Newman College - University of Melbourne

Transcription

NEWMAN
Newman College Newsletter
Spring 2012
Volume 44 – Number 2
Peter Daniel Steele SJ AM
(1939-2012)
Something which has existed
since the beginning,
that we have heard,
and we have seen
with our own eyes;
that we have watched
and touched with our hands:
the Word, who is life –
this is our subject.
The first Epistle of John: 1.1,3
It is profoundly mysterious of course, and the mystery
begins with that expression, ‘the Word’. We might say that
Christ is part of the eloquence of God our Father. In him
the Father spells out who and what he himself is. Christ is
the capstone on which that eloquence is founded. Our Lord
tells us that whoever has seen him, has seen the Father.
Peter Steele SJ – The Chapel of the Holy Spirit
Sunday, 6th May, 2012
content s
from the rector
community service dinner
semester 2
a gentle soul - bill uren sj
3
6
10
rich reminder of the value of an arts education - morag fraser
16
braiding the voices - andrew bullen sj
el camino de santiago de compostella
july, august and september in college
26 chao
33
things that matter - kevin rudd
& frank brennan sj
arnhem land
more swift than stern - chris wallace-crabbe
32
34
35
39
from my brother jack
44
the beauty that was peter steele's mind
- morag fraser
48
vale peter - sean burke
17
the daniel mannix memorial lecture 2012 chivalrous knight - andrew hamilton sj
the eloquence of god - brendan byrne sj
11
23
36
doctor of laws honoris causa
8
commencement dinner 2012
news of former collegians
38
41
46
eulogy for peter steele - john mcencroe
49
peter steele's path to something better
- michael kelly sj
51
peter steele's seven types of ingenuity - philip harvey
at the table by the window - raimond gaita on peter steele
thank you on behalf of peter steele - margaret manion ibvm
50
52
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Cover: A photograph taken at the Vigil Mass for Father Peter Steele on Sunday, 1st July, 2012. Photographs in this publication come from: Jim McDermott, Mike
Chen, Donna Yeo, Rachel King, Daniel Belluzzo, Michael McVeigh and Peter Casamento from Jesuit Publications, and the members of the Camino pilgrimage.
2
Newman Newsletter Spring 2012 – Volume 44 – Number 2
From the rector
Fathers Hamilton SJ, Uren SJ and Healy SJ, at the Vigil Mass for Father Peter Steele SJ
Professor Peter Steele SJ, AM.
Professor Peter Steele, member of the College Council
since 1991, died on Wednesday, June 27th at 6.15 p.m.
He was recognised in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List
as a Member of the Order of Australia on Monday, June 11th,
and the College celebrated this further mark of distinction
on the following day at the launch of his new book,
“Braiding the Voices – Essays in Poetry”. There was a crowd of
well-wishers in the College Oratory to witness the launch by
his friend and fellow-poet, Father Andrew Bullen, SJ. Peter
was very frail on the day, but he rallied over the following
week and was able to converse more freely with many of his
friends who came to visit him at Newman.
However, on the afternoon and evening of Tuesday, June
19th, his condition deteriorated, and the decision was made to
transfer him to Caritas Christi Hospice in Kew. His condition
improved temporarily, and although he had some difficulty
responding, he seemed to understand what was being said
to him. He lapsed into a comatose state on Tuesday, June 26th
and died on the evening of Wednesday, June 27th. His brother,
Jack, and a number of his friends, both Jesuit and lay, were
with him at the end.
A Vigil Mass was celebrated by the Rector with over twenty
concelebrants on Sunday evening, July 1st. Father Andrew
Hamilton SJ, who entered the Jesuits with Father Steele
in 1957, was the homilist, and Jack Steele and Sean Burke
delivered eulogies to a crowded chapel. The Requiem Mass
was celebrated on Monday, July 2nd, at 1.00 p.m. The Jesuit
Provincial, Father Stephen Curtin, SJ, was the principal
celebrant and again there were over twenty concelebrants.
Father Brendan Byrne SJ, the Rector of Jesuit Theological
College, another exact contemporary of Father Steele in the
Jesuit Order, was the homilist, and John McEncroe, Morag
Fraser and Jack Steele were the eulogists. The College Choir,
under the baton of Pat Miller, sang at both the Vigil and
Requiem Masses, and refreshments were provided after Mass
on both occasions.
Father Steele was interred in the Jesuit plot at the Melbourne
General Cemetery at 3.15 pm on July 2nd. Another Jesuit
contemporary, Father Joseph Sobb SJ, presided at the
internment. As most of the College students were absent from
the College at the time of Father Steele’s death, it was decided
that the Commencement Mass at the beginning of Second
Semester would be a Memorial Mass. The Rector was the
principal celebrant and homilist, and Fathers Healy, Horvat
and Willcock concelebrated. Sean Burke delivered once again
a very moving eulogy, and the College Choir was in fine voice.
3
The Deputy Rector with members of the Senior Common Room: Sandeep Pratap (fourth year MBBS), Sarajane Ting (fifth year Med/Sur/Med Sci), Christina Jovanovic (second year D Dental Surgery),
Dr Kate Wick, Dr Tomos Walters (PhD candidate), Phillip Moller SJ, Tim Gorton (second year JD), and Yau Nga ( final year M Architecture)
The Camino
As in 2010, the College supported thirteen students
in undertaking a fifteen day pilgrimage to Santiago de
Compostella in July. They were accompanied by the College
Chaplain, Mr Chris O’Connor, and a Jesuit scholastic,
Mr Kieran Gill. Daily meditations drawing on The Spiritual
Exercises of St Ignatius were prescribed, and the pilgrims
attended Mass daily in the local Spanish churches. Four of the
pilgrims reported on their experiences at the Commencement
Dinner, and a further four were the guest speakers at the
Council Dinner on August 22nd. All of the participants in the
Camino have reported very positively on their experiences,
although virtually all found it more physically and spiritually
taxing than they had anticipated. It is hoped that we can repeat
the experiment every two or three years, perhaps alternating
the Camino with World Youth Day (Rio de Janeiro in 2013).
Academic Programme & Examinations
Our results from Semester 1 were again strong with forty
students gaining an H1 average. Twenty-three percent of
all subjects examined resulted in an H1 result, twenty-two
percent in an H2A result and a further twenty-two percent
with an H2B. In Semester 2, we are offering tutorials
in ninety-two subjects; interestingly, fifteen of these are
provided for students reading for graduate degrees.
4
Outreach Programme and other visitors
In May, Mr Clifford Longley, long-time contributor to the
English Catholic magazine The Tablet, spoke in Catalyst for
Revival Series to a packed audience in the College Oratory
on Vatican II, the People of God and the World Today. We
also in May, received through the good offices for former
Collegian, Sir James Gobbo, a visit from Fra Matthew
Festing, Grand Master of the Soverign Order of Malta.
On Friday, May 25th, Newman hosted a seminar on “Religion in
the University”. About 70 participants gathered in the Oratory
to discuss the historical exclusion of divinity and theology as a
faculty within the University, and the way in which religious
questions are currently incorporated explicitly and implicitly
in teaching, research and pastoral care. Speakers included Dr
Brian Howe, former Deputy Prime Minister, Dr Abdullah
Saeed from the Centre for Islamic Studies, Professor Marcia
Langton from Aboriginal Studies, Dr Dvir Abramovich from
the Centre for Jewish Studies and Professor Peter Sherlock,
recently appointed Vice Chancellor of the new Melbourne
College of Divinity University of Divinity. Why not a Centre
for Christian Studies?
Recent days have witnessed a number of visitors to the
College, many part of the Helder Camara Lecture Series
(ably organised by Brother Mark O’Connor), who have
provided a rich variety of Catholic voices in our community.
Giving lectures in the College have been: Archbishop Bruno
Forte from Chitei-Vasto in Italy, a member of the Papal
Cardinal Rodriguez following his address in the Oratory
Archbishop Denis Hart, Chair of the Newman College Council
International Theological Commission; Father Paul Murray
OP, Professor of Spirituality at the Angelicum in Rome;
Professor Robert P. George from Princeton University,
Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison
Program in American Ideals and Institutions and Cardinal
Oscar Rodriguez SDB, President of Caritas International.
Student Profile & Accommodation
A small exhibition of Redmond Barry’s books, mostly owned
by St Mary’s College, was held in the Allan and Maria Myers
Academic Centre as part of Rare Books Week in Melbourne.
Professor Wallace Kirsop, noted book historian, gave a
lecture on Barry’s personal library and its dispersal.
In August, the Students Club invited Dr Barry Jones AO
to be the guest speaker at the 2012 Mannix Lecture: Gough
Whitlam: A Revisionist View. It was a most successful and
enjoyable evening. Soon thereafter, the College co-sponsored,
as part of the celebrations to mark Eureka Street’s 21st
birthday, a conversation between Frank Brennan SJ and the
former Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, on Things That Matter.
Looking ahead, Professor James David Earnest from the
University of Kentucky, author of John Henry Newman:
Fifteen Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford,
will be the guest speaker at the Cardinal Newman dinner on
Friday, October 26th. Dr Mary Ann Glendon, the Learned
Hand Professor of Law at Harvard University and former
USA Ambassador to the Vatican, and Dr Elizabeth Lev,
an art historian who specializes in the pilgrim churches
of Rome, will address us in December.
With the increasing semesterisation of the University there is
a significant turnover of residents at the end of first semester.
It ranges from 10% to 15%. This year we had to recruit
34 new residents, both graduate and undergraduate, to fill
vacancies. These are drawn from a variety of sources: Study
Abroad students, former non-residents, overseas and local
students beginning or resuming courses. We have been able
to fill all our vacancies and to provide accommodation to a
further three residents in a house newly rented in Swanston
Street. We now own six residences in Swanston Street and
rent five. The profile of the College has remained constant:
25% graduate and postgraduate and 75% undergraduate.
W.J. Uren, S.J. Rector, Newman College
September, 2012
5
Communit y
Service Dinner
Our annual Community Service Dinner in 2012 raised funds for
the Jesuit Hakimani Centre in Kenya, Jesuit Social Services and
Caritas International. In addition to providing various tutoring
services (here in College and at Flemington) to disadvantaged
students in the area, donating blood to the Red Cross Blood
Bank, assisting with projects and maintenance at the local
Carlton Primary, assisting with music therapy at the Royal
Melbourne Hospital, students in the community have raised
funds for Jesuit Refugee Services, the R.S.P.C.A, Bali Smiles
(a community service project run by Sacred Heart College,
Newtown), the Cancer Council, St Jude’s School in Tanzania
(established by former Collegian, Gemma Sisia) and Peace
and Diversity Australia, a community service project established
by former Collegian, Justin Coburn, for indigenous people in
south-east Mexico.
6
Second year students Callum Gin and Braedon Kittelty
Leo Veenendaal from Melbourne and Quinn Kaiser on exchange from Holy Cross College, Boston
Alicia Deak from Melbourne ( fourth year Arts and Theology), Robert O’Shea from Colac
(just completed his MA), and Sarah McSweeney from New Zealand (PhD candidate)
Second year students, Harriet Garvey and Michael Fogarty
Juliana Macula, Alessandra Muto and Madeline Cendese
They come from everywhere: Daylesford, Hamilton, Boston in the USA,Perth, Phillip Island, Ballarat, Mackay, and Albury
Tim Gracie with his mother, Lynda
The Rector with Sarah Bowyer and Katie Cook
Patrick Burke, Treasurer of the Students’ Club
The Pidcock family
7
A GENTLE SOUL
The homily given by the Rector, Father Bill Uren SJ,
at the Commencement Mass for Semester 2, a Memorial Mass
for Father Peter Steele SJ, on Friday, 27th July, 2012
Last Sunday afternoon when many of you were moving
back into College for Second Semester, I attended a concert
at the Melbourne Recital Centre. The second item on the
programme was a work by the great Twentieth Century
French composer, Olivier Messiaen, entitled “Quatour pour le
fin de temps”: “Quartet for the End of Time”.
At the beginning of the Second World War Messiaen was
drafted into the French military forces as a medical auxiliary.
He was captured by the invading German army at Verdun
in 1940, along with three other musicians: violinist Jean Le
Boulaire, Henri Akoka, a clarinettist, and Etrienne Pasquier,
a cellist. The first two had been able to hold onto their
instruments when they were captured, and when they were
interned in Stalag VIIIA at Gorlitz, in the easternmost part
of Germany on the border with Poland, a beaten-up cello
was found for Pasquier. It was for these musicians and for the
other interned prisoners that Messiaen composed, in the first
instance, that “Quartet for the End of Time” which I heard
on Sunday.
The Quartet was premiered in Barracks 27 of Stalag VIIIA
on the frozen night of January 15th, 1941, with metres of
snow piled outside. In the unheated room 400 or so inmates
and guards shivered as they listened, enraptured, to the end
of time and Messiaen’s vision of an eternity of love and hope.
It was so extraordinary considering the context in which
the Quartet was being performed. “Never”, the composer
subsequently recalled, “was I listened to with such rapt
attention and understanding”.
Two of the seven movements of the Quartet centre around
Jesus, the Word of God, first of all Jesus in His Divinity and
then Jesus in His Humanity. Two of the other movements
centre around the Angel who proclaims the end of time: life,
death, resurrection, immortality. And, as I listened, I could
not but recall Peter Steele, priest, poet, wordsmith, preacher,
scholar, teacher, friend and companion, who week after week
in this very Chapel from this very lectern proclaimed Jesus,
the Word of God, and who now at the end of his time, as it
were, has gone to his eternal reward.
8
I asked Peter about three months ago which reading he would
prefer at his funeral Mass. After a little deliberation he came
back to me and specified the beginning of St John’s Gospel, the
one we have just heard: “In the beginning was the Word, and
the Word was with God, and the Word was God” culminating
in those extraordinary words at the centre of Christian belief:
“And the Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us” – the
Word, the Second Divine Person of the Blessed Trinity became
human in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
Peter Steele as a poet was obsessed with words, so it was
hardly surprising that when he thought of things both divine
and human at the end of his own life – at the end of his time,
as it were – he thought of Jesus as the Word of God. “Christ”,
he said, “was part of the eloquence of God our Father. In him
the Father spells out who and what He Himself is”. Or, as he
also often put it: “Jesus is the human face of God”. Week after
week, as I say, in this Chapel at this very lectern through his
own marvellous eloquence Peter proclaimed that Word of God,
and he not only proclaimed it, but as a Christian, as a priest and
as a Jesuit religious, he lived out fully the implications and the
responsibilities of the words he proclaimed.
But the Word that Peter proclaimed was the Word that
became human in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and the
words that Peter used in his poetry and in his prose were
words that cast light especially on the nature of our common
human condition. Poets are by etymology workers, doers,
craftsmen – this is what the Greek word from which the
English word “poet”, is derived means. And Peter was a
worker with words, a veritable wordsmith, sometimes, I
think, just for his own delight, but almost always to cast light
on the human condition. He reflected deeply on the ordinary
words that we use and he drew equally on extraordinary
words to draw attention to the startling beauty of the world
in which we live and the wonder of the creatures, human,
animal, vegetable and mineral, who inhabit it.
Jesuits are commended by their founder, St Ignatius Loyola
“to find God in all things”, and Peter took that injunction very
seriously. So often he worked as a craftsman with words –
and with rhythm and verse and metre – to reveal the divine
in the human. Even the very humble circumstances of our
lives – simple things like fruit or vegetables or herbs or plants
or cooking – were grist for his poetic mill, but it was always
with an invitation to us to think a little deeper and to be
enchanted – a word he loved to use – by their intimations of
a divine transcendence. In Peter’s sermons and homilies the
Word of God was made flesh. In his poetry and prose the
flesh, the human, was so often revealed as divine.
Peter Steele as a priest and a pastor, as a scholar and a teacher,
as a poet and a homilist, had made many friends. One of his
great friends was the very distinguished philosopher and
author, Rai Gaita (“Romulus, My Father” – book and film).
In the last couple of weeks of Peter’s life Rai visited him a
number of times, especially at Caritas Christi hospice towards
the end. On the evening that Peter died Rai said to me: “We
will not see his like again. When all of us are forgotten he will
be remembered”.
Artists like Olivier Messiaen and Peter Steele compose
works that reflect, in the first instance, their insights into
the present moment. But if these are great works of art, they
have inevitably resonated that echo in every generation of the
human condition – compositions that are in a sense timeless,
that bespeak not only the present, but also “the end of time.”
I think that was what Rai Gaita meant when he spoke of
Peter Steele’s poetry outliving the memory of his generation.
If that is so – and I certainly think that it is – we have been
remarkably privileged here at Newman to have had Peter
as our scholar-in-residence for over twenty-one years, to
have listened to him expounding the Word of God from this
lectern, and to have read with delight the poetry and prose
that was for the most part composed at his desk in the Dome
of Newman College.
May his gentle soul rest in peace.
9
Commencement Dinner
Semester 2
Following the Commencement Mass held on 27th July, 2012,
the Dinner to mark the start of Semester 2 was held in the
Dining Room. At the Dinner, four members of
the community, Nicholas Mannering, Ella Trimboli,
Callum Maltby and Michael Francis, reflected upon their
recent pilgrimage to Santiago. Here are some images from the
evening.
Senior Common Room members: Mike Chen from China, Guillermo Aranguren from
Venezuela , and Jorge Andrade from Ecuador
James Crafter, second year student from Ballarat, with SCR member
Sebastian Cheung from Sydney
The Rector with Jesuit scholastics: Kieran Gill, Philip Moller and Justin Glyn
10
Ben Buckingham, third year Arts student
and member of the General Committee
of the Students’ Club
First year Fine Arts student, April Kim
Br aiding the voices
Launch of “Braiding the Voices: Essays in Poetry”
at Newman College, Parkville, 12 June 2012 by Andrew Bullen SJ
“What are those Golden Builders doing?” asked William Blake
in 1818, and went on to ask further might there be some
showing of Jerusalem “near Tyburn’s fatal tree? Is that /Mild
Zion’s hill’s most ancient promontory, near mournful/
Ever-weeping Paddington?” The great private visionary
in our literature, William Blake was given, as we know,
to finding eternity in a grain of sand, so more likely than
anybody then and now to find the heavenly Jerusalem in
the enduring ordinariness of Paddington.
