Humane Catholic

  “The days are coming when you will desire to see one of the days of the Son of man, and you will not see it.” “Remember Lot’s wife.” Melbourne Synod met this week, and I along with the other parish stipendiary clergy, and parish reps Peter Sherlock and Sandra Treadwell-Monk joined several hundred others at the Cathedral. With the exception of one matter, it was probably the most boring session of synod in living memory. Three minor legislative pieces were passed, virtually without debate, and a series of motions on the usual social questions passed formally and without controversy or any real enthusiasm; notwithstanding an excellent motion on indigenous reconciliation with which the synod began its debate. It had originally been my intention tonight to spend some time commenting on the Archbishop’s charge to Synod which, at one level, said nothing useful in terms of providing the diocese with vision or leadership, but at another level made some really quite useful ...

Motion 24: Melbourne Synod, 20 October 2018 Conversion Therapy  That Synod  a)  acknowledges that all people are made in the image of God, regardless of sexuality or gender identity  b)  acknowledges the position of the Australian Psychological Society that “strongly opposes any approach to psychological practice or research that treats lesbians, gay men, and bisexual people as disordered, and any approach that attempts to change an individual's sexual orientation”  c)  calls upon Church members to be sensitive to, and to listen to, diverse expressions of sexuality and gender identity, to accept, validate, support, and encourage those in our churches who are seeking to live in accordance with biblical teaching and to live out their identity in union with Christ and his calling, and to not recommend “Conversion Therapy" to anyone; and  d)  calls on the state government—through the Healthcare Complaints Commissioner (HCC)  I...

Motion 13, Melbourne Synod 20 October 2018  Form of Blessing for Civil Marriages  That Synod  a)  acknowledges the widespread national and local support for the recent changes to Australian marriage laws, to include same-sex couples; and  b)  commends the pastoral value of the Archbishop authorising a revised Form of Blessing of a Civil Marriage, which may include marriages between two persons of the same sex, for optional use within the Diocese of Melbourne alongside, or in addition to, a wedding conducted by a civil celebrant.  Mr President, members of synod, I rise in support of the motion standing in my name. Craig D’Alton, St Mary’s North Melbourne and Archdeacon of Melbourne. I stand to move this motion very reluctantly, but for two reasons. My first reason is that I believe that the church, and this synod, needs to acknowledge that society at large has made a clear decision in favour of marriage equality, and that that d...

A sermon at St Mary's North Melbourne 30 September 2018 Text: Mark 9:38-50 It is probably one of the most mis-quoted texts in the new Testament – “Whoever is not against us is for us.” How often have I heard instead, “Whoever is not for us is against us.” The grammarians amongst you will understand that this is one of those occasions in English where word order matters. Let’s start with a secular example. Let us say, for argument’s sake, that I am an indigenous politician, and I am arguing for a change in the law to improve the health outcomes for members of my community. I lobby, I give speeches, I get the matter in the public eye and on the national agenda.  I discover that the people with a parliamentary vote on this question fall into a number of categories in response: 1) Those who stand to benefit directly from the success of such a policy are in favour. They are “for us.” There are two of them. 2) Those who have nothing to gain personally, but who a...

“God is love, and those who live in love live in God, and God lives in them.”  These words from 1 John 4, which begin the marriage service in A Prayer Book for Australia , undergird the doctrine of marriage as it has been received by Anglicans. We the bishops of the Anglican Church of Australia, affirm the following: 1) The injunction to love is the greatest of the commandments, and any discussion of marriage ought to begin with the principle that marriage is a sign of God’s love in the world. 2) All people, including gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and other gender identifying people, are children of God, and created in God’s image. 3) The law of the Commonwealth of Australia has changed to allow the marriage of persons who previously could not marry one another, and this Church has not yet come to a clear view on how this change effects the doctrine of marriage of this Church, nor has it yet formulated a uniform liturgical response. 4) We are committed to wo...

Commemoration of John Keble (14 July), preached at St Mary’s North Melbourne, 15 July 2011 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness In 1833 John Keble preached a sermon from a very high pulpit to a group of legal and civic luminaries in a university city. Keble’s sermon, in its substance and context, holds almost nothing of relevance for the Anglican Church in Melbourne in 2011. It is, like most historical documents, so grounded in its own time and place that its purpose and cares have long been left behind. The notion of the Christian state, let alone the notion of that state becoming apostate in the manner of Saul in 1 Samuel 12, is an irrelevance to us here today. (I could here make a quip about CRI and School chaplaincy, but that is a story for another time.) Keble’s sermon is irrelevant – but not entirely. Two points, I think, bear repeating and revisiting, even in Melbourne in 2011. The first is Keble’s realisation that the church was in danger, and his r...

