"THE OLD SCHOOL TIE" FATHER JOHN O'NEILL

To-day, someone I regard highly asked "Who is Father John O'Neill?" or words to that effect.I was stunned but realised how quickly the years pass and the colours tend to fade. So I thought it might be helpful to re-post this item from 28th October 2011.

Subtitled "A story of survival in the tensions of the Catholic Church", it has obviously been written "con amore ". I can say that with gold-plated certainty because I count Father as a friend and I know his ardent love for the Church, even if the evidence of his life's work did not already demonstrate the fact.

The book is a novel, but everything in it happened in one way or another, even though the names have been changed, and some characters are the "telescoped" product of two personalities. Anyone who lived through the period the book re-creates will, as I did, immediately see through the delightfully altered names of people and places to recognize the Archdiocese of Sydney, St.Patrick's Seminary Manly that was, St. Columba's Minor Seminary, Springwood etc., etc. Anyone who loves the Catholic Church and its Priesthood will quickly come to read the book "con amore" also. It traces the journey to Priesthood of two best mates and schoolmates, and their encounter with the post-Conciliar false "spirit of the Council" rogues. the book is very special for me, not only because I know the author, but because I knew or knew of, many of the real characters.

Let us "taste and see":

Father Mark O'Brien has just arrived in Rome to commence post-graduate studies and comes to meet his best friend Father Harry Stuart whose studies are more advanced due to his arrival in Rome a couple of years earlier. Harry is talking to the Queensland Priest Father Greg Jenkins. The Second Vatican Council is continuing............"Greg Jenkins took great interest in the newcomer. Harry had spoken so much of his life-long friend, but always in glowing terms, and Jenkins wondered whether or not this Mark O'Brien was a candidate for canonization.

One free afternoon, Father Jenkins invited Father O'Brien to accompany him on a walking tour. They went across the Tiber and had spent a good while examining the Roman Forum when Jenkins decided it was coffee time. They found a nice place near the Colosseum. Mark was somewhat disappointed at the break in the tour- he was getting immersed in the history.

They settled at one of the little tables on the wide footpath, looking out across the ancient amphitheatre, Constantine's Arch and other surrounding remnants of past grandeur.

"What do you think of Rome?" asked Jenkins.

Mark smiled,"That hardly matters-I'm sure Rome won't be concerned what I think of her; but I love the place anyway."

"Anything in particular?"

"Well, of course, Peter and Paul are here, plus some other apostles-catacombs, remnants of the Empire. The Pope - should have mentioned him first" he laughed. Then there's the Council -biggest event in the Church for centuries."

"How are you going on the Council documents? "

"Read everything that,s released so far."

"You don't muck around, do you, Mark.

"Didn't come here to muck around, Greg."

Jenkins took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. He offered Mark one. It was refused. But Mark told him to go ahead and have one.

Jenkins blew out the first cloud of smoke, then looked at Mark squarely. An enticing smile came over his face. Mark thought it looked too deliberate.

"If I may say so Mark, you and Harry are going to be quite a force back home."

Mark lowered his cup a little. "What makes you think so?"

"I've never met anyone like you two- you've got all the gifts. I think you're going to be a pair of giants."

Mark laughed once more. " Then we'd better make sure we don't put our feet in it," he said looking straight into Jenkins' eyes.

Jenkins' smooth smile re-appeared." That's very good " he said. I'd say each of you is going to make quite a splash."

" As long as what we do helps people and the Church," said Mark.

"The people are the Church," said Jenkins.

" Now that's a revelation - I thought the Church was just buildings," said Mark, looking at him squarely.

That smile was there again on Jenkins's face. "Sorry", he said, " I shouldn't be trying to teach you. It's just that I think the Church hasn't been taking enough notice of what the people are thinking. This Council's not going far enough."

"it's certainly going long enough", said Mark.

Jenkins gave a laugh, " Then you're getting a bit tired of all these Bishops around the place, eh?"