Peter Steele’s great friend and mentor, Vincent Buckley,
wandered purposively around the streets of Parkville and
Carlton in the early 1970s asking the same question of our
immediate locality – “names of their lordships./Cardigan, Elgin,
Lygon: Shall I find here my Lord’s grave?” [“Golden Builders, I”,
page 46]. By the end of the 27 poems of the sequence “Golden
Builders”, though certainly finding mournful ever-weeping
Carlton, and for all the notated moments of his intense longing,
Vin Buckley heads out of town Romsey-wards, his birthplace
up country, with that key question unanswered.
And what of Peter himself, another long-term denizen
of these parts? Here he is, as early as 1972, out of bed
one misty morning in time for “Matins”:
Out there in darkest Parkville it’s a kind
of animal country. Morning displays –
I thought it was the gardener – someone trotting
hale and compulsive, barely attached
to four maleficent greyhounds, sleek and dumb.
He’s Bogart or Camus, a bigboned ghost
easing himself and his charges around the block;
they move as sweetly and as bloody-minded
as if their talent were for treachery,
not coursing and the would-be kill.
We’ve traded words on form in wetter days,
sodden together into comradeship,
but not this morning. I’m praying in his trail,
a sort of christian and a sort of man,
watching him get between us the police
the park the children’s hospital
the bolted shelter for old derelicts
and the zoo, that other eden, where
some cruciform and prestidigious monkeys
hang in the sunlight, and the sombre bears
rove their concrete to sweat out the duration.
Among the half a dozen new poems in the book we celebrate
today, Braiding the Voices: Essays in Poetry, “Monday” tells us that
Peter Steele is still on the alert for signs, easily mistaken for
something else, often cruciform:
Monday is Day Oncology, where the dark
Burses arrive by courier, and we’re glad
To see them stripped for action, hooked in the air,
Lucent against fear.
Maybe only Peter Steele could see these bags of chemo as
Christological signs, like “the sixteen quilted maple leaves / Their
sugars candescent still, as is/ To those who hope, scattered throughout
the wards,/ The upsprung Silver Man.” [Braiding the Voices, page
295]. That’s because Peter Steele has always been a visionary; as
with the zoo once, so now the Oncology Ward at St Vincent’s
Hospital offers hints of that other Eden. If Vin Buckley could
surprise us with his essay “The Strange Personality of Christ”, then
there’s a PhD topic awaiting on “The Strange Ubiquity of Christ in
the Writings of Peter Steele”. Christ is among us, he believes and his
poems witness, in a thousand guises, seemingly mundane. Has
anyone probed more constantly, more imaginatively, more in
dialogue with contemporary culture, the Jesuit call “to find God
in all things” ? His poems send sudden and often oblique glints,
candescent moments, of what, of whom, Peter has seen
glowing in the depths, the core, of things.
11
Part of the gathering in the College Oratory
and Anthony Hecht, American poet and a personal friend
of Peter’s who saw the poet’s task as “braiding his loose ends into
a coherent pattern” (BV, p. vii).
The Introduction, to go no further, mentions John Dryden,
John Donne, Norman MacCaig, George Herbert, and
Shakespeare, in that order. In the second poem here,
“Audience”, Peter lines up, like birds on a wire, in one line
Cicero and Buddha and then in another four lines Johnny
Cash, Von Moltke, hero of the July Plot against Hitler,
and St Paul, before coming to the Good Lord himself,
all of them braided together by Johnny Cash’s line:
“Convicts are the best audiences I ever played for” [BV, 296]
and by Peter’s seeing that means just about everybody,
but these four of course are full-on convicts.
Peter Steele with his doctors and friends: John McEnroe and John Knaggs
So I am tempted to say that Peter Steele writes golden
poem-bricks. Along with other poets in this room today,
he is one of our Melbourne golden builders, placing
poem-brick on golden poem-brick. But Peter might well say,
“But, mate, hold it, poems are not solid as bricks but fluid as words,
pungent as voices. I’ve given you the clue in the title Braiding
the Voices”.
How many voices are gathered into this book, as in all Peter’s
writing, voices past and present, famous and obscure, foreign
and local? For Peter voices are presences, persons there before
him and speaking to his attentiveness. In this braiding book a
dedicated essay of attentiveness is given to fellow poets Dante,
Anthony Hecht, Vincent Buckley, Peter Porter, Les Murray
and Seamus Heaney. Other voices are called up for honour:
in the Introduction Peter writes that “two presences brood over
this book” – Andrei Sinyavsky, the Russian dissident who
celebrated Russian writers to keep the best of Russia alive,
12
Moreover, Peter has honoured many of us in this room,
including myself, and in this book Bill Uren, with poems
dedicated to his friends and companions: we have the honour
to be conjured presences in his work, the only chance of
immortality this side of the grave for most of us. On their
behalf I am bold to say, “Thank you Peter, we are honoured
more than we can say”.
Then there is the braiding voice itself, Peter’s own:
welcoming, celebrating, turning things over aloud in his
mind and heart, testing – after all as a man instructed long
ago by Dean Swift, Peter still sometimes finds himself in the
tiny southern continent of Lilliput and the truth of how things
are with us here still needs to be told. And humorous, as his
A to Z celebration of food in “Auguri!”, dedicated to Bill
Uren, shows us – he likes his lists, does Peter Steele, and
so in comic Homeric mode takes a deep breath in this poem
to get us through a feast of food words. Comic exuberance
suggests the Rabelaisian Steele: the man is a pubful and
a choir of voices.
Father Peter Steele with the former Chancellor of the University of Melbourne, Ian Renard, and Professor James Best, Head of the Melbourne Medical School, and a member of the Council of the College
Over two hundred people attended the book launch
The editor – John Leonard
Launching the book – Father Andrew Bullen SJ
13
xx
Peter Steele with Dr John Williams
Peter Steele with Sir James Gobbo, Father Peter L’Estrange SJ and Father Gerard O’Collins SJ
Peter’s core voice is conversational, so suited for evoking
presences and for braiding loose ends into coherence, always
alert to the variety of the other, quickly shifting into different
registers and back again and so holding and repaying our
attention, sounding out the vastness of the world. Given the
encyclopedic range of voices and references in his work, we
might suppose that Peter is the last Jesuit polymath, but living
as I do, out there in darkening Parkville, at Jesuit Theological
College, I can tell you that is not the case, but Peter is master
of us all in getting his knowledge to work and to the point –
well, maybe only poets can do so. I find it exhilarating that
Peter can round up so much into his work, ordering recondite
references and fabled names into place, lining them up, with
the gentle nudge of his voice, sonorous and quick. Read him
aloud, readers; study his diction, poets and essayists.
Here’s how the essay concludes:
The eighteen essays in this book, seven for named poets,
explore and celebrate poetry, and two the relationship
between art and poetry, with titles that tease the mind:
Poetry’s Fugitives: A Christian Hearing, A Poet’s Horizon: Four Faces
of Reality, The Rocks and the Riot: Making Poetry; most sweet
of all, Past, Present, Future: Poetry as the Mind in Love makes me
want to read not only it, but also re-read so much poetry. I
think, however, my favourite will be A Blessing of Creatures:
Birds, Beasts, Verse.
14
If I ask with this essay’s title in mind, ‘How is this bird blessed’?
then the simple answer is that it is blessed by being chosen – chosen
to sing God’s presence, even if sometimes in a blues key. And if I
ask, ‘How is this bird a blessing’? the equally simple answer is that,
in haunting its hearer, it may be said to mediate that greatest of
all haunters, the Holy Ghost. Its mission is, after all, sacramental,
because such is its song. [BV, page 85]
Little surprise, I think, that birdsong in this key should finally
remind us that Peter’s own voice is one ready to praise and give
thanks and bless, a voice echoing and conveying Gospel voices, a
voice seeking out above all the Good Lord - who surely appears
in Auguri! as the Bread Man, as “the convict’s-in-waiting”
in Audience, as “the upsprung Silver Man” in Monday, and baldly as
“the Man” in Motley. And there’s an essay here called Elemental
Man: Contours of Christ in which Peter gives us four of his own
poems that align the Good Lord with the classical four elements:
Breathing Days for air, Star Man for fire, Green Man for earth and
Water Man for water. The essay gives us the experience of reading
four of Peter Steele’s poems through the eyes of Peter Steele.
Peter is surprised at what he himself has written, partly because
that is how poetry is, but mostly because they are poems about
Christ. “You write a poem”, he says, “partly to see what will happen,
this time round, when you put yourself in the presence of mystery” [BV,
page 272]. Poems, this essay tells us, can by their very facture
mediate the Good Lord.
Above: Kristin Headlam, Evan Jones, Peter Steele, Chris Wallace-Crabbe and Elizabeth Pearce
Left: The brothers Steele, Jack and Peter, at the book launch
Bottom left: Sir Gus Nossal, Sir James Gobbo and Professor Kwong Lee Dow
The essays in this book are a form of thank you to many
of the significant presences in Peter’s writing vocation.
And surely all the poems of these last years are a hidden
“Hymn to God, my God, in My Sicknesse”, John Donne’s last
and greatest poem. What more could any of us ask for
ourselves, or for him?
So thank you, Peter Steele, for all your words, over many
years, prayers and blessings, essays and poems. Thank you
to your editors and publisher, and all the enablers of this
book. All of them carriers and handlers of a hodful of essays
and poems, worthy helpers in your task of laying a few more
golden bricks of what we can boldly call the new Jerusalem.
I’d bet on it, Melbourne to a brick.
I was honoured by Peter’s asking me to launch his book,
and moved beyond telling. Book launches demand what the
philosophers call a performative act, and so it is my duty and
pleasure to declare Braiding the Voices: Essays in Poetry by Peter
Steele and published by John Leonard Press well and truly
launched.
15
RICH REMINDER OF
VALUE OF AN ARTS
EDUCATION
From The Age, 19 June 2012 by Morag Fraser
WHAT price a humanities degree? In our grad-grinding,
instrumentalist times, who'd buy? Well, I would, for one.
And I'll tell you why.
Last week one of Melbourne's most enduring and brilliant
university teachers – of poetry, literature, and of the ways
of the street and the heart – launched a new book. His
name is Peter Steele. The book is called Braiding the Voices:
Essays in Poetry. And it was a sharp reminder of how rich and
multivalent, how intellectually nourishing and equipping
an arts education can be when its exemplars and teachers
are of Steele's ilk.
Braiding the Voices is the latest in a half-century's issue of works:
poetry, prose, essays in literary criticism and homilies. (Steele
is also a Jesuit priest. Of his homilies think John Donne, if
less hectic, and certainly never any sermon you've snored
through.) Thousands of secular students at The University of
Melbourne, and in Washington, Chicago, Alberta and Oxford
have experienced the exhilaration of Peter Steele's lectures and
seminars, the play of his vagabond mind.
His interests are broad – in university English departments
he has taught classes on travel writing, on ''writing the city''
and on autobiography, among many others.
His own poetry is modernist and laced with allusion,
profound and playful. The late Peter Porter, formidable
Australian poet as he was, described Steele's verse this way:
''Wisdom, wit, whole parklands of Edenic language, presented
in a technique bettered by no one writing at the century's end''.
High praise. But fit. This is the writer as virtuoso. But
the dance of Steele's language, while you can't replicate it,
nonetheless invites you to stand up and join in. His invitation
is the invocation of every great teacher: he takes his reader,
his student, as a necessary partner in a joint enterprise.
At the launch last week, the large crowd was as mixed
as Steele's interests are ranging. There were scientists,
engineers, students, doctors, nuns, publishers, theologians,
administrators, historians, a chef, friends, fellow poets,
bluestockings like me, and people who have likely never read
a poem in their life.
They were gathered to honour a particular man, clearly, and
to celebrate a sparkling collection of essays that will keep the
readers among them pondering for years.
16
Morag Fraser in the audience at the book launch of Braiding the Voices
Steele, ever the teacher, provided the how-to manual: "I tell
my students that if they can't read slowly they can't read, and they
look at me either as if I am telling them that sodium chloride is a salt
or as if I am heterodox to my fingertips: but it is still true."
That's a truth, an injunction, ''READ SLOWLY'', one could
wish blazoned in large black type on the inside walls of buses
and trains, just like the poetry in the London Tube that stops
you in your tracks, or the ''ETERNITY'' graffito that bemused
Sydney and gave people there welcome pause years ago.
The launch itself was a welcome pause on a Melbourne
winter afternoon, a time when words spoken were heard and
relished. I was reminded of the late John Button, for whom
politics was a profession, not merely an ambition.
The public and Button's colleagues, even his staunch
opponents, held him in high esteem because he cared too
much about the integrity of language to traduce it for political
ends. Words, for him, were tools of trade, and he kept them
sharp, balanced and true.
But even Button, I think, would have envied Peter Steele's
way of enticing with an epigram (for the poem Audience:
Convicts are the best audience I ever played for - Johnny
Cash), or his cliff-drop way with an opening sentence: ''
'Dying,' wrote Emily Dickinson, 'is a wild night and a new road.' ''
I can give you only the merest taste of Steele's prose and
poetry because I am exploiting him to make a point,
which I trust he will pardon.
The point is this: writing like his, teaching and the arts
education that he and some of his colleagues have offered is
of a kind to set you up for life. It also helps hone the mental
agility that the contemporary marketplace demands.
But it does so much more than that. It fleshes out an idea
of the university that for many of us is still vibrant, and still
worth fighting for.
El Camino de Santiago de Compostella
On Wednesday 27th June, a party of fifteen from Newman
College began the journey to Santiago in Spain to participate
in following the pilgrim path (Camino) to Santiago, the
burial place of St. James, apostle of the Lord. The Camino
is an ancient pilgrim path that has been trod for over a
thousand years and was one of the most important Christian
pilgrimages during medieval times, together with Rome
and Jerusalem. In 2010, ten students from Newman College
accompanied by the Chaplain, Chris O’Connor, and Father
Peter Hosking SJ, undertook the Camino from Leon to
Santiago. This year, thirteen students from Newman, the
Chaplain and Kieran Gill SJ, a Jesuit scholastic, undertook the
Camino from Astorga to Santiago and then on to Finnisterrre,
the end of the world, a distance of approximately 360
kilometres. Here are some extracts of the views of those
who travelled the road in 2012:
Our Chaplain, Chris O’Connor writes:
"After a few days orienting ourselves to Spanish life and culture
in Madrid, Avila and Salamanca the group travelled to Astorga
to begin the Camino. The journey from Astorga to Santiago is
an outer journey but also more significantly an inner journey,
hopefully a journey that sees one undergo some form of personal
growth and change. A pilgrim is distinctly different from a
tourist, as their journey is ultimately an intensely personal and
contemplative inner journey. A pilgrimage implies a journey with
hopefully an accompanying sense of serious inner reflection,
which helps distinguish it from mere sightseeing. To undertake the
experience of being a pilgrim, a person undertaking a journey for
some spiritual purpose but not to change, is to have failed at the
fundamental task and purpose of pilgrimage: to change and to
grow in your relationship with God.
The slow process of walking every day from before sunrise, with
no other task to fulfil than to reach a place to rest for the night,
exposes the pilgrim to a slow, sacred metamorphosis, realizing
that the hardship of heat, cold, rain, blisters, fatigue and aching
muscles and joints can open up the mind to old memories and
new possibilities, and can effect an emotional and spiritual
purification. The destination signifies not the end of the journey,
but the start, a portal into a new way of being, of seeing life
afresh with spiritually cleansed eyes.
Finisterre – the end of the Earth
Going on pilgrimage is a metaphor for the spiritual journey taken
by each person. We undertake an inward journey to Christ and an
outer journey toward each other every day. God is present to the
pilgrim, not only through the beauty and majesty of creation, but
also through the people and fellow pilgrims whom they meet on
their journey. As we followed the pilgrim path marked by scallop
shells, the symbol of the Camino, we learned to be alert to the signs
of God’s guidance and presence in our lives in the small events
and meetings of every day. An eccentric Spanish Priest in the town
of Tri Castella challenged the pilgrims by reminding us that the
journey to Santiago must be Christocentric, otherwise it is just an
indulgent journey for cultural reasons, a 'bucket list' journey.
The Camino strips us bare of all that we know and really brings us
back to who we are, and we see ourselves warts and all, but, more
importantly, and fundamentally as a creature loved beyond all
measure by our creator God. The litany: 'Lord you search me and
you know me and yet you love me,' was a mantra that was tattooed
on my heart as I walked the Camino. In contrast to two years ago
where I hobbled for much of the journey, this time I was able to
walk it and pray it more completely.
17
Top: Starting out from Astorga
Above: Finisterre
Left: Between Palas de Rei and Ribadiso
Second year Biomedicine student from Ballarat, Lachlan
McLean in a postcard to the Rector wrote:
"There is such beauty in living a simple life away from material
possessions; our needs change, they become very basic. I love how
we woke up, walked, ate some bread, continued to walk, and then
rest in the evenings..The Camino has been the best reflection for my
life. Many new friendships have developed and others strengthened.
I send my many thanks to you for making this journey possible."
Final year Science student from Perth, Timothy Garvey writes:
We returned to College the day before second semester commenced.
A few looked different, wearing their 'pilgrim beards’, and a few
came back a few kilos lighter, but the exterior changes that were
evident merely hint at the deep individual personal changes that
had developed. The road to Santiago had allowed us all to grow,
to change and to develop a sense of the sacred in our daily lives.
The silence of the Camino remains with me today. We left as
individuals, we returned as pilgrims; changed in mind, heart and
spirit, different but the same; refreshed but exhausted, strengthened
in our faith and doubt."
