of the next few
years convalescing while Edith shouldered the burden of their
young family. Over that time, Tolkien slowly enlarged upon a
project he began before the war. He invented a language,
Elvish. He knew that every language requires a community
and a history, and so the stories that eventually formed the
Silmarillion began gradually to surface from the rivers and
caves within him. Those stories would finally take shape as
one of the few grand narratives of the post war period. In a
world that had become broken into many little pieces, Tolkien
told a big story about The One. He went to Mass at 7am
every day he was working on The Lord of the Rings.
Why was Tolkien’s big book so significant? Among the many
casualties of World War I was language. The horrors of the
great war were so far beyond words that many people
became sceptical of the power of language to do justice to
human experience. It would take a long time to explore this,
but if you think of Joyce’s Ulysses and Eliot’s The Wasteland,
both published in 1922, you will realise that they are brittle
and incomplete. In them, language is defeated by basic tasks,
such as describing a single day in the life of a single person
in a single city. Indeed, people have commented upon the
1400 or more war memorials that were built in Australia after
the war. They are often impressive. The superb one in Albury,
high on the hill that overlooks the city, was the first
monument in the world to be flooded by electric light. But
these monuments have very few words, usually just dates
and names. They offer very little in the way of explanation;
they are inarticulate with grief. They have a palpable
presence in every community of Australia, but have very
little light to shed.
3
Tolkien was among those whose journeys into the deepest
recesses of language was profoundly healing. I would not
be the first to think that some of the battle landscapes of The
Lord of the Rings are closer to the western front than they are
to New Zealand. Tolkien insisted, somewhat strangely, that he
was an historian, not a myth maker or fantasy writer. He was
rebuilding a place called home and using words to do it.
John Henry Newman, our patron, would have understood this
calling only too well. Newman’s experiences in the 1850’s as
rector of the Catholic University of Ireland led to a book of
essays book called The Idea of a University. It is built around
a vision of a world held together by the humble encounter of
the human mind with the mind of God. It is a holistic vision,
to employ an over-used expression, one that seeks to stop
the world dissolving in fragments. When Newman says of the
world that ‘God has so implicated himself with it’, we need
look no further than the cross of Jesus to share this vision. For
Newman, the pettiness of ego can put blinkers on the mind:
All knowledge forms one whole, because its subject matter is one;
for the universe in its length and breadth is so intimately knit
together, that we cannot separate off portion from portion, and
operation from operation, except by a mental abstraction; and
then again, as to its Creator, though He of course in His own being
is infinitely separate from it … yet He has so implicated himself
with it, and taken it into His very bosom, by His presence in it, His
providence over it, His impressions upon it, and his influences
through it, that we cannot truly or fully contemplate it without in
some aspects contemplating Him.
The mind plays an undervalued role in healing. I’d like to share
something of the story of Ray Parkin, one of the survivors of
captivity during World War II on the Thai Burma Railway.
Parkin died as recently as 2005, and I only knew his story in
outline until I recently met a friend of his. This drew me to the
three books Parkin wrote about his wartime experience. Into
the Smother, the second of them, deals with his time on what
became known as The Line. Alongside The War Diaries of
Weary Dunlop, it is one of the most significant acts of witness
in Australian culture.
4
Parkin was a member of that almost forgotten clan, the
Methodist working class. Born in Collingwood, he was a
practical sort of bloke who joined the navy as a teenager. But
he was also an autodidact who loved philosophy and read
hungrily. Most of all he was an artist and many of the best
know images of The Line are his work; they survived because
Dunlop hid them under the lid of his operating table. Parkin
was on HMAS Perth when it went down in March 1942. In
captivity, he had a vital but hidden role in motivating his
commander, Weary Dunlop. After Dunlop had been forced to
perform yet another major operation without anaesthetic,
which was an ordeal for the patient but also pretty hard for
the doctor, Dunlop would seek out Parkin and the pair would
talk philosophy; Parkin especially liked Spinoza. Parkin would
help Dunlop deal with the brutality of his immediate situation
by reconnecting him with the broader human family and the
nobility of its attempts over many centuries to understand
itself. However horrific their current imprisonment, Parkin
was tough minded enough to remember that it was not the
whole story.
Parkin committed himself to draw and paint beautiful things
while in captivity. He created hundreds of images of
butterflies and orchids, insects and flowers. There was a
discipline in this vision that helped him and plenty of others
as well. Many of the prisoners collected butterflies for Parkin.
Wonderful things will always share the world with dreadful
ones. Sometimes it takes courage to see them both with the
same pair of eyes. Parkin wrote:
1 First year Biomedicine student Joshua Murray from Glenthompson
with his parents, Ian and Sylvia.
2 Joe, Kate and Claire Connellan.
3 Second year Science student, James O’Connor, with his parents,
Luke O’Connor and Julie Fitzgerald.
4 The Smith Family – Alex, Paulette and Todd.
37
5
A cloud of butterflies of all sorts, large and small. I captured a
beautiful specimen, which is the richest I have seen. I hope to
paint it Sunday. This changing nature is what I like to watch – time
passes while you watch it.
He pinned dead butterflies to the bamboo roof of his hut and
I believe he allowed those in poor spirits to experience the
magic of them fluttering in the air. Years later, Parkin told his
biographer, Pattie Wright that ‘the Sistine Chapel had nothing
on it.’
Finally, from another time and place, the healing life of the
mind is evident in the story of the greatest religious poet in
the English language, John Donne (1572–1631). Donne was
much admired by the late Fr Peter Steele whom I know this
community still misses very much. I am sure Donne also has
a place in the affections of many of us; he was a kind of raft
for me in my difficult last year at school. In Donne I first
encountered the experience of being passionate about God
rather than just interested in God. Earlier this year our family
was holidaying in northern Tasmania and I found in an
op-shop an old school poetry text, used by a student in Year
11 in 1991. The section of Donne was covered in notes, mostly
the ideas of an impressive teacher. But near the love poetry
the girl had drawn a few love hearts, and I was delighted to
see Donne speaking over the intervening miles and centuries
to a young woman whose world he could not possibly have
imagined. It saddens me that poets such as Donne are much
less familiar to students than they were even 20 years ago.
Donne had poor credentials as a spiritual explorer and guide.
Most of his life seems to have been about advancing his career.
