Author: MotherhoodsMatter

Beauty At Newman #1

Below is one of the most incompetent pieces of filming I have ever done.

I pointed the phone the wrong way and inadvertently filmed the floor and the people behind me instead of the front of the church and the ceiling.

But the voices of Gary Ekkel’s Newman College choir !!!!!!!

The still absorption into the melody on the faces of the listeners !!!!!!!

To borrow from the title of the 1881 painting at the top by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, this was a Song Of The Angels.

I hope no one is offended.

Geoff Fox, congregant, December 7, 2025, Newman College, Parkville, Australia.

Iosephus Lux Castissimus

I created this micromovie today at a very profoundly holy Catholic Church for Saint Joseph in Hadspen, Tasmania. The Latin mass survives there. Maintaining ancient cultures and languages cannot be achieved everywhere, but civilisation is in peril if the pillars of our oldest heritages are always replaced everywhere

(Iosephus) Lux Castissimus.

Patronus Pauperum.

The Most Chaste Light.

The Patron Of The Poor.

Saint Joseph.

AMDG

Geoff Fox, October 29, Pod Inn, Launceston, Tasmania

ECCE HOMO ALL THE WAY TO GOD

Ecce Homo.

Humanity glorified.

Bringing us to God.

Geoff Fox, October 27, 2025, Stone Cottage Guesthouse, 4 Church Street, Ross, Tasmania

I made this little movie today in The Church of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart in the peaceful village of Ross. The windows in this church were created by Melbourne stained glass artist William Montgomery.

Praise the Lord for the beautiful gift of life and all creation.

The words “Ecce homo.” (meaning “See this man.”) were spoken by Pontius Pilate to the crowd before Jesus was crucified.

Praying for Patrick and Eliza – And For Understanding Of Father Hunger

Father Hunger is an astonishingly insightful phrase that has been profoundly meaningful to me ever since I first heard it from my friend, poet Patrick McCauley, 2 or 3 decades ago. (Patrick is in mourning for the recent tragic loss of his deeply loved daughter, Eliza.)

This morning, I made this little prayer at the side of St Patrick’s cathedral, Melbourne, where there is a wonderful statue of St Francis of Assisi:

I am not sure if I know what Father Hunger is, but my instincts tell me that it’s a two way street.

Many men hunger to be the best fathers they can be.

And children hunger for fathering and mothering too.

We are all children of God.

Thank you, Lord, for all the possibilities you give to us including that free will which can bless us – and destroy ……..

Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam Patrumque Matrumque Filiarumque Filiorumque

May all children and parents find their divine glory in each other.

And solace in The Word if they can’t.

Geoff Fox, May 30, 2025, Melbourne, Aistralia

Religious Freedom, Thomas Jefferson And George Pell

Thomas Jefferson was born on the 13 April, 1743, in the American state of Virginia.

The 1786 Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom was a document Jefferson wanted to be remembered for.

These words are from this Statute: “Almighty God hath created the mind free ……. all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness ……. Truth is great, and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error …….”

On April 13, 2019, the imprisoned Cardinal George Pell received a letter from an anonymous Vatican writer which included this thought: “I am afraid that now you have to pay also for your unshaken Catholicity, but thus you are very close to the Lord.”

I have no doubt at all that Cardinal Pell now rests in peace.

But while I am alive, speaking up against the injustice done to him is something I need to do.

That Freedom And Necessity Of Speech is God-given.

Praise The Lord.

Geoff Fox, 13th April, 2025, Melbourne, Australia.

Ave Matilda

For me Cecil B Demille’s 1927 film, King Of Kings, is a visual feast, one of the most unremittingly great depictions of the story of Jesus I have ever seen.

In the above footage from the post Last Supper portion of DeMille’s film, Ave Maria is an obvious choice of melody for the relationship between Jesus and his mum.

Waltzing Matilda, which comes in at the half way mark of this clip, when the focus shifts to Peter, is less obvious.

Peter, an individual, betrayed Jesus, by denying knowing him three times, and thereby betrayed the group of individuals to which he belonged. His own conscience troubled Peter very deeply.

Waltzing Matilda, often called Australia’s unofficial national anthem, is also about betrayal. But it is the betrayal of the human rights of an individual denied his basic right to food by an unjust society.

The swaggy is driven to suicide, whereas Peter recovers to become the rock upon which the Christian church was built.

For me the fusion of these two different types of betrayal is very beautiful.

Perhaps a strange universality but it works for me.

But maybe in a world where there are so many more people than were alive 2 millennia ago, there was more individual freedom, and less betrayal of individuals by groups than happens now.

