I was quick to accept the invitation to give this Bishop Michael Putney Memorial Lecture for at least three reasons: first, because this may be the last of these Lectures I attend as Archbishop of Brisbane, given my impending retirement; secondly, because Michael was a great friend of mine, and I thought it was time to reflect publicly not only on him but on the ways he influenced me; and thirdly, because I have come to believe more and more in the importance of the ecumenical journey of which this Lecture is part.
But let me begin by going back a long way, in fact to the very beginning. In the Book of Genesis we are told that after God has created woman and brought her to the man, the man exclaims, “This at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh” (2:23). We are in Paradise, the garden of God’s ecstasy which is our true home; and this is the cry of ecstasy which passes from God into the human being and from the human being into the world. It is the cry of nuptial love, but it is also the cry of a love which reaches beyond the couple and into the cosmos. It is the cry of the communion which comes from God and returns to God, a communion from which nothing and no-one is excluded.
After Adam and Eve have turned from the garden and made their way out into the desert (Gen 3:23-24), two sons are born to them, Cain and Abel (Gen 4:1-2). Each can say to the other, “You are bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh”: they are brothers, born of the communion of Adam and Eve. In the Fall (Gen 3:1-7), however, the communion between God and the human being has been ruptured (Gen 3:16b); but now in the crucial first scene outside the garden the communion between brother and brother is ruptured. According to Scripture, it is an unfailing logic: if we get things wrong with God, we get things wrong with each other and vice versa.
Cain murders his brother. Yet God, it seems, has kept an eye on things out in the desert and wants to pursue a dialogue even beyond the Fall. “Where is Abel your brother?” God asks. The question echoes the first question heard in the Bible, “Where are you?”, which God asks Adam after the Fall. In Scripture, whenever God asks a question, it’s not because God doesn’t know the answer. It’s a given of biblical narrative that God always knows everything. Therefore, if God asks a question, it’s to summon the human being into the knowledge which God already has. Both the earlier question and now this one clearly don’t ask just about physical location. The questions are metaphysical in force. God asks, “Where are you in the scheme of things? Place yourself, human being: are you God? or are you nothing?” – which are the only two options the serpent has proposed. Or are you, as Scripture claims, a creature possessed of a unique and magnificent dignity, created in God’s image, flesh and bone of God, called by God to be a co-creator (cf Gen 2:19)? Insofar as the human being answers this question rightly, the return to Paradise will be possible. But insofar as the human being fails to answer it rightly, the desert looms endlessly.
God’s question to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?”, has that metaphysical force: you who have murdered your brother, place him in the scheme of things. There is pathos in the question’s form, because it contains its own right answer; it’s as if God is prompting Cain. But there is a still deeper pathos in Cain’s answer, “I do not know: am I my brother’s keeper?” He thinks he’s being smart, but he’s speaking the truth: Cain does not know where his brother is in the scheme of things and doesn’t know where he himself is. He has lost his brother, and he himself is lost. In answer to Cain, God could have said, “No, Cain, you are not your brother’s keeper, you are your brother’s murderer. But the deeper truth is that you are not your brother’s keeper, you are your brother’s brother”. Then we are told that Cain, wallowing in self-pity, goes off to dwell in the land of Nod, east of Eden (Gen 4:16). The Hebrew verb nod means to wander. So Cain drifts off into the land of wandering, and the Bible’s call to the human being at that point is to turn all our wandering into journeying; and the great journey which Scripture recounts is the return to Paradise, coming home to the garden, the world of perfectly right relationship in which the human being shares the ecstasy of God.
In Christian understanding, the human journey back to Paradise takes a decisive turn when Mary says yes to the angel’s invitation to be mother of the royal messiah (Luke 1:38), which is why in many paintings of the scene there is a garden through the window. This is no decorative detail; the garden is Paradise glimpsed. But, again in Christian understanding, it is only when Jesus rises from the dead that the gates of Paradise are thrust open and he is the first to return home to the garden; and where he has gone the whole creation, and all human beings as part of it, are called to follow. He rises in a garden, and Mary Magdalene, when she sees him, even thinks he’s the gardener (John 20:15). Here again the garden is no decorative detail; it is Paradise.
Against that background, let me turn from Mary Magdalene to the rather different figure of Michael Putney. I first came to know him in the late 1970s when we were both young priests, and I was invited to lead a Holy Week retreat at the seminary where Michael was Vice-Rector. There was an immediate rapport which grew stronger when not much later we were both in Rome for higher studies, Michael doing a Doctorate in Theology with an ecumenical theme at the Gregorian University and me doing the Licentiate in Scripture at the Biblical Institute just across the piazza.
