View of the Church - from the Carpathia or the Californian?

A transcript of a speech given by Paul McClintock at St Aloysius College, 20 August 2020.

Headmaster Mark Tannock, Rector Fr Ross Jones SJ, friends of St Aloysius College, let me start by joining in the acknowledgement of the Cammeraygal people who are the traditional custodians of this beautiful place called Kirribilli – which the College moved to in the late 1800s and was joined by the McClintock family at the other end of the street 50 years ago. It is, and always has been, a very blessed place to share.

As a past parent – Andrew graduated two years ago – and neighbour, and as chair of St Vincent’s Health Australia, it is a particular honour to follow so many distinguished speakers in the Campion Lecture – and bowing to the pandemic by doing it online. I am conscious of how difficult this year has been, particularly for your senior students, so can I send my very best wishes through any parents who may be watching to every young man approaching the end of their time here. I got sick in my last year of school and I still remember missing events like the debating final and the cadet camp which I had long anticipated – all I can say is the drive that you used to create those opportunities will deliver many more to you as your lives unfold.

So let me turn to my topic tonight, which is perhaps a little cryptic. In a tragedy that has held power to fire the imagination for over a century, the RMS Titanic struck its fateful iceberg on the evening of April 15, 1912, and began to sink. By the morning 1,500 passengers and crew had been lost, and 710 saved. The human loss was exceptional, even in a world used to such events, made worse by the view that the ship was the finest product of its age – it was unsinkable and the event unthinkable. And yet, it sank.

My topic goes to the roles of two ships in the vicinity which were starkly contrasted. The Carpathia was the hero, way out of sight but with a radio operator still at his radio, a captain willing to risk all to own the problem. He steamed through the night, aware of the risks, and rescued the 710. The Californian was much closer and the radio operator was asleep and was not woken even when the flares from the Titanic were actually sighted. It watched from a distance, not being sure of what was at stake and apparently not wanting to find out. It took no part in the rescue that night.

Last year I gave a speech to the conference of Mary Aikenhead Ministries (the body which carries on the health and education work of the Sisters of Charity including St Vincent’s Health) titled “A Church Leader – Not I surely Lord”. In that speech I shared my ongoing journey with health and education colleagues as I grappled with the question of whether leadership in a church activity, however modest, made you a leader of the church, and if so what difference did it make?

Tonight I want to take the journey a little further, but to do so I need to restate briefly how far I had reached in last year’s comments. Then I will return to my ships!

My starting point was a challenge from Fr David Ransom at the previous year’s conference that to be active in any ministry made you a leader of the church. This challenge was not hierarchical – it applied to nurses, or teachers, or parents, or boys who take on a role in our schools. Nor was it discretionary. I realised that if this was true I was way off course – my view of the church leadership was that “they” were struggling – in fact “they” had dropped the ball – there was very little concept of “we” in the equation. I had bought tickets but I was nowhere near the stage.

The gospels have plenty of stories of spectators. One is the Epiphany where the religious leaders stand back in Jerusalem as very distant – and safe - spectators at the birth of Christ and the foreigners – the Magi – take the action, accept the risks, and own the opportunity in Bethlehem.  Or the powerful moment when Jesus comes across a crowd of spectators watching a woman being stoned, and in one sentence turns them from spectators to jurists – and they set the woman free. I don’t think spectators fare well in the gospels, so what does that mean for you and me?

I am a director by trade and temperament, so I started with an analysis of my barriers to acceptance of the role proclaimed by Fr Ransom. I will list just five tonight:

·         “Church leadership” sounds too hard today so no one would want to do it - think of announcing your leadership at a dinner party,

·         The church is paternalistic and our religious brains have long since atrophied,

·         Those senior in the structures we see most prominently may not welcome our arrival

·         Amateurs and sinners should stay out of this complex theology business, and

·         The direction of the whole enterprise is too contested – who wants to be a leader when everyone seems to have a different view on where to go?

Each of you could all add more barriers of your own. So the initial reaction is “Not I surely Lord”.

But I was not sure that this initial reaction should have the last word, and to get past it I asked two questions – do I care enough to bother to break through and do I have anything to contribute – is there a need?

What we care about is deeply personal to each one of us, and is at the heart of the Ignatian Examen.  I wonder sometimes whether any of us spend enough time on it. My approach to whether I cared was to ask a sequence of questions, and whilst the answers are only mine I think the questions work for everyone:

• Do I believe I have a spiritual side?

• Does it need nurturing or will it look after itself?

• Does Jesus Christ give me the best nurturing framework or do I have a better one?

• Is that nurturing best done in a community that journeys together and seeks to preserve and hand on that tradition, or can I go it alone?

• Does God remain present in that community?

That discernment can be put as a simple sentence, but it has five distinct questions that I needed to answer in sequence. I think every human being needs to start on that sequence with real discernment worthy of Ignatius – of course your answers will decide if you get past the first one and stay on the same course, or head off on a different one. My answer for the first question was “I hope so” (an answer which draws from Fr Daven Day SJ and theologian John Haught) and the rest were answered “yes” - which meant I had no choice but to care.

In preparing these remarks I returned to the journey of Edmund Campion, and was that not a man who cared? His whole life reflects that fierce discernment, a willingness to give it priority over wealth and power, and his understanding of the central importance of the community he saw standing in the place of his God. I do admit being a little relieved that I do not expect the Church leadership that I am trying to understand will inevitably lead me to the same end as St Edmund. But it is the same discernment.

