WORDS Michael McVeigh

Father Bob Maguire is willing to 'stick his beak in' if it means helping more people discover faith.

Father Bob Maguire's got his computer on in front of him as I enter his study. 'Here, come over and look at this', he says.

He opens up his webpage (www.fatherbob.com.au) and goes to click on the weekly podcast program that he's got posted there. Among the topics of this week's show: 'Would Father Bob ever give communion to a robot?'

An intriguing mix of old-fashioned values and new ideas, Fr Bob is an unlikely media celebrity. But along with his website and podcast, he's also on the radio every Sunday night on Triple J with John Safran, and he co-hosted 'Speaking in Tongues' on SBS earlier this year. In fact, he may be the most widely-heard priest in Australia.

'I made the decision. The brand, you see, is a word they use. Well Jesus is a brand. But you see your Jesus brand has been so disfigured by bad religion over the centuries, and even over my lifetime, that I thought I'd better start doing what Paul says. Paul stuck his beak in, stuck his face in, stuck himself in', he says.

Those who've seen or heard any of Fr Bob's shows know his style is all about sticking his beak in. It's abrupt, no-nonsense, say-what-you-think ... in fact, it's just about as good an antidote to the commercialised, prepackaged soundbite media as you can find.

For young people looking for ways to relate to religion, Fr Bob's freshness touches just the right chord. He says he's received a few hundred e-mails a week since the TV show went to air, and had people come up to him on the street saying how much they enjoy what he's doing.

'"You've kept alive," somebody said, "the value of religion in an agnostic world". I didn't know I was doing that', says Fr Bob, laughing. 'But that's what they say.'

Perhaps it's no coincidence that Fr Bob is the priest of St Peter and Paul's parish in South Melbourne. He speaks about the differing missions of both Peter and Paul in the early church—one to establish the Church, the other to spread the word to other parts of the world.

'Peter said let's keep the faith, Paul said let's share it with others', says Fr Bob.

He says the two saints are representative of the differing forces inside the church today. 'That relationship of conflict—constructive conflict—is what I think served the church best', he adds. 'But when one seems to be dominant, and when one isn't even allowed into the conflict, that's the problem.'

It's Paul's example—taking the Word to those who haven't yet heard it—that Fr Bob seems to be following most himself.

Living in South Melbourne, he's conscious of the large numbers of young people moving into apartment towers in high-density living, and wonders how the Church can form a community in these often isolating environments.

'You've got high-rise flats for the overclass, the superclass. Nothing can get anywhere near them because you can't get into the place. How are you going to preach the gospel? What would Paul do?' he asks.

He's not averse to trying new ways of doing things. The robot question on his podcast show came about during a conversation about online role-playing games such as Second Life, where people can take on roles and lead whole lives in a virtual world. He wonders why the Church doesn't try to engage with people in these environments.

'They're living in a world of their own creation, we're going to have to learn to speak that language too', he says. 'Or put them in charge of their own world, with cyber-sacraments, or the cyber-word or virtual sacraments and the virtual word or something.'

The church needs to find ways of using the internet to reach people, he says.

'And if they laugh and say "oh no, that's not tradition", well they've just dumped hundreds of thousands of people.'

The response to the TV show, especially among young people, has made him aware that there's a large number of people out there who haven't any experience of faith, and are yearning for something more out of life.

'The 20- and 30-somethings who may have tasted the bitterness of life, lost somebody dear to them, or went broke, or had too much cannabis when they were teenagers and now they're pot-heads. That demographic, that makes me sad. Because if we want to be poor-aligned again we have to be missionaries to those kinds of people. And learn that kind of language.'

The title of the TV show—'Speaking in Tongues'—was appropriate for the church in our times, says Fr Bob. A lot of the older ways of speaking about faith just don't make sense to people today.

'It's a bit like Elvish, in the Lord of the Rings. It sounds nice, but nobody knows what the bloody hell you're talking about', he says.

The Church needs to open up to people, engage with them again.

'Something has to be done to reconvince lay people that they are the main resource of Catholicism. Clericalism has had such a hold over Catholicism for so long', he says.

On top of his media commitments, Fr Bob is kept busy with his work with Open Family and the Emerald Hill Mission, as well as his work in the parish. He's never afraid to speak out on issues he believes in. Some people love it, others pick up their pens to complain. Father Bob says it's his job to stick his beak in.

'Just as the bishops are supposed to be interested in the welfare of all the churches around the globe, not just their own, parish clergymen should be interested in the welfare of all parishes', says Fr Bob. 'That's a dangerous thing, but I believe it to be Catholic.'

He calls himself a GP—a general practitioner—and a conversation with Fr Bob can cover diverse topics from history, science or philosophy. He speaks like a performer, his speech rising and falling almost at whim.

Asked to summarise Catholicism for him, Fr Bob says it's 'to be Jesus, within my sphere of influence'.

'If they say, "What do you mean by that?" I would say, "Look, sweetie, just follow me around and what you see is what you get." What you see is in fact what I understand to be Jesus of Nazareth in my time and space', says Fr Bob.

When he speaks about Catholicism, it's almost like he's describing himself. It's something that's alive, constantly engaged with the world, and adapting to suit its needs.

'It's a barrel of worms. It's a trainload of monkeys. It's on the boil all the time', he says. 'Once it goes off the boil, and simmers down, that's when you've got Catholicism becoming something like Christendom, which is institutionalist totally.'

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