It was in those years that a friendship grew which lasted until Michael’s death and still lingers as far as I’m concerned. In my room at Wynberg I have a photo of the two of us in St Peter’s Square after the canonisation of St Mary MacKillop in 2010. I often look at it and think what a loss it was when Michael died at the age of 67. I thought this especially through the years of our Plenary Council journey in Australia. Michael would have been a unique resource for the Council, with his theological expertise, his love of the Church, his wisdom, his balance, his good sense, his diplomatic skill and his gift for friendship. We really did miss him.
When I came to Brisbane as Archbishop in 2012 I thought one of the big pluses was having Michael just up the road, as it were, in Townsville. Until his death in March 2014, I often rang him to chat about the Archdiocese of Brisbane which at that stage he knew much better than I. He was a fount of corporate knowledge, sane advice and good humour. Then as he was dying he came to stay with me at Wynberg in January 2014 for about three weeks. We sat for hours on the verandah talking of many things, including his funeral – uncomfortably for me though not for him. These final conversations made me more conscious than ever of how important he had been in my life and what a loss he would be to us all. After he died and we had laid him in his tomb in the Townsville cathedral, I found myself thinking at times – especially when facing some seemingly insoluble problem – that I should ring Michael for a chat. But the best I could manage was a plaintive request that he pray for me and us, which I trust he does.
By nature and by vocation Michael was an ecumenist. George Pell, who could hardly have been more different in temperament, once described him, with a touch of affection, as “a hopeless eirenicist” – by which I presume George meant a man given to peace at any cost, an appeaser. Yet that wasn’t the Michael I knew. True, he was a peace-maker by nature; but he was that because he had an unusual ability to see things through the eyes of the other and, even more importantly, a great gift of friendship. Michael befriended his ecumenical companions; he actually liked them. He saw them not as the other, but as human beings just like him, even as brothers and sisters. Hearing him talk of going to yet another ecumenical meeting was like hearing someone talk of going not to a religious gathering but to a family reunion. This was no less true of meetings with those who were not Christian as it was with Christians. He had a heart big enough for everyone.
Yet what drove Michael most deeply was a vision of Paradise. He never forgot where we had come from, what was our true home, and where we were destined to return. Even in difficult times, and he grappled with depression in his early years as priest, that vision never failed him. Michael understood in a deep and unusual way that Paradise was the ecology of God, that we are flesh and blood to each other, brothers and sisters, not strangers or enemies; and he was prepared to dedicate his life to that understanding and its implementation. That’s why he was an ecumenist. It wasn’t some ecclesiastical hobby; it was his vocation; it was his life.
Michael’s witness and work were a major part of shaping my own sense of the importance of the ecumenical and interreligious journey. In my earlier life, I tended to see ecumenism as one of those things best left to those, like Putney, who had a penchant for it. I had simply too many other things to deal with, or so it seemed. I would say to Michael at times that ecumenism was a form of eschatology – that Christians would be one only when the Lord Jesus returns on the clouds – and that I preferred to dedicate my energies to more immediate goals. Yet Putney eventually wore me down, or stirred me up, though he wasn’t the only one.
He was aided and abetted by others like the Taizé community and in particular the charismatic figure of the Prior, Brother Roger, who had a deep and lasting influence on me, visionary of Paradise that he was. From my seminary days I read his books, received the newsletter, sang the chants, even did a retreat at the monastery and in recent years welcomed to my house in Brisbane two of the monks, including Brother Alois, the Catholic successor to Brother Roger as Prior who was succeeded last year by Brother Matthew of Anglican background.
The only time I actually met Brother Roger was when I met Pope John Paul II for the last time on the Australian bishops’ ad limina visit to Rome in 2004. I was then an Auxiliary Bishop of Melbourne, so I went in to meet the Pope with the other Melbourne bishops. But in some ways more memorable than meeting John Paul, and certainly more surprising, was to meet Brother Roger with a few monks of Taizé as soon as we came out of the papal audience. They were next in to see him. I introduced myself to Brother Roger in my best French, and he seemed even more surprised than I was. He was quite frail and hard of hearing, but I spoke loudly and he seemed to understand. The next time I saw him was at the funeral of John Paul in April 2005. Roger himself was dead by August of that year.
Under the influence of such people and as the world grew more polarised, I came to a stronger sense that Christian disunity was almost absurd, certainly counter-productive. How could we speak credibly of a mission to the world, a mission of communion, if we weren’t prepared to give ourselves for the healing of the wounds of disunity among Christians, and even for a new kind of fraternity among the world’s religions, especially Judaism, Christianity and Islam – and this without abandoning anything of our own identity but entering more deeply into our true identity?