He came from no ordinary Catholic family. His forebear was Sir
Thomas More, his younger brother, Henry, died in the Tower in
1593 where he had been imprisoned for harbouring a Catholic
priest, his uncle was a criminal because he was a Jesuit and his
mother lived many years in exile because she was a Catholic.
But Donne became an Anglican because that was the best
career move. He was nothing if not pragmatic about such
things and even wrote a tract saying that martyrdom was
really suicide because it was avoidable and, well, silly.
38
6
Donne’s marriage to Ann More, ten years his junior, cost him
his prestigious job in the public service where he was a rising
star. It was a rare miscalculation on his part described by
Isaac Walton, his first biographer, as ‘the remarkable error of
his life.’ Thereafter, he struggled both financially and socially.
The couple had twelve children (five of whom they buried),
and Donne was never more lonely than when surrounded by
the demands of many noisy little kids. He longed for
intellectual and gentlemanly conversation.
In 1615, Donne was ordained as a priest. He took this step
basically because he was broke and needed to earn money.
In 1621, he became the dean of St Paul’s, the main church in
London. Donne was a Londoner to the core of his being. One of
his many biographers, John Stubbs, wrote: ‘for literary posterity,
and the contemporary integrity of the Church, the appointment
turned out to be the masterpiece of Jacobean patronage.’
It is hard to fully account for the awesome depth of Donne’s
spiritual writing. The meditations he wrote in six weeks in
1623 after a near fatal brush with typhoid, Devotions Upon
Emergent Occasions, are among the most searching spiritual
explorations of death we have. Donne is surely in the same
class as creative people such as the composer Gustav
Mahler. Mahler is often judged for having become a Catholic
simply to secure his position at the Vienna Court Opera. So
how can you account for the mysticism of such moments as
the Veni Creator Spiritus in his 8th symphony.
The answer I believe is that Donne’s mind led ultimately to
his heart and let it breathe fresh air. He had plotted and
planned his course through life in a calculating and cerebral
manner. He worked out the odds of success in every situation.
He was the ironmonger’s son who was always going to be a
gentleman. But he never knew that he was the egotist that
was going to learn humility. This was the work of grace and
we all need it. Our minds can be wonderful instruments of
healing if we can bear for them to be freed from the
entrapment of ego. Donne’s religious poetry has all the
passion and verve of his famous love poetry. The difference is
that it is less in love with himself.
7
8
Let me finish in Holy Week with a few lines from one of
Donne’s more private poems, one written as his life began to
turn. It is called Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward. It is about
an act of mundane violence at the heart of all creation.
Who sees God’s face, that is selfe life, must dye;
What a death were it then to see God dye?
It made his owne Lieutenant Nature shrinke,
It made his footstoole crack, and the Sunne winke.
Could I behold those hands which span the Poles,
And tune all spheares at once peirc’d with those holes?
Could I behold that endlesse height which is
Zenith to us, and our Antipodes,
Humbled below us? or that blood which is
The seat of all our Soules, if not of his,
Made durt of dust, or that flesh which was worne
By God, for his apparell, rag’d, and torne?
If on these things I durst not looke, durst I
Upon his miserable mother cast mine eye,
Who was God’s partner here, and furnish’d thus
Halfe of that Sacrifice, which ransom’d us?
Though these things, as I ride, be from mine eye,
They’are present yet unto my memory,
For that looks towards them; and thou look’st towards mee.
9
10
5 Jim and Maree Ryan with their daughter, Sinead (Science 2).
6 James Dooley (Commerce 2) with his parents, Dolores and Phillip.
7 The Mahony Family – Mark ,Ned and Joanne.
8 Hillary Mansour with her parents Andrew Mansour and Judith Leahy.
9 Jack Stinson, Chris Cunningham and Rodney Nugent.
10 Katie, Anthony and Jackson Gravener.
11 Liz Tehan, Michael and James Woodburn.
11
39
12
13
14
15
16
17
12 David, Lisa and Maree Whiting.
13 Gerald and Ronan Mathews.
14 The O’Shea Family from Ballarat: Patrick, Barbara,
Tim and Ben.
15 Georgia and William Chisholm.
16 Meg Carroll with her parents, Janine and Jason.
17 John, Marcella and Esther Crowley.
18 Conor and Tim Dickson.
18
40
19
21
23
20
22
24
19 From Moama, the Carmody Family, Isobel (Science 3),
Roger, Maris and Ben (Science 1).
20 Michelle Clark (Biomedicine 3) with her parents, Rolland
and Theresa.
21 Sarah Millard, Maree Faulkenberg and Stephen Millard.
22 Michael McGirr with the Rector and Provost.
23 Arnuv, Manu and Satbir Chug.
24 Julia Frederico and Lily McCaffrey.
25 Jack and Rohan Bennett and Gabriele Cannon.
25
41
college ball
2014
42
N ewm an Autumn 20 1 4 • Vo lum e 4 6 • Num ber 1
From the
NOCA President
Since the last edition of Newman News the Association’s
Annual Dinner and the Founders and Benefactors’ Mass have
both taken place. The guest speaker at the Dinner, which was
held in the College dining room, was the ABC’s Director of
News, Kate Torney. Kate attended Newman between 1986
and 1988 whilst she pursued a Bachelor of Arts (Media
Studies) Degree at the RMIT. She joined the ABC in 1994
and has been the Director of News since April 2009. She
provided some fascinating insights into the way in which
the ABC seeks to maintain balance and accuracy in its news
reporting – an issue which was to become topical within
weeks when the ABC carried reports which alleged that
Australian sailors had mistreated asylum seekers who were
attempting to enter Australia.
There was a large contingent of the Torney family present
at the dinner, including Kate’s father, Geoff, who had been
the guest speaker at the dinner some 20 years earlier.
It was also good to be able to welcome large groups from
1963 and 1993 who were celebrating 50th and 20th year
reunions.
The Founders and Benefactors’ Mass on the following Sunday
night was well attended and provided an opportunity for
prayerful remembrance of those who have served and
supported the College over almost 100 years.
I was pleased to have the opportunity to represent the
Association at the Valete Dinner and to welcome the
valetents to the ranks of the Old Collegians. Some 35
valetants were farewelled. Some fine speeches were made
which reflected the value which the current generation of
students place on their participation in the many facets of
collegiate community life. It was a particular pleasure to note
the number of valetants who had lived in Newman for four,
five and six years.
