Ted Kennedy

When we first came to Sydney from Adelaide in 1968 several of our friends gave us advice about the Catholic Church in this city. In particular:

  • to understand the Sydney Church read Tom Kenneally’s Three Cheers for the Paraclete; and
  • make sure we get to know Ted Kennedy, if we wanted to see the Church as it really can be.

Reflections/Memories of Redfern Community

So many memories and reflections come crowding in as they have for everyone else, no doubt; the following are a few random ones:

Arriving at Redfern (St Vincent’s) for the first time was like coming home. I loved the "place" for being raw, earthy, sparse. I loved its gutsy Word, and its liberating unpredictability. I both loved and hated its dis-comforting challenges. I marvelled at the birds-in-residence.

Reflections on Redfern

When I go to the Redfern Church I feel that I am surrounded by many people of immense spiritual strength and independence. People of like mind and persuasion who follow the true intent of Jesus’ teaching – and lead their lives guided by their conscience rather than a doctrine. I feel at ease in the church and even though there is a city outside it is pretty peaceful.

Sacred site

In the middle of the 1970’s Mark Raper S.J., then Director of the Jesuit “Asian Bureau”, asked me to write an article on the links between contemplation and social awareness/action. Mark could have supposed that I might know something about contemplation, though that would have been a somewhat doubtful assumption. It is true that I had, been living a completely enclosed `contemplative” life for twelve years, before the changes f Vatican II brought our contemplative, Eucharistic life back to earth and back to an earthed theology of Eucharist. I wanted to write the article. I … Continue reading

Snapshots of Ted

My dad may have been a truck driver and a laundryman but he ran his service as a business and he kept his Bondi family in creature comforts. Good sheets and pyjamas were de rigueur. When I got to university, Ted as chaplain was a shock not just intellectually, but physically. As we became close friends we slept in the same room several times – in huts, at Newman Society camps, at Araluen, and so on. Ted seemed to have no concern for pyjamas. He dossed down in shorts, shirts, old coats, pants (still with … Continue reading

A personal reflection

My earliest memories of St Vincent’s concern the church itself.

By late ‘71 I was back in Sydney after having done the rounds of “training” by the then policy of Conscription which took some of my peers off to their deaths or reduced them to a traumatised state in Vietnam. Others, like myself who were considered poor military material were given softer options. I mention this personal historical detail because I think that St Vincent’s offers a challenge in real life terms to anyone who is prepared to come to … Continue reading

St Vincent’s Redfern

But alas for you Pharisees! You pay your tithes of mint and rue and all sorts

of garden herbs and overlook justice and the love of God. (Luke 41/42)

Many years ago, my husband, Ted Burke, and I became very tired of listening to sermons about Money – Children Crying – causing us to leave Mass on Sunday in a very angry frame of mind. We needed a depth to our Faith. Two of our daughters had made Redfern THEIR Church. Just a case of parents following their daughters.

Ted Kennedy & Redfern – a brief reflection

I first came to Redfern on Trinity Sunday. I think the year was 1981. We had recently moved to Sydney, were living in West Ryde, a fair way from Redfern, and had attended Mass at various parishes near where we lived.

On this particular Sunday, having heard of Ted Kennedy and Redfern, we decided to go there. I saw a man who was older than I expected but whose voice was strong enough to fill the church. When it was time for the sermon, I sat back and remember thinking … Continue reading