The thing about him is the preaching.
He preaches almost every day, and whether it’s a major occasion or weekday mass for a handful, the preaching is superb. Even if there were a finer English-speaking preacher, nobody, but nobody, sustains this level of quality, fidelity and sheer vim and vigour. It seems like a feat from medieval days made available through microphone and media to thousands in the modern world.
The Order of Preachers has no monopoly on fine preaching, and being a son and brother of St Dominic does not guarantee the art. But in the case of Archbishop Anthony vocation, nature, education and temperament have come together in a life of preaching.
I once heard—not in Sydney of course—a priest describe his preaching as an indulgence. I think the speaker had other things he wanted to do with those twenty minutes and was probably more used to the seven-minute serve. Having listened to Archbishop Anthony preach on, I suppose, thousands of occasions I think there are at least two things wrong with this comment.
First, as a deeply pastoral act the Sunday/feast day homily should engage the entirety of the person; emotion, imagination, intelligence, our weariness, worries, queries, our sweated terrors. Anyone listening to Archbishop Anthony week by week knows that he deliberately alters style; sometimes preaching an intellectual and doctrinal homily, sometimes literary and imaginative, sometimes moral and instructional or philosophical or spiritual or a barnstorming mission-style work of the pulpit. He has no one style. He has mastered them all so as to serve the precise needs of listeners in particular social and pastoral contexts. Far from indulgence, this is self-emptying, born out of study, prayer and hard graft.
Secondly, as someone who responds with deep feeling to individuals and their needs, the same thoughts and feelings that guide the archbishop’s preaching follow him into his meetings, pastoral encounters and church councils, national and global. The preaching is active in people’s lives and carefully diffused and unpacked through meetings and talks.
He is of course “Archbishop Anthony” in the friendly convention by which we address Religious using their Christian and not surname. Others can tell better than I can the story of his early entry into Dominican life. But that is the chief fact about his biography. St John Paul II reminded him on his ordination day; stay as faithful to the Dominican vocation as episcopal ordination will allow. He did not need the pope’s reminder but having had it, he would regard it with the utmost seriousness.
When I first met Archbishop Anthony overseas, he was holding his own in a Priory filled with Dominican giants of the lecture hall and the pulpit. He was there to study for his doctorate under the highly distinguished supervision of Prof. John Finnis. He wrote a wonderful thesis, as the many in healthcare and bioethics who still consult it today would agree. In those supervisions with Finnis, Dominican tradition, including veneration for Aquinas, came together with the laser-like mind of Finnis on contemporary bioethics topics. It would have been something to have witnessed.
Not much remains hidden these days and we all know more than we need to of doctrinal and moral battles between church authorities. The intellectual leadership of Archbishop Anthony has allowed people affected by these battles to grasp two helpful points.
First, the silliness of talk about staying in the centre on matters of serious morality or of truth. As Aristotle knew, talk of the centre doesn’t mean occupying middle ground but judging truth by your reason alone and not by any extreme allegiances.
Secondly, we don’t have to follow the path of slow decline—following radicals driven by identity theory or recluses driven into bunkers. In speaking truth to governments, professionals, layfolk, priests and seminarians the archbishop has so often sidestepped the ancient ‘liberal’/’conservative’ battles for a reasonable and orthodox solution. Cardinal Pell once said to me that if someone is clear in their seriously-formed conscience where truth lies, that person need not fear labels or insults or carry useless anxieties. Archbishop Anthony learned this lesson in spades.
What are the five top achievements? I have nothing very original to add here.
First, the extraordinary pro-life activity from his teens in Sydney flowing through his publications—including the matchless contributions around the Tony Bland case in the UK—and reaching fruition in the foundation work of the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family in Melbourne.
Secondly, the capacity to learn from other bishops across the globe but then to invent his own approach to bringing the faith to Australian public life. How desperate now do the insults of those who called him a clone of +Pell look!
Thirdly, the coordination of World Youth Day 2008—a job big enough to form the climax of another man’s working life but only the beginning of his.
Next, the patient guidance and leadership of Catholic education through long years stewarding the Bishops’ Commission for Education, leading on primary to tertiary Catholic education in NSW and helping shape the national conversation, including countless representations to government.
Finally, in a full and often tense life, his achievement is to maintain the focus on people, from the newest babies to the oldest and frailest of us. Archbishop Anthony has long said that from his own grave illness at the beginning of his period as archbishop came greater insight into the human condition and a more heartfelt understanding of human need. I wish to heaven he had not faced that ordeal but from it grew his Dominican and episcopal focus: to preach the truth and to serve all those for whose sake Truth suffered.
To do all this and do it with a smile, endless good humour and human warmth makes for an exceptional ten years of service.
Professor Hayden Ramsay is Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) and Professor of Ethics at the Australian Catholic University. He was recently appointed as the tenth president of the Catholic Institute of Sydney (CIS).