The Association now has a thriving on-line community being
hosted on Linkedin. Almost 400 Old Collegians have joined,
and it is proving an excellent way of finding Old Collegians in
various parts of the world and in various professions. To join:
simply search LinkedIn Groups using key words, Newman
College, University of Melbourne. Membership is free. When
applying to join, please provide information about the years
you were at Newman and who the Rector was. Bill Lang
(Newman 81-86) is administering the group and will provide
access. E-mail him on bill@human-performance.com.au or
call him on 0433 312 345 if you have any questions.
This year’s Annual Dinner will be held at the College on 17
October 2014. Please put the date in your diaries. Booking
details will be published later in the year.
Yours sincerely,
Richard Tracey
43
FAREWELL
TO DAVID
MCKENNA
The eulogy given by Professor Tony Coady
at the funeral of former Collegian,
David McKenna.
When friends die, their passing calls up a kaleidoscope of
memories that sharpen the grief, but also revive past joys
which their presence helped create. These memories are
shared around as friends of the deceased gather to talk and
grieve. So, my own memories of David McKenna are mixed
with the stories other friends have told me, and with insights
they have provided to round out a picture of this lovable,
complex, remarkable man. Some idea of that picture I will try
to convey today. It is a picture of someone whose identity
was developed around at least four central pillars: Christianity
(especially Christian humanism), the rule of law as a work of
justice, politics, and his sexual identity as a gay man.
I first got to know Dave at Melbourne University when I came
there from Sydney in 1961 for postgraduate study in
philosophy. People who knew him from schooldays at Xavier
College recall a lover of talk, a leader in debating, and the
winner of prizes for religious education. He also won the
history prize in his final year at school, which he shared with
my wife’s older brother, Bill Aughterson, who also went on
to a legal career and an involvement in politics. By the time
I knew David, he was, as well as a Newman College identity,
an important figure in the Newman Society at the University
which also rejoiced in the somewhat grand title of “The
Intellectual Apostolate”. In spite of a certain excess in its
sense of self-importance, this basically spiritual movement,
with which some of us here were also deeply involved, had,
beginning in the early-1950s, made an important, prescient,
and progressive contribution to the attempted renewal of the
Catholic Church that took place at Vatican Council II in the
early 1960s. David, as Secretary of the Newman Society and
for a time Chair or Leader of what was somewhat pompously
called “the Senior Group” in the Society, was at the centre of
its thought and activity and more recently wrote, that with
all its imperfections: “At least we had a glimpse of the New
Jerusalem. That is more than is given to most people.”
David’s formation in that milieu was no egocentric or
internalised spirituality; he saw faith as enjoining activity in
the wider community to the betterment of life, especially for
those who were disadvantaged, degraded by poverty, or
oppressed. This was his driver in the practice of law, so the
law was, for him, a vocation rather than a job. He saw the rule
of law less as a way of keeping order, important as that can
be, than as a way of respecting and upholding rights. It is no
surprise that he spent many years as an active member of
Amnesty International , and that when he formally retired he
took up a position for a number of years with Legal Aid. The
law infected much of David’s ordinary conversation, though
often in an ironic fashion. He was very fond of injecting terms
from the law, policing, or criminal jargon into his conversation;
44
terms like “alleged”, “the defendant”, and the much used
“caper”. “What caper do you think Tony Abbott is up to with
that?” was a typical comment. The word “hoon” was also one
he delighted in since it expressed much of staid society’s
suspicion of the supposed tendencies of adolescents, as also
did the term “youths” pronounced in his flat, laconic voice.
Politics, of course, especially Labor politics, fascinated David,
and he was an active player in some major incidents in Labor
history, especially in Victoria. He was a founding member of
the group within the Labor Party called the Participants, who
in the 1960s opposed the regime of the leftist Victorian
Executive of the ALP and played a role in its demise under
Federal intervention prior to Gough Whitlam’s victory in 1972.
Many of this groups’ leaders were lawyers and close friends
of David, and some of them later had distinguished careers in
public life, notably John Cain as Premier of the State, Dick
McGarvie as Governor, and Michael Duffy and Barney
Cooney as Federal Labor MPs and outstanding members of
an ALP Government. David was involved in branch activities
and, later, was for some years Chair of the Labor Party’s
Disputes Tribunal in Victoria, a position to which he brought
such judicial impartiality as to make enemies in all factions
in the party. “You could have no idea of the capers these
guys get up to,” he would tell you with a mock sad shake of
the head.
Unknown to all his friends and family, David was gay, and his
efforts to come to grips with his gay identity made a great
deal of his life a silent misery. His genial sociability concealed,
for much of the time, private suffering and spiritual confusion,
and when in 1993 he decided to go public with his sexual
orientation, he wrote letters to a number of his friends on the
advice of his psychiatrist. My wife Margaret and I received
one of these while we on study leave in Princeton. When I got
the large envelope with Dave’s name on the back and took
out the unexpectedly long letter, Margaret said, “What on
earth could David be writing about at such length”, and I
immediately said: “I think he’s telling us that he’s homosexual”,
even though I had never explicitly made that judgement
about him. It was a beautifully written letter that told of
painful efforts to “overcome” his inclinations because of the
attitudes of society and the church to gay sexuality, attitudes
which he had himself internalized to a great degree. We
wrote back sympathetically, and I recall apologising abjectly
for any jokes or comments of mine that had in the past no
doubt displayed homophobia. Dave was suitably forgiving,
writing back that he too had engaged in such talk himself.
Margaret wanted to have his “coming out” letter published
because she thought it would help others in a similar
situation, but David didn’t want that at the time.
His coming out not only shocked various people that he
respected, but caused a nervous breakdown that had him
hospitalised for some time at Vimy House.
He took some years to adjust fully to his new public persona,
but added many gay friends to the existing circle and typically
took a prominent part in the public activities of the gay
community. His attitude to the Church became naturally
tense and somewhat ambiguous, but he continued to exhibit
a Christian spirituality. In my view, and his, one of the many
failings of the Catholic Church at present is its incapacity to
rethink seriously its teachings on a range of sexual ethical
issues. There has been some welcome softening of the
rhetoric, and the new Pope has shown commendable pastoral
concern for gay and lesbian Catholics, even if there has been
no change in official teaching.
