Father Bob

Pyriamids, Socks and Capitalism

God and goodness go together, says I. Not so, say many others. They feel out of it at Christmas. The “festive season”, as it’s known in many countries, still evokes memories of God and religion.
Carols are sung, many about Jesus, son of God, angels and shepherds likely and unlikely messengers of God.

Give me a break, say those many who classify themselves as areligious. This festive season let’s practice goodness but without God. Just do it, I say. Don’t fall into the same trap as us religious folk. We worship regularly and talk/pray about helping others, even “walking with” them, but turn those gospel imperatives into fine, seasonal sentiments safely left behind in church and transformed into more acceptable practices like carrying for “kith and kin” not “Kath and Kim”!

They’ve just uncovered another pyramid, in Egypt, dating back to 3000 before the Christian era. Built by slaves to glorify a pharaoh, his family and mates.

It’s a reminder that we humans have always struggled with the practice of living together. We’ve shifted between tribalism and nationalism and back to tribalism so often as to bear closer scrutiny.

There was a brawl last week among monks of different branches of Christianity right in the heart of Israel, the temple, Jerusalem.

The Israeli police stepped in. Religious civility is the only strong and safe antidote to civil religion. Once religion succumbs to the blandishments of the nationalists, the temple curtain is torn in two and God leaves the Temple to its own devices, inevitably disastrous for the Temple.

Christmas is a chance to promote religious civility. Jesus of Nazareth is the strong and safe antidote to nationalist “gods”. But even Jesus is in danger of being kidnapped by sectarians who are often nationalists.

I, personally think Jesus is safer with holy secularists than with unholy sectarians.

I think that’s the beauty of Christmas. God gets down and dirty “away in a manger”. God consulted, first, after Mary and Joseph, with blue collar workers. As the child was heard to mangle the carol words, “while shepherds washed their socks by night.”!

Nationalism cops it again with “we three kings from Orient are” – three astrologers, for God’s sake, of Iranian (Persian) and pre-Abrahamic religious background led by a natural phenomenon to take part in the Great Transformation.

Capitalism, curse or blessing as it may be, covers Christmas in as much “ordure” as there was in that stable.

You can either rummage around in the muck and find a pearl of great value or you can recoil from the offensive trappings and miss out on a jackpot.

It’ll be easier to find the “pearl”, good people, doing good things for a good reason, this Christmas because capitalism is having a hard time of it.

Don’t miss the chance this Christmas of finding goodness/godness. Capitalism will soon be back with its mischievous elves, consumerism and waste.

R.J.M.

Street Report #27 - Am officially broke

The following is a report from one of our key volunteers after years of selfless service AND there's no relief for the Father Bob Maguire Foundation in sight. A strategic withdrawal from the streets and lanes is on the cards. No one's fault. Everyone's fault. rjm.

"Really busy night tonight. What can I say. Judy was present and she can report if she wishes. Top night.
 
P.S. Am officially broke as of writing this email. Have stopped buying fags for people and have given out my last $35 not asking for any just reporting a fact.
 
Probably won't be in tomorrow as off to see three people in two different prisons. Then I will see what to do."

Change

“Change” was the keynote of Barack Obama’s campaign. Change is like the air we breathe. Occasionally someone has to draw our attention to it.

Change needs to be managed, not discovered only. We’ve been bombarded by reports of global change. That’s what the media and its local equivalent gossip, does best.

Have you noticed how good the Americans are at the art of the great speech for the grand occasion. It’s not just the movies! They do it in real life.

Australians seem to have settled for the laconic or wry humour to couch deep feelings for a grand occasion. There’s a story in that somewhere.

This last week I’ve been to several rites of passage as celebrant – funerals, weddings, christenings. I also attended a 200 person gathering of Rugby League people, a fund raiser for past players finding life hard and young men talented at rugby but short on cash to support themselves.

In its own way, the Men of League dinner was a ritual. Old timers told stories which gave attendees a chance to participate vicariously and release feelings of empathy.  All rituals aim at that, (including church rituals).

There was a chance to change, for the better, attitudes to sport as more than a game, rather a way of life. I even coined a word, “sportuality”, for the occasion. I don’t know if it did much for my cause!

