Father Bob

by Sue Williams

  Then, in 1953, at the age of just eighteen, Bobby was driven down to Werribee, 35 kilometres south-west of Melbourne’s CBD, along the road to Geelong. There, he politely thanked the parish priest of Prahran who’d given him and Paul the lift, and walked quickly across the entrance to Corpus Christi College, the Catholic seminary that would be his home for the next eight years.

  5

  The Cavalry Arrives

  At the time Bobby entered the seminary, the Catholic Church was on the precipice of an era of momentous change.

  The early 1950s was the last period of calm before the storm. Catholicism still meant mass said in Latin, the priest standing with his back to the congregation, rosary beads and hats and gloves worn to church. But the world outside was changing fast, the seeds of the coming cultural, social and religious revolution were steadily being sown and pressure was growing on Catholicism to face up to those challenges of modern life.

  The war was over and a new prosperity had flowed into most of the western world, and into Australia in particular. At the same time, women were agitating for greater rights, new technologies were beginning to transform daily life and the Cold War was in full swing. The Australian Catholic Church also saw any advance in communism as a real threat, accusing the trade union movement and the Australian Labor Party of being unduly influenced by communist sympathisers. It was a charge first levelled in Melbourne and was later to lead to a bitter split between many right-wing Catholics and the party. At the same time, the Church was busy fielding the pressures of new ideas like the quests for equal rights, the peace movement, birth control and the rise of liberation theology, with its emphasis on social justice and combating poverty.

  At the Werribee seminary in 1953, everyone could feel the growing tension between the old ways and the new ideas. Among some, there was enormous apprehension about what might be on its way. Among others, and for Bobby in particular, there was enormous excitement at being part of a Church in the throes of real change. He’d entered the college almost reluctantly, resigned to a life of almost last resort, a quiet and pious trainee priest. He’d even, in the light of how his father had been, signed up to the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association of the Sacred Heart, an Irish organisation for Roman Catholic teetotallers – although, hedging his bets, only until the age of twenty-five.

  But the discussions now constantly taking place infected him and his friends with a passion for their faith that might previously have been considered a touch lacking. Sensing change was in the wind, he became brighter, keener, energised. ‘I suppose it was then that I started to feel a part of it,’ he says. ‘You grow up a Catholic and it becomes an automatic part of you, but now I started really beginning to embrace it.’

  Yet it still wasn’t easy. For Bobby and the other newcomers, the rigid discipline and innate conservatism of the seminary was still in sharp contrast with many of the radical ideas of the time. The daily routine and teachings had changed little since the Jesuits had first drawn up their program for training priests some 300 years before. With all theology texts and study in Latin, the seminarians plodded slowly through a regime of constant prayer, Bible study, daily masses, spiritual ‘direction’, theology and philosophy tuition, confession, long periods of silence, and a communal hymn to end each day. ‘It was boring, boring,’ says Bob bluntly today, regularly referring to it as ‘The Cemetery’. ‘It was deathly dull. It was like a massive overdose of Catholicism. I don’t even remember them ever even talking to us about celibacy. The subject just didn’t come up, and it never occurred to us. That may sound strange to outsiders, but the question was never even raised. The seminary was very quiet. But it was a pretty place, you had to give them that.’

  The seminary was certainly stunning. An elegant Italianate building framed by stately arches on 1000 acres, it was once the stately home of wealthy pastoralists, and the largest residence in Victoria. The Melbourne Archbishop Daniel Mannix had bought it in 1922, thinking the mansion would be perfect as a seminary, while the surrounding farmland could be worked by the students to enable it to become self-sufficient – which never quite happened. The estate eventually closed as a seminary in 1973, and is today a museum maintained by the National Trust, with one of its rooms recreated as a seminary dormitory as it would have been for the very first students in the 1920s.

  But back in Bobby’s time, it was still a very serious place of intense study and quiet reflection for its 131 students. There was a rule of silence during recreation time that could be broken only if absolutely necessary. And if a student had no alternative but to utter a few words, they were ordered to do so as briefly and as quietly as possible.

  If they wanted to buy a newspaper or a book or to eat anywhere outside the college, they had to apply for permission, and all letters had to pass through the college post. Inside, they always had to salute ordained priests and, if they went for a walk, they had to be accompanied by at least two others. Even holiday times were regulated. When they left the college, it was a requirement to report to their local priest and when they returned, they were expected to bring with them a letter from him attesting to their good behaviour.

  But the feeling of coming change in the air kept Bobby going. Archbishop Mannix had established a scholarship to send Catholic university students overseas to study, and many returned to talk at Werribee of what was happening elsewhere. Clergy from churches in other countries were also invited to lecture, and they spoke about the persecution of communist governments, new philosophies gaining ground on other continents and alternative ways of doing things.

  ‘They had blokes coming in to the seminary all the time,’ Bobby says. ‘I learnt more from people coming in and talking than from the classes. We were lucky at that time; they called in people from all over the world, especially in the second half of the course. We were exposed to a breadth of thinking from all over the world, from America, the Philippines, Africa … everything except Roman! At the seminary, we were pretty convinced of the fundamentals, the substance, Catholicism’s core business, but we would have been healthily sceptical about the cosmetics of Catholicism.’