David was a warm man whose personality displayed a
delightful version of what I think of as one typical Australian
attitude to life. He was witty and dry with a sardonic take on
the passing parade. When he once acted for us in a
conveyancing matter he asked about the estate agent we
were dealing with. When I said we didn’t know much about
him, David advised passing a hand across his back just to
see if he had a dorsal fin. Michael Duffy tells of sitting with
David and disconsolate ALP friends at a polling booth after
a devastating loss in the 1966 federal elections and
wondering what to do. David suggested their first move
should be to import folk singer Joan Baez to sing “We Shall
Overcome—Some Day”. He was essentially a man of
communities, as already indicated, and great company. He
had the magic quality of charm. On one occasion we had him
to dinner with an eminent visiting British philosopher, Jim
Cameron, who later wrote us a letter of thanks which made a
point of how much he had enjoyed the presence of “that very
nice young lawyer.”
The Christian faith holds out the promise of an eternal life.
It is a mysterious claim made vulgar by pictures of pearly
gates and harps, but it offers the hope that something of the
best in this life survives death in community with God. The
philosopher Wittgenstein once remarked cryptically: “He lives
eternally who lives in the present.” I think in his life David
lived the present moment to the full, and I hope and pray that,
in a mysterious way, he continues to do so.
The poet W.B. Yeats once wrote: “My glory was I had such
friends.” David certainly had an amazing number of friends,
many of them.
45
John Fouhy
Kearney AM, QC
From a eulogy given at a
Memorial Service in the Chapel
of the Holy Spirit
John Fouhy Kearney showed great resilience, courage,
determination and humour throughout his varied and
interesting life of 90 years. I would like to speak from the
heart and share a daughter’s experience of the man behind all
his extraordinary achievements. Many of you will know some
aspects of his life better than me: however, I will attempt to
give you a more rounded sense of my father. My understanding
of the things that were of most importance to him were his
family, the Law, good education and investing in property.
Dad’s father, Patrick Kearney, was a railway paymaster in
Toowoomba and his mother, Lenora Hogan, a.k.a. Dolly, was a
determined, entrepreneurial businesswoman. Dolly returned
to Melbourne from Toowoomba and raised seven children on
her own whilst running a boarding house for professional
gentlemen in St Kilda, Melbourne. Dad would certainly have
learned about the importance of a good education and the
vicissitudes of private enterprise from Dolly. Dad’s brother,
Kevin, is here with us today as I’m sure his siblings, Patrick,
Mary, Tom, Sheila and Lenore, are in spirit.
Dad learned about the gift of love from Mum. They have been
lifetime soul mates and constant companions for over 60
years. Their loyalty, love and commitment are unprecedented.
Theirs is a great love story with all that 63 years of marriage
entails. Mum fondly recalls that during his proposal that Dad
said, “I haven’t got anything, but I can promise you that your
life will never be dull”. He was true to his word!
Dad was a great communicator and story teller. He loved to
have an audience and to share his jokes and anecdotes with
as many people as possible. Dad attributed his
surefootedness in the use of the English language and his
broad and deep education to his time as a student at Burke
Hall, Xavier, Melbourne University and as a Franciscan novice.
It seems significant that yesterday was the feast day of
St Francis of Assisi. I have fond memories of Dad sitting down
with me at bedtime and telling me a story. He would weave
more threads into the story each night until they became
sagas. These stories were always far too exciting to go to
sleep, especially as I always had an opportunity to contribute
to the storyline. I delighted in throwing in a tricky twist to see
what he would come up with. I was always impressed with
his ability to maintain continuity despite convoluted
storylines.
Dad’s first love was the Law. He took the more challenging
path of being an articled clerk to his eldest brother Patrick.
He was admitted to the Melbourne Bar in 1949 and was
one of the youngest men to take silk at 41 years. He had
an interesting and varied career as a barrister, including
co-authoring the Draft Bills for an Administrative Appeals
46
Tribunal and Ombudsman which were adopted by the
Victorian Parliament. He had a pioneering interest in
Indigenous Land Rights Law, writing a report entitled History
of the Law concerning Aborigines in Victoria in 1969. He was
Senior Counsel for the Kamkum and Butibum people in the
ground-breaking Indigenous Land Rights Trial regarding
ownership and acquisition of the Markham River Delta, which
included the airport and city of Lae, PNG in 1972. His Junior
Counsel was Ron Castan, who later became a renowned
human rights advocate and senior counsel in the famous
Mabo case which resulted in the recognition of Aboriginal
Land Rights in Australia for the first time. Dad stated that
some of the elements in the Mabo case were not dissimilar to
those they submitted in the Kamkum and Butibum case, and
that there was no doubt that the PNG Supreme Court’s
decision to give credence to the claims of the Lae tribes had
a significant bearing on the Mabo finding.
He served on many boards and tribunals, including as
Chairman of the Victorian Branch of the International
Commission for Jurists, Chairman of the Victorian Town
Planning Appeals Tribunal, Chairman of the Victorian
Groundwater Appeals Board, a charter member of the
International Bar Association and its Town Planning and
Environmental Law committee and the Australian member
of the International Data Bank Committee on Town Planning.
I remember Dad going off to the Middle East to represent
political prisoners, which I presume was during his time with
the ICJ. He certainly instilled a sense of social justice, human
rights, standing up for what you believe in and giving back
to your community in his children.
His experiences of the challenges of life and those of his
mother, especially growing up Catholic in Australia in the
1920’s and 30’S inspired him to become a keen supporter of
education. This included sponsoring many people to attend
University, acting as an advisor and supporter of the
foundation of Bond University and President of Friends of
Bond University, a supporter of the development of Griffith
University on the Gold Coast, including being a member of
Griffith University Council and chairman of the Griffith Gold
Coast Campus Advisory Council. He was also a benefactor
of many educational bodies, including Bond, Griffith and
Melbourne Universities, Newman College, Marymount,
Somerset College, All Saints and Xavier. He was awarded
an Honorary Doctorate of Laws by Bond University and an
Honorary Doctorate of Griffith University in 2000.
Mum and Dad shared a keen interest in heritage buildings,
including the preservation of many architecturally significant
buildings in the City of Melbourne, such as the jewel in their
crown, the Block Arcade. He was a visionary property
investor especially on the Gold Coast. He made it very clear
to me that he identified as a property investor not a
developer. He had an extraordinary ability to pick the eyes out
of a place, to see the potential of an area and to understand
how the development of that area was going to proceed.