18
"I loved the opportunity to visit some of the great architectural
constructions in that city (Madrid), such as the Royal Palace and
the Cathedral. I spent several hours viewing pieces of art – some
very beautiful – in the Prado museum. I particularly enjoyed some
art with Christian subject matter which was displayed. On our
way to Astorga from Madrid, our group stopped in Ávila. In Ávila,
I viewed relics of two Saints who are of particular interest to me:
St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Ávila…At Santiago de
Compostela, I visited the Cathedral several times and loved the fact
that the Cathedral had multiple architectural and artistic styles
within it. It was a pleasure to sample some of the local Spanish
cuisine; I particularly enjoyed the beverage ‘Sangria’.
..As I struggled physically at some points on the trip, other
members of the group would sometimes walk and talk with me,
occasions which afforded opportunities to deepen friendships."
Third year Biomedicine student from Ballarat, Ben McOwan,
reflects thus:
"It is difficult to contain something as large as the Camino
de Santiago in so few words. It is a journey that touches upon
much of human experience, a journey that is filled with humour
and companionship, solitude and quiet, and, of course, trials
and difficulties. You never know where it is going to take you;
certainties fly out of the window on the Camino.
Uncertainty and the minor inconveniences of pilgrim life are part
and parcel of the Camino. In a certain sense, it is one of the ways
the Camino breaks you down to build you up.
Thus, ‘offer it up’ became the mantra we adopted, and I think
these three words, if any, sum up the pilgrimage entirely. This is
because you cannot really think about the pilgrimage as being just
you in a vacuum. The Camino is not a 'top-down' experience where
you are passively changed; rather you are changed in the context
of a relationship: your relationship with others and with God.
Any such relationship requires self-sacrifice, and self-sacrifice itself
implies a strengthening of character and spirit.
I would say simply that the Camino takes you on a subtle journey
of the spirit and a real rollercoaster of a ride for the body. Both
make it what it is: an adventure and retreat in one. The unique
combination of the two is part of this ancient pilgrimage’s enduring
relevance, satisfying the two conflicting human needs to engage
with the world and withdraw from it."
Therese Mount, who is now engaged in a Graduate Diploma
in Education after a double degree in Arts and Science,
contributes this piece:
"It was in Astorga that I first really reflected on what I thought the
word 'pilgrimage' meant. Why does one go on pilgrimage? What
should it involve? It came to mind that a pilgrimage should bring
one closer to God and involve a great deal of personal sacrifice.
I felt that to go on pilgrimage was a sign that you were willing to
carry the cross of Christ alongside Him and offer Him all the joys
and suffering you may experience. I just hoped I could live this out
while on the Camino.
..Probably the biggest things that came out of this trip were
improving my patience, becoming a little more selfless and learning
how to appreciate the smaller things. Walking for seven hours
every day, with the same routine, for eleven days straight, your life
becomes very slow and very simple. However, it was not a grind.
It was peaceful."
Nick Mannering, Callum Maltby, Ella Trimboli, Ben and Tim McOwan
First year Environments student, Ella Trimboli, from Perth,
spoke about her Camino experience at our Commencement
Dinner:
"Walking this journey, I found that being a pilgrim made me
appreciate the simplicity of life. We were disconnected from our
lives and worries back home, and the only things that we were
really concerned about was getting to the next Albergue each day
and having something to eat. I found that this simplicity allowed
me to reflect more openly and helped to clear my mind."
Nick Mannering, a third year Biomedicine student, was
another to share with us his thoughts at our Commencement
Dinner:
"Pilgrimage is something special that captures many of life’s
moments and bottles them in a glass jar for us to take home – the
challenges, the highs and the lows, the excitement, and at times the
disappointment. Yet in other ways it separates us from our lives as far
as possible. It forces us to bring only what is necessary for the journey,
to leave behind what has become familiar, to venture forth into new
territory. The Way seems to pull us out of our everyday lives, to
remind us; we are like a grain of salt in the ocean. Yes; not one iota
of worrying will add anything unto our stature. Yet even salt has
its purpose. As it seasons the earth, so too do we give flavour to life
around us. But are we not worth much more than salt?"
Tim McOwan, a first year student from Ballarat explains:
"If truth be told, I was unsure of what to expect, unsure of what
this experience would mean to me and what impact it would have
on my life. Now, in life post-Camino, I can appreciate that my
uncertainty stemmed from the fact that I had never done anything
like it before. It was a fantastically foreign concept, an experience
that could only be understood by experiencing it. It could not
be anticipated. In hindsight, this is the only way it could ever
have been. Walking the Camino is such an intimate and personal
experience that any assumptions based on the reflections of others
or any concepts of how it will or should be are almost certainly not
going to reflect the reality of this profoundly spiritual and intimate
journey. I came to consider my Camino experience as a prolonged
discourse with my true self, my soul.
19
Arriving at Cee
..It is difficult to identify what exactly the Camino offered me.
However, I believe I could sum it up, somewhat inadequately
given the true scope of this experience, with one word: 'Time' that precious, intangible commodity, which we often squander,
but always seem to want more of. Rarely do you get to dedicate
three weeks of your life to reflection, prayer and soul-searching.
It was an amazing opportunity that provided the perfect setting
for a personal evaluation of where I was in my life and, more
importantly, where I wanted to be."
Second year Science student from Geelong, Callum Maltby,
spoke about companions on the way:
Final year Arts student, Michael Francis brought a slightly
different perspective in his Commencement speech:
"I present to you The First Rule of the Camino:
- If you find a toilet, use it, lest your bladder explode.
- When you pass a water fountain, refill your bottle.
-R
eal men at least attempt to grow beards, despite the fact
they will invariably suffer ridicule upon their return home!
- S hould you see an ATM, withdraw cash, lest you remain
broke for days on end.
"The people we met changed as our trip progressed. Before we
started the hike, we stayed a few nights in a convent in Salamanca.
I’d never met a nun, and to be one hundred percent honest, I had
no idea what to expect. But these ladies just radiated goodness,
and it was just like living in a house run by twenty Spanish
versions of my grandma.
- T he Uno card game transcends all cultural barriers and may just
be the universal language of love.
They actually made quite a good case for me joining the convent,
although I’m pretty sure I’d have been disbarred for a number of
reasons. On the hike itself, it was a general rule of thumb that the
walkers who started further back were the more serious walkers.
We thought we were doing okay with our two hundred and ninety
km trek, until we came across a couple of grandparents, who had
walked all the way from their front door. In Holland!"
-G
reet every stranger like an old friend, and wish them “Buen
Camino.”
- Anti-inflammatories are your friend.
-N
ever backtrack, always saunter forward at your own pace,
lest you miss something.
- Everything tastes better in a bun, even tinned octopus.
- Every fourth person orders white wine.
-N
aming your blisters won’t make them any more compassionate.
AND, finally;
- Never, under any circumstances, accept food from gypsies.
20
Dinner in Arca
Fourth year Optometry student from Adelaide, Van Ngo,
writes:
Nick Mannering
Just over a week ago, I was in Finisterre, the westernmost point of
Spain, and historically known as the Ends of the Earth. I was lying
on a cliff, staring into the endless horizon, thinking about eternity.
My powers of eloquence cannot adequately convey the tranquillity
of my soul in this moment. I was completely at peace. Perhaps it
offered a glimpse of Heaven.
So I guess what I’m trying to say, at the risk of sounding clichéd
(though perhaps it is worth remembering that most clichés are such
because they are central to human experience), is that the Camino
reminds you of the importance of TAKING EVERY CHANCE. And
(and I might be paraphrasing here, but I couldn’t for the life of me
find the original poem, hopefully you will forgive me), of seizing
every opportunity to laugh, and to cry, to share, and to listen, to
think and to act, to walk slowly, drink deeply, love freely and pray
quietly: to reflect on God’s graces in our lives.
"Silence. That was something we had quite a lot of in Spain. There
was all the time in the world to pray, reflect, and think through
things without distractions. It was so peaceful! To be able to walk
through the beautiful Spanish countryside as though you're the
only one there, because you can't see or hear anyone around you..
To be able to be with a group of people you feel so comfortable with
that the prolonged silence between you isn't an awkward one. It was
truly a blessing to experience this peacefulness.
..One of my favourite days of the Camino was actually my hardest
and most painful day - I received so much encouragement from
everyone around me, telling me to fight on and that I didn't have
long to go; I even had a random lady offering me deep heat magic
spray...and then to top it off, when I finally arrived at the town,
an hour or so behind the rest of the group, I received a round of
applause as I shuffled into the hostel."
Many students wrote cards during their walk expressing
thanks to the Rector. Genevieve Holland:
"We are currently at the end of day seven and are in the town of
Portomarin; it is quite beautiful….Thank you for all your help
and support to allow me to come here to walk the Camino. It is
amazing, and I can’t thank you enough for everything."
Take every chance. Thank you."
21
Robert O’Shea, who has just completed his M.A and is off to
undertake a D. Phil in History at Pembroke College, Oxford
University and is the recipient of the Clarendon scholarship
and the Rae and Edith Bennet Travelling Scholarship closes
with:
"My Camino started in March 2010 on the road to St. Mary’s
College. Sean Burke promptly stopped me in my tracks. I assumed
I was about to be pulled up for cutting across Shane’s manicured
lawns. Instead my shortcut turned into an invitation to walk across
Spain. My first Camino in 2010 was filled with discovery. Our
rapid immersion into the Spanish lifestyle meant that everything
from the soccer World Cup to going to the supermarket involved
Iberian idiosyncrasies. Hence there was a danger when I accepted
the call to go on Camino in 2012. Without the novelty of visiting
a new country, would I become blasé about the extraordinary
privilege and paradox of flying across the world, just to travel
on foot?
While we were a group, walking at our own pace permitted
solitude. We paused for the Angelus, joined Benedictines for
Compline and bowed our heads at Finisterre. Such customs are
sometimes seen as empty rituals, but the Camino gave everyone
a purpose and deepened our inner understanding of the outward
signs of faith.
At the Senior Common Room Retreat the Deputy Rector tells us
that Newman College prepares us for death. Ominously, I am
going to be leaving Newman in a few weeks. I am uncertain if
we can truly recognise the formation we receive at Newman until
decades after we leave. The Camino is a concentrated burst of
effort and emotion that has greater immediacy. But let us also
realise that our time at College, be it in Spain or in S-Flat,
is a grace-filled time that I, for one, will be forever grateful for."
Thankfully, any prospect of complacency was assuaged by the
infectious enthusiasm of my fellow collegians. Their wonderment
at the medieval walls, saintly relics and vending machines of Avila
brought new life to a momentous site. Similarly, the routine of six
a.m. wake-up calls and nine kilometres walking before breakfast
was only bearable by knowing the day would be shared with loyal
friends; companions who would lend you a hand, a stick, a prayer
– anything that would help you reach Santiago.
Santiago is a city with a magnificent historic centre, but its
cobbled streets gain their greatest significance when imbued with
the sea-shells and yellow arrows of ‘The Way’. The splendour of
the Cathedral can only be truly appreciated when you have walked
across barren ranges and through decaying villages. The austere
beauty of the tomb of St. James only resonates when you reflect
upon the suffering felt by those who have preceded you to Santiago,
and the departed family and friends who journey in your heart.
Walking alongside pilgrims from countless nations exposed us to a
variety of faith rituals. I sometimes looked with envy at the piety
of others, their stillness in prayer and their confident recitation
of creed and catechism. To have such sure faith and such clear
means of expression is a great gift. It is tempting to emulate the
long fasts and deep bows of the devout and try to genuflect your
way to certainty. However, I am unsure if many of us can live
without doubt and distraction. As Ignatian pilgrims we sought to
‘ find God in all things’, and the simplicity of walking lent itself
to genuine meditation. Silence was not imposed but freely chosen.
22
Van Ngo in Trabadelo
July/August/September – in College
This gives but a glimpse into the community during these three months in 2012. It does not show
the ongoing arrangements of formal dinners, tutorials, Masses, and inter-collegiate sports and activities.
The College Play: Elle Webb and Alex Eastwood in Rumours
Scout Rigoni, Catherine Buckley and Tyler Hay – the College Play
Guest speaker at the NCSC Dinner and former Collegian, Ms Naomita Royan,
with the President and Vice-President of the NCSC
Edward Nurse, Joanna Pidcock and Alex Delaney in Rumours
Week 1
Week3
25th, 26th
& 28th July
The College Play, Rumours by Neil Simon,
performed on three days at the Union Theatre
in the University of Melbourne
25th July
Lecture on the rare Redmond Barry collection
in the Academic Centre
27 th July
Commencement Mass and Dinner
29th July
Newman College part of Melbourne Open
House 2012
Week2
31st July
Feast of St Ignatius
1st August
Rector’s Roll Call
2nd August
Service of Compline
6th August
Address by Father Paul Murray OP,
Professor of Spirituality and a poet who
teaches at the Angelicum in Rome: Falling
towards God: Simple Prayer/Complicated Life
(Helder Camara Lecture Series)
6th August
Soiree
8th August
Meeting of the Building Committee of the
Council of the College
8th August
33rd Daniel Mannix Memorial Lecture delivered
by the Hon. Barry Jones: Gough Whitlam in
context: a revisionist exercise, organised by the
NCSC and held in the Public Lecture Theatre,
Old Arts Building, at the University
of Melbourne
23
At the Council Dinner: Susan and Pierre Belluzzo with son, Daniel
Football under lights at the University of Melbourne
Retiring Bishop of Ballarat, Bishop Peter Connors, fifteen years on the College Council
The Netball ‘Stars’
Cardinal Rodriguez at dinner with Mitchell Black, Jaz Patel and Sarajane Ting
Week 4
13th August
24
Natural Law, God and Human Dignity - Lecture
by Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of
Jurisprudence and Founder and Director of the
James Madison Program in American Ideals
and Institutions at Princeton University
(Helder Camara Lecture Series)
14th August
Meeting of the Finance Committee of the
Council of the College
14th August
Book Club: Atonement by Ian McEwan
15 th August
Michael Scott Art Prize; won in 2012 by first
year Arts student Andrew Mills and Science
research student, Mitchell Black
17 th August
Celebrating the 21st birthday of Eureka
Street with the Kevin Rudd/Frank Brennan
conversation: Things that matter at the Asia
Myer Centre, the University of Melbourne
18 th August
University of Melbourne and Newman College
Open Day
18 th August
Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez, SDB, President of
Caritas International in conversation with
Frank Brennan SJ on Connecting with our
world’s indigenous peoples (Helder Camara
Lecture Series)
First year students: Carly Visser, Rebecca Thwaites,
Clare Vincent, Ella Trimboli and Rachana Jujjavapu
Jesuit scholastics from USA, Nathan Halloran SJ and Robert Murphy SJ,
with former Rector, Father Peter L’Estrange SJ – dinner in College
At the Council Dinner reflecting upon the Camino – Van Ngo, fourth year Optometry
student from Adelaide
Michael Francis and Tim Garvey discussing the Magisterium with Father Frank Brennan SJ
Tim Gorton, Brandan Walker and the Dean Dr Guglielmo Gottoli
Week 5
17 th – 22nd
August
25th August
Week 7
Visit from former Rector of the College,
Father Peter L’Estrange SJ,
who is presently based at Georgetown
University in the USA
Meeting of the Council of the College
followed by Dinner with students
and parents
Week 6
29th August
Good will Dinner to raise funds for Peace
and Diversity Australia
29th August
Scholars' Presentation
5th September Peter L’Estrange SJ Music Prize
6th September Service of Compline
7th September NCSC Dinner, with guest speaker and former
Collegian, Ms Naomita Royan
9th September Concert of the Choir of Newman College,
The Voice of the Bard, featuring music written
by William Byrd, John Wilbye, Vaughan
Williams, Benjamin Britten, George Shearing
and John Rutter.
Week 8
12th September
Rector’s Roll Call
25
33RD DANIEL MANNIX MEMORIAL LECTURE
The Newman College Students Club organised the 33rd Daniel Mannix Lecture on Wednesday 8th August, 2012,
in the Public Lecture Theatre, Old Arts Building at the University of Melbourne.
The guest speaker was the Hon. Barry Jones, who spoke
on Gough Whitlam in context: a revisionist exercise. An
extract of his address follows. Full copies of the address can
be obtained from the College. Mr Jones dedicated his address
to the late Father Peter Steele SJ.
"On 8 June, Malcolm Fraser delivered the 2012 Whitlam
Oration at the Whitlam Institute at the University of Western
Sydney. In an outstanding speech, he praised Gough Whitlam,
emphasising that, notwithstanding the political trauma of
1975 and the events leading up to ‘The Dismissal’, he and
Whitlam had common cause on many issues. They included
foreign policy, especially the recognition of the People’s
Republic of China, unease about automatic acquiescence
in all aspects of United States foreign policy, White
Australia, multi-culturalism, the ownership of newspapers,
immigration, refugees, Aborigines and Native Title, the
(mostly covert) revival of racism in Australian politics, the
environment, constitutional reform and the Republic.
Fraser’s Whitlam Oration is strong and radical, particularly
so in the context of 2012. It is hard to name anybody in the
current Australian Parliament, with the possible exceptions of
Malcolm Turnbull, Kevin Rudd and John Faulkner, who would
attempt to be so bold, courageous, far-sighted and generous.
A singularity can be defined in several ways, most commonly
as the quality of being different. In science and mathematics,
a singularity often appears as a spike on a graph, something
that soars up and then falls back to the norm. Gough Whitlam
was a political singularity who transformed Australian politics
in unprecedented ways and, despite his relatively short tenure
as Prime Minister (2 years 11 months 7 days), was a major
change agent.
In 1960, when Dr H V Evatt, having lost three elections, was
coerced into retirement, Arthur Calwell succeeded him as
Federal Leader of the ALP. Gough Whitlam – not yet widely
known – was a surprise (and to Calwell, unwelcome) choice
as Deputy Leader. It was not a happy relationship.
Calwell, with his Irish Catholic background, had been shaped
by the sectarian bitterness of Conscription and its aftermath
in World War I, the Depression, the Labor split of 1954-55
and the resulting schism in Victoria’s Catholic community,
and a decade of difficulty with Evatt.
