The history of the Catholic Church in Australia, with its heroines and heroes, saints and sinners, politics, and art is mostly recorded in often-inaccessible books. Now, however, it can be accessed on YouTube.
The Australian Catholic Historical Society has created a YouTube channel which draws together dozens of videos posted on the internet – talks, historical newsreels and documentaries spanning the last hundred and more years.
There are clips of Archbishop Mannix arriving in Liverpool in 1920 after the British arrested him to keep him from landing in Ireland, the close of the International Eucharist Congress in Sydney in 1928, and a moving requiem Mass for fallen Australian soldiers at the Lae war cemetery in 1944.
Papal visits are well documented. There are documentaries of missionary work in the Northern Territory, and clips from feature films about the church, a positive view in the 2010 telefilm Sisters of War to the oppressive 1976 film The Devil’s Playground directed by Fred Schepisi.
There is a growing number of talks and lectures. The latest to be added is “Crossing the Tiber: Australian Anglican Clerical Converts to Rome, 1840s-2000s.”
In short, it’s a kind of historical lolly shop bursting with fascinating flavours and varieties. The YouTuber behind it is the ACHS vice-president, Professor James Franklin, a polymath at the University of NSW who is a mathematician, philosopher, and cultural historian.
“We (ACHS) want to extend the range of our communications to those who don’t read much or just prefer watching to reading, that is, the younger generation, but not solely,” Franklin told The Catholic Weekly. “But also, video newsreel is special in that you can, so to speak, look directly into the past without the mediation of some historian’s interpretation. It’s the most immediate contact with the past you can have.”
The channel’s ultimate aim is to be part of the new evangelisation. “The purpose of this and other communication by ACHS is similar to St Luke’s in the Acts of the Apostles: to tell the story of the past of the Catholic community so that present-day Catholics see what tradition they have been born or converted into – as role models, warnings, and just to understand what they’re carrying forward,” Franklin explained.
The Catholic Weekly suggested that the Catholic Church might have been roughly handled by the film industry.
“Well, it’s been somewhat neglected by the Australian film industry, but I don’t know about treated badly,” was Franklin’s riposte. “The Devil’s Playground and Brides of Christ are watchable, even if ludicrous in parts. Anyway, if the church doesn’t like their treatment in film, they could make their own, as they did successfully with radio and Dr Rumble.”
Archbishop Mannix and Cardinal Pell each has his own playlist of videos. “That reflects their high public profile, which meant that people were always sticking film cameras in front of them,” said Professor Franklin. “When Pell was asked a question, he’d usually answer it, so there is plenty of interesting video on record.”
A surprising inclusion is Jordan Peterson’s interview with “the Mad Monk”, former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, about his faith and his “botched pursuit of Catholic priesthood”.
What impressed him most? The saints.
A playlist of “saints and potential saints” includes St Mary MacKillop, Eileen O’Connor, Dr Mary Glowrey, Caroline Chisholm, Msgr John Hawes, and World War II photojournalist Damien Parer. “The saints are all impressive. A pity there aren’t really good video treatments of Mary MacKillop, and none on Irene McCormack or Rosemary Goldie,” said Franklin.
What is Franklin’s next project? He has two of them – a book of essays entitled The Necessities Underlying Reality: Connecting Philosophy of Mathematics, Ethics and Probability and a book about the mysterious disappearance of the merchant ship Madagascar laden with goldrush gold on a voyage from Melbourne to London in 1853. A polymath indeed.