For example, he bought Woodlands and Jabiru around the
time I was born. I remember him saying to me as a child that
one day this area would be the centre of the Gold Coast. It
was hard to imagine that a place that was a dirt road and
paddocks would become Robina. He could definitely play
a long game! One of my favourite things to do was to go on
a drive with Mum and Dad along the dirt road from the Old
Coach Road to Broadbeach to see how many wild animals we
could see. The highlight of the trip was if we saw a wombat
or koala. This was far more interesting than the hours I spent
with Mum and Dad driving around Melbourne on the
weekends looking at properties and attending auctions. I did
learn how much homework Dad put into his potential
investments and strategies for a successful auction bid.
Dad became a Member of the Order of Australia in 2005 for
services to the community as an advisor and benefactor to
a number of education and church organisations and through
the preservation of a number of architecturally significant
buildings in the City of Melbourne.
In my opinion, Dad’s core qualities included his big generous
heart; his fierce loyalty to his beloved wife Alison, his family,
friends and colleagues; his wry and witty humour; his strong
will and determination; his incredible resilience and ability
to re-invent himself when he hit hard times and his ability to
embrace the simple pleasures in life - good food and good
company. Dad did not have an easy life nor was it dull. He
identified with the Little Aussie Battler. He may have looked
like a swan but those legs were working hard under the
surface. He suffered a number of set-backs in life including the
car accident in 1964. I certainly learnt about the challenges
and freedom of being your own boss, the importance of
friends and family and how to be clear, focused, creative and
resilient. JFK was truly a ‘Man for All Seasons’.
It was a relief to those that loved him that Dad passed away
peacefully surrounded by Mum,Benji, Edwina, Miriam and me
on Wednesday 2nd October. It brought joy to my heart to see
his look of serenity with the hint of a wry smile after death.
Dad’s reflection on his life is capsulated in the perceptive
words of the great American poet, author and philosopher
Ralph Waldo Emmerson: The reward of a thing well done is to
have done it.
47
The Sacrament
of Marriage
Michael Scott when Rector of the College
had this to say on this subject in 1967:
It (Marriage) is God’s greatest gift to us, but precisely
because it is such a gift, because of its richness, and its
rewards, it cannot be bought cheaply, it has to be paid for..
1
..I think here two things are the ones that count.
First of all, the thing that is stressed in the marriage
service, namely the unselfishness.. and the second one
is the question of trust..
Over the years, many former Collegians have taken up
the Sacrament of Marriage. Here we share some images
of recent weddings and one that is a shade older.
2
48
3
4
1 Patrick Tehan (NC 2007-2009) and Kate
Boggon May (NC 2008-2009) were recently
married by Father Gerry Healy SJ in the
Chapel at Xavier College.
2 Edmund Ryan (NC 1943-1945) married to
Catherine O’Bryan in 1951 in the Chapel of the
Holy Spirit. They are photographed here with
the Rector, Father Jeremiah Murphy SJ.
5
3 The wedding of Kristen Swenson and Julian
Jarvis – a very ‘Newman Wedding’: The Rector,
Father Uren SJ, John Jerome Myers
(NC 2003-2004), Katherine Mcqualter,
Kristen Swenson (NC 2003-2005), Julian
Jarvis (NC2003-2005), John Eland
(NC 2003-2005), Sarah Lovick (NC 20032005), Scott Luetjens (NC 2003-2004), and
Rosemarie Marsiglio.
4 Former Collegians Jacqui Magee and Gary
Butcher, both members of the College in 2006
and 2007, were recently married in the Chapel
of the Holy Spirit by the Rector.
5 Joe Butler (NC 2002-2005) and Gerardine
Dillion (NC 2002-2004) were married at
Newman College in the Chapel of the Holy
Spirit in late 2013.
49
20 year reunion
newman college freshers of 1994
Save the date: Lunchtime, Saturday October 4th 2014; please
get in touch via Facebook or email and pass the message on
so we can confirm numbers and venue.
News of
former
collegians
Mick M (mckitmick@hotmail.com)
Est L (esthereclethlean@gmail.com)
Mel M (melaniemackenzie@hotmail.com)
Facebook Group – Newman College Melbourne –
Fresher class of 1994
congratulations
Congratulations to former Collegian, Major General the
Hon Justice Richard Tracey AM RFD who was recognised in
the 2014 Australia Day Honours List for exceptional service
in the field of military law, as a consultant for the Director of
Army Legal Services, and as Judge Advocate General of the
Australian Defence Force.
Major General Tracey has served in the most senior and
demanding roles within the military justice system and has
actively promoted the fairness and integrity of the system.
His dedication to ensuring that Australia has a robust and
appropriate military discipline system has been an inspiration
to all military lawyers, and has maintained ongoing
Government, judicial and public confidence in Australia’s
military discipline system.
50
Father Rector met former Collegians Jim O’Collins and Geoff Torney at a lunch at the MCG for those with a membership
that exceeded fifty years. An animated discussion took place on the merits of the 1957 College Golf Team. We discovered the
photograph above right of the Golf Team in the archives featuring Geoff Torney, Glynn O’Collins, Tony Capes and Peter
O’Callaghan. Absent were: Jim O’Collins, Mick Somerville and D. Johnston.
Sarah McNicol (Newman 2003–4,
2007–8) has recently completed
her LL.M (Masters of Law) at the Freie
Universität, Berlin, having received a
scholarship for postgraduate studies from
the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch
Dienst (daad.de). Sarah wrote her thesis
in German on the implementation of
European Union Consumer Law. She is
photographed on a recent holiday with
her Mum, former Newman College
Council Member, Dr Sue McNicol SC,
in Majorca.
best lawyers
in australia
Congratulations to
former Collegian,
Katherine Forrest
(NC 1985-1990), who
was named the Best
Lawyers 2014-2015
Melbourne Financial
Institutions “Lawyer
of the Year”.
Katherine Forrest (back left) with some members of the 1988 General Committee.
51
farewell
kevin hogan, gavan hackwill, paul grundy,
tony capes, angus james macissac, denis
bourke, john batros and natalie shekel
News has reached the College that a number of former Collegians
have died in recent times. Our condolences to their families and
friends and may their gentle souls rest in peace.
Kevin Gerard Hogan (NC 1947-1950) died aged 83 on the
19th May, 2013; he was the last survivor, of his generation,
of a prominent Catholic legal family.
Gavan Hackwill (NC 1952-1954) passed away peacefully in
Sale on 17th February, 2013. He spent much of his working
life as a secondary school teacher, finally as Principal of
Maffra High School. A Latin scholar, he mainly taught English,
French and History.