26
Whitlam was twenty years younger, an urbane humanist,
cosmopolitan in style and superbly equipped, it seemed,
for dealing with television and the problems associated
with the coming of age of the post-war boom babies.
Although not a racist, Calwell was firmly committed to
White Australia on social and economic grounds. A strong
protectionist, he became increasingly, and embarrassingly,
dependent on the support of the ‘hard Left’ Victorian branch
of the ALP, and its dogmatic and authoritarian style
repelled voters.
In the turbulent 1960s, four controversial figures changed
the face of the ALP: Gough Whitlam, Don Dunstan, Lionel
Murphy and Jim Cairns, but of the quartet Gough proved
to be prima donna assoluta. Whitlam and Dunstan shared
a wary respect, but operated in different spheres, Dunstan
remaining in South Australia. While Cairns and Murphy
were both suspicious of Whitlam, Murphy hoped to be able
to transfer to the House of Representatives (as John Gorton
had done) and become Leader – and, to that extent, saw
Cairns as a potential rival. On many major issues, such
as White Australia, multiculturalism, the death penalty,
Aboriginal rights, censorship, affirmative action and gender
issues, all four agreed. Cairns and Murphy resisted Whitlam
on modernizing the Party structure and transforming the
Victorian Branch.
In his essay in Australian Prime Ministers (2000), edited by
Michelle Grattan, the late journalist and academic Clem Lloyd
wrote, correctly, that Whitlam:
brought sophistication of structure and process to the moribund
machinery of the Australian Labor Party, which he set out to
reform in the early 1960s. This involved a display of raw political
courage unwaveringly sustained over a decade, contemptuous of
even the most basic tenets of political self-preservation. The ALP’s
successes over twenty-five years were anchored in the bed-rock of
the Whitlam-driven reform of the administration and political
process… Whitlam’s task on entering the cabalistic world of Labor
branch politics was to convince a dubious branch membership of his
Labor sympathies. His remorseless didacticism aroused incredulity
among traditional Laborites steeped in class struggle and militant
socialism… Whitlam prevailed through a combination of
persistence, patience, intelligence, geniality and ubiquity. His
opponents had no answer to his vitality, consuming presence and
perpetual advocacy.
Barry Jones, and the Rector with co-chairs of the organising committee, Lachlan Russell and Emma Bechaz
The reference to Whitlam’s ‘remorseless didacticism’
deserves elaboration. Whitlam liked to speak at length
and on the subjects that engaged him – ratification of ILO
Conventions, uniform railway gauges, UNESCO’s World
Heritage system, altering the Commonwealth Constitution.
He gave long, lucid speeches, incorporating the odd
witticism, but devoted to explaining, explaining, explaining.
Sometimes he went on too long, and audiences could feel
fatigued, but he never short-changed them or talked down
to them.
The range of Whitlam’s achievement is extraordinary,
especially in the face of what seemed like insurmountable
odds. He transformed the ALP and made it electable, but
he did it emphasising his policy agenda, much of it noneconomic, and did so largely through sheer force
of personality, a mastery of evidence, and outstanding
debating skills.
His interests were patrician. In addition his role model, in
appearance, colouring, stature, dress and debating style,
seemed to be Robert Gordon Menzies rather than any figure
in the Labor tradition, even H V Evatt. I don’t ever recall
seeing him on television wearing a hard hat and pretending
to be interested in what was going on at a mine site.
His verbal skills and his performances in unarmed combat
defy reproduction here. His knowledge and range of interests
were encyclopaedic. His humour was sharp, often savage,
usually erudite. He once provided a favourite joke to The
Age, but it leaves listeners blank unless they have strong
Bonapartist interests.
Talleyrand once asked Napoleon, ‘Why is it that your brothers
hate you so much?’
Napoleon pondered for a moment and replied: ‘They believe
I have robbed them of the patrimony of our late father the king.’
His achievements are exceptional because he had no power
base other than his head, his family and his faithful staff,
no faction, no coterie of intimates inside Caucus.
In 1969, as Leader for the first time, competing against
Prime Minister John Gorton, Gough Whitlam only won
silver. Despite a large national swing, in Victoria, 14 years
after the Split, Labor finished only one seat ahead of where
it had been in 1955.
The stormy Federal intervention into the Victorian branch
of the ALP in September 1970 resulted in removal of a
dogmatic Left junta which had proved to be electoral poison.
The decisive vote on the Federal Executive was cast by Clyde
Cameron, MHR for Hindmarsh, a tough ex-shearer and AWU
heavyweight from South Australia, but a self-trained scholar,
historian and debater, not conspicuously enthusiastic for
Whitlam.
But Cameron was a devotee of realpolitik and recognised
the inexorable logic of Whitlam’s campaign against the
Victorians. He wanted Labor to win, concluded that only
Whitlam could do it, and that the Victorian Branch had to
be removed and replaced. (Bob Hawke opposed Federal
intervention, fearing that the ALP in Victoria would collapse
and trade unions would form an Industrial Labor Party).
27
Whitlam was an outstanding campaigner who appealed
directly to voters, reaching out over the Party structure
which basically didn’t like him much. Nevertheless the Party’s
apparatchiki conceded, reluctantly, in 1969, 1972 and 1974
that he was the leader with the best chance of winning.
Whitlam recognised the need to ‘crash through or crash’ and
make the ALP more open and accessible, especially in the age
of television. This opening-up also occurred in the Liberal
and National Parties, to some degree, and much of the credit
is Whitlam’s.
He promoted a revolution of rising levels of expectations.
Whitlam told the Australian public that it was entitled to
expect more of its governments; that governments could and
should do more things. If they failed, they should be judged
harshly, and replaced. He succeeded in this. He was both
a beneficiary (in 1972) of sharper scrutiny and increased
expectations and also its victim (1975 and 1977). Fraser was
both beneficiary (1975) and victim (1983).
The processes of law reform, often regarded as of limited
and esoteric appeal, were very important to Whitlam who
campaigned energetically for them over many years. He was
an enthusiastic proponent (with Lionel Murphy) of setting up
an Australian Legal Aid Office, and a permanent Law Reform
Commission, enacting simplified and non-punitive divorce
laws, enhanced legal protection for women, abolishing the
death penalty and enacting a Bill of Rights. All but the last
came to pass. He was attracted by Ralph Nader’s program
for freedom of information, consumer protection and
environmental impact assessments.
Whitlam was excited by the arts and film. John Gorton had set
up some new structures, but Whitlam went much further, and
was himself an enthusiastic consumer of high culture. He was
committed to the concept of evidence as a precondition to action.
He had a passion for information and education, assuming that if
only the facts were revealed, prejudice, ignorance and sectional
interest would fall away. It did not always happen.
Whitlam describes himself as a consistent opponent of
protection and Cairns as an equivocal supporter of tariffs.
He claims credit for the 25 per cent across-the-board cut
in protection announced in June 1973, a major change in
direction for Labor. However, he concedes, ‘In government
Cairns was rational enough when one could prise him away
from his sycophants’.
28
Public Lecture Theatre, Old Arts Building, University of Melbourne
In the famous 1972 ‘It’s time!’ policy speech Whitlam set out
‘three great aims, to promote equality, to involve the people
of Australia in the decision-making process of our land and to
liberate the talents and uplift the horizons of the Australian
people.’ He invoked the ‘touchstone of modern democracy –
liberty, equality, fraternity’.
If I had to identify Whitlam’s greatest achievement as Prime
Minister, it would be that he took the demonology out of
foreign policy.
It is almost impossible for contemporary audiences to
understand the phobias and irrationality generated by the
Cold War, fear of China and paranoia that if Vietnam was
unified under the Hanoi regime, Australia would be in danger
of invasion. We no longer see yellow arrows and bloodied
hands on our television indicating where the Chinese would
probably invade. Now our main fear about China is that it
will buy less of our minerals, at a lower price. We happily
cooperate with Vietnam in trade, aid and education: it’s hard
to recall what the long, bloody war in Vietnam was about.
Introducing rationality in foreign affairs was a central element
in Whitlam’s legacy, and it was continued by Fraser, Hawke,
Keating and even – the Iraq War aside – Howard, to a degree.
Whitlam was never a populist. He never resorted to cliché.
He was a leader – not a follower. He was antithetical to
the current obsession by political professionals with ‘polls’,
‘marketing’, ‘damage control’ and ‘spin’ generally.
Now, in the era of ‘spin’, when a complex issue is involved,
leaders do not explain, they find a mantra (‘Stop the boats!’)
and repeat it endlessly, ‘staying on message’, without
explanation or qualification. The word ‘because’ seems to
have fallen out of the political lexicon. Gough was ahead of his
time – and out of it, too.
Since Gough Whitlam’s time, Australia has undergone a
serious decline in the quality of debate on public policy – and
the same phenomenon has occurred in the US, Canada and
Europe. The British journalist Robert Fisk has called this ‘the
infantilisation of debate’.
Currently we are, by far, the best educated cohort in our
history – on paper, anyway – but it is not reflected in the
quality of our political discourse. We appear to be lacking
in courage, judgment, capacity to analyse or even simple
curiosity, except about immediate personal needs.
Debates on such issues as climate change, population, taxation,
refugees, mandatory detention and offshore processing, plain
packaging of cigarettes, limitations on problem gambling, and
access to water, have been deformed by both sides resorting
to cherry-picking of evidence, denigration of opponents, mere
sloganeering, leading to infantilisation of democracy, treating
citizens as if they were unable to grasp major issues.
Both Whitlam and Keating emphasised the importance of
high culture. Other than Malcolm Turnbull, nobody does
now. There is a strong anti-intellectual flavour in public
life, sometimes described as philistine or – more commonly
– bogan, which leads to a reluctance to engage in complex
or sophisticated argument and analysis of evidence, most
easily demonstrated in the anti-science push in debate about
vaccination, fluoridation, and global warming.
Media – Old and New – is partly to blame. Revolutionary
changes in IT may be even more important, where we can
communicate very rapidly, for example on Twitter, in ways
that are shallow and non-reflective. Advocacy and analysis has
largely dropped out of politics and been replaced by marketing
and sloganeering. Politicians share the blame as well as
consenting adults.
The politics (that is, serious debate on ideological issues) has
virtually dropped out of politics and has been replaced by a
managerial approach. The use of focus groups and obsessive
reliance on polling and the very short news cycle means
that the idea of sustained, serious, courageous analysis on a
complex issue – the treatment of asylum seekers, for example
– has become almost inconceivable.
For decades, politics has been reported as a subset of the
entertainment industry, in which it is assumed that audiences
look for instant responses and suffer from short-term memory
loss. Politics is treated as a sporting contest, with its violence,
personality clashes, tribalism and quick outcomes. An
alternative model is politics as theatre or drama.
The besetting fault of much media reporting is trivialisation,
exaggerated stereotyping, playing off personalities, and a
general ‘dumbing down’. This encourages the view that there
is no point in raising serious issues months or years before
an election. This has the effect of reinforcing the status quo,
irrespective of which party is in power and at whatever level,
State or Federal.
The 2010 Federal Election was by common consent the most
dismal in living memory, without a single new or courageous
idea being proposed on either side. The National Broadband
Network (NBN) was announced before the election. After
many discussions with people of all political persuasions (or
none) I have yet to meet a dissenter to that view.
In 2010 the assertion that Australia’s public debt was getting
out of control was largely unchallenged – although figures
confirmed we had the lowest percentage in the OECD.
Similarly, nobody pointed out that we run 46th in the number
of refugees arriving unheralded on our shores. The largest
factor in the three, I believe, is community withdrawal and
disillusion. The tiny numbers of people in major parties (even
if we vote for them) confirms this.
29
By any objective measure, Australia has been more successful
than any other OECD nation (Canada comes second) in
coping with the aftershocks of the Global Financial Crisis
(GFC). Recent strong praise by the IMF ranking Australia
as first in the world was described by the Opposition,
perversely, as a ‘warning shot across the bows’ and a
conclusion that we must do better. Similarly, Wayne Swan’s
designation by Euromoney in 2011 as World’s Best Finance
Minister was derided. However, NewsPoll and the Neilsen
Poll indicate that of all sectors of government, economic
management is regarded as the area where the Opposition is
strongest, and the Gillard Government weakest. It flies in
the face of common sense but must be recognised, however
irrational, as a political reality...
The High Court’s decision (June 2012) that Commonwealth
funding for school chaplains was unconstitutional was
immediately bypassed by a cross-party love-in, hurriedly
passing new legislation to nullify the High Court’s judgment.
This is a classic example of how a fundamental principle –
the separation of church and state – is abandoned for fear of
offending powerful interest groups and losing votes. James
Madison, in the United States, campaigned until his last
breath for the preservation of the separation of church and
state. How the Tea Partyists would have loathed him – but
then he was not running in 2012, more’s the pity.
Despite the exponential increases in public education
and access to information in the past century, the quality
of political debate appears to have become increasingly
unsophisticated, appealing to the lowest common
denominator of understanding.
In 1860, more than 150 years ago, in New York Abraham
Lincoln began his campaign for the Presidency with a
very complex speech about slavery at The Cooper Union,
7500 words long, sophisticated and nuanced. All four New
York newspapers published the full text which was sent
by telegraph across the nation, widely read and discussed.
In 1860 the technology was primitive, but the ideas were
profound and sophisticated. In 2012 the technology is
sophisticated, but the ideas uttered in the Presidential contest
so far are, in the most part, embarrassing in their banality,
ignorance and naiveté, much of it fuelled by rage
or ignorance.
30
We live in the age of the Information Revolution, but
it is also the age of the cult of management. Education
(like Health, Sport, the Environment, Law, even Politics)
is often treated as a subset of management, with appeals to
naked self-interest and protecting the bottom line. At its
most brutal the argument was put that there were no health,
education, transport, environment, or media problems,
only management problems: get the management right,
and all the other problems would disappear. Coupled with
the managerial dogma was the reluctance of senior officials
to give what used to be called ‘frank and fearless’ advice
− and replacing it with what is now called ‘a whole of
government’ approach. This is not telling Ministers what
they want to hear − it is actually far worse, a pernicious
form of spin doctoring..
Paradoxically, the age of the Information Revolution, which
should have been an instrument of personal liberation and an
explosion of creativity, has been characterised by domination
of public policy by managerialism, replacement of ‘the public
good’ by ‘private benefit’, the decline of sustained critical
debate on issues, leading to gross oversimplification, the
relentless ‘dumbing down’ of mass media, linked with the
cult of celebrity, substance abuse and retreat into the realm
of the personal, and the rise of fundamentalism and an assault
on reason. The Knowledge Revolution ought to have been
a countervailing force: in practice it has been the vector
of change.
In Britain in the Thatcher era, and in Australia, after 1983,
there was a growing conviction that relying on specialist
knowledge and experience might create serious distortions
in policy-making, and that generic managers, usually
accountants, or economists, would provide a more detached
view. As a result, expertise was fragmented, otherwise,
health specialists would push health issues, educators
education, scientists science, and so on. It is striking that
of eight current Directors-General/ CEOs of Education
in Australia, judging from their Who’s Who entries, only
two (in the ACT and NT) admit to having had any teaching
experience or qualifications. Universities have become
trading corporations, not just communities of scholars.
Sport has become very big business. Political parties are
managed by factions, essentially a form of privatisation.
Guest speaker, Barry Jones, with the Rector and members of the 2012 Daniel Mannix Lecture Committee: Rebecca McElhatton, Matthew Thomas, Lachlan Russell, Ben Frilay-Cox,
Patrick Dollard, Emma Bechaz and Daniel Belluzzo
Departments contract out important elements of their core
business to consultants. A consultant has been defined as
somebody to whom you lend your watch, then ask him to
tell you the time. Consultants, eager for repeat business,
provide government with exactly the answers that they want
to receive. Lobbyists, many of them former politicians or
bureaucrats, are part of the decision-making inner circle.
Generic managers promoted the use of ‘management-speak’,
a coded alternative to natural language, only understood by
insiders, exactly as George Orwell had predicted.
The managerial revolution involves a covert attack on
democratic processes because many important decisions
are made without public debate, community knowledge or
parliamentary scrutiny..
Whitlam was – is – a great achiever, but he would not want
me to end by gilding the lily.
Under present arrangements in the ALP, there is no
possibility that Gough Whitlam could have been preselected
for a winnable seat unless he was a loyal factional member –
and the same would have been true of Bill Hayden, Gareth
Evans, John Button, Neal Blewett, Don Dunstan or Geoff
Gallop.
The central problem for the renewal of Labor is: how can
a party with a contracting base reach out to an expanding
society?
I have called this ‘the 1954 problem’. 1954 was the year
in which membership of trade unions began to contract as
a proportion of the total labour force. After 58 years it is
starting to look like a trend. In the lifetime of the Prime
Minister the ALP as an organisation has become increasingly
unrepresentative of the community at large, and even of
Labor voters.
Currently the Party’s owners, people like Paul Howes, Tony
Sheldon and (until recently) Michael Williamson, think
that the highest priority is for them to keep control of their
property. They were not unduly worried when the ALP’s
primary vote in the New South Wales State Election in March
2011 fell to 25.6%, after the power brokers had despatched
two Premiers, Morris Iemma and Nathan Rees. From the
Howes-Sheldon perspective, all was well because they were
still running the show.
They regard the opinions of voters outside their unions as
totally irrelevant; after all, they haven’t met many.
The ALP must turn outward, embrace democracy and
reject oligarchy, understand the past, respect its heritage
but embrace the future, thinking in decades, not Twitter
moments. We must all search for the ‘shock of recognition’
which enables us to find ourselves, expanding our
understanding both of the universe and of each other,
pursuing arts, science and music as avidly as we pursue sport
or the cult of celebrity.
31
Things That Matter
On Friday, 17th August, 2012, Newman College was one of
the sponsors of the ‘conversation’ between Frank Brennan SJ
and Kevin Rudd in the Asia Myer Centre at the University of
Melbourne to mark the 21st birthday of Eureka Street.
