Then and Now: Australian Catholic experiences

Readers of Madonna magazine will be familiar with Edmund Campion’s sketches of church life in his columns. They are gems of conciseness, elegance, generosity of spirit and stimulation. These are the characteristics also of the essays and papers collected in Then and Now. They focus on Australian Catholic life, but are never narrowly Australian or Catholic. Cardinal Newman, Lord Acton and Manning Clark receive attention as does the international question of clerical celibacy. The book represents the musings of a mind and heart without borders.

It is also a book for our times when as a Church we engage with what a faithful community of the future might look like. In describing the Australian Church of the past, Campion pays attention to the small and local experience in both its richness and limitation. He recognises the sentimentality and narrowness of many hymns, for example, but also appreciates the warmth of the faith they express and the importance of the imagination that they embody. He gives full and quirky weight to clerical tyranny but also points to the respect given to bishops and priests as builders and defenders of the community. The church he describes is alive, holds together strong divisions of opinion, is marked by distinctive prejudices and nurtures a shared faith.

Seen from this perspective the Australian Catholic Church of the future will need structures fit to purpose. But it will also need a strong, diverse but shared Catholic imagination lived out in small grass roots communities. That will be nurtured by the telling of stories.