Angus James MacIssac
who died on
27 December, 2013.
He attended Newman
College in 1948-1949
and married Joan
Trethowan in the
Chapel of the Holy
Spirit, Newman College
in 1955. Train a child in
the way he should go,
and when he is old he will
not turn from it. (Proverbs 22:6)
Natalie Shekel (NC 1998) who died tragically in a car
accident in Leopold.
Dr Denis Bourke (NC 1954-1959) who died on the
22nd September, 2013.
Professor Emeritus Paul Grundy AM (NC 1953-1956) passed
away peacefully on the 6th January, 2013. He followed his
father, M.W. Grundy (NC 1919-1923) to Newman College
and the University of Melbourne. Paul was very active in the
Newman Society, and more recently, in the ‘Golden Years’
programme. He had a distinguished academic career
(Civil engineering) at Monash University.
Dr John Batros (NC 1960-1963) who died on the
14th July, 2013.
The 1955 Second VIII: Back: M. Shannon, R. Koerner, R. Lilburne,
D. O’Day. Front: G.A. Walsh, J.G. Joyce, D.K. Sutton, D.M. Bourke.
Absent: P. Bourke.
John Batros in the 1961 Tennis team: Back: A. Fry, J. Batros,
J. Dynan. Front: W. Gourdie, G. Pitt, I. O’Connor.
52
Dr Anthony Capes
(NC 1953-58) died on the
20th August, 2013. He was
a great amateur footballer
who was selected in the
1956 Australian Football
exhibition match at the
Melbourne Olympic Games.
He served as the Club
Doctor at the Footscray
Football Club and later as
Club President.
Edmund Ryan AM
RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEWMAN STUDENT DURING WORLD WAR II
53
The Provost has asked me to record my memories of
being a student at Newman College between 1942
and 1945.
1
My association with Newman has lasted for many years.
From the mid-1970s I was Chairman of the Building
Committee. I occupied this position for 25 years, after which
I became the Chairman of the Joint Committee (Newman
and St Mary’s College) for the formation of the Academic
Centre. In addition to this, I took up the role of manager for
the Academic Centre project from inception to completion.
That is by way of introduction to these recollections, and to
explain why references to the physical presence of the
College buildings will be woven throughout the record.
I came to Melbourne University at the age of l6. fresh from
the country. In my first year I attended tutorials at Newman
as a non-resident student. I was enrolled in the new threeyear degree course in engineering science. This short-lived
degree was a product of the war. It was introduced by
Melbourne University in 1940 so that students could
graduate more quickly and move into the workforce or
services to contribute to the war effort. Students could take
out a bachelor degree in engineering science after three
years, or go on to complete a fourth year (as I did) and obtain
a degree in civil engineering.
2
My decision to pursue a career in civil engineering was an
odd choice; my father was a lawyer and I had no contacts or
family members in the civil engineering profession. Indeed, at
the boarding school I attended scarcely any information or
advice had been given concerning careers and the range of
university courses available. However, my choice was a good
one. and opened up many opportunities for future study and
work in architecture, commerce and management.
I began my course two weeks before the academic year
officially commenced. That was an introduction to a heavy
workload for the ensuing four years. A normal University
working week for those doing engineering comprised
lectures, practical work, tuitions, and supervised assignments.
The only free time I had was on Wednesday afternoons, and
about two hours otherwise. Those doing engineering were
required to spend up to eight weeks during long vacations on
approved practical aspects of the course. This had to be
completed in order to fulfill the requirements for admission to
the degree. It was assessed at the time that, upon completion
ol the double degree, our four-year course was the equivalent
of five years of study. The pressure of work meant that I was
known as one of the quieter members of College.
3
54
In my time, except for the works described in the next
paragraph, the building layout of Newman was the same as
when the College first opened in 1918. The Mannix and Carr
Wings, and the Dome area, contributed to the total area of
the College. The student accommodation consisted of a
series of two-room flats, each occupied by two students, one
room being the study and the other the bedroom.
Around the first level of the Dome there were about five
single rooms for senior students. Most students found the
arrangement to be advantageous both from academic and
companionship aspects.
The Chapel was not fully utilized in the life of the students
until the end of 1945. Construction had commenced in 1938
and progressed slowly until all was completed by October
1942. On 27 October the Chapel was consecrated and
dedicated. When I was at Newman the area for Mass and
other religious uses was on the first floor above the area now
used for offices on the west side of the south entry to the
cloisters. It was known as the Oratory—hence the present
term for that area, which is today used for meetings. Two
tutorial rooms were on the ground floor under the Oratory,
with access to the second room being through the room
opening off the cloisters. This area is currently used for the
offices. The original design of the Oratory was for a two-level
area, as shown by drawings held in the Newman archives.
There was no provision for tutorial rooms of any practical
intent in the original designs.
The only two faults with the original college design were,
in my opinion, the lack of proper tutorial rooms and the
provision of an enclosed swimming pool at ground floor level
at the end of the Carr Wing in the western projecting wing.
This pool was scarcely used; it was not heated, and was so
cold that for those brave enough to hazard a brief swim,
including myself, it had to be followed immediately by a hot
shower. The pool area was thus totally underutilized for over
30 years.
The normal routine of the College changed dramatically in
1942. This arose from the arrival of members of the RAAF
and the Women’s Australian Auxiliary Air Force (WAAAF).
The RAAF servicemen took over the flats on the cloister
side in order to attend officer-training courses at Melbourne
University. Each two-roomed flat housed four defence
personnel. The students had no need for alarm clocks as
around 7.00am there was considerable noise and activity
with the servicemen getting ready for their training at the
University.
The war also impacted on life in the dining room. Food
shortages, and the issue of food ration tickets, meant that
College meals lacked variety and meat was in short supply.
A bonus of being in the First VIII rowing crew (I held No. 3
position) was that for two weeks before the inter-collegiate
races crew members were given steak at dinner. The
WAAAFs served in the dining room, as well as being engaged
in food preparation and kitchen duties. However, together
with members of the RAAF. they had their meals in the dining
room outside the student mealtimes. The RAAFs and the
WAAAFs were in College until the war ended in 1945.
Apart from the presence of the defence forces, I recall few
physical signs of precautions for war hostilities. One
exception was the glazed roof lights around the centre of the
Dome, which had been blacked out in case of air raids. Some
architectural aspects of the dining room were significantly
reduced because of the reduction of natural light. The roof
lights remained covered for some decades until the dining
room was upgraded.