So to the second question of whether the church needs the contribution of people like you and me, which takes me back to the Titanic. It may seem a harsh symbol for the church in Australia today, but I suspect one of the only things that unite all of us with our vastly different views of where the church should head is a shared view that it is taking water quickly, and whilst it may not be sinking it is certainly in trouble. I argued last year that many of us shared a “view that our leadership has failed to live up to the challenge of presenting Christ here and present in the Australian community, with joy and confidence”. Sharing a view is fine, of course, but sharing responsibility is much tougher, and “our” leadership can’t stop with the bishops but has to include us too.

Now we all know that the ministries of the Church like the great College we celebrate tonight and the extraordinary hospitals that have been playing a leading role in this year’s terrible pandemic, are by no means hitting the water line. In fact the history of St Aloysius College tells us that in the lifetimes of many of us its future was very uncertain, and the new students were not lined up as they are today. But what is sinking is trust and respect for the overall role we all play, and our ability to convey the joy of the Christian community and the relevance of Christ at its centre – and the impact we continue to have on Australian society.  I described it as one of the worst brand efforts ever seen – a remarkable product which we appear unable to defend. We may end up with hugely important ministries largely disconnected and not confident of their Divine dimension as key pillars of a community with God at its centre – and that sounds to me like the ship sinks. So there is a need, and it is urgent.

Finally, if you are willing to take this journey and accept that you have found yourself, even unwittingly, with some level of leadership you will get to the point of asking what changes of approach does it encourage, and then what am I supposed to be leading? Where is my church?

The impact of seeing yourself on the deck of the Carpathia, and not on the Californian, is profound. Several simple but important changes of attitude jumped out at me – the first is an obligation to take up Pope Francis’ call to cast off the gloom – that wonderful quote that leadership does not come from those “who are dejected, discouraged, impatient, or anxious, but from those who have received the joy of Christ”. Then there is the crucial ability and determination to pursue the trilogy of firstly humbly acknowledging our failures (and there have been some terrible ones, including but not solely sexual abuse), secondly continuing the necessary and robust debate about change, and thirdly celebrating the inspiring work we do and the truly amazing people – including our clergy and religious – who do it.  You may think you can’t do all three – I say none of them work by themselves, and if we all focus on repentance and reform alone, and not also on celebration, we will soon end up talking bitterly to ourselves.

And for those who cannot find inspiring work to balance the other legs of the trilogy I would urge you to look again. The Church communicates a lot, but it is not easy to get an overall sense of it. But just in the two areas where Mary Aikenhead works – health and education – the impact is incredible. Even the statistics – 768,00 students in 1,750 schools, nearly 100,000 staff, capital works we funded of $1.5 billion annually, and in health and aged care 25,000 places in aged care, 10,000 hospital beds, 83,000 staff – tell a story that needs to be heard. And they are just two areas, and just the Catholics – and within all of that work astonishing stories of goodness and sacrifice lie. You all know this – you see it in this College, in our hospitals, in our parishes and social services every day.

We also need to find new faces, and have more of these discussions amongst we part timers. We have some wonderful leaders tucked into all of our activities who we need to unlock and empower.

But we also need to work out where our church lies, and that again is very individual. This is the area where I have spent most time since the original speech, and in doing so I will try to respond to the challenge Mark Tannock gave me  that many boys will still see these ideas as calling for allegiance to a structure that they feel has already sunk – my generation just hasn’t worked it out yet. So when I argue that the boys of this College should see themselves on the Carpathia, not just called to come to the aid of a listing church but to see themselves as leaders in it, there is a good chance that they will say it is too late, or they are being called to save a structure that they too have ceased to trust.

I do not pretend to have a settled answer for this challenge, which will be familiar to many of you participating tonight. The closest I have come is to go back to the 5 questions on do I care, and focus on the fourth – “is that nurturing best done in a community that journeys together and seeks to preserve and hand on the tradition”. This does not focus on any particular structure, or priests, or bishops, or even the Jesuits –however important they all are - it looks more to a nurturing community. This may be the part of the church where the next generation can first land – a community – the people of God - and it can be found, and loved, in every school, and parish, and home – or in Rome itself if that is where you look. Structure is important, of course, especially if it enjoys Divine sanction, but that is not necessarily where all are called to serve. So to those on the deck of the Californian, watching from a safe distance, I think we need to say that the captain of the Carpathia never intended to save the Titanic – he came for the people in the boats.

Fr Frank Brennan SJ will be known to many of you, and of course he must have the last word. I think he was making this point about finding your own church when he advised me that wherever this journey of leadership took us all our most important responsibility as a church leader was in the place of each person’s own ministry – in my case primarily the board of St Vincent’s Health Australia. Like much of Frank’s advice discernment is needed, and I first thought he was discouraging us from getting too involved in Church affairs – as if our leadership was confined. But the wisdom of the advice is clear when you fully acknowledge the church as the community of God, nurturing our spiritual lives and passing on this divine tradition. If the church is the people of God, and your leadership comes from your role as parent or student, teacher, board member or Jesuit, then that is where you are first called to serve. And in that service you will convey the joy of the Christian community and the relevance of Christ at its centre.  

So whilst my contemporaries and I decide where and how to play my great hope is that the next generation will accept the Carpathia challenge, respond to the call and lead. If they do it will be a joy to behold.

Thank you.