So, away we go again looking to promote the local alongside the global. Obama insists on the power of the local. He refers constantly to members of the voiceless majority – workers, parents, college kids – who construct, daily and selflessly, the United Local Communities of America.

I have a dream that Australians will espouse the founding parents’ idea of a commonwealth of common people with commonsense all working together for the common good.

Obama readily acknowledged the part played by the $ contribution of his silent majority of supporters.

In my case, 150 years of $ support from local parishioners, most of them for most of that time working class people, build two churches, three schools, a grand hall and large residences for priests, brothers and sisters. Add to that two residential and occupational facilities (orphanages as they were previously called for boys and girls).

How’s that for “putting in”! All those facilities were needed for the way we were, not the way we are.

What we need now is an entrepreneur or two who survey the .9 of an acre left on our books and create, like Aussies do so well, ways and means of making places and spaces on our .9 of an acre productive of the $ absolutely necessary for bringing relief to the broken-hearted of the neighbourhood

Obama’s “Yes, we can”. Yours and my “Yes, we shall”.

R.J.M.

All Soul’s Day

“First Australians” is on SBS on Sunday and Tuesday at 8.30pm

October 8th “The Age” blurb said: “Before the Dreaming the Australian continent was a flat, featureless place, devoid of life”, says a woman’s ethereal voice , overshots of red desert and rugged coastline.  “Then giant beings came down from the sky, came from across the sea and emerged from within the earth. With their arrival the Dreaming began and life was born …. (and) in everything they touched they left their essence, making the birds – the first Australians.”

This weekend catholics worldwide reflected on two episodes from their own brief history. All Saints (Nov 1) and All Souls (Nov. 2) have eternal insights to offer people of every generation and culture.

All Saints insists we honour and emulate the efforts of our ancestors. “Saints” was the word used by St. Paul to address the members of his own foundational communities. The word pops up in several of his letters.

The point he makes is that we’re all in this living business together. Each inspires the other. That’s the saintly vocation and mission, not to be taken lightly.

Our parish is named, rather imperiously, after Saints Peter and Paul.

But, in reality, it’s here because of the tens of thousands of unknown “saints” who effectively build a beacon of hope on Emerald Hill.

We recognise the original owners of Emerald Hill, the Wurrunjeri people of the Kulin collective.

What more can we say?  Thanks to our aboriginal settler role models, we may be able to relearn the survival skill of making do with less.

Our parish house of hospitality flies both the Irish and Aboriginal flags, proudly, from the balcony.

Both groups were kicked around by persons known. Both groups have tears, toil and sweat  invested in this .9 of an acre.

Our own historian, Rob Grogan, is retelling our catholic tribal story in the hope that our contemporary congregation of saints will pick up the story and run with it for the good of the neighbourhood.

All Souls gives us an annual chance to name our dead, polish their bones, reconnect with them, lest we forget.

Croatia was impressed by the interest shown by Australia in one missing person, Britt Lapthorne.

Mass graves are common in the Balkans, Gallipoli and, indeed most countries wracked by millennia of battles.

South Melbourne parish boundaries embrace the Coroner’s Court, where lies the body of Britt Lapthorne.

All Soul’s Day gives us, at Sts. Peter and Paul, a chance to pastorally embrace Britt, her family and friends.

She returns the favour by sparking a feeling in our individual and collective hearts, for our own loved ones now experiencing, in ways beyond our imagination, the dimension we call “eternal life”.

RJM

Good religion, morality not moralism and meaning

We’re interviewing, this week on 3JJJ, John Carroll, author of “Ego and Soul – the modern West in search of meaning”.

That takes me back to the sixties. While looking for a fresher vocabulary to express Vatican 2 insights for secular listeners, I’d discovered Viktor Frankel’s “Man’s Search for Meaning”.

I needed to have a catch phrase to grab peoples’ attention for long enough to leave, I’d hoped, a lasting deposit of spiritual nourishment.

The 60’s were close enough to the end of World War 2 and the subsequent discoveries of Nazi and other “fascist” atrocities to apply a timely shock to the arrogance of secularism.

Viktor Frankel was in a concentration camp. He witnessed and absorbed the evil. He sought a vaccine for the toxic virus pervading the camp and its inhabitants, captives and captors alike.

He needed a space away from it all. He found he could be alone only on top of a small structure used to cover bodies taken from his hut.

