Faith & Spirituality in Review

Icons + Art, Michael Galovic, Honeysett Press, 2006, 290 x 210 mm, 96 pp, hardcover.

The cover image for this edition of Madonna is an icon of Mary MacKillop by Michael Galovic. Michael Galovic was born and schooled in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. He began absorbing the ancient tradition of iconography as a child, while watching his stepfather restoring frescoes and icons in Serbian churches and monasteries. In his late teens he began painting icons while studying at the Belgrade Academy of Arts.

Eager to see the world, after the graduation Michael has travelled extensively and lived in the Middle East, Spain and Africa, trying himself in areas other than art and absorbing the contrasting richness and beauty of different cultures.

Michael settled in Australia in 1990 since then has held many solo shows of his icons and contemporary artwork throughout Australia and in many countries overseas.

This book is an overview of his work to date. The beautifully reproduced full-page illustrations give one the best idea of his work which is steeped in the icon tradition but also contemporary in its expression and theme. Apart from representations of biblical characters and scenes and the saints, more contemporary themes include Mary MacKillop, reinterpretations of the crucifix, and, most recently, the sacred rock Uluru.

After many years of both teaching and art making, Michael is now devoted solely to his art practice in his studio/gallery on the Central Coast of NSW.

Rod Pattenden, Chairman of the Blake Society for Religious Art, sums up Michael’s work:

‘Michael Galovic offers a unique contribution to contemporary Australian Art. He has developed an impressive body of work that seeks to bring together the Australian landscape and religious and personal identity … He is a careful student of tradition while exhibiting the capacity for artistic innovation and excellence. A considered craftsman and dynamic originator, his vision offers new possibilities for figuring the transcendent contemporary multicultural Australia.’

Peter Kennedy: The Man Who Threatened Rome, Martin Flanagan & Michele Gierck, One Day Hill, 200 pp, pb, rrp $29.95.

This valuable book illuminates the dispute between the Archbishop of Brisbane and Fr Peter Kennedy’s St Mary’s congregation, setting it into a human context that is both much smaller and larger than that offered by the media coverage.

The most instructive and moving contributions to the book are studies of people involved.  Two interviews of Peter Kennedy by Martin Flanagan serve as book ends. Flanagan catches the contemplative and detached character of Kennedy’s personality. Michele Gierck’s profiles of a range of people involved in the life of the congregation are also deeply insightful. She allows them to speak for themselves, perhaps more eloquently than they knew they could speak.

Much of the comment deals with the underlying tension between the inclusiveness of the community worship and its symbols and the insistence by the Archbishop on the universal symbols of the Catholic Church. I found myself most exercised personally by this question.

I take it as axiomatic that Christian communities should offer hospitality to the hesitant, doubtful, searching and disconcerted. That is a Christian ideal, and also reflects life in any congregation and seasons in the life of most Christians.

The question the book leaves me with, though, is not about the inclusiveness of the community, but about what people are included into. In my understanding, at the heart of Catholic faith has been the conviction that God has acted decisively for all human beings in the life, death and rising of Jesus Christ. The implications of this faith have been spelled out in summary form in the claim that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that God is trinity. 

This fundamental belief shapes relationships in the church and its teaching.  It is expressed through symbols of faith in the church. The reflections in this book generally focus on the tension between these symbols and the belief of individuals or the demands of modernity. But in the reflections that insist on the need for new words, it is not clear whether the decisive investment of God in the life of Jesus Christ was an event for which new words needed to be found, or was part of the old words that needed to be superseded. I did not find any clear assertion that in Jesus Christ God has spoken a decisive word into silence, and that this is the heart of Christian faith.

A large question to be left with. And that is the significance of the dispute and the merit of this book.

From Humble Beginnings: The Story of the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart in Victoria, 1890-2009, Jill Bernard, Utber & Patullo Publishing, 250 x 210 mm, hardcover with jacket, over 100 illustrations, 2009.

In January 1890, in blazing temperatures, Mary MacKillop returned to central Victoria, to Numurka, with three of her Sisters, to set up the first Josephite Convent in the then colony. It was, Mary wrote, ‘a humble beginning for a great work’. A second convent and school was soon established at Bacchus Marsh, then the city of Melbourne, suffering from the ravages of the economic depression of those years.

So began the Victorian chapter of the Josephite story. This beautifully designed book traces the development of the congregation from then on: through the World Wars, the great Depression, growth of the western suburbs and western Victoria, the influx of migrants, the contacts with Aboriginal Australians. The numerous photographs throughout not only illustrate the range of endeavours undertaken but also remind readers of the general development of the Catholic Church in the state.

While the book documents the work taken on by the Sisters, it presents this through the stories of the women involved, making the story an introduction to the people who are the Josephites. ‘It has been my aim’, says Jill Bernard in her Preface, ‘to portray, as far as possible, the Sisters as individual women.’ This is a powerful testimony to the role these individual women have had in the growth of the church.

The book concludes with a description of the Mary MacKillop Heritage Centre in East Melbourne, in the building which was built as the first permanent Providence for unemployed and homeless women in 1902. It has been gloriously restored and now houses a museum as well as facilities for retreats and workshops. Situated at 328 Albert St, it is well worth a visit.

Twelve Came First: The FCJ Mission to Australia, Aileen Ryan FCJ, Faithful companions of Jesus, Richmond, 176 pp, 200 x 210 mm, pb, illustrated.

In the chapel at Genazzano FCJ College in Kew, Melbourne, a glowing stained glass panel commemorates the arival of the first party of Sisters of the Faithful Companions of Jesus on Australia in 1882. The panel adorns the cover of Twelve Came First, an account of this first group, and the subsequent early groups of pioneers—their journeys and early endeavours in this country.

The first group of twelve, most in their 20s or early 30s, undertook a voyage of six weeks aboard the SS Liguria. They kept a journal of the voyage, a series of letters addressed to Mother Josephine, the General Superior, and sent back from each port at which they broke the voyage. It is an intriguing first-hand account of the travel of the day, though necessarily given through unwordly eyes.

This first group of Sisters had travelled in reponse to requests from Archbishop Goold in Melbourne and Fr Joseph Dalton, the Jesuit Provincial, who recognised the need for new people to staff the schools in the growing colony.  They were taken from the ship to the Jesuit parish at Richmond, and within twelve days of their arrival, the Melbourne Catholic paper reported that the Sisters had opened their high school and free school.

Further groups arrived in 1884, 1885 and 1888, and their work rapidly expanded. Again the author draws on contemporary accounts of setting up schools, teaching, parish and devotional activities, and aspects of society. ‘Everyone’, says one comment, ‘seems to be education mad … We were expecting to find a crowd of unruly gold diggers’ children, but I can assure you that for intelligence and good manners these little colonists would put to shame their sisters in England.’

Brief biographies of the Sisters in these first groups put human faces to these pioneering workers, as well as fill out details of the work of the congregation, both in the new mission of Australia as well as in the places they originally came from. A picture is built up of the extraordinary ventures women such as these undertook.

This book is a tribute to all the women who left their homelands to travel to the other side of the world in pursuit of a God-given mission. The description of Provincial Leader Sr Barbara Brown-Graham in her Foreword applies to these FCJ groups as well as to all those who undertook similar journeys: ‘What marvellous women they were … giving their all as they met the needs of God’s people with creativity, ingenuity and generosity!’

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