Photos from top to bottom: The Rector with Father Steve Curtin SJ,
Provincial of the Society of Jesus, and guest speaker, Kevin Rudd,
Part of the Kevin Rudd – Frank Brennan ‘conversation; Part of the
audience – Father Andrew Hamilton SJ, The Rector, and Damien
Nolan, Acting CEO of Jesuit Communications, Australia; Newman
College students at the event: Sam van den Nieuwenhof, Matthew
Thomas, Peppe Cavalieri, Sebastian Reinehr and Tristan Beale, with
former Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd.
32
Chào - It means “hello”
in Vietnamese.
Fifth year dentistry student, Stella Lee, writes about her
Rotary Australia-Vietnam Dental Health Project, March 2012.
My tasks were diverse and included triaging, treating,
assisting and simply entertaining the students as they half
nervously and half excitedly waited for their turn. I also
had an opportunity to conduct a small qualitative study,
interviewing teachers, parents and local dental staff on their
awareness of oral health of children in Vietnam and their
perception of the impact made by the Rotary involvement;
generous positive feedback was received.
A few months have passed since the project, but the warm
welcome received in Vietnam, the curious and pure
eyes of the children, and the unforgettable memories of
companionship continue to touch my heart with joy and
love. I am extremely grateful for the opportunity I had and
would like to thank Dr. Jamie Robertson for his mentorship,
GC corporation for their generous sponsorship and Team
Diamond for their constant support and passion. Diamonds
rock! If there is a little travel bug within you, I strongly
encourage you to go volunteering. Priceless memories and
life-long satisfaction aside, you will be touched by the world
you otherwise would not explore. Cám on.

A typical day of work went from 7.30am to 4.30pm. Each
day, around 50 students, mostly 12 years of age, were triaged
. (open mouth)” revealed many
then treated. “Há mieng
caries-affected teeth. Although some students only needed
fissure sealants, many required multiple restorations, most
commonly involving large occlusal caries on the first molars.
A modified Atraumatic Restorative Treatment (ART) method
was employed; the procedure was efficient and did not
require local anaesthesia. There was no wastage as left-over
GIC was used to seal the fissures of the remaining permanent
molars. Regardless of the amount of treatment required, the
students remained exceptionally compliant and cheerful.
Aside from clinical work, Vietnam offered much more.
Having always enjoyed Vietnamese cuisine, each meal was a
delightful feast – warm, hearty pho’ bò (beef noodle soup),
 nóng (Vietnamese coffee), fresh
sweet, yet strong cà phê sua
seasonal fruits and thirst-quenching young coconuts to name a
few favourites. Side trips outside work hours were interesting
and culturally enriching. The team visited the elaborate
battleground tunnels of Cu Chi, explored the local markets
and had dinner in Rach Giá where we observed the most
beautiful sunset. Just like that sunset, our short journey in
Vietnam came to an end, with lasting warmth and hope of the
future filled in our hearts.

Upon arrival in Phú Giáo, we set up the clinic with dental
items from Australia – this was an excellent prelude to
incredible teamwork which continued and grew over the next
two weeks. While one room had the luxury of a new dental
chair donated by the Rotary group, the next room revealed
an optometrist’s chair, which we gladly took to utilise for
dental treatment. Limited resources and equipment meant
that we had to quickly adapt to the unfamiliar, improvise
and overcome.
Frankly, I felt overwhelmed at times, as restorative need far
exceeded the treatment we could provide. However, the
team powered through continuously, sometimes working
until as late as 7.00pm. In two weeks, we provided over
1100 restorations, some fissure sealants and extractions of
deciduous teeth. With restored health of teeth came my
satisfaction and realisation that it all starts from one heart,
and that small things count and make a long-term difference.



Our field work took place in Phú Giáo, a rural district
. of Kiên Giang
of Bình Duong province and Tân Hiep,
province in the Mekong Delta, and involved provision of
primary dental treatment and oral health promotion.
The most rewarding activity, personally, was promoting oral
health through education. In addition to leading interactive
oral health lessons during the day, I also embarked on a
motorbike ride to a local primary school with the therapist
to give out oral hygiene and diet advice. There, we saw the
Rotary-installed toothbrushing and milk drinking program
running smoothly. The students enthusiastically demonstrated
their brushing technique and discussed components of a
good diet. Seeing them quickly learn, I could already foresee
healthier habits translating to healthier smiles.
.
In March 2012, I was privileged to join a group of
Australian dental volunteers to participate in the Rotary
Australia-Vietnam Dental Health Project, an annual outreach
program led by Dr. Jamie Robertson. As a final year dental
student, it was extremely thrilling to work alongside a veteran
dental team and utilise the skills learnt in dentistry to deliver
health and hope to those in need.
33
Western Arnhem Land Dog Health Programme
Final year Veterinary Science student and SCR member, Karienne Black writes:
During July I was fortunate enough
to participate in the the Western
Arnhem Land Dog Health Programme
(WALDHeP). Run by a small group
of academics and final year veterinary
students from the University of
Melbourne, WALDHeP was created to
provide basic veterinary services for dogs
within indigenous communities.
Our base camp was located within the
township of Gunbalanya, some 600km
from Darwin, and comprised a simple
structure established from old shipping
containers. Locally named ‘Toad Hall’,
this facility drew few similarities with
the glamorous mansion that features in
‘The Wind in the Willows’. Yet, it did
not lack character. Looking out from
the back doorstep, one could easily take
in the serenity: the cattle plains and
crocodile infested billabongs, framed by
the distant escarpment, provided a scene
so perfect that it could only have been
created by nature.
We were to work in Gunbalanya for a
week, set up outside the local health
clinic under the shade of a tree, before
departing a further 600 kilometres east to the outstations
of Kabulwarnamyo, Marlkawo, Manmoyi, and Maningrida.
Picnic tables served well as surgery tables, and a rope strung
between two trees with dog leads attached made for a perfect
waiting room.
When asked what we did for two weeks, I find myself
faltering before responding. Strictly speaking, we provided
basic canine care: worming for parasites, desexing, microchipping, and general health checkups. In practice, however,
we achieved much more than this.
With a dog population outnumbering the human population,
animal welfare can quickly be called into question within
remote communities. The animals are often malnourished,
and territorial or food-based aggression can result in serious
injury to dogs and humans alike.
34
The closest veterinary care is in Darwin, which proves
impossible to reach for many indigenous people. Accordingly,
any dogs that have been injured or suffer from a terminal illness
are left to die a natural death. WALDHeP aims to bring dog
population numbers under control in order to improve the
conditions for the individual animals, to minimise the number
of dog attacks, and to humanely put suffering dogs out of
their misery.
Despite the problems associated with the strong dog
presence within the indigenous communities, the expression
that a dog is a man’s best friend has never been more accurate.
A common expression heard during our time in Arnhem
Land was “Duruk [dog], he friend for life”. With this in mind,
when asked why we undertook the project up North I can
answer that we did it for the people and for the dogs. We did
it to allow the prosperity of the human-animal bond, which
is so very important within isolated indigenous communities
in Australia.
More Swift thaN stern
For Peter Steele SJ
For years you've taught us all those things
To disconcert imaginings
Or glint like hummingbirds' flashed wings,
Dear Peter;
None of us wanted your imaginings
To be neater.
Discerning planets from prismatic angles
(Far from drab academic wrangles);
Your verse can prance but never tangles
In granny-knots
For all its curlicues and spangles,
Of which there's lots.
You are sustained — I guess I know —
By the Holy Spirit fluttering below
And you become its Papageno,
Sagacious poet.
If there's a conceptual furbelow
You'll know it,
Taming that jigger as metaphor.
But the merest bud or apple core,
A cairngorm or a mouse's paw
Can be your grist
As you give it several octanes more,
Evangelist
Or prestidigitator of
A maplike sphere infused with love,
Showered with subjunctives from above,
Sublimely good.
Even your Trinitarian faith
Can serve as food
For those of us who blandly lack
Such nourishment, or at our back
Hear the vague tread, the clickety-clack,
Of those great stories
And gorgeous King James Bible prose,
In weakened flurries.
You've written, alas, that you'll no more travel
To hallowed sites where cameras marvel.
Hearing this note, I'm stung to cavil
That it can't be true,
But no blip or snitch will ever unravel
My love for you.
(A poem by Chris Wallace-Crabbe AM who is an Australian
poet and Emeritus Professor in The Australian Centre,
University of Melbourne.)
35
News of Former Collegians
Sue and Geoffrey Chapman
Sue Chapman, the widow of Geoffrey Chapman (NC 1951-1952)
writes following the article in the last edition of Newman
entitled: Reunion of the 1952 Freshers:
“Geoffrey Chapman (photo in second row from the back,
eighth from the left): Geoff died in May 2010. The Newman
newsletter carried an obituary of him by Gerry O'Collins SJ
that year. Jerry Fernando (photo to the left of Geoff in the
same row): Jerry moved back to Sri Lanka after graduating,
married and had four or five children. He died comparatively
young, in the eighties I think. John Worrall (mentioned at
the foot of column 1): John died on the 9 November 1991
following a car accident in Bowral, NSW. I think it may be
John in the photo, front row, seventh from left.
I always enjoy reading the Newsletter, which is full of variety,
interest and stimulating articles. During the years Geoff
was in the College, I spent much time there (I was resident
in JCH). Father John Fahey SJ instructed me before I was
received into the church in 1953. We left for London as soon
as we were married in December 1953, and worked together
as publishers in London for all our working life. I hope,
despite Geoff's death, that you will continue to send me the
Newsletter. The magazine and this correspondence have
stirred many memories for me. Geoff felt he owed such a
lot to his time in Newman, and to Father Jeremiah Murphy's
genial wisdom in particular. I attach a photo of the two of us
taken a couple of years before Geoff became ill. With thanks
and best wishes for all the work of the College.”
towards realising her dreams, spending two months at the
NASA Ames Research Centre and completing the International
Space University’s Space Studies Program. Since then, Beth has
completed a Master of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford
University supported by the Australian Fulbright Scholarship
in Science and Engineering, and a Rotary Ambassadorial
Scholarship. She is undertaking a PhD as an Amelia Earhart
Fellow and as a JPL SURP Graduate Fellow. On semester break
at the time of writing, Beth is completing her second internship
at NASA.”
Completing courses at Oxford University include: Hugh Boylan
(M African Studies), Hugo Batten (MBA), and Jono Kong (M Law
and Finance). Arriving at Oxford to take up further studies are
Sarah Steele and Robert O’Shea.
Shovan Rath (NC 2009-2012), who left the College at midyear
after completing his B. Eng (Hons) and Diploma in Mathematics,
is off to Stanford University in the USA to read for a M Sci in
Chemical Engineering.
In July we were visited by former Collegian, Augustine (Four)
Meaher IV, who is currently Director of the Department of
Political and Strategic Studies at the Baltic Defense College. He
reports that Georgie Landy (NC 2004-2005 ) is reading for a MA
at the Sorbonne in Paris.
John Drennan, who organised the 1952 re-union, writes of Jerry
Fernando: “a delightfully irreverent character from Ceylon, who
was a leading light – and effectively active – in the Newman
society of Victoria: Father Golden thought very highly of him
and his role in the apostate.”
Stephen Minas (NC 2002-2005), after study and work in the
UK, China and Hong Kong, is working for the Victorian Premier,
advising on trade and international engagement.
We have recently heard from Joe Butler (NC 2002 to 2005) who
graduated with a MBA from the Harvard Business School in June
of this year.
The July edition of Cath News, included an article on former
Collegian, Beth Jens (NC 2004-2006). We reproduce this short
exert: “In 2008 Beth completed a Bachelor of Engineering
(Mechanical) and a Bachelor of Science (Physics) at the
University of Melbourne. In 2009 she took her first step
36
Shovan Rath with the Deputy Rector following his graduation in August, 2012
Current SCR member and Master of Architecture student, Mike Chen
Current SCR member and Master of Architecture student, Mike
Chen, catching up with former student, Piermario Porcheddu
(2005-2008) in Beijing. Piermario is presently engaged with
studies at London University, whilst Mike is in his final year of a
M Architecture here at the University of Melbourne.
Michael Osborne is to be found in this photograph of the 1955 Football team
back row on the right
Former Collegian, Michael R. Osborne (NC 1953-1956), is
currently Professor Emeritus in the Centre for Mathematics
and its Applications at the Australian National University in
Canberra, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.
He has held academic positions in Australia, Britain and the
United States of America.
Above something new and something old: the 1943 General Committee, with Richard Gorman seated on the left, with inset, his
daughter Dympna and granddaughter, Milly, currently in the third year of Arts in the College.
37
Doctor of Laws
Honoris Causa
On the 5th July, 2012, former Collegian, Professor Jack
Martin, was awarded an honorary degree by the University
of Melbourne.
The citation reads:
Throughout his career Professor Emeritus Jack Martin has
integrated an abiding commitment to, and association, with
this University with strong international collegiate links.
After graduating from the University of Melbourne in 1960
he moved into a career position as Professor of Chemical
Pathology at the University of Sheffield, UK, before returning
to the University of Melbourne as Foundation Professor
of Medicine at the Heidelberg and Repatriation General
Hospital.
His directorship of St Vincent's Institute, held concurrently
with his chairmanship of the Department of Medicine St
Vincent's Hospital was characterised by its recognition of the
changing face of medical research in the 1990s. The Institute's
landmark association of industry research staff working
side-by side with academic scientists presaged later Federal
Government initiatives and the Institute participated actively
in early collaborative measures into breast cancer research.
Determined to understand why some cancer patients
develop dangerously elevated levels of calcium in their blood,
Jack Martin's research began in the pioneering time of the
recombinant DNA revolution. His search would become
a story of discovery that evolved with the science and the
emerging technology. His great contribution to science has
been in the advancement of contemporary understanding of
calcium regulating hormones, extensively developing modern
concepts of bone cell biology and calcium
regulating hormones.
One of his most outstanding contributions was the cloning
of parathyroid hormone related protein. His research has
had a major impact on the understanding of bone synthesis
and disorders such as osteoporosis and bone tumours. His
foundation presidency of the Australian and New Zealand
Bone and Mineral Society fostered this research discipline,
both in Australia and internationally.
38
Professor Jack Martin with the Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne
The prolific research of one of Australia's most distinguished
medical scientists has been recognised by his appointment as
officer of the Order of Australia, his election to fellowships of
the Australian Academy and the Royal Society and by twelve
prestigious career awards, including the Eric Susman Prize
from the Royal Australasian College of Physician. He has had
twelve patents granted and held eight international visiting
appointments in the United Kingdom, United States, and
Switzerland.
He has served on twelve state and national committees
and boards, been invited, since 1997, as a guest lecturer
internationally to give 75 major lectures, and his work has
been extensively published in a total of 420 original papers,
178 reviews, chapters and editorials, and seven books. He has
been named an Australian citation laureate in biochemistry.
In 2010 Jack Martin wrote that: 'The task of the University is
to educate people in ways that will equip them to contribute
to the common good, the good of the community.' He
has embodied this principle during a career spanning fifty
years. Most latterly, through his commitment to providing
evidential argument for the conceptual and technical
questions surrounding stem cell science and his conscientious
stewardship of ethical questions in science, he continues his
service to the community.
Chivalrous Knight
Homily given by Father Andrew Hamilton at the Vigil Mass for Father Peter Steele SJ
Sunday, 1st July, 2012
Tonight we grieve the loss of Peter Steele, our brother, friend
and teacher, We celebrate his life. We pray for Peter, and also
for ourselves whom he has so blessed.
I have always associated Peter with words like chivalrous,
knightly, courtly and courteous. They come from the world
of chivalry and the code that links the knight with the Lord
whom he serves, with the Lady whose favour he seeks, and
with battle, his business.
Peter was courteous and elegant in conversation. Who else,
in his last days, struggling for words, would greet you with
a huge smile, and say, ‘My dear fellow’? He showed the same
courtesy in listening intently to even the most inarticulate of
people. And I imagined his circle of friends in Lygon Street as
like Camelot, though it was hard to picture all of them in full
knightly livery.
But my association of Peter with chivalry goes back longer
- to our first year as Jesuits. As boys we had both avidly read
GK Chesterton. Peter introduced me to his ‘Ballad of the
White Horse’. The images and rhythms of romance came alive
when on frosty mornings we walked out into the Plenty
country, steel-studded boots ringing off the metal road.
That year we were also led into the world of St Ignatius who had
been captivated by the legends of chivalry. Upon his conversion
he kept vigil with his sword before Mary’s altar. A pivotal
meditation in the Spiritual Exercises, too, invited us to offer our
service to Christ as Lord. Only a craven knight would refuse.
This vision of Christ is rooted in the opening of John’s
Gospel which we have just heard. It introduces us to the
chivalrous God. It offers a large vision of the Son of God
who is intimately involved in the shaping of our world. He
loves it enough to enter it and to share our struggles in the
human life of Jesus Christ. That is where we find God’s glory.
Youthful ideals and literary passions, of course, need to be
tested. For Peter that took place in the University here.
But the Lord whom Peter served continued to be Christ.
His sermons always return to Christ; his poems discover
him in unlikely places. During one of our summer holidays
as students Peter read the three shelves-full of Karl Barth’s
Church Dogmatics. More than the theology, he found telling
the haunting images in which Barth described Christ’s coming
and his Passion: ‘The journey of the Son of God into a far country’,
and ‘the Homecoming of the Son of Man’. This is the world of
John’s Gospel.
Introit - the Vigil Mass
Peter was blessed with so many friends, women and men.
But the Lady whose hand he sought was the world. He spent
his life exploring and celebrating her infinite variety and
beauty. For Peter the world was shot through with the glory
of God. His reading was gargantuan, his recall extraordinary,
and his ability to find words enchanting. The oddest of things
were tiles in the mosaic of a world that coruscated with light.