Awful, but satisfactory for his purposes. It was in that unlikely place that Viktor found the scrap of meaning necessary for the “religion, mortality, meaning” trifecta (sorry Melburnians are in the middle of the horse racing season!).

He says we can’t have meaning and mortality without religion. I’d add, pure and undefiled and can join our critics in a mutual offensive on bad religion, impure and defiled.

Victor Frankel and John Carroll need to be called as witnesses in any discussion about the Xavier College incident. Young men, especially, be it for genetic or environmental reasons, are especially prone to undisciplined behaviour when the religion, morality, meaning links are broken.

Everyone’s had a go at Xavier. Some for political, some for philosophical reasons. Others for the purely practical reason of trying to understand how adults and adolescents can share in a happy, healthy way, a commonwealth of commonsense.

One young “letters to editor” contributor suggested we start all over again. We could have a global, regional and/or local stocktake of social assets!

Our teenagers may well reflect at the “byo diy” (bring your own, do it yourself) beliefs of their parents and society! No rocket science involved there.

Do fathers spend so little time with their children? You don’t have to be Dr. Carr-Gregg to know what happens if it’s true.

Lots of our local public housing kids are brought up by single mothers. God bless them. No fathers or father figures at all.

Some kids become socially anorexic. Some become immune by self discipline. Some of us, well meaning adults, walk beside each group as back up for them.

As Carroll says in his book and Frankel in his, the winning combination is good religion, morality not moralism and meaning.

Melbourne Cup appeals to Australians because the myth of the rank outsider winning from  the back of the pack keeps the hope alive that any of us, allowed to run on our merits, (as St. Paul also says) can run to achieve our personal best.

RJM

Economic rationalism

I’ve attended a few meetings and forums since last weekend. Most of them were about the poor.

A Uniting Church forum at Melbourne Uni had three speakers. One was about training migrant children for the workforce so the bit of poverty cycle around their necks could be broken – not the necks! The cycle!

Another was an aboriginal woman, ex-prisoner, who’s educated herself while incarcerated. She recommended highly, education as the key to salvation for grossly socially challenged people.

The third was involved in a programme at Catholic University Melbourne. (Yes, there is such a place, even after Mannix’s life long opposition to such a concept) which fast tracks “wounded” people onto a well educated level, usually against all odds.

It’s great to exchange the field of battle for the field of dreams, even for a couple of hours.

“Yes, Yes”, I muttered to myself several times over those blessed 120 minutes.

Then I noticed that damned elephant in the room so big a denial in the face of all the beautiful things filling the lecture theatre.

The lectures and the following inspiring discussions stated that lots of things were working already, thanks to government, corporate, philanthropic fundings.

For me, not successful at attracting dollars from either of these sectors, the question remained as to how to bring the benefits, listed by the speakers, to thousands more socially excluded fellow citizens.

There’s a cultural divide here which may well be unbridgeable. Even friendly economic rationalists insist you limit your “good works” by how many dollars you have.

There’s another theory, espoused by secular and sacred saints, that you identity your “good works” then go find/make the money.

I’m calling that “economic relationalism”.

Economic rationalism gets several pages in the press every day. Economic relationalism gets a paragraph whenever a socialite puts on a fundraiser for his/her favourite charity.

Deb Tsorbaris, social activist and CEO of the Council for Homeless Persons, has been begging us for years to get our act together.

Economic relationalism requires an ALL in effort. A champion team beats a team of champions.

Differences of opinion, style and modus operandi add colour to the human enterprise, just like in an orchestra, a musical, a football match or, even, a local church.

Good management keeps each of these social activities running as smooth as clockwork. God bless those bureaucrats who sees their work as a vocation, not a job.

Leadership is the other essential ingredient. Maybe it’s time for each of us to be the leader/manager within our own sphere of influence. Then we have to form an alliance with other leader/managers and re-create dynamic families, schools, sports clubs, neighbourhoods and even churches.

Australia’s the ideal place to workshop a new, small evolutionary step where individual and collective responsibilities work hand in hand as a “commonwealth”.

    R.J.M.

Inclusive brethren

Maybe Jesus was right, just as a social commentator. He said it doesn’t matter who’s in government, it’s religion and business, often in a well meaning conspiracy, that rule the world.