It’s an interesting experience; being a temporary minor media personality. The sermon immediately below in this blog was picked up by The Sunday Age, a Melbourne-based broadsheet, and turned into an article with the rather disarming title “Priest urges end to ‘forced’ religious education”. I had been contacted by Jill Stark from The Sunday Age, who had read my sermon, and having realized that she had some pretty basic facts incorrect, I decided that it was better to speak to her than not. As always, what comes out in print is never exactly what you would have written yourself . . . Nonetheless, although I was initially annoyed by the newspaper report, as time has passed I find myself much less so. I think that there are two reasons for this. First, because of the quite astonishing level of support for what I said both on this blog and in the newspaper. Apart from one rather intemperate phone call from someone involved at the senior level in Access and one pretty mild rebuking email f...

Sermon for Easter 4 15 May 2011 Preached at St Mary’s Anglican Church, North Melbourne “A different sort of Access” When I became vicar of St Mary’s, I discovered that one of the duties I had inherited with that title was to teach and coordinate religious education at Errol Street Primary School. I’ll be up front and admit that I wasn’t a duty I relished, but over a month or so late last year I took up the task, and enjoyed the interaction with the grade five and six students, as well as the younger students who were involved in the final Christmas session of the year. Fr Philip, who has taught RE for several years, was intending to take over these duties this year, freeing me up to do some other things. Things have worked out somewhat differently. Doubtless many of you will have seen in the papers and elsewhere over the last few months – even this morning in fact – that there has been quite a kerfuffle about the teaching of Special Religious Education in primary schools. What ...

A sermon preached at Evensong at SMV, Sunday 6 September 2008 Paul, arriving in Ephesus, finds some disciples who have never heard of the Holy Spirit. He tells them about it, and they are re-baptised into the true faith. And so begins a great tradition – of one group of Christians telling another group of Christians that they are missing some crucial element of faith, and then converting them to their brand of the truth. Of course in this particular case the missing element of faith – the Holy Spirit – is pretty crucial, and I don’t blame Paul at all for wanting to share his news, and for bringing them into a new form of faith. But it does raise for me some fairly fundamental questions about how we, as Christians, behave towards other Christians whose beliefs are not the same as ours. Is it our job to convert them to our set of beliefs, or should we passively stand by, and leave them to remain with the set of beliefs they currently have, even if we think they are wrong? There are, to m...

A sermon preached at SMV, Trinity 7, 2008. The Sunday before GAFCON. Yesterday, if one can believe what one reads in the papers, the Anglican Communion split. The curtain-raiser for the Global Anglican Future conference, the conservative alternative to Lambeth, announced, in effect, that there was no future – at least no future in which conservatives and liberals could co-exist. As someone who doesn’t much like being called a liberal, but who is certainly not a conservative, I wonder what place there will be for me – for most of us perhaps – in this brave new world of two Anglican churches. It is actually far too soon to say whether the GAFCON leaders are right, or whether Archbishop Williams will be able to stitch back together the broken seam. And so in this sermon I don’t want to try to address directly the issue of a split, or even the presenting issues driving that split. I do, however, want to address what I believe to be one of the background causes. One of the accusations I mos...

A sermon at Evensong at SMV, Feast of St Barnabas (24 August) 2008 When I was a student in theological college over a decade ago, there was a regular question raised in the Friday “community time” as to the contemporary spiritual value of the daily offices of morning and evening prayer. Some – including myself – said we found it not merely helpful, but an essential part of keeping sane in the wake of the quite manic program of study and work we were required to undertake. Some others, however, said they found its rigid formality stifling of prayer, and argued for much less highly structured forms of daily worship and reflection. Perhaps the most helpful intervention in the debate came from someone, I can’t remember who, who suggested that the issue here was no so much the substance but the form. What some were finding helpful and others difficult was the form of the service, and its rigidity. No-one, however, was seriously questioning the substantive idea that as priests in training we...