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

Mother Angelica Of The Annunciation – A Good News Woman

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 – What The World Needs

On this date, April 18, in 1521, before the Diet Of Worms (an assembly of the Holy Roman Empire called to work out how to respond to the challenges of the teachings of Martin Luther), Luther took a courageous stand for intellectual innovation and religious freedom.

Christianity has been the constantly evolving and dominant moral foundation of The West for most of the past two thousand years.

In 2023, the Christian faith and life is now under secular attack on many fronts.

If it can stay true to the moral core of Jesus, it will survive.

But, as in the days of Martin Luther, that will require a judicious mix of courage, creativity and freedom.

I hope I can help.

Geoff Fox, grandson of theologians, 18th April, 2023, Down Under