Peter also treated the world with respect. In his student days
be learned to bind books. Later when he cooked he always
wore an apron, set out his knives neatly, measured and sliced
his ingredients exactly. And in his poems he finds the right
word fastidiously.
But knights’ business is to fight. As the Gospel says, ‘the Light
shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it’. Peter
knew the darkness. He spoke only obliquely of his inner
strength, but they gave him sympathy with others.
In his writing he championed the rigorous and generous use
of mind. His enemy was the specious, the showy and shallow
use of words that do not respect the depth of reality, offering
fools gold instead of glory. Faced with the halfbaked or the
tawdry, Peter could be imperious. He could use the word
‘mate’ as a mace.
But the heart of the matter for Peter was that the Word became
flesh. He was fascinated with the Word of God, with the world
into which the Word came, and with words which could catch
the glory of the world and of human flesh. The last lines of
John’s Gospel, spoken of Christ, could equally be well adapted
to Peter. ‘If all of his words were written down, I suppose that the
world itself could not contain the books that would be written.'
39
The Vigil Mass – homilist Father Andrew Hamilton SJ
Rehearsal
Upright again, fritters of mint in my fingers,
I’m given pause in the kitchen patch
by the car’s whine, the loud harrumph of lorries
that round the stand on Two-Tree Hill
and hustle past the boneyard.
I’ve taken leave of the Cliffs of Moher, the unsmiling
campus guard at Georgetown, the fall
of Richelieu’s scarlet enclosed by the London gloom:
I’ve watched my last candle gutter
for dear ones, back in Paris,
Father Andrew Hamilton SJ
When illness came Peter did not fight it. He lived through it.
In his last days he struggled for words. That was hard to watch.
But it was also where his faith took him. In his Gospel John
invites us to look on the tortured and crucified Christ, and to
acknowledge that there we have seen his glory, full of grace
and truth. In Peter’s unworded, naked humanity, we are also
invited to see the image of God’s glory, full of grace and truth.
And not only in Peter, but in the most adrift of human beings.
That is where chivalry led Peter.
That is where it leads us.
sung, as with Francis, the spill of an Umbrian morning,
each breath a gift, each glance a blessing:
have said farewell to Bhutan of the high passes
and the ragged hillmen, to the Basque dancers
praising their limping fellow,
to the square of Blood in Beijing, to the virid islands
that speckle the Pacific acres,
to moseying sheep in Judaean scrub, to leopard
and bison, a zoo for quartering, and
to the airy stone of Chartres,
But here’s the mint still on my hands. A wreath,
so Pliny thought was ‘good for students,
To exhilarate their minds.’ Late in the course,
I’ll settle for a sprig or two –
the savour gracious, the leaves brimmingly green –
as if never to say die.
Peter Steele
40
The eloquence of God
Homily by Father Brendan Byrne SJ at the Requiem Mass for Father Peter Steele SJ,
Chapel of the Holy Spirit, Newman College, University of Melbourne, 2nd July 2012
Preaching here in this Chapel some weeks ago Peter Steele
alluded to the text I have just read, the beginning of the
Gospel according to St John, and remarked:
It is profoundly mysterious of course, and the mystery
begins with the expression, 'the Word'. We might say
that Christ is part of the eloquence of God.
The ‘eloquence of God’: what a wonderful phrase, coined by
Peter, to bring fresh life to an ancient article of faith. And
how appropriate to recall it now when we are gathered here
to celebrate his requiem – Peter, who was so constantly here
in this Chapel eloquent about God.
And eloquent, not only about God, but about so many other
aspects of life, chiefly literary and artistic, in the wider
context of this College and this University.
It will fall to others more qualified than I to pay tribute to
Peter’s achievements as scholar, teacher and poet. Many such
tributes have already begun to come in. In this Requiem
homily I shall speak of Peter as friend, Jesuit and priest,
eloquent about God.
The first sight of Peter, over fifty five years ago, was not, as
I recollect, all that promising of friendship to come. He had
arrived at the novitiate early on the day appointed for entry
after the long train journey from Perth. The rest of us had
put off our arrival until the last moment, leaving Peter to a
wearisome wait for companionship the whole day long. He
had then, and – I think even his close friends would agree –
retained throughout his life, a capacity to give a fixed look,
the kind of look that a sergeant major would have found very
useful on parade. It took some time for us, equally though less
eloquently confused about it all, to grasp what a remarkable
and lovable companion had come to us from Perth.
‘In the beginning was the Word. And the Word became flesh
and pitched his tent among us, and we saw his glory, full of grace
and truth’ (John 1:1, 14).
In the second-last conversation I had with Peter, we agreed
that that text should be the Gospel for his Requiem. In the
halting words of our last conversation, he reiterated that it
was very much the right choice. There is a sense, I’m sure,
in which every poem that Peter wrote was an instance of
the Word becoming flesh. Our Irish novice master, Ned
Riordan, whom Peter loved and admired as much for his wit
and intelligence as for his holiness, once made a throw-away
remark that greatly intrigued him: ‘Where most people look
out a window and see a cow, a saint sees a creature’. Peter
looked out at the world and acquired from his voracious
reading an incredible knowledge of anecdotes and facts
– quaint, technical, arcane – most of them remote from
anything overtly religious or theological, and found in them a
spark of the divine glory.
In his early days I sensed in him a certain reserve regarding
the Jesuit poet Gerald Manley Hopkins – a reserve towards a
figure against whom he might be too readily measured. But
some lines from Pied Beauty give perfect expression to what
drew Peter into the particularity of God’s creation:
Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him.
Peter was very much the Scholar described by the sage Ben
Sirach in the 1st Reading:
(who) seeks out the wisdom of the ancients,
preserves the sayings of the famous
penetrates the subtleties of riddles,
seeks out the hidden meanings of proverbs
and is at home with the obscurities of parables.
(Who) sets his heart to rise early
to seek the Lord who made him,
who opens his mouth in prayer
and asks pardon for his sins.
Peter, who was never a good sleeper, certainly set his heart
to rise early. And it was as an early riser that he would meet
those other early risers and workers: the janitors, porters, and
cleaners of the buildings where he worked. And he greeted
them not as a busy academic rushing past on his way to higher
things, but as a fellow human being, going to his labour as
they were busy about theirs. The unfailing courtesy, the
witty and cheering word that won their respect and affection
flowed from his profound humility, his sense of being thrown
into the mix of humanity and standing in as much need of
God’s grace and succour as anyone – he, who had so little
to be modest about.
41
Sister, I was startled to see Peter putting on exactly the same
alb. Alas, it was not the garment that once it was, nor by now
was Peter the slim ordinand that once he was; the strain upon
zips and stitches all too clearly showing a growth in stature as
well as wisdom before the Lord. But the fact that Peter still
wore that alb – besides being a tribute to the needlework of
those good sisters many years before – said something about
the kind of priest he felt he had been ordained to be.
The ‘cultic’, the ‘celebratory’ aspect of the Mass – not so
much stressed in post-Vatican II years – was central for
him: the proclaimed transformation of bread and wine, the
handling of the sacred vessels, the gestures and movement
of the Mass as ‘dance’. Last year in his memorable Radio
National Encounter interview with Margaret Coffey Peter
said that what priesthood has in common with poetry is that
each of them has to do with celebration.
Father Brendan Byrne SJ
If he was much loved, as well as respected as Provincial, it was
because he met everyone on this simple human level. No one
in the Province, no matter how far below him in education,
ever felt the weight of his words or put down by his learning.
What a blessing for us to have a Provincial who could sit
alongside us in our humanity and use his great intelligence,
wisdom and articulacy, simply to help us name and so render
more manageable our hopes, our fears, our sorrows and our
aspirations.
A man fearlessly immersed in the university world and the
contest of ideas, Peter never ceased to point and provoke
us to be similarly outward-looking to the world. He often
appealed to another Johannine text: “God so loved the world
…” (3:16) and stressed that the world that God so loved –
and gave his Son for its life – was not some sanitised or past
world but the present world in all its squalor, violence and
meanness, as well as its beauty, decency and love.
Peter was ordained a priest in Perth on 12 December, 1970, the
same day as five others of us were ordained here in Melbourne.
In preparation for that event we had been sent off to the
Carmelite Sisters at Kew to be measured for albs according
to our various bodily proportions. No less than 41 years later
when concelebrating with Peter a Mass for the Golden Jubilee
of his devoted friend Sr Margaret Manion and my own Loreto
42
He went on:
the cultic side of priesthood, which still is mainly the
Eucharist, is what sort of besots me the older I get. The word
‘Eucharist’ means saying ‘Thank you’. I think that God can
never be thanked enough for being God and for sending his
Son Jesus to be both God and a human being. There is no end
to the amount of celebration which this warrants.
If the Incarnation – the Word become flesh – was the central
truth of the Christian faith for Peter, he also celebrated in
countless poems and sermons the joy and splendour of the
Resurrection. He was ever conscious, however, that the path
from Incarnation to Resurrection led through the divine
vulnerability that climaxed at the cross. If Peter was a kind and
compassionate priest, a faithful and sympathetic friend, it was so
because he had personally plumbed and felt the brunt of human
alienation and despair. He was no stranger to depression, could
swiftly oscillate in mood between high and low.
For Peter the supreme moment of divine eloquence occurred
at Calvary – an hour when the divine Son uttered very little
but was stretched out, nailed and lifted from the earth in a
helplessness of love eloquent beyond discourse of any kind.
His 1986 poem Crux speaks so typically of Peter before that
divine humility that I cannot forbear reading it now.
Crux
Seeing you go
Where the dead are bound, and having no resource
To twist those timbers out of their lethal course,
I want at least to know
What I can say
Now that the boasts have blown away and even
The cursing has grown faint, while the pall of heaven
Abolishes the day.
I was never wise
In word or silence, never understood
The killer in my members, thought of good
At what one might devise
From scraps of evil.
How can I learn a way for me or mine
To stand beside you? Vinegar, not wine,
Is all we give you still.
Among the dice
And the dirt, with more of shame than love to show,
All that will come to heart is ‘Do not go
Alone to Paradise.’
As he lay dying in Caritas last week, I asked him whether he
remembered that poem. ‘Indeed I do’, he said. He was living
– or rather, dying – it now.
As long as I’ve known him Peter has always lived in close
consciousness of mortality. In the college library where we did
our early studies in Philosophy there weren’t many books that
were not in Latin. But Peter found his way to a treatise of Karl
Rahner on Death and it left a mark upon his imagination and his
writing that never went away. Nor was this preoccupation with
mortality merely theoretical. I know there are many of you here
present who have experienced Peter’s priestly accompaniment
through tragedy and loss in a deeply human way. Whether that
was in the context of explicit Christian faith or no faith at all,
Peter knew what to do and say.
Of his own mortality, he said, again on that Encounter
program:
I believe it is a condition … let’s call it a room, which is
what John Donne called it, which precedes and leads into a
capacious and entirely blessed and secure immortality, one
of whose names is heaven. And I believe in that very, very
strongly. And I probably believe that more strongly than
almost anything else.
To speak personally, it has always been a great sustenance
for my own faith that Peter, who read everything, heard
everything that could be thrown against the faith – in the
name of so much suffering, so much evil – and who was
constantly in conversation with friends and colleagues who
did not share his faith, could hold to the end that ‘assurance
of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen’ (Heb
11:1). Peter’s faith was simple in the best sense, his piety
unostentatious but profound. When you visited him in his
room in the Dome, there was his Breviary open, his vow
crucifix close at hand.
Many have remarked on the equanimity with which Peter
accepted his terminal illness and the medical procedures it
increasingly required. The poem Rehearsal is, I believe, his
Nunc Dimittis. He addressed it publicly on several occasions
in recent months, including what was to be in fact his last
class of all, given to our Jesuit students at Jesuit Theological
College early in May. Several times, in the course of that
event, granted his physical condition, I tried to bring the
session to close but, try my best, he kept on explaining,
drawing out responses – the teacher to the end.
The poem is too long to read here in full. Basically, it’s a
reverie while preparing (Peter the cook in action to the last!)
the ingredients of a meal. He runs through all those places in
a life of travel to which he must now say ‘Farewell’. Here is
the final stanza:
But here’s the mint still on my hands. A wreath,
so Pliny thought, was ‘good for students,
to exhilarate their minds.’ Late in the course,
I’ll settle for a sprig or two the savour gracious, the leaves brimmingly green as if never to say die.
Farewell, but once again the hint of resurrection.
The ‘wreath’ motif must have appealed to Peter. It features
also in a line from a poem he wrote to commemorate our
mutual Golden anniversary in the Society:
‘Yesterday’s vow goes on wreathing its way through the heart’.
Peter’s vowed life as scholar, teacher, poet, priest, wit and
friend has wreathed its way through our hearts – hearts that
so keenly feel his loss. His immense legacy, in memory and
print, will ensure that his eloquence about God remains.
43
From 'my brother Jack'
A eulogy delivered by Jack Steele at the Vigil Mass on Sunday,
1 July, 2012, and at the Requiem Mass on Monday, 2 July, 2012.
Fr Steve Curtin; Fr Bill Uren, Rector of Newman College;
your Jesuit con-celebrants; and to all friends and colleagues
of Peter Daniel Noonan Steele here today –
May I first express to you all, my deep appreciation for your
attendance and for the care, love and respect that you have
shown for my brother during his life; and particularly, during
the most recent period when his health was faltering.
I would like to share with you a family perspective of Peter,
son and brother.
Peter was the eldest son of Jessie and Fred, brought up in
the family home in Victoria Park in Perth. This was a time
influenced by the 2nd world war; our father had served in
New Guinea and he had returned in poor health - and much of
the bringing up of the young Peter fell to our mother.
Family life was fervently Catholic; and influenced by Irish
heritage. It was a very loving atmosphere; but also a tough
one economically; and it was regimented – I have no doubt,
that Peter’s shoes were well polished, each and every Saturday
afternoon.
Peter attended senior school at Christian Brothers College in
the Terrace; where it became evident that he was:
• Academically strong
• A bookworm;
•E
xcelled at Air Force cadets (he ended up with officer rank;
some of you here today will also know that another use from
his experience in the cadets was as material for a poem; a
phenomenon that was to occur often);
•B
ut – as was subsequently also the case for his two brothers
– perhaps not so successful at sport.
At approximately fifteen years of age Peter decided that he would
dedicate his life to the priesthood – And further, as a member
of the Society of Jesus. Peter has always been a man with a plan.
And so it was that at age seventeen, he left his mother and
father; and Paul, the brother a couple of years his junior and
with whom he had grown up; and boarded a train for the
foreign parts known as “the east”, to get his life plan under
way. At this time I was two years old – and in my existence,
probably the primary family beneficiary of Peter’s planning to
leave Perth and join the Jesuits.
44
Jack Steele
Peter’s progress in the east was monitored by the family with
love and pride – as well, of course, with a sense of loss of his
physical presence. His academic progression was marvelled at
- albeit probably not fully comprehended. He would not have
wanted for evidence of the support of his family – indeed, as
tokens of this and substance to support him, a constant stream
of home cooked fruit cakes were sent in the mail to the east –
tangible expressions of a mother’s love.
I remember Peter’s visits to Perth in the late 1960s for him
being a bigger-than-life, very affectionate and welcoming man –
gentle; spirited and enthusiastic; experienced; and also, a little
bit foreign. And occasionally a bit eccentric – evident from time
to time in the latest products from his propensity of visiting
“bargain basement” clothing shops during his travels.
His consecration as a priest and his First Mass were almost
certainly the high points of our parents’ lives. I recall that
at times we were scrambling to keep up with him:
I have no doubt that Peter’s homily at his first mass was
absolutely first class;
However, I know that his homily and my comprehension of
its meaning parted company fairly early, probably the second
paragraph, into that homily;
Later, standing outside in the car park, my father and I were
somewhat relieved to hear the homily described as a “tour de
force” – good, I thought, that explains it.
Intercessions from Clare and Tim Steele
The Vigil Mass for Peter Steele SJ
And, it’s also true that Peter’s visits to home had a disruptive
effect upon the normal family way of things, although happily
these were simply matters of some form of eccentricity:
Around the lunch table, effervescent conversation and hilarity
would flow at a fast pace. Peter brought a special frisson of
unpredictability to the thought play: mischievous but never
malicious; surprising and disruptive. And although the
honoured visitor, it was Peter who was always the first one
found back in the kitchen, manning the sink to get underway
the washing up. And also, looking out for surplus food for the
next morning’s breakfast.
He’d move the family furniture around in unexpected ways,
for example to liberate the dining table and to set it up in the
lounge room as an office for the purpose of writing - It became
a good idea that when he was in residence, if moving around
the house after dark then we switch on the lights rather than
assume the normally safe passageways would be clear;
or
To our mother’s shock, he’d make unexpected interventions
in the kitchen: for example, cooking spag. bol. for breakfast
(much to the delight of his niece Catherine, who saw the
evident common sense of this).
Other interactions were more substantial and meaningful:
easily the moments of strongest family intimacy that I can
recall, were masses said by Peter in our lounge room (using
that same table as I referred to before); where he would
often preach a simple homily. Celestial moments in a number
of senses; usually followed by a roast lunch - for which
purpose, that same dining table needed to be reinstated and
recommissioned to its original purpose.
In later years, as our parents and our brother Paul suffered
medical tragedies, it became the pilgrimage for Peter to make
the trip to Perth for less joyous occasions. It was a special
family privilege that it was he who buried our father, our
brother Paul and our mother.
And so, as he would say himself: “what is the plan,
going forward? “
I submit to you that it is as follows:
• That we give thanks for the privilege and pleasure that has
been ours, to be touched by the gentle loving of Peter Daniel
Steele;
• That we keep him in our prayers, and in our hearts ....
• and that we use the wisdom and strength that knowing
him has conveyed to us, to fortify us as we go forward.
45
Peter Steele – vale
Eulogy given by the Deputy Rector, Sean Burke, at the Vigil Mass for Peter Steele
on Sunday, 1st July, 2012.