" I didn't say that. It's a tremendous event- I just think it could be a lot simpler."

" Everything's black and white with you, isn't it, Mark," said Jenkins through his smile.

Father John O'Neill - Tried and True

"If that means everything's clear, then yes."

"So we have all the answers, then."

"In the necessary things, yes."Jenkins' smile changed to a smirk. Mark's inherited Irish brow hardened. "If we haven't the basic answers to man's questions, then Christ is pointless," he said, almost glaring at Jenkins. " What's the use of God becoming man if He leaves us in our confusion, and our weakness.".........

The story continues and the divide between those seeing in the Church and the Council the hermeneutic of continuity as the only possibility, and those who chose a hermeneutic of rupture to secure their New Church opens before our eyes. Just as it happened. Jenkins by the way - the real man became a Queensland suffragan Bishop. But by the force of his personality, he became the "Godfather" of the Queensland bishops - and the wreckage of "Jenkins'" activity persists from Brisbane to Cairns.

Father John O'Neill is Parish Priest of Doonside in Parramatta Diocese, having survived the Episcopates of Cardinals Freeman and Clancy in Sydney, and then the all too vulnerable Bishop Bede Heather (resigned) and Bishop Kevin Manning (Emeritus, and now out of retirement to act as Apostolic Administrator of Wilcannia Forbes). Doonside is fortunate indeed.

Father's latest work is "BENJAMIN"available at http://www.connorcourt.com/catalog1/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=128

1958 "WHEN I WAS TOWARD THE LAW " PART I

SAINT THOMAS MORE
The portrait by Holbein in his robes as Lord Chancellor of England

When I first planned to do a post with the title "When I was toward the Law....", I had in mind resuming the recollections of my life, and that quote from St. Thomas More in the movie (in this it is more accurate than the play which says when I was practising the Law)) "A Man For All Seasons"(the Paul Schofield version , of course!) came to mind as being useful. I will get to those recollections in Part III.

But two obstacles stood before my proceeding immediately with what I had planned. Firstly, my abounding admiration of the Saint, and secondly and on a lower plane, my admiration for the Paul Schofield film of Robert Bolt's play "A Man for All Seasons".

St. Thomas More was surely the most brilliant and truly noble Englishman to have lived. Quite apart from all else, it is his sanctity, which is his highest achievement - we remember Our Lord's exhortation to "Be Holy as your Heavenly Father Is Holy"(Matt 5 : 48).Holiness or perfection is the essential character of God, in man it came to also be called Godliness. It was a quality that St. Thomas More had long possessed, but he grew in it by leaps and bounds , even as the difficulties and trials in his life grew to appalling heights.

But he was remarkable for so much more than even that great achievement. He was a brilliant intellect, a writer, poet, lawyer, Judge,Ambassador, Parliamentarian, and as Chancellor, effectively Prime Minister of England.His wide experience, his scholarship and his humanistic  approach matched by his awesome integrity and realistic appreciation of the affairs of men obviously attracted many of the world's leading scholars to him, including controversial scholars like Erasmus. But St. Thomas was able to keep his balance and personal stability, even whilst moving in these exalted circles. His humility preserved his filial deference toward his Judge Father and when he would meet his Father in the Inns of Court, Thomas the faithful son, would kneel for his Father's Blessing. 

We know a vast amount about St.Thomas More from his own writings and from the records of his interrogation and trial. So great are his writings that the Harvard Library which owns his papers , has published 14,000 Pages of his writings. Further the bureaucracy of Henry VIII's early Police State had become very efficient and its files are preserved. Even the personal papers of the wretched Thomas Cromwell the avaricious and heretic successor to St. Thomas as Lord Chancellor are preserved, this, largely because when he fell from Henry's favour, he fell far and fast - arrested without warning one day and executed on the second day afterward. He had no time to sanitise his papers.

