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The Australian Jesuits
SESQUICENTENARY
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Mass Of Thanksgiving
ST STEPHEN'S CATHEDRAL,
1 AUGUST 1999
by Bishop Michael Putney
Deuteronomy 30:15-20; I Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 9:18-26.
Your Grace, Bishop Gerry, members of the Society of Jesus, and dear friends gathered here to give thanks to God on the occasion of the sesquicentenary of the Society of Jesus in Australia, and on the occasion of the eighty-third anniversary of the Society in Queensland.
As I reflected on those many years and even more Jesuits, a number of powerful images came to mind. For example, there is an early letter written from the district around Sevenhill in South Australia, the first foundation of the Society of Jesus in Australia, containing a description of Fr Tappeiner of the Australian Province, who had arrived in 1852: 'Fr Tappeiner was never so happy as when he could sit with a group of shearers or woodcutters round their camp-fire and sing and recite. He had a good singing voice and was a good dancer, and he would sing and dance for their entertainment. When they began to drift off for the night, he would invite them to join him in prayers. He would pray with them for a while and they would wander off leaving him sitting close by the camp-fire praying.'
This Jesuit was a missionary and worked tirelessly as a missionary. He continued the earliest Jesuit tradition of recognising that all the different aspects of human culture, including the arts, are an ally in preaching the gospel. This recognition continues in the apostolates of Australian Jesuits today. And if he was at home by a camp-fire with shearers and woodcutters, then he located the Society of Jesus from the very beginning at the heart of the most treasured folk traditions and images which have shaped the Australian cultural landscape.
Another powerful image is from the Jesuit stronghold of Melbourne, founded by the Irish Province of the Society of Jesus. The redoubtable Vice-provincial, Fr John Fahy SJ, spoke on the occasion of the laying of the foundation stone of a new novitiate and house of studies in 1932. He said: 'This is our only object, to render service to the Church in Victoria and the Church in Australia by the formation of holy, zealous and religious priests who shall be banded together for one single purpose, that of defending and propagating the faith, for promoting Catholic ideals of Catholic culture and of helping men to greater holiness.'
With due allowance for the rhetoric of the day, one can recognise a vigorous commitment to effective communication of the faith which found its expression in Jesuit colleges, academic work and the media, and which had as its motivation a truly missionary spirit, to help people become holy. This commitment also continues today.
A third image is of Isaac Moore SJ preaching a mission here in St Stephen's in 1894, which was said to have brought many 'absentees' back to the sacraments, and of the Brisbane clergy on retreat with Archbishop Dunne, I think in the same year. He asked the priests whether he should bring the Vincentians or the Jesuits into the archdiocese to start a college for boys, and one of the leading priests is reported to have said: 'of two evils, we had better choose the less... I recommend we take the Jesuits.' This was not to happen until 1916, and not to start a college for boys.
The parish of Toowong, which then included Indooroopilly, St Luca and Auchenflower, was cut off from Rosalie in that year. Queensland has never been a major region for the Society of Jesus, as has been Victoria, but the Jesuit ministry in Toowong, and later St Leo's and the University of Queensland, has made a notable contribution to the Catholic culture and spirituality of the Brisbane Archdiocese. I wonder whether differences between the Church in Melbourne and that of Brisbane can be traced in any degree to the fact that the priests and the bishops of the former were formed and educated by the Society or Jesus, and those of the latter by diocesan priests in Sydney and Brisbane. Though some, for example Archbishop Bathersby and myself, would wish to acknowledge the rich contribution to our formation by the Gregorian University postgraduate programmes.
Another image of Fr Christoforo Borri SJ of Milan trying to persuade Propaganda Fidei in 1606 - and also Pope Urban V11 and the Portuguese, to send missionaries to the new land discovered in the southern hemisphere. Only much later would the Jesuits, through their Australian province, take up the call to act as agents of encounter between the gospel and aboriginal Australians, a relationship which has continued so fruitfully in various forms to today. A similar commitment has led many Australian Jesuits to their mission in India, and to many other countries with the Jesuit Refugee Service.
My final image is of a classroom at Weston College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I was on sabbatical leave in 1990, and sat in on a post-graduate seminar conducted by John O'Malley SJ. It was on the mission and ministry of the early Jesuits, and was attended by a dozen or more Jesuit scholastics.
In the seminar I sided with John O'Malley in his attempts to convince the young Jesuits that 'the schools' or work in academic institutions was an appropriate ministry for contemporary Jesuits. He argued that, despite the lack of reference in foundational documents, it was a foundational ministry. I heard myself arguing that, as a member of the larger church, I had a right to be heard, as Jesuits worked out what their contribution to the church should be.
I remembered a story of Archbishop Bathersby, when he was Spiritual Director at the seminary. He was asked by a young, naive seminarian that question which arises periodically in Jesuit history usually, though not in this case, from their enemies. He was asked 'Are Jesuits Catholics?' The archbishop answered, I presume unhesitatingly, in the affirmative, and the young man said: 'That's real good because they seem pretty smart and write a lot of books. I'm glad they're on our side.'
I argued at Weston what I took for granted, that the Society of Jesus should continue to make a contribution to the academic life of the Church in Australia, and even cited a couple of examples to prove my point, which I will desist from doing today because I do not wish to single out any living men. I believed, and still do, that the expectations of the rest of the church deserved to be considered by the Society as it discerned its mission.
Today, however, I would be less willing to locate that mission so concretely, despite my real hope that the Society of Jesus will not desert their academic apostolates, because I have come to realise that the fundamental vocation of a Jesuit is to be a member of the society or company or the companions of Jesus, of that 'band' of which John Fahy SJ spoke, which means men shaped by the Exercises of Ignatius. Having been formed theologically by Karl Rahner's writings more than any others, I have always been convinced that this theology was only a working out in details of his experience of the Exercises.
So may I say to our brothers and colleagues of the Society of Jesus on this, their sesquicentenary, as the prayers of this mass will later proclaim. St Ignatius was called by God into the company of Jesus so that his love for Jesus might in turn inspire you to seek the greater glory of God, to be apostles on fire with the love of God, in Jesus, in his company, strengthened by the bread of life to spread the riches of God's love within the church, and to those who do not believe in God.
Do not today's readings remind you of St Ignatius' own Exercises? Did not God set before you 'life and good, death and evil,' or 'life and death, blessings and curses?' Did not Ignatius urge you to choose life and did you not so choose? Did you not discover in your silence that Christ Jesus 'judged you faithful', and did you not experience the divine mercy and discover that the grace of God 'overflowed for you with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus?' Did you not discover that if you would go after him, you would need to deny yourselves, take up your cross daily and follow him, and that to do otherwise would be to lose your life?
I am grateful that so many of you learned these truths and lived them in the past one hundred and fifty years. This is above all what we ask of you in the next millennium, that you keep rediscovering these truths, and that, in all you do, you share them with us.
As the Archbishop already prayed to open our liturgy: May God enrich the Society of Jesus with gifts of heart, mind and spirit. May you all be one with Jesus in holiness and love so that you will know God's will and obey it as his faithful servants for us.
BISHOP MICHAEL PUTNEY
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