  His good friend Paul Garland was similarly cynical about some aspects of Catholicism, but excited about the changes being forecast for others. ‘Personally, I think that seminary was probably the best in the world at the time, because we were all being prepared for the changes even before they happened,’ he says. ‘The rector at Werribee, Father Charles Mayne, was a far-seeing fellow, and he wanted us to be role-determining rather than role-determined. We had all these international speakers in who told us how the world was changing, and how religion was changing in response. We learnt about the social issues, the psychology, the scriptures. It was a time for positive renewal. Of course, some of the bishops insisted that the conservatives talk to us as well, but we learnt at the same time about alternative interpretations.’

  A number of the trainee priests, Bobby and Paul among them, took to reading widely, including critics of orthodox Catholic theology alongside the recommended texts. Bobby read avidly too about Catholics who’d become well known for their social activism among the poor, homeless and hungry. Among those was devout American Catholic Dorothy Day, who was becoming increasingly well known for her social justice campaigns. She had a very orthodox and traditional sense of Catholic morality, but a progressive attitude on social and economic rights, working with another activist to set up the Catholic Worker movement, which led to a series of homes for the poor to live together communally. Another was Canadian Jean Vanier, a Catholic philosopher turned theologian, humanitarian and the founder of L’Arche, an international organisation that creates communities where people with developmental disabilities and those who assist them share life together.

  Along the way, he also became a keen follower of the actions of Abbé Pierre, a French Catholic priest and hero of the World War II Resistance. He returned to the headlines in 1954 when, during an extremely cold winter, he made an impassioned plea on Radio Luxembourg
, and through the pages of the newspaper Le Figaro, imploring citizens to come to the aid of homeless people who were freezing to death on the streets. His cry for help raised an astounding donation of 500 million francs, and the founding of the international Emmaus movement, to help the homeless, poor and refugees worldwide.

  Not surprisingly, he has remained a hero of Bob’s to this day.

  In 1958, the changes everyone had been talking about were finally signalled to be on their way. The newly elected Pope John Paul XXIII had been intended to be a caretaker of the faith but proved instead to be an agent of massive change. He invited eighteen cardinals to attend a service in Rome at St Paul’s Outside the Walls, and then called a global Church Council, putting everything up for debate: liturgy (the prayers, songs and mass); the role of the laity, with the idea of moving the congregation from being spectators to being participants; the role of the Church in the political and social world; and religious freedom and respect for other faiths.

  His decision may have caught many by surprise, including the Vatican hierarchy, but he’d felt from his own experience that it was time for the Church to take stock of its position in the world of the mid-twentieth century. He knew of the already existing movements to push the Church to modernise, and allowed them, for the first time, to be freely debated at the highest levels of the worldwide Church.

  The series of councils, Vatican II, that was to end up taking place from 1962 to 1965, bringing 3000 cardinals, bishops, clergy and religious workers from around the world to Rome, was to become the most significant event of the century for the Catholic Church. The Pope was to die in June 1963, two years before the talks ended, but they continued without him. By the end, Church leaders had created a new definition of the Church, and a new way for the Church to behave in the world. The Old Testament ‘People of God’ became the defining image and so much changed, including the way in which priests ran mass, facing their congregation, the service no longer being held in Latin and parishioners being invited to the altar to read the Scripture. Rather than simply helping the poor, the Church debated looking at the causes of poverty instead, advocating for social and political change, encouraging inter-faith relationships, recommending religious freedoms and allowing the dress code for the clergy to be relaxed.

  For progressive Catholics, Vatican II was a time of great excitement and expectation. For others, it caused immense alarm, with the loss of treasured traditions, age-old certainties and familiar, and much-loved, customs and rituals. For Bobby, it was the making of the man. ‘Vatican II came and saved us,’ he says. ‘It was like the cavalry had arrived. I think I was wandering around in my adolescent years, all enthusiasm looking for a cause. And then, thank you Jesus, that cause presents itself. The Church enters the modern world, and you realised how undernourished you’d been. It felt like it was no more us and them, just we.’

  Those Vatican II changes had a profound effect on Bobby’s faith, his outlook on life and even his personality. Almost overnight he went from a quiet, shy young man, haunted by the poverty and loneliness of his youth and overshadowed by the intellect of his best friend Paul, to a trainee priest who felt the world had suddenly opened up infinite possibilities to him. He now determined to grab them with both hands and started to become much more outspoken, opinionated, loud and enterprising.

  In his enthusiasm, Bobby embarked on a number of projects, writing long letters overseas to missionaries in far-flung parts of the world and circulating the replies around the class. The new skills he was learning in the classroom all the time also fed into his new leadership role. ‘We started practising debating,’ he says. ‘We were forced to stand up and make a speech. That really helped my confidence, realising I could do that when I had to. There were a lot of us there in that priest factory and we tended to be very serious young men. They sent us down to spruikers’ corner to preach,’ he smiles. ‘“But there’s no-one here,” I said. “Attract them, you fool,” they replied. So to survive, I turned myself into a bit of a clown. It was the only way I could compete with others who were brighter than me. And I thought if I can make others laugh, I’ll get through it.’