See how quickly politics vanishes from the media when the $ elephants are on the rampage. It’s the grass that gets trampled.

I do hope the “lords of the universe” solve their $ management problems, so I can continue to bring help to the homeless and hopeless.

I speak not just for myself but for all the nameless and faceless “caped crusaders”, the social entrepreneurs who believe in and, indeed, practise the “commonwealth” of Australia.

Maybe there’s “good” greed and “bad” greed, just like good and bad religion and good and bad cholesterol.

Good greed means making more money to give to more to the poor. Maybe, philanthropy is the right label. The word’s Greek – boils down to the love of people. Wealthy people create Trusts to handle their love for others and attract tax deductibility – a businesslike winning formula. Good luck to them. There’s another group, younger business people, creative, innovative, who help spontaneously when approached directly. The man who posts this blog for me, David, is in that category. So is Michaela.

Thanks, too, to Brian, Adrian, John, Andrew, Danny, Robert, Stephen, Bruno, Mike, Nonda who have stepped up to help with $ to keep the Father Bob Maguire Foundation “virtual village” of 300 souls housed, clothed, schooled and, therefore, hopeful.

I’m still looking for a single major sponsor. A new radio station, boasting two of Australia’s leading Presenters has moved into South Melbourne. If I could get them it would be great – local radio station proudly supports local priest in supporting local “socially challenged” people.

Starbucks is gone locally.  They had an “inhouse” vocabulary including “partners” – staff and customers.

I like that. Better than “customers” or “clients”.

I think we’re all in this together. It’s not about me, as Obama keeps saying, it’s about us, together,

Whoever helps, or is helped, all are partners. Good religion promotes this idea in practice as “inclusive brethren”.

Bad religion promotes the opposite and deteriorates into “exclusive brethren”.

Well known Melbourne social activist Les Twentyman, and I have just started a summer season Sunday show, 3-4pm, on radio 3AW.

This week we’ll talk about Melbourne suburban and CBD gangs. It won’t be the usual radio report. It’ll be more discerning, let’s hope, because Les and I (Les more so than I) know what incites young people, mainly male, to form sad, mad and sometimes, bad peer groups.

Blame the government, families, schools if you like. But don’t forget those elephants I started with. It’s the economy, stupid!

Everyone needs a living wage. Young people need to earn to live. Who will come and save us?

   

R.J.M.

Recessions, depressions, credit squeezes, inflation, deflation

Can’t find my magnetic alphabet.  Need to change the noticeboard outside our church to “Bunnings is not the only saving place”.

Just how “saving” little places like this and “saving” little people like us, can truly be is a moot point just now.

If Freddie Mac and Fannie Mac can’t save themselves, why do we think we can?

Well, I suppose because we’ve been through it all before, many times, in fact – recessions, depressions, credit squeezes, inflation, deflation.  Are all these mysterious names for failed aspirations or coverups for greed, one of the seven deadly sins?

This place burbled along well enough while there was money around, not church money, never church money, but money earned by us as a centre of hope for the locals and my own acquired dependants.

Because I live “over the shop”, 24/7, I know the new look of desperation on the face of locals and my own dependants when I knock them back.  It’s a mixture of fear of the unknown and disillusion with me and the security I represented to them.

I did make the tactical mistake 30 years ago, of giving the impression that I/we could be trusted to stand by them, while all around them fell apart.

How sad to have to rely on a security door for some feeling of safety at 8am or 8pm?  I’ve chosen to live alone “above the shop”, rightly or wrongly. Maybe it’s a dated form of bleeding / sacred heart Catholicism.

Maybe because I’ve no where else to go and sleep in a bed provided at the discretion of local parishioners and, to some extent, clerical superiors.

Having moved from place to place during my own childhood, presumably because we couldn’t pay the rent, I dread next months rent bill for half a dozen dependant families.

I dread, even more, the invasive questioning of prospective $ supporters who have endless advice as to how my dependants can become self supporting.

Having had my own secondary school fees paid by a CBC St Kilda bursary, I have delighted in being able to keep 15 teenagers at that same college and its “sister”, PCW, just across Dandenong Road.

I dread the same predicament as with housing.  Thank God we’re paid up till ’09 and potential $ supporters seems less demanding about why these beautiful young people are in need.