Study for a Portrait of the More Family by Hans Holbein.
St.Thomas is clearly seen beneath the Clock, His Father on his right and son John on his left

The sharpness of St. Thomas' intellect could have made him a very uncomfortable person to have around, especially when combined with his absolute integrity. However, both were kept rightly in balance by his generosity of spirit and highly developed sense of Christian  charity. All of his qualities made him the ideal Paterfamilias. One would logically tend to look at his son John to see the Father in the son, but there seems to have been some unusual and obscured factor there. Some have speculated that the young man was in some way deficient - but we cannot know , and it is useless and intrusive to speculate. We do know that St.Thomas' daughter Margaret "Meg" was the apple of her Father's eye. Yet in the end, she was to disappoint him,not only imploring him to swear the King's Oath denying the Truth , but swearing it herself to save her life.

It must be a bitter scourge to have one's deeply loved child betray the Catholic Faith for which so many have been enslaved and died at the hands of persecutors. 

St.Thomas was very much a Saint for us to emulate. For we are inclined to regard ourselves as uniquely "with it" immersed in, and taken up with,the affairs of our times.But he was equally so in his times. Though they may not have moved with electronic speed, they were, to those then living, marvellous indeed with the very recent advent of the printing press , ideas began to circulate far more widely and at a greater rate than ever before. There was a consequent hunger for novelty and an immense letting off of a head of intellectual steam built up over centuries.

 The situation was itself a very great novelty and one could hardly blame the authorities, principally the Church, for being so inept in responding. No-one had ever experienced or even imagined the phenomenon then infecting their society.Their response was to formally rebut error , expect compliance and punish non-compliance. Everyone knew that error had no rights. And those in error held the same view when they gained power in parts of Europe. St. Thomas More was in the thick of it, in fact the Champion, enlisted by the Archbishop of Canterbury to rebut the heretics. Publication and counter-publication was the order of the day.But the heretics enjoyed the advantage of the guerilla fighter. They were subversive and could mould any situation to their advantage siding with any group of locals who found troubles with Church authority, which in those days ran very far into popular life,and from there leaping into the controversies about doctrine. Any resentment against any cleric or situation, found its excuse with the deformers.

 (The whole situation bears some eerie parallels with the post- Conciliar period. The Council met, issued its documents and the Bishops and Curia expected the Church to move into broad sunlit uplands of a new golden age. But a coterie of North European Prelates and "Theologians"with another agenda, had been meeting daily and daily holding Press Conferences. They told the World "what the Council said ,and thought and meant and did". Of course it was not true, this "spirit of the Council"they invented was false and so plastic it could be moulded into any shape you wanted- it could subvert monasteries in Europe, subvert the Church in Holland, destroy Religious Orders in the USA with quack Psychology, undermine the Sacred Liturgy and Sacred Scripture TOTALLY ignoring Conciliar documents . The Council Fathers all 1,500 plus of them, were effectively gagged by a diabolically media savvy group of miscreants.)

 The Truth seemed paralysed whilst lies bounded about athletically. 

Yes, St.Thomas More had seen it all - he knows what we have lived through, and are struggling out of!

He was a man of great  humanity, he had considered a vocation to the Priesthood as a young man, but in his discernment found he was called in other directions.His youthful ardour is remembered in the poem"REUNION" in which he writes of a mature man, meeting after decades the grown woman he had known and chastely loved when they were sixteen. Denied by her parents the right to develop their relationship, they lost contact. But now the sight of her re-kindles in him the flame of youth. It is a marvellous piece of writing and shows us how very endearing a man he was.

Very human and a loving Father, he writes these lines for his children :

"I've given you kisses a-plenty,
A few smacks, lest duty fail
But if I flogged you ever,
It was with a peacock's tail. "

When so many have written books about the great Saint , and Holy Church has raised him to those Honours of the Altar, my lowly post can add nothing to his lustre or dignity. I only wish to record my homage to so great a man.