  A young Bob Maguire at the seminary.

  He proved surprisingly good at it too. Vatican II, he felt, had given everyone permission to be much less reverent about the Church and its ways, and he delighted in becoming almost subversive in his attitude to its institutions. He discovered the shock value of making casual fun of previously hallowed customs and traditions. Other priests in training with him at the same time report that he’d often perform almost a stand-up comedy act in the seminary. ‘He could command an audience any time,’ says Father Tom Doyle, who entered the seminary behind him. ‘He could be very funny. He was always a bit of a leader in the seminary. He was always a wordsmith and was funny and entertaining, and had a strong personality.’

  With his new blossoming as a comedian, other outlets for tomfoolery materialised, too. The seminary had a proud tradition of the arts and the first year Bobby was there, he brought the house down when he took to the stage with a one-man comedy act in the gaps between the main show. Another year, the students put on a production of American musician Spike Jones’s satirical take on the opera Carmen: ‘Carmen Murdered’. Paul, the director, volunteered Bobby to be the star, and he ended up miming enthusiastically to the soundtrack. ‘They said, “Don’t put your daughter on the stage, Mrs Worthington,”’ he quotes from the well-known song. ‘But I went on and dressed up as Carmen Miranda, in a red dress, with fruit on my head. The Jesuits were highly intellectual, so I suppose the drama thing was a way of making my own mark.’

  It was still early days, however, and testing those new freedoms sometimes caused problems. At one point, he even came close to quitting the seminary. In his third year, he was editor of its magazine and wrote a long piece debating some aspect of Catholicism. One of his teachers took angry exception to it. ‘I got called in and spoken to,’ he reports. ‘I ended up saying that if this is as bad as you say it is, I should be told, and I’d go home. If it wasn’t as bad, then it was a trivial offence, and for God’s sake, stop! Don’t beat it up. You don’t need a sledgehammer to kill an ant.’

  Secular life was changing rapidly in Australia, too. On walks outside the seminary, there were regular glimpses. ‘I remember, out on one of our compulsory walks, pressing my nose to the window of the hamburger joint Greasy Joe’s to see television for the first time,’ Bobby says. ‘They were screening the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne that were happening just down the road. It all felt so strange. Imagine: in the priest factory, I’d not read a newspaper in six years.’

  Students were allowed visitors, but Bobby, without parents or many close friends, had fewer than most. His brother Jim and his wife Betty did call in every few months, however. ‘We’d go and see him when we could,’ Betty says. ‘We felt sorry for him. He didn’t have much fun in his life. But he still had a certain sense of humour, and would pull funny faces, although he was nothing like as extroverted as he became later!’

  His sister Eileen, her Jim, and their children also visited, and Eileen’s daughter Peta Knights remembers looking forward to those times. ‘I used to love going to the seminary,’ she says. ‘It was a beautiful building and lovely grounds and Uncle Bob was gorgeous, and was always so funny, and he’d come in and light up the room. We’d go three or four times a year and have a picnic on the grass with blankets on the ground and just run around and kick the footie and play, or sit and chat.

  ‘Once a year there was a big fete to raise money and I remember Uncle Bob did some carpentry lessons and made Mum a coffee table once, and another time made her a table to put her sewing machine in, so it sat flush to the surface. But it wasn’t that good …’

  Bobby kept himself busy with other physical pursuits, too. The seminary kept bees, in order to raise funds with the sale of honey, and Bobby ended up becoming the regular keeper of the thirty hives. He liked being outside with them, and drew philosophical parall
els with how they lived their lives, as the ultimate collective, and how humans managed their societies. Still a great fan of teamwork – a notion that could previously have been considered subversive within the strictly hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church – he liked watching them all working together for the greater good, and wondered if mankind would ever learn from them. Yet his sympathy for the underdog was never far away. When worker bees that refused to work were driven out of the hives to die, he’d always feel a pang of sorrow. ‘There are so many lessons there for humanity,’ he says. ‘It’s all about instinct, as against our free will. And they have a mob mentality too. If it’s all good, then everyone benefits but if the queen goes bad, then everyone suffers.’

  Apart from the beekeeping and growing some fruit, vegetables and herbs, the land around the seminary was mostly used for sporting activities. While there, Bobby played cricket, football and handball, and also tried his hand at umpiring – with varying degrees of success. Paul Garland remembers the time he spat the dummy while refereeing a football match when everyone kept disputing his decisions. Much to the players’ amazement, he blew the whistle hard, tossed it over a hedge and then stomped off the oval. ‘He’d just got sick of it,’ he says. ‘But I think it was good for the boys. It taught them a valuable lesson!’

  He was perhaps more popular on the cricket pitch. Not a particularly good player, he volunteered early on to be wicketkeeper, always the role no-one much wanted. ‘I did quite well at that,’ he says. ‘I thought I wasn’t so good at batting or bowling, so I should do something that people had a real need for instead. I think I’m good at being a niche player, and have been one, really, all my life.’