The war certainly had an impact on student numbers in
College. In 1943. when I became a resident at Newman, the
total number of residential students was 71. Not many more
than the 56 residential students who entered the College
when it first opened on 11 March 1918. In 1944 there were
81 residential students, but by 1945 this had increased to 96.
As far as I can remember, medical students dominated the
College student population during the war years in terms of
numbers. That could be attributable to the possible need for
more medical personnel in the services and on home soil if
hostilities came our way.
During my years at Newman the Rector was the Very Rev.
J. M. Murphy SJ. He held this office for many years: he
became Rector in 1923 and still occupied that position when
Catherine O’Bryan and I were married by him in the Newman
Chapel on 17 November 1951. He was a staunch believer
in respect for authority, insisting that the students uphold
certain standards. Gowns were worn for all five evening
meals on weekdays. Punctuality for meals was given high
priority. At the allotted time all students had to stand behind
a chair at their designated tables in readiness for the Rector
and others to proceed to High Table. If any student arrived
after the Rector entered and said grace, the student was
required to approach High Table, bow, and wait for the Rector
to acknowledge him before moving to his seat. Quite often
1 Gerard Schaefler, Doug Jones and Claude Culvenor.
2 Ed Ryan with Peter Penn.
3 Edmund Ryan (NC 1943-1945) married to Catherine O’Bryan in 1951
in the Chapel of the Holy Spirit.
55
the Rector would deliberately avoid eye contact for students
who were particularly late, or regularly late, and leave them
standing.
Respect for authority also extended to those at University,
whether they were lecturers, demonstrators or tutors. College
students generally wore ties and jackets for all attendances.
There were, of course, occasions when respect was
abandoned. In the engineering course there was one
particularly good-natured lecturer who would declare at the
commencement of the lecture that he had not properly
prepared himself. There was no need for explanation, as was
obvious from the lack of student attention and paper
aeroplanes that flew wildly from the upper tiers at the back
of the theatre.
A very important member of College in those days was the
Matron. When I first came to College the Matron was Miss
Egan, who had occupied the position since 1922. In May
1943, Mrs Staples became the new Matron. The Matron was
fully responsible for administrative matters, including the
housekeeping and kitchen and dining areas, and collection
of food rationing tickets. Her role was particularly onerous
because of the shortage of staff, food rationing, and the
increased number of people in College brought about by the
presence of the RAAF and WAAAF. In addition to her normal
daytime tasks, in the evening she attended to the needs of
the students. For instance, she would dispense cough
mixtures for minor ailments and listen to the problems of
students, who had no family members available. She thus
played an unofficial role as a counselor and one with a willing
ear. As a result, most of her evenings were taken up with
students who wished to see her.
I also recall a long-serving member of staff called Ernie.
His duties were obscure, his main claim to fame being that
he was a survivor of the sinking of the Titanic. At about 9pm
when the main doors were closed he acted as a night
watchman; no student could be admitted unless recognized
by Ernie. According to a story that circulated around the
College, a selected few of the final year students (mainly
medical) had Ernie as their personal housekeeper to make
their beds and attend to their needs. This seemed to follow
the old tradition at the English University colleges.
Quite often on Friday nights a small group of us would go to
the local picture theatre on Faraday Street The screening of
films was very popular, with the theatre mostly filled by the
time the film commenced. Management had no hesitation in
allowing the students to sit on the aisle steps, possibly
indicating a more relaxed attitude towards fire safety than
exists today. On wearing our academic gowns we were
admitted for the special fee of 9 pence. The presence of a
56
group in gowns seemed to arouse some antagonism in the
local youths, which occasionally led to in an altercation
between ‘Town and Gown.’ My own attitude was to beat a
hasty retreat. Not so. however, for some of my colleagues,
who relished the opportunity for a stoush.
It may be difficult, for those with little knowledge of student
life in the 1940s, to believe how rare cars were in student life.
In my experience, the total number of student motor vehicles
on the college site averaged one per year. One of my friends
was lucky enough to possess an old 5-seater. He arranged
for a group of five of us to go to the Christmas Hills north of
Melbourne for a night in the open. Our object was to prospect
for gold in a creek bed known to have had gold many years
ago. We did find a few specks, which were carefully bottled.
It was a good way of consolidating friendships, but I have
never been so cold as on that night. It certainly put an end to
my ever having any desire for camping.
During the war years the area now occupied by St Mary’s
College was a wilderness, covered with scrubland and native
self-sown bushes. It was always sensible at night on going to
and from the University to keep to the regular tracks as the
area was sometimes frequented by the rougher element, as
well as some who had to sleep out because of the difficult
times. When I was a student at Newman, the predecessor
to St Mary’s College was known as St Mary’s Hall and was
located at the corner of Walker Street and The Avenue.
Parkville. The total land now occupied by Newman and
St Mary’s College, according to the original subdivision of that
area, was left as one parcel to the Catholic Church. The
Council of Newman College in later years agreed to hand over
part of that land to the Loreto Sisters for a women’s college.
In so doing, they provided a significant service to the
community.
My time at Newman eventually made me realize that it was
the beginning of gaining a broader knowledge in areas outside
my initial study of engineering. Those further pursuits greatly
enhanced my career and enjoyment of life and continue to
do so. In conclusion, I have always felt greatly indebted to my
parents for giving me the privilege of being a resident at
Newman.
Good Friday
2014
The homily given by the Rector at the Good Friday Service held in the Chapel of the Holy Spirit,
Newman College, on Friday, 18th April, 2014.
On Monday, April 7th, less than two weeks ago, a Dutch
Jesuit, Father Frans van de Lugt, was shot in the head,
twice, by a masked gunman in front of the monastery
in which he was living in the rebel-held Old City of Homs
in Syria.
Father Frans, as he was universally known, was born in
1938 and entered the Jesuits in 1958. He first came to
Syria in 1966, and he had lived there for the subsequent
forty eight years. He was a psychotherapist by profession,
a retreat leader, a pastor and the founder of an
organization called Al Ard, an association that cared for
the mentally handicapped. It provided one of the rare
spaces where members of the three great Abrahamic
religions – Jews, Christians and Muslims – could come
together and pray. He was considered an eccentric, a holy
puzzle, for many Syrians, a Dutchman who had learned to
love Syria and the Syrians perhaps more these days than
they seem to love one another.