A little over a month ago, at a dinner held here in college in
the Rector’s lounge, somewhere between the pudding and the
cheese, Peter Steele was asked if he was going to Georgetown
this year to teach. There was a slight pause, and then came
the reply: “No, my doctors advise against it”. Again, after yet
another pause, he went on: “In fact they think I should be
dead by now”. More pause, and then with that characteristic
impish smile and a twinkle in his eyes, he added: “I am
unclear why I am still here. I am not sure whether it is
defiance, or whether it is sloth”.
All of us here this evening will have particular and special
memories of Peter: many of these rooted in the ordinary,
as Peter could, and would, bring a certain magic to the
ordinary. Did you know that the English translation of Cicero
is chickpea?
Bill Uren recently referred to Peter as “a poet, a wordsmith,
a scholar, a teacher, a friend, a faithful servant of his Lord”,
and a little later on as “a gentle soul”. He was all of these - at
the same time.
Poet, wordsmith, teacher and scholar: I suspect that there
are many here and elsewhere, who have already, and who will
in the future, write and speak about his extraordinary gifts
as a poet, writer, teacher and homilist. His work demands
revisiting, and with each visitation more is revealed. And
we keep returning as the nourishment becomes even richer.
Examples abound. Here are but a few of my own favourites:
In a poem for the opening of our Academic Centre, he
described it as “an inn for the mind on pilgrimage”. Here
he is on Jesus, following his rejection in the synagogue of his
home town: “Closing the scroll and sitting down to preach,
he went to war…”. And recently I came across this
observation on the Bible: “Split it into chapters and verses,
web it over with echoes and foreshadowings, orchestrate it
from Genesis to Revelations, and it still comes up with a
fiesta of astonishments”. One could continue forever.
Friend and a gentle soul: Although a private man, who liked
his space, Peter delighted in a social setting. Drinks, lunch
and dinner were all milieus for fun, laughter, learning,
companionship and love. He commanded, but never
dominated, the company. He had that great gift of
listening, and of hearing. He made you feel worthwhile.
46
Sean Burke
Peter, like all of us, had his flaws. In the intimacy of
friendship, he acknowledged his own vulnerability, and in
doing so, he gave us the confidence to visit ourselves anew,
providing us with glimpses of a better self. This challenge,
and it is a challenge, was always gifted with a sprinkling
of enchantment grounded in that wonderful Australian
bluntness.
Although not confrontational, there was also a demanding,
and dare one say Jesuitical, edge to the man. In discussion
with a group of undergraduates about the current state of
debate in Australian politics, he stopped them with the
words of a French theologian: “Nothing is as voracious as
mediocrity”.
He reminded the College in an address that “Jesus Christ did
not say to the Society of Jesus (and to anyone else), ‘Regard
the complex world with interest, but be cool!’ Jesuits are, or
should be, interventionists: it is part of the Society of Jesus to
be a nuisance, where this is called for, and where it will help”.
For the last twenty-one years, Peter has been mostly part
of this community. We shall miss him. We shall miss his
presence in the centre of things. Going into the Office in
the mornings, one would often find Peter sprawled across a
couch surrounded by his books. “Good day, mate” would be
the salutation! We shall miss the poem left on the desk, the
fruits of recent labours, or next Sunday’s homily still warm
in its inception. He would burrow himself in his glass office,
writing, thinking, imagining. We shall miss the sight of Sr
Margaret Manion fussing lovingly over a frail man in his
sickness. We shall miss him sometimes sauntering off, or is
it meandering, possibly perambulating, never promenading,
with a friend or two, possibly Wallace-Crabbe, Jones,
Curnow, Fraser or before them O’Hearn, or Buckley, down
to Lygon Street, with an often unpretentious, yet sometimes
bold, shiraz in tow. Lunches were sometimes long. We shall
miss him at formal dinners – the questions, the answers, the
listening - and in his occasional addresses to the community,
all of them beautifully crafted, all thought-provoking. And we
shall miss the prayers, constant they were, and the homilies,
where his faith and his imagination were let loose.
For it is as a faithful servant of the Lord, where Peter was
in his pomp. Half a dozen years ago, he was asked in our
annual Senior Common Room gathering: “What was the
most important thing he did in his life?” Quick as a flash he
retorted: “saying Mass every day”. His faith was central to his
life and the Eucharist was central to his being. Here he is on
the topic with a very human Jesus in Taste:
After some weeks of compassion and of scorn
He took a spell to pray and muse alone,
Surprised that, early, he should feel so worn –
The much expressed and yet the little known.
His mother’s wisdom was to praise their food,
That benediction from the hand of God,
And so he found the coriander good
And blessed the little broad beans in the pod.
Almonds, pistachios, mulberries, new cheese.
He told them over as a psalmist might:
Mustard, and lamb, the husbandry of bees,
And pomegranate gleaming to the bite.
Father Gerald O’Collins SJ with Bishop Michael McKenna
Six weeks ago, Peter casually mentioned from the couch in
the Office where he was sitting in the weak winter’s sun:
“Christ is God’s eloquence”. This was the title of his last
homily in this place.
In two days it will be Tuesday, and, as Peter has promised,
“Tuesday night is Mexican night in heaven” where “St Peter
snacks on tacos at the gate of the biggest hacienda of them all”
and “Voltaire, to his eternal surprise, is mixing margaritas”
and “Rabelais is piling golden rice upon red chicken fricassee
with pumpkin seeds” and so much more.
There is a story, apocryphal I am sure, attributed to that blind
French Benedictine monk, Dom Pérignon, who in 1693, after
making the first batch of champagne, called out to his brother
monks: "Come quickly brothers, I am drinking the stars!" I
think, over the years, with, and through, Peter, we, brothers
and sisters, have been “drinking the stars”. They are now
drinking them in heaven.
Well now, he thought, perhaps they’ll know me best
As bread and wine delivered with the rest.
47
The beauty that was Peter Steele's mind
Eulogy by Morag Fraser at the Requiem Mass
held in the Chapel of the Holy Spirit, Monday 2 July, 2012
During Eureka Street’s first months, in 1991, Peter Steele
gave its editor some riding instructions. Media magnate
was not his style. As Jesuit Provincial, he’d had to learn the
rigors and language of authority, but cant, prescription, or
proscription – they weren’t his style either. ‘Publish the very
best writing you can lay your hands on’, he said. That was it.
But it was more than enough. From a poet and a man as
subtle, mercurial and profound as Peter Steele, the words
were both guide and challenge. Anyone who had experienced
his classes at Melbourne University, read his books, shared
a meal or heard one of his pithy, grounded-in-life homilies,
would understand what he meant, know how freighted his
words were. How they pointed to integrity and élan in the
wielding of language.
We were sitting at the time in a pub in Richmond. It was
called the All Nations, an old city hotel jammed in between
Housing Commission high risers and the flats that were home
to the Vietnamese who’d come here by boat in less politically
expedient times. There was an old tailor’s dummy in the
dining room corner, costumed and feathered to conjure the
pub’s heritage of hospitality. She became a kind of totem for
Eureka Street. And Peter Steele became its guardian angel.
He’d grimace, or just laugh at my description. And in an ideal
world, we would then have an argument or a meander about
the varieties and meanings of angels. And how some of them
are swooping, formidable presences, always at one’s back.
Peter’s friend and fellow poet, the ever questing, unbelieving
Peter Porter, wrote about angels in a way that struck home for
both of us. In An Angel In Blythburgh Church Porter’s angels,
in their ‘enskied formation’, are mute but exhortatory. He
calls one a ‘stern-faced plummet’. ‘The face is crudely carved,
simplified by wind / It looks straight at God and waits for
orders.’
Over the years, I’ve waited for Peter’s orders to be
transmitted to me, down here on the ground. They’ve come
in code, in the poems, in the essays and reviews that he wrote
for Eureka Street, and in all his books and talks and homilies.
I am still deciphering the code, and will for the rest of my life,
with the kind of exultant gratitude that one feels in the face of
a budding magnolia, or a rainbow, or the western sun.
Morag Fraser
These past weeks, as Peter has been visibly dying, his flesh
pared back to bone but the smile and the flash of his glance
insisting that he is still the man we know, he has become a
gathering place for so many. People have come to visit. They
have written, whispered in corridors, sung his songs, smiled
and cried, waiting on him. Poets and friends have written
and rung and emailed from all corners of the world that Peter
once ranged across and took in so avidly. It’s hard to eat a
meal, mend a glove, see a bird, trace a thought or intuition
and not have Peter Steele spring into mind. He has inscribed
in his prose and poetry so much of our fugitive longing,
apprehension, our raw humanity. Often at a distance himself,
he draws one close to understanding, and affirmation of a
shared state of being.
Peter sometimes wrote about sloth, and turned the accusation
inward. It’s presumption to judge any fellow’s scouring of his
own soul, but it used to make me smile. I was the editor who
received Peter’s immaculate copy, always on time, to length,
and according to his brief. I knew that if we found even the
slightest literal (once or twice in thirteen years) Peter would
look pained or even unbelieving. He was a driven craftsman.
Technique obsessed him, but technique always as the conduit
of meaning. He knew the soarings and harrowings of human
experience, but how to shape that in words? ‘James Joyce’, he
wrote in one essay, ‘reporting that he had spent the morning
on a sentence, and asked whether he was looking for the mot
juste, said that, no, he had all the words – he was looking for
the order.’
Peter found it, the order, over and over, and died, I am sure,
still looking for it. What he leaves for us, who now have
leisure to read all his words, and to puzzle through the maze
of beauty that was his mind, is the heart to do the same, to
keep trying, over and over, in his words, 'to find out what the
devil is going on.'
Bless you, Peter Steele.
48
Eulogy for Peter Steele
Given at the Requiem Mass for Peter Steele,
on Monday 2nd July, 2012 by his friend and doctor, John McEncroe
I am greatly honoured to have this opportunity to speak about
Peter Steele, who was my friend, my patient and my priest
for over forty years. I know he was similarly close to many of
you here, in one or another of these ways. It is about Peter as
friend that I wish to speak today.
Peter's preferred mode of address - at least to his men friends
- was "mate", a term which, for me, gave a distinctively
Australian colour and a robust and down to earth quality
to his friendships. Yet for all that, his company was gentle,
attentive and always respectful. Conversation with him
was never dull or aimless. An observation or a turn of
phrase could trigger, at once, and without apparent effort, a
kaleidoscopic flow of allusions, metaphor, or simple wordplay,
sometimes purposeful and to the point, often just for the
sheer joy of it.
As most of you well know, Peter was irresistibly drawn to the
colorful phrase - or malapropism - especially of the rich and
famous: he loved Sam Goldwyn and Groucho Marx. But he
was like a magpie, keeping shiny things for future use, and
I found a phrase or two of my own turning up later. Talking
one day about the ups and downs of punting at the racetrack,
I said that one of my favourite maxims was: "You can't win
with frightened money". Peter took this as a metaphor for
living life with passion. It is now the title of a poem.
Friendship with Peter meant hospitality, conviviality,
cooking, wine, food and conversation. Peter was a generous
and gracious host when the opportunity arose. His cooking
style was eclectic. He leaned towards meals of substance,
often with a miscellany of ingredients as rich and various as
his poetry.
Peter's careful cultivation of his friendships was driven by
his spirituality. He wanted - and was able - to see the beauty
of God's sumptuous creation all around him. His poetry
is testament enough to his discerning eye. But he believed
that man was created in God's image, and he sought to
appreciate the beauty in every man and woman who crossed
his path. It is this faith in the Incarnation and Redemption
which underpinned his deep respect for people. This is not
to say he was unaware of our flawed condition, or that his
discernment stopped short of recognizing fault, weakness or
lack of character when he saw it. Peter could be savage in his
criticism when he saw evil in action. "Dealer in death" was a
phrase he once used about someone.
The Chapel of the Holy Spirit – the Requiem Mass for Peter Steele SJ
Peter bore his illness bravely, his serenity imbued with faith.
The process of his dying was accompanied by the fears and
anxieties from which we all, no doubt, will suffer, but he
remained utterly sanguine and confident of the life to come.
My wife, Bebe, and I had a wonderful last conversation with
Peter yesterday week. He was a little agitated, but alert and
keen to talk. At one point he said, searching carefully for the
words, "At times like this one loses one’s urbanity". I think
that says a great deal about the man: that even while dying, he
felt he was not keeping up his end of the conversation.
And what conversations we have had over the years. How
enriching for us all have been Peter's words, spoken in homily,
lecture, class and conversation, and written in prose and
poetry! The written word will abide and continue to inspire
and encourage, but now our talk is over. So sadly, we must
farewell the man.
So for all your friends, here in this Chapel and around the
world, I say thank you, Peter, for all you have meant to us,
and goodbye mate.
49
Peter Steele's seven types of ingenuity
From Philip Harvey and published in Eureka Street on 2 July, 2012
Even in his own lifetime John Donne was criticised for
writing TMI poetry: too much information, Reverend Dean.
That his contemporary in London William Shakespeare
was doing exactly the same thing in helter-skelter speeches
did not elicit similar complaints. Shakespeare had to get his
people inside the heads of the audience, so hours of normal
connective thought and feeling were compressed into sixty
seconds of words. Miraculously, it works. Donne made
poems in which every line can be a new simile, an outrageous
inversion, a nerve-racking pun.
His poems are an anthology of knowledge where, somewhere,
an argument or an emotion waits to be revealed. The reader
has to have determination. This ingenuity of the anthology is
also a characteristic of the poetry of Peter Steele.
The American poet Marianne Moore had the felicitous knack
of finding the just-so quote. She also had the audacity, borne
of a democratic spirit, of not privileging one source over
another, so a distinguished declaration of Henry James
could find itself beside the home-grown idea of a baseball
hero she’d heard on the radio that morning. The polished
and the popular found company in the same poem. Literary
distinctions do not count when you need the bon mot,
something we find over again in Steele’s writing and teaching.
This ingenuity with the appropriate, which we dare to call
wisdom, capsizes snobbery and chortles with common sense.
More than once I have observed him walking from the
Medley Building of the University of Melbourne to Newman
College reading a book, not looking up. I will alert the reader
to the many corners on that course. With anyone else, such
behaviour would be thought attention seeking or eccentric.
But I wish to picture the emblem of the book leading the
human through the everyday world.
No bookish adjective gets close to the way learning with
Steele was a means to creative ends. The poetry at its best
bounds forth as one inspired and energised by these providers
of language. Barracking, banter, backchat, blessing and
occasional battle come fresh to us as Steele engages with
the big past in an ingenuity of belief statements.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream says the poet 'gives to airy
nothing a local habitation and a name’. In the same magical
outpouring Shakespeare talks of how 'imagination bodies
forth the forms of things unknown.' Solo quips, haiku sprees,
50
Skeltonic skittering, the thin slalom of chopped prose,
postmodern agglutinations – none of these were
Steele’s metier. When he bodies forth it really is a body, broad
verse structures, expanding stanzas, weighty divertimenti,
well-nourished conclusions. Lately we kept coming
face-to-face with solid sonnets. We find this increasingly
(how else would we find it?) as his work matures, this
ingenuity with prepossessing sentences and dilating dialectic.
Neither rambling as Les Murray nor wanton as Walt
Whitman, closer to the gorgeous ecstatics of Christopher
Smart, but eminently more intelligible.
Peter Steele loved quoting George Herbert and most
frequently 'I like our language, as our men and coast.' In
this one line we have an affirmation of English, humanness,
and local place that in total we call home. Herbert’s
undemonstrative tone tells us he will never find reason to
retract the statement, either. One or all of this tried and true
triad are present as a point of departure or return in Steele’s
poetry, and can be described as an ingenuity of self-awareness.
I remember sitting in a Steele seminar once when he pointed
agitatedly through a south window of the same Medley Building
towards the City of Melbourne, exclaiming, 'If you try to
believe everything that is said out there, you will go mad.' This
is helpful in reconciling what seems like a contradiction in his
work, between the desire to say everything 'out there' using
a panoply of thought and every known word in the language,
up against his desire to get at the essence. '’The knowledge’
– what’s not to prize in that?' he says in a late poem, but the
ingenuity of his order is to acknowledge the extensive view
while fixing on the short view.
Which is another way of saying he is going after pearls. Peter
Steele would have revisited Herbert’s poem ‘The Pearl’ many
times, splendid in its austere summary of worldly ways. The
poem turns on our understanding of the saying at Matthew
13, 45 where a merchant sells everything he has to buy 'one
pearl of great price'.
While Steele flourished poetically in the second half of his
life, seeming to be on a permanent roll into new found lands,
it is observable in the late work how he returns to where
he began, talking through the Christian inheritance. Steele
spent plenty of time in churches, but also in common rooms
and galleries and libraries, hence in the poetry the manifold
ingenuity of his devotion.
Peter Steele's path
to something better
From Father Michael Kelly SJ, founding publisher of Eureka Street
and now executive director of the Bangkok-based UCAN
Catholic news agency.
‘Things can only get better', was Peter’s characteristically selfdeprecating response to the list of publications, qualifications,
accolades and many achievements rehearsed as he rose to receive
an Honorary Doctorate from the Australian Catholic University
last year.His half chuckle, and by then somewhat hoarse and highpitched, response summed him up – at least for himself and those
who knew him. A man of grand and gracious gesture, it was
always for others. For himself, the manner was ordinary and the
presence bordering on the shy. Even if the prose could be prolix.
Those verbal explosions came from an abundant inner life that
was complex, at times moody, yet always affirmative. But such
effusions came after long consideration and what he used to call
‘brooding’.
This is captured in his portrait at Newman College (pictured).
There he is in an ill-fitting doctoral gown, almost unaware of
wearing it as it slides off his shoulders. On his lap are books
on which his hands rest loosely. The look on his face is part
bewilderment, part surprise, completely vulnerable and not a
little sad. He seems to be saying, 'Mate, has it come to this?'
Peter’s adult life, his professional career and the character of his
vocation are all indelibly marked with Melbourne University.
Proud to say he was a boy from the bush, he crossed the
Nullarbor in 1957 to see what it might be like on the other side.