Something to think about.

And thinking is what living in The Word is all about for me.

Geoff Fox, Sunday, April 6, 2025, Melbourne, Australia

Kathleen Norris

Devout Catholic Norris was born in San Francisco on the 16th July 1880.

When she was 19 years old, her parents died and she became the head of her family. She went on to become one of the highest paid female writers in America:

“I wonder if children don’t begin to reject both poetry and religion for similar reasons, because the way both are taught takes the life out of them.”

“The Christian religion asks us to put our trust not in ideas, and certainly not in ideologies, but in a God …….. Who desires to be present to us in our ordinary circumstances.”

“If grace is so wonderful, why do we have such difficulty recognizing and accepting it? Maybe it’s because grace is not gentle or made-to-order. It often comes disguised as loss, or failure, or unwelcome change.”

“Prayer is not asking for what you think you want, but asking to be changed in ways you can’t imagine.”

“For grace to be grace, it must give us things we didn’t know we needed and take us places where we didn’t know we didn’t want to go. As we stumble through the crazily altered landscape of our lives, we find that God is enjoying our attention as never before.”

“But it is daily tasks, daily acts of love and worship that serve to remind us that the religion is not strictly an intellectual pursuit, and these days it is easy to lose sight of that as, like our society itself, churches are becoming more politicized and polarized. Christian faith is a way of life, not an impregnable fortress made up of ideas; not a philosophy; not a grocery list of beliefs.”

God Bless Faith.

The Foundation Of Understanding.

Geoff Fox, 16th July, 2023, Down Under

Incantations For Mums #1 Some Opening Thoughts On Australia’s Mother’s Day

This week, the week of The Ascension, I turn my attention down from the fatherly sky to the motherly earthly foundation of what we are.

A focus on Mary?

About four and three quarters of a year ago in Rembang, Java, the home of the Kartini Museum, I formulated this set of socio-philosophical principles about gender:

1. Men, women and children need to live with love.

This love is an indispensable foundation of human society.

2. Three fundamental mothering capacities differentiate women from men:

A The ability to carry and nurture life in the womb.

B The capacity to give birth to that life.

C The ability to give the best possible nutrition to new human beings by breast feeding.

3 These three qualitative differences give mothers and potential mothers some different human rights and responsibilities to the rights and responsibilities of other people.

4 The modern western demonisation of men and disempowerment of mothers are two sides of the same coin.

5 The cradle of human culture is maternal love.

6 True loving manliness empowers and protects mums.

7 When family life ceases to be a nation’s foundation, the nation’s death is inevitable.

On a very important day in a 175 year old church last year, I came up with the idea “Arma Virumque Me Cano” rewriting a line of war poetry by the Roman poet Vergil to make it more Catullan, less warlike.

In that spirit, I hope the above articulation of gender principles can evolve to become incantations of value to mums.

We need them.

And they need us.

Geoff Fox, 14th may, Australia’s Mother’s Day, 2023

(God Bless Andrea Mantegna of Mantua for creating the above image of Mother Mary to which I have added a few words.)

Reading Pell #1 David Farrer and Some Thought From Mark Twain

“There has been only one Christian. They caught him and crucified him …… “ – Mark Twain. (N.B. As with many things written by Mark Twain, I prefer enjoying the humour of this quote over pretending that I know whether or not every single part of it is true.)

When Anglican David Farrer was ordained as a bishop, Roman Catholic stalwart George Pell stood beside him.

Later, as a Cardinal trusted by both Pope Benedict and then Pope Francis, George Pell became the second most successful Australian Catholic ever behind Saint Mary of the Cross.

Some voices I have heard rate Pell’s prison journal as one of the greatest works of literature produced in Australia.

In the Catholic Weekly, independent schoolmaster Michael E Daniel wrote: “It ranks with other literature written by people of faith who suffered imprisonment, including Walter Ciszek, Francis Xavier Cardinal Nguyen Van Thuan and Thomas More, and may prove – with the test of time – to be a spiritual classic.”

Bishop David Farrer expresses his admiration of Cardinal George Pell’s prison journal in this clip made today. The bishop describes the journal as “remarkably uplifting” and helpful for prayer.

How can ordinary people make sense of all this?

Today is the 113th anniversary of Mark Twain’s death in 1910.

Perhaps the following words of Twain can help us to see that there is no single easy human way to fully comprehend why Pell’s life in Australia finished as it did:

“Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion – several of them.”

Geoff Fox, 21st April, 2023, Down Under