The motives for the attack were not known, and neither
side or faction in the desperate civil war claimed
responsibility for the killing. Though he was a European,
Father Frans had come to be considered part of Syrian
society. He was well-known and respected in and around
the city of Homs, even by the insurgents who controlled
the Old City. There were no known specific threats against
him, and the rebels had even assigned him a guard, who
was also shot in the attack.
The civil war in Syria has claimed over 150,000 lives.
Still, the killing of Father Frans struck a special chord
because he chose voluntarily to share the plight of the
people who stayed in the rebel-held Old City of Homs.
In February United Nations and Red Crescent workers had
evacuated more than 1,300 civilians from the Old City
during a temporary truce that accompanied the peace
talks in Geneva between the government and the rebels.
But Father Frans and the remaining twenty or so
Christians decided to stay. In a video posted on Youtube
at that time Father Frans had warned that the Christians
and Muslims trapped in the Old City were facing severe
shortages of food and medicine. “There is nothing to eat.
There is nothing worse than to see people in the streets
looking for something to eat for their children. There
are so many people here who need operations and
specialist medical treatment, but have to wait for a long
time and endure immense suffering. Given these
conditions,” he concluded, “it is impossible that we should
not stay and try with the international community to do
something together.”
But now Father Frans is dead, yet another victim of the
600-day siege of the Old City. His death is a stark
reminder that what we are commemorating on this
Good Friday is still robust and active in our own world –
senseless violence that sweeps up in its embrace both
government and rebels, the soldier and the civilian, the
murderous gunman and the innocent priest. It happened
in Jerusalem two thousand years ago, it happened in the
Old City of Homs on April 7th, it happened in the streets
of Sunshine on Wednesday morning when a thirty three
old woman was stabbed to death by her abusive partner,
it happened on Manus Island six or so weeks ago when
an asylum seeker was shot dead by as yet we know
not whom.
I remember about five or six years ago going to the
Rivoli theatre in Camberwell to see Mel Gibson’s film,
“The Passion of the Christ”. It was a Saturday morning
session, the film had already had a long run, and there
were only about eight or ten people in the theatre. Right in
my line of vision were two young people, obviously very
much in love, hugging, cuddling, arms around one another
57
as the film began. Those of you who have seen the film or
have read reviews will remember that it is in its own way a
quite violent film. Gibson does not spare the viewer any of the
savagery and violence that accompanied Jesus’ passion and
death – the constant buffeting, the slaps and punches to the
face even by the Jewish authorities, to say nothing of the
brutality of the Roman soldiers, and, of course, the scourging,
the crowning with thorns, the carrying of the cross, the nailing
to the cross and the final three agonising hours on the cross.
When the lights came on at the end of the film the two young
people were sitting bolt upright – no kissing, no hugging, no
cuddling. Violence does that to you – shock and horror, what
we can do to one another when anger, hatred and
disillusionment take over, or when authority is threatened. Or
even, sadly, when it is not any of these but when it is merely
expeditious – as the High Priest said justifying the death of
Jesus: “It is good that one man should die for the people.” Or
when it is expeditious to win the war or to provoke fear and
terror in the Old City of Homs, or perhaps even to stop the
boats and win the next election.
One might have thought that for members of the three great
Abrahamic religions – Jews, Christians and Muslims –
whether they revere Jesus as a prophet and a holy man, or,
indeed, as Christians do, as the Son of God, the events that
culminated in Calvary would have constituted forever and
absolute no–go area for any thoughts or plans involving
violence or victimisation. Calvery is, as it were, the final
playing-out of the central mystery of our Christian belief, that
God truly became human, and therefore mortal, in the person
of Jesus of Nazareth. Becoming human and being the sort of
person He was, and living and teaching in the sort of world
that He – and we – share, there was – and is – a certain
inevitability about Calvary, as there was about Father Frans’
murder in the Old City of Homs, or death on the streets of
Sunshine or in the detention centre of Manus Island.
The Incarnation is about God’s, through Jesus, solidarity
with us. He is an exemplar not only in His person, in His
teaching and in His healing, but also in His suffering and
death. For those who suffer, especially for those who suffer
unjustly, solidarity with Jesus in His suffering and death may
be a consolation. It has always been such for Christian
martyrs, and I would be surprised if it didn’t figure in Father
Frans’ last desperate consciousness as he was dragged into
the street by his masked assassin.
But Calvary in a quite different and in a very salutary way
is exemplary for all of us, too. Its violence is the antithesis
of Jesus’ command that we should love one another. Every
abuse of power, every fomenting of hatred or division, every
exploitation of race or gender, every fraud, every deceit,
58
every manipulation of the truth, every dishonesty, every
betrayal, every time we have been complicit in, or ignored,
the victimisation of another – over all of these the cross of
Calvary casts its shadow. Judas, Peter, the apostles the
Jewish authorities, Pilate, even the Roman soldiers, “just
doing their job”, probably weren’t all that different from you
or me. The people who cried out, “Crucify him, crucify him –
his blood be upon us and upon our children”, were probably
the same people who cried out, “Hosanna to the Son of
David”, on Palm Sunday. They were just ordinary people, like
you and me, caught up in the web of violence and terror that
demanded a victim.
That is why Jesus’ command that we should love one another
is so important, why at the Last Supper, as His last will and
testament, as it were, He was so insistent with His apostles.
“If you love me,” He said, “keep my commandments.” “This is
my commandment, love one another as I have loved you.”
And finally, prophetically, “Greater love than this no man hath
than he lay down his life for his friend.” The alternative to love
on that first Good Friday was betrayal, denial, condemnation,
violence, victimisation and death.
One would wish that 2000 years down the track we had
learned the lesson of the Last Supper and Calvary. But Homs,
Sunshine, Manus Island are – alas – only a few of so many
instances. They are enough, however, to remind us that
Calvary is still with us, and that Jesus’ commandment of love
is not some optional recommendation but the only sure and
enduring basis for living together in harmony, civility, mutual
respect and peace. It is not enough to abhor violence,
important certainly as that lesson is that Calvary, above all,
teaches us. It is even more important that we learn to love
one another – as Jesus loved us and Father Frans loved the
people of Syria, both Christians and Muslims in the Old City
of Homs before, like Jesus, he was so cruelly murdered just
two weeks ago.
N ewm an Autum n 2 0 1 4 • Vo lum e 4 6 • N um ber 1
59
Enquiries
Further 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: office@newman.unimelb.edu.au

Newman College - University of Melbourne

Transcription

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