Adventure, travel and discovery were the hallmarks of his life for
the next fifty-five years.
But it was at Melbourne University that he most expansively
found out what life was like on the other side, going there in
1962. And there he met his lifelong mentor, though he presided
at his funeral in 1988: Vincent Buckley. It was Vin who licensed
his muse, fostered his talent and shaped some of the enduring
features of his imagination. Vin’s life and work, despite his
melancholy, were about ‘the honeycomb’, the sweeter things,
their depth and perseverance at the heart of our living. For a good
deal of Vin’s middle life, that focus centred on the Incarnation.
Peter shared that passion lifelong, though he added to it. He
shared with Vin an unusual sensitivity to how that deeper
sweetness could be brutalised. To survive the glare of that sight,
Peter took comfort in the relentless commitment to irony, which
was the subject of his doctoral thesis on Jonathan Swift.However
sunny the greeting or warm the embrace of any and everyone he
met – and in forty years, I only ever heard him once speak ill of
another human being – beneath the exterior there lurked in Peter
an acute familiarity with the dark side.
Nicknamed ‘Stainless’ early in life, the swashbuckling gait and
swaggering style masked all that he knew and felt of life’s grimier
parts. You can measure how present and potent in his life that
was by the way he prized paradox. It was the fulcrum of his
imagination.
‘Fools and knaves’ is how Swift viewed our species. But to this
sober recognition Peter added what he learnt in his lifelong
pattern of prayer taught by the Jesuits’ founder, Ignatius Loyola.
In the Spiritual Exercises, the retreatant is asked to pray to see
and discover ‘where the divinity hides itself’ in the darkest
mysteries of Jesus’ Passion.
Peter waited and he discovered. And what he found was the
complement to what we celebrate at Christmas – Easter. Peter
took to heart all his life what he learnt early from the Romantics
and the Existentialists: that from conception we are death bound
creatures. Mortality and alienation were subjects of his constant
musing, prayer and poetry. And as a death bound creature, he
sought every day to find plausibility in affirming that, despite the
corruption and self-interest that soil so much human endeavour,
he could still find the ‘dearest freshness deep down things’.
It is a testament to the value and fruitfulness of his lifelong
search that he met his decline in health in recent years with such
serenity. It was as if he was saying but not uttering ‘See, I told
you this is what it builds up to. And I’ve been preparing for this
day with all the surrenders to trust and love that I’ve made for
decades.’But Peter knew the pain that challenges love and kills
trust: disappointment with his brothers; frustration with his own
limitations; indulgence of his considerable passions; the Cross
of the unstinting love of his many friends, some of whom didn’t
reciprocate. But no matter what the fare, Peter was always ready
to take it because for him, it was the path to something better.
Throughout his poetry and preaching, yearning and longing for
what might be, how this event or that personality might be
made more of, were constants.
For Peter, the end of all our longing is greater yearning still.
Now all that waits him is the crowning of that desire.
51
At the table by the window
Raimond Gaita on Peter Steele (1939-2012)
first published in The Monthly, September, 2012
I remember the date, November 1972, because I was about
to go to England for the first time. Peter Steele and I were
sitting in my battered old black Citroen outside the Jesuit
Theological College in Royal Parade, Melbourne, where he
lived and taught. I asked him how his work had been received.
He laughed and said it was like listening for the echo of a feather
dropped in the Grand Canyon. Our conversation turned to
teaching and friendship, prompting him to quote these lines
from Robert Bolt’s play, A Man for all Seasons:
Thomas More: W
hy not be a teacher? You’d be a fine
teacher, perhaps a great one.
Richard Rich: If I was, who would know it?
Thomas More: Y
ou, your pupils, your friends, God.
Not a bad public, that.
By the time he died in June this year, Peter had published
11 books of literary criticism, essays and poetry. His friends
included the noted poets Peter Porter, Seamus Heaney and
Chris Wallace-Crabbe, a public that would have made even
Richard Rich see value in a teacher’s life. Rich might also have
been brought short by the gratitude of Peter’s students. Ailsa
Piper told me recently that she still kept aside her writing desk
an essay marked in 1996, for the inspiration his comments
continued to give her.
Peter would have been a fine teacher whatever route had taken
him there, but he became the teacher he was because of twin
vocations to the priesthood and to university teaching, each
informing the other. Both, he said, called him to celebrate the
world. His task, he thought, was to enable students to see the
world as their gift – a world he believed was both created by God
who had become human to live amongst us and rendered to him
by the writers he loved, many of whom were not religious.
That same spring evening in 1972, Peter told me, “I believe in
teaching.” Having been taught and inspired by Vincent Buckley,
at the time Professor of English at the University of Melbourne,
he abhorred the spreading notion that teachers merely put into
the heads of students what, in principle, students could have got
from elsewhere - that teachers are merely facilitators of learning,
doing for their students what autodidacts do for themselves. This
conception of teaching is now ubiquitous, which is why we hear
so much about Learning (capital intended) but so little about
teaching. I once heard a bright young man say at the end of his
schooling, “Teacher’s are losers”. He would not have disparaged
Learning: he needed it to qualify for a place in a prestigious law
or medical school.
52
When Peter declared, “I believe in teaching,” the emphasis
fell as much on “believe” as it did on “teaching”. He professed
his faith that a good teacher’s love of her subject and her joy
in teaching it can nourish students not only with an entirely
new understanding of their subject, but with a deepened
sense of intrinsic worth. I’m sure he meant love rather than
enthusiasm, which even if it is passionate, will be banal if
directed towards things that are banal. Everyone knows, of
course, that enthusiasm can be catching, so it is often regarded
as a pedagogical asset, but it is neutral with respect to what
it is about. Love, on the other hand, as Plato was perhaps
the first great philosopher to see, is in complex ways related
to the good. One can be an enthusiastic debunker, even an
enthusiastic nihilist. Love, however, asks to celebrate the
beloved. Often we come to see something as precious only in
the light of someone’s love for it. This includes teaching, but
for that to occur, the person who reveals the value of what she
loves, as much as the one to whom it is revealed, must not fear
to disclose their vulnerabilities. Such courage is a gift, and it
requires faith to receive and make something of it.
It therefore grieved Peter to become partially estranged from
his subject when, as he put it, “’God’ lost a capital letter and
‘Theory’ gained it.” It was a caustic remark, but it was not, as
someone who did not know him might think, a cheap shot in
the culture wars. Peter was not a polemicist, let alone a cultural
warrior. He meant, I think, that although there is an obvious
reason why God should take a capital ‘G’ in monotheistic
faiths, only hubris could make someone claim capital letters
for the name of an intellectual endeavour, as was the case
when science yielded to scientism, with teachers (and others)
applying scientific method to unsuitable subject matter. This
did not diminish Peter’s passion for teaching because he knew
that it would be ever thus, as it had been in his early days when
literary criticism became Criticism. Even so, it tested faith to
be a celebrant when debunking was fashionable and nothing so
admired as a sceptical, cool urbanity.
In the introduction to his last book, Braiding the Voices: Essays
in Poetry, Peter writes that he is essentially an essayist. This
surprised many people who believed he was essentially a
poet. And it may well seem that I have written as though he
was essentially a priest and teacher. I suspect, though, that all
existed inseparably in Peter Steele the celebrant. I have not
written about his poetry because I am not competent to do so,
but I am confident that for him poetry was not only a way of
expressing his love of the world. In the formalities of poetic
discipline, in making the words come together in exactly the
right way, he was making making himself fully open to the
wondrous complexity and beauty of the world.
In an interview with Radio National in October 2011, he said:
… [Seamus] Heaney is, as he said when he came to Australia
years ago, a yes man, not in the sense of course of truckling to
what other people want him to do – he is very bad at doing that
– but he’s saying yes to the world, he is saying yes to existence
and saying yes to language. He is somebody whose business as
a poet is to celebrate life, and for me these two fuse together in
the ordinary conduct of an ordinary day.
Peter and I seldom discussed religion, but it was implicit in
almost everything we talked about. I remember, for example,
that he remarked with gratitude that I had written that each
human life is a miracle. I did not mean anything supernatural
by it I meant that every human being is inalienable
preciousness and that when the reality of that is fully present
to one it can call one to a kind of witness to its wondrousness.
Our desire to celebrate the world as a gift was one of the main
things that brought Peter and me together. He understood it
as God’s gift and he knew that I did not. Nothing he ever said,
however, suggested that he believed that my sense of that gift
depended on explicit metaphysical or religious commitment
to make it coherent, not, at any rate, in the context of any of
the many conversations we had about the life of the mind and
spirit. Or, just about life.
Less than two weeks before Peter died, I curated a conference
for the Wheeler Centre titled Faith and Culture: The Politics
of Belief. At the conference his good friend Morag Fraser
told me that he was barely conscious and might die any day.
At lunchtime I rushed to see him at Melbourne University’s
Newman College. As Bill Uren, the rector, took me to Peter’s
room, he told me Peter was more alert than he had been for
days, probably because he had been taken off a particular
medication. To my astonishment, when I entered the room,
Peter was sitting in his study, a bottle of wine on the coffee
table. Margaret Manion, who cared devotedly for him, brought
us lunch and cut up his meat. We talked of the conference
and other things, and drank what I feared would be our last
glass of wine together. I was humbled by his dignity, and his
determination to honour his life and his dying by trying always
to be lucid about their meanings. I returned to the conference
just in time hear the first lecture for the afternoon, and hear
someone remark from the floor that religious people must lack
intelligence and courage. I thought I might strangle him.
Peter believed in the resurrection. I do not know quite what
this means, in part because I do not know what it is to believe
in God – what the grammar of ‘believing’ comes to here. The
person who said religious people lacked courage thought he
did know. He thought that such people sought to diminish the
fear of death, by believing that after death they go to another
place, a good place, and he thought they believed this much
as one believes that going north in winter brings relief, only
that it is much better – infinitely better, he might say. Perhaps
some religious people believe this, but I’m sure Peter didn’t.
You would have to think of death as a strange form of travel you can fly or drive to the North, but you have to die to
get to heaven.
In his last days at the hospice, close friends and his brother
came to sit with Peter. It struck me how much we all needed
him. I reflected on my own deep need of him when I had
asked him to bury my father. Again, when my father’s closest
friend and a second father to me, Hora, died, I turned to
Peter to bury Hora. I’d hoped that he would bury me, and
I am disoriented by the knowledge that he will not.
Now when I am at the University of Melbourne, or walk
through Carlton, I realise how much my sense of the life of the
mind and spirit had been deepened by the way Peter revealed,
at our many lunches at the table by the window, upstairs at
the University Café, his humane, ironic love of the world and
appreciation of how many sorts of us it takes to make all sorts.
I have not known anyone like him.
Peter Steele died bravely. Everyone who saw him in those last
days remarked on it, and was moved by it. The need for courage
was not, I am certain, because he wavered in his belief in an
afterlife. Two days before he died he said to a friend, “At times
like this, one loses one’s urbanity.” Characteristically, the line
had many layers of meaning, but it means at least that this was a
time for as much sobriety, but also as much passion, as he could
muster if courage was to be true and truthful.
53
Thank you on behalf of Peter Steele
In his homilies, Father Peter often referred to the importance
of gratitude in our lives. He stressed the need to keep on saying
thank you for the good things God gives us every day, and
expressing thanks to the people around us who communicate
in so many ways God’s personal generosity and concern. In the
last few months of his life, which, apart from a few final days in
Caritas Christi, were spent here at Newman, Peter had cause to
express constantly his gratitude to the College community. In
so many ways you contributed to making this period in his life,
which could have been so difficult, one which he consistently
referred to as ‘a good time’. I was privileged to accompany
him closely on this final stage of his life’s journey. From that
perspective I witnessed many of the acts of care and support
he received from you and so I write these words on his behalf.
During the last few months of his life, Peter continued
to be received and welcomed as a member of the College
staff, faithfully doing his work as ‘distinguished scholar in
residence’. He wrote and proofed most of his last book from
his desk in the front office, composed his homilies there and
often photocopied freshly written homilies and the occasional
poem for immediate distribution to his office colleagues. He
regularly attended the staff morning tea, and appreciated
being able to read either his breviary or a book borrowed
from one of the many University or College libraries, when
settled comfortably in one of the Office chairs or sofas. The
Academic Centre also had a strong attraction for him, where
he consistently received kind and efficient assistance from
both the Library and IT staff.
As well as his wonderful band of Jesuit brothers, former
University colleagues and students, and those who regularly
attended his weekday and Sunday Masses, Peter had an array of
friends in the wider community. Many of these either lived near
Newman or were linked through shared interests and activities.
Among Newman neighbours with whom he regularly enjoyed a
meal, were Herb Eales, former business Manager of the College
and his wife Barbara, and Di Tibbits. Sandy Curnow, a friend of
many years, took on the exacting task of sorting out his papers
for the Jesuit archives. Peter also looked forward to the visits to
Melbourne of Barbara Hayes, Foundation Professor of Nursing
at James Cook University, Townsville.
54
Peter had a special group of friends among the medical
profession. Dr John McEncroe and his wife Bebe were
life-long companions, but surgeon, Simon Banting and
cardiologist, John Williams also welcomed him into their
homes and families. The care and attention shown by all
Peter’s medical team was remarkable. Associate Professor
Dominic Vellar gathered the group together to care for Peter
when he arrived back from the US in November, 2006. Peter
had been diagnosed with cancer the previous September, so
he lived under the shadow of this disease for almost six years.
After the expert surgery of Simon Banting which slowed
down its progress considerably, visits to the Oncology section
of St Vincent’s Private Hospital under the direction of the
oncologist, Ivon Burns, and a specially trained nursing team
became a regular part of every week.
The care of Peter’s general practitioner, Jon Knaggs was also
extraordinary. At the end of this long saga, when Peter was
taken suddenly ill, Jon journeyed the long distance across
Melbourne to ensure that he had an easeful night, and saw to
it, too, that his transfer to Caritas was as smooth as possible
the following day.
When Peter was well enough he loved going for the week end
to the Jesuit holiday house at Anglesea. Later, he went to the
nearby community house at Xavier College, Kew, where he
also relished being made to feel part of the community.
Back home at Newman, as his movements became more
restricted, the care and support increased. Peter had always
enjoyed being part of the Senior Common Room, and up
until the end of first semester this year was a regular attender
at High Table. When he could no longer come to the College
dining room, he was wonderfully supported by the kitchen and
dining room staff, under the leadership of Nilgen and the cooks:
Conrad, David, Frank and Andrew, all of whom he had come
to know personally, on his many earlier visits to the kitchen.
Although he dined mostly in his flat located up in the dome,
meals remained celebratory and companionable occasions.
Beautifully prepared trays, usually set not only for Peter, but
for one or more guests as well, were delivered to his rooms
with respect and affection. Their contents indicated how well
the kitchen staff and the students who assisted them had come
to know Peter’s tastes and special likes, as well as his few ‘not
so favourite’ things which the cooks -- Frank in particular -discreetly replaced with more attractive fare.
Under the house keeper, Bronwyn Billings’ direction a veritable
army of workers not only saw daily to the cleaning of Peter’s flat
but also to his personal needs. As well as rooms that sparkled
their welcome, there was always an array of freshly ironed shirts
to choose from each day -- none of which was lost on Peter.
The Business Manager, Becky Daley and House and Catering
Manager, Sam Brooker, were also unfailingly attentive; and the
ever resourceful Nino Arranz (Maintenance) and Shane Bocquet
(Groundsman) were on call at a moment’s notice if a blind
collapsed or furniture needed moving. Somewhere hovering
over it all -- not surprisingly to those who know Newman -- was
the Rector making sure that all was as it should be.
One very special initiative that involved both student and staff
volonteers of the College was efficiently developed by the
Deputy Rector, Sean Burke. Peter’s flat was relatively isolated
at night time. So his handsome library-study became also at
night a second bedroom and a suite of volunteers from members
of the Senior Common Room as well as Sean himself, Chris
O’Connor, the Chaplain, and Guilielmo Gottoli, the Dean,
manned a fortnightly roster, so that Peter always had company
at night (as well as during the day). He took a keen interest in
his companions, asking earlier in the day who was to be on deck
that evening and making sure to greet them and subsequently
thank them. This night care was of critical importance in
enabling Father Peter to spend his last days in the College which
had been his home for over twenty years, and which he loved
and served so well. Thank you again to all those who took part
in the scheme.
Professor Peter Steele and Professor Margaret Manion
Among his many faceted activities -- scholar, poet,
teacher, Jesuit -- the most important role for Peter was his
priestly calling. Each Mass for him was a celebration of the
goodness of our Creator and of the wonderful mystery of the
Incarnation which involved ultimately calling us to share in
Christ’s resurrection. Peter celebrated Mass daily for as long
as he could, and in this he was helped again by members of the
College community especially his Jesuit brothers and also by
the College Chaplain, Chris O’Connor. In those last months
and weeks, Father Uren aimed to be present whenever Peter
was to say Mass and helped him as needed. Towards the end,
Peter attended Sunday Mass as a member of the congregation;
but on the last Sunday he was present at Mass on earth, he
concelebrated. Seated in the front bench of the Newman
Chapel and vested with a priestly stole, he celebrated Mass
with his brother Jesuit Father Chris Horvat. Afterwards,
Richard Divall carefully manoeuvred Peter’s wheel chair
down the steep ramp by the Chapel. This was just one of
the efficient things that Richard -- who always seemed to be
appropriately on hand -- did to help Peter.
Thank you to all the members and friends of the Newman
College community who were so supportive during this
special time. There are many others not named here,
You all matter, and we are grateful to you all.
Margaret Manion IBVM
55
ENQUIRIES
Further information can be obtained
from Newman College
Website: www.newman.unimelb.edu.au
or from The Rector, Newman College
N E W M A N C O L L E G E
887 Swanston Street, Parkville VIC 3052
p: 03 9347 5577 f: 03 9349 2592
e: [email protected]

Newman College - University of Melbourne

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