An invocation that starts with two words inspired by Cardinal George Pell’s wish that his tombstone declare “Vehementer amavit dominum et ecclessiam.” (He passionately loved the Lord and the Church):
Amor Domini/with child/not of this world/unfailing triumph/Emmanuel.
Amor Domini can mean either Love of God or Love for God.
All praise to Mother Mary, easily the greatest mum of all time.
Geoff Fox, former Registered Midwife, December 28, 2025, Melbourne, Australia
AN OPEN LETTER LIST OF IDEAS FOR DANIEL MADIGAN, TNC
Dear Innkeeper D. Madigan,
As an attender of masses on your premises, I am your congregant.
I send you this list as a Xmas present.
It names, and in some cases discusses, things that I think you and I and others on your premises should talk about more next year.
According to John 1:1, Logos is God.
According to me, that means that when people talk with each other, they are living in The Word, living in God.
This December, you have achieved a hat trick of three consecutive Advents during and in between which you have not been able to have a single decent discussion with me of even one of the numerous ideas I have put to you.
In recognition of your achievement, I both present you this list of ideas I want to talk about and declare you to be a Terra Nullius Christian, by which I mean a Christian who has the ability to ignore the legitimacy of the claims and/or ideas of a human being in his sphere of influence, in this case the Inn or accommodation establishment known as Newman College.
A. La ilaha IllAllah; la ikraha fiddin. This is an anti-terrorist formulation invented by me (as far as I know). I put it on top of the list, because I see a horrible Islamophobia in recent days in Australia. What could we do with these words at your Inn?
B. Being small-c Catholic. The church is declining. To slow down the decline it needs to broaden ways to participate.
C. Being an asmaulhusma poet. Kiai Mustofa Bsiri bestowed this compliment on me in his home in Rembang in the 1990’s. It is one of the proudest honours I have ever received.
D. What to do to respect the art display I created at Barak Obama’s first school, the Assisi Primary School in Jakarta.
E. Discussing the unfairness to women of the 12 game AFLw season. One of your female staff has avoided a hat trick like yours by showing strong support for discussion of this issue among your residents next year.
F. Helping single mums in Dili, and through to Indonesia, and in doing so, celebrate the the precepts of R A Kartini. I got support for the start of this idea from an important woman in Dili last year, but not a shred of positive acknowledgement from anyone else in your Inn.
G. http://www.the-crucified-cardinal.com When I was removed from a church service door and physically and sexually assaulted by police in 2022, your predecessor Fr Frank Brennan wrote a note to Melbourne Magistrates Court (for the subsequent legal proceeding where I was put on trial), drawing the court’s attention to aspects of the injustice committed against Cardinal Pell. The book in which Frank wrote that note could and should be a treasured possession in your Inn’s library. Could you show a really good capacity to discuss this website and my experiences with me?
H. http://www.motherhoodsmatter.com I was a Registered Midwife for thirty years. I prophesy that a good future wave of feminism will reduce misandry and increase respect for mothers. Do you want to help me try to make that happen?
Daniel, you do not get thirty grand a year from me for a room at Newman.
You get ideas.
That mostly get ignored.
No room at the inn.
Three Advents in a row.
As Ned is reputed to have said, ” Such Is Life.” ??????
Or can you and the hundreds or thousands strong community you lead get better at talking with me next year ???????
I hope you share a really positive New Years Resolution along those lines with me on January 1st.
What are my chances?
Would you prefer a double hat trick next Advent?
Geoff Fox, 11.00 a.m, Xmas Day, 2025, Newman College, Parkville, Australia
At the request of the director of Music of Newman College, where I was a marginalised, old congregant whose ideas as a former Registered Midwife for women were too often scorned, I have removed a spontaneous film, full of my love for art, of a version of Silent Night which IMHO did for that song what John Lennon did for emotional honesty on the Plastic Ono band album to be later echoed in my ears by Paul MacCartney on his glorious enigmatic letter in a song to Lennon, Dear Friend. To borrow from the title of the 1881 painting above by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, this Silent Night, like Dear Friend and Love and Isolation and Ram On and Dragonfly et carmina alia, was a Song Of The Angels.
I am hurt by the director’s EMPHATIC closure of his doors to me.
Of such bricks from accomodation businesses was the marginalisation of Jesus AT HIS BIRTH built 2025 years ago.
Of such bricks is the continued marginalisation of women in the Roman Catholic Church built. One good woman there had green lit what I did. To be overruled.
Of such bricks are the modern misandry and its attendant Gender Suicide Gap slowly and selfishly built by people in positions of protected unaccountable privilege and power.
Omnia omnibus?
Not at Newman.
Geoff Fox, former congregant, a sad revision on January 6, 2026, of a December 7 post titled “Beauty At Newman #1”, 2025, Melbourne, Australia.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
IMHO, as a man who was a midwife for three decades and who always found an extra touch of warmth in Catholic hospitals, deep respect for motherhood (and fatherhood) is at the very heart of what makes Catholicism so special.
The above image of The Virgin Mary is from Leonardo’s painting of the annunciation which is now found in Uffizi, Italy. She is beautiful.
Female beauty is an irreplaceable element of the overall power of motherhood in the human realm.
Mother Mary Angelica Of The Annunciation, who was born 100 years ago today in Canton, Ohio, rose from poverty to build a massive television empire to protect and extend the reach of her faith.
She maintained long standing Western values which the modern world destroys. For instance :
“The woman is a gentle, loving bond who encourages, consoles, builds, reconciles, and makes all things new and vibrant. The woman is strength in time of suffering, courageous in failure, intuitive in time of danger. A woman is ingenuous when all fails, resourceful in times of want, and a true helpmate for man.”
“We have become so accustomed to trees, mountains, sky, air, water, flowers, animals, vegetables and people that we no longer see them for what they are – God’s work.”
“When we begin to build walls of prejudice, hatred, pride, and self-indulgence around ourselves, we are more surely imprisoned than any prisoner behind concrete walls and iron bars.”
“Any form of over-indulgence creates within the body warning signs of destruction.”
Faith is important.
It must survive.
Geoff Fox, 20th April, 2023, Down Under
Ways Of Being Christian 