A bright spot this week – a local man read the blog or heard on the radio that I wanted cinema tickets.  First thing last week he fronted with dozens of kids tickets and a dozen for adults.  Thanks, mate.

I gave some to ComBiz, a local churches / community Youth Group working out of the Sol Green Centre, just down the road and on the public housing patch.  I gave some to our own Henri Ser (Happy New Year!  Happy Yom Kippur) to distribute in St Kilda.

I’m writing all this pathetic, personal stuff to encourage you to read the pathetic, personal letters of Saint Paul.  (I include this advisory as Parish Priest for Catholic Parishioners reading the Parish newsletter. Apologies to readers of the blog page, fatherbob.com.au).

R.J.M.

Street Report #26 - From Agent Henri

It's a sad sight but one becoming more common in todays society that we have had and still do have good decent tax paying people coming to 
our soup kitchen due to the unstable economic times. Tonight was no exception.
 
Just as we were closing up for the night a person in his 30's got out of a station wagon that was parked next to the Hopemobile and rushed 
to us and asked if we had any food left as he was starved. He said he waited till the crowd had died down as he felt uncomfortable 
approaching us and he felt uncomfortable with our regular clientelle. He was residing in his vehicle and I looked inside his vehicle and 
sure enough he had the back seats down and a rudimentary bed in the back. With clothes nearly stacked on the from seat. I took him across 
the road and bought him food at the 24 hour bakery across the road and gave him $50 to spend on himself. ( as the bus had no more food left 
to give out ). This person had his home taken off him by the bank and he had recently lost his job. Walked him back to his car, gave him a 
business card of ours and watched him drive up Loch Ave away from the Gatwick and park up the road for his nights sleep.
 
Busy night otherwise and also a few new faces as well. Tonight was a peaceful night and all were appreciative for us being there.
 
Good night.
 
H

School Holidays

It’s school holidays.  I wish I had a fist full of free tickets to the cinema.  Public housing school kids could come to the Parish Centre and ask for some – not from me, mind you, for obvious reasons, but from a kind, motherly parishioner on duty for such benevolent purposes.

Or, free tickets to the Melbourne Show.  The rich kids may be in Paris or Vanuatu.  The poor kids should have a free ticket to something local.

They need to know that life’s beautiful.  They need someone to reassure them of that.  Especially since they’re swamped with ugly news items 24 / 7.

Money markets collapse.  Young Finn shoots other Young Finns.  South Africa falters.  Chinese baby milk infected.  Grand final tickets only for the rich and powerful.

Bad news is like toxic gases.  It sneaks in, undetected, when you’re least suspecting and most vulnerable – in other words, otherwise occupied, which is most of the time.

Lots of kids, apparently, are sad.  I won’t say “depressed” because some well meaning Professional will race off to get a pill for that disorder.

(Lots of foetuses are sad, too, because lots of adults don’t want them, and that’s another issue best left to others).

Another issue, of course, close to my own ageing heart, is that there’s lots of elderly people as unwanted as those foetuses.

Priests, rabbis and Iranians used to be the early warning systems alerting their publics to a clear and present socio-religious danger.

Post Enlightenment Philosophy has, in the service of secular liberal democracy, restricted ‘religious leaders’ influence to members of their own worshipping congregations, much narrower targets than these leaders’ cultural memberships.

If democracies are to be genuine models of the modern preferred way of living together, then each and everyone of us had better get on with the job.

Each of us needs to fit into our busy schedule of family, career, peep group, some time for engaging in neighbourhood real politiks.

This self-sacrifice may not be legally binding but in has, I submit, reached the stage of being morally imperative.

Secular societies have to find suasive reasons and promote, not impose, them to children, teenagers and adults alike.

And, we haven’t, judging by mass media coverage of worldwide bizarre behaviour, a moment to lose.

Antony Levenstein’s written a helpful book The Blogging Revolution (with glowing references to “The Baghdad Blogger”), emphasises the pivotal role already played by this virtual global electorate.

While old people, like me, should continue to play some part in civil societies, I beg much younger people not to wait to be invited by anyone else, but to assert themselves as citizens and, in my own case, local church operational members.

We don’t want to be responsible for Wall∙E the film to become reality.

RJM