Here the prophetic witness and work of Pope Francis has helped me see more. Michael died early in the Francis pontificate, and I sometimes wonder what he would have made of the Pope’s ministry of communion, which is perhaps even more remarkable beyond Christianity than within it. He too is a visionary of Paradise; he too understands in a deep and unusual way the ecology of God; and he sees his ministry as Bishop of Rome as a service of a communion which is not just ecclesial but global. He sees that service as important for the peace of the world at a time when peace can seem a mirage.
You have only to read his 2020 Encyclical Letter Fratelli Tutti to see how Pope Francis understands his service. The title is taken from St Francis of Assisi, perhaps the greatest visionary of Paradise the Western Church has ever known. It was St Francis who in 1219 laid his life on the line by leaving the Christian camp in Egypt to go and meet the Sultan al-Malik al-Kamil, who was known to be a pious man. It seemed a suicide mission. Remarkably, however, a slightly battered Francis was eventually admitted to the Sultan’s presence where he spoke of Jesus Christ as Saviour of the world. It seems the Sultan recognised holiness when he saw it. Though his advisers counselled execution, al-Kamil not only spared Francis but invited him to stay on for a week as his honoured guest and interlocutor. When the Saint came to leave, the Sultan offered him lavish gifts but he declined, accepting only an ivory horn which to this day is displayed in Assisi. This extraordinary encounter with all its risks could happen only because of Francis’ vision of what was possible, in the end his vision of Paradise. He saw the Sultan not as his archenemy but as a brother, his own flesh and blood. Brother Sultan was, by the way, so impressed by St Francis that he gave his brothers, the Franciscan friars, sole custody of the Christian holy places, which they have retained to this day.
The Pope took the name Francis when he was elected; and it’s not by chance that he follows in the footsteps of the Saint in reaching out beyond the bounds of the Christian world. Just recently, he was welcomed by the Grand Imam at the Istaqlal Mosque in Jakarta; in 2019 he signed a joint statement in Abu Dhabi with Sheik Ahmad el-Tayeb, Grand Imam at Egypt’s al-Azhar Mosque who, the Pope has said, inspired him to write Fratelli Tutti; and there have been many other important meetings with Muslim leaders. Such meetings are a kind of redefining of the Petrine ministry, as the papacy yet again morphs to meet the needs of the time, drawing upon the past in creative ways.
As an aside, I might add that my growing contact with Islam through the years has helped me not only to understand Islam better but also to understand more of what it means to be Christian and how the Church might take its place in the world. Many years ago, when I was a young priest, I had my first taste of dialogue with Muslims, and it wasn’t easy to find a common language. I wasn’t sure how to get my foot in the door. In the meantime, I have lived in Rome with an Australian priest who had served in Pakistan and was studying at the Islamic Institute; from him I learnt a good deal. It was also in Rome that I studied Koranic Arabic for two semesters and even passed an exam, though I’m almost embarrassed to say so because I’ve forgotten most of it by now. I’ve lived for a time in countries with a strong Muslim presence, and I’ve visited countries which are predominantly Muslim, the muezzin’s call echoing through the day. In January of this year I was, like Pope Francis, in Jakarta where I visited the Istaqlal Mosque and was received by the Grand Imam. In Brisbane, at a time of considerable anti-Muslim feeling, I joined other Christian leaders in sitting down with Muslim leaders to ask how we might work together for the sake of concord. This was really an experience of getting to know each other, which is surely how we get a foot in the door and where we begin to find a common language.
From his days as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Pope Francis has also built close relationships with Jewish leaders like Rabbi Abraham Skorka with whom he co-authored a book and whom he has invited to Rome more than once. The Pope visited Israel in 2014 and the Roman Synagogue in 2016, although in more recent times he has been drawn into the political and diplomatic maelstrom of the current conflict in the Middle East with a number of Jewish leaders critical of the Pope for what they judge to be a failure to condemn unequivocally the terrorist attacks on Israel. Whatever his personal views may be or the urgings of his Jewish friends, the Pope is constrained by the long-standing diplomacy of the Holy See in the region. Diplomacy can be a powerful instrument, but faced with the apocalypse it can also have its limits, as the Church discovered when attempting to deal with Nazi Germany. Faced with the infernal situation in the Middle East, it’s hard to follow the diplomatic path and even harder to focus the vision of Paradise.
As another aside, I might add that my own higher studies of the Bible and my teaching of it, both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, have given me a profound reverence for Judaism and its holy texts, by which I mean supremely the Bible but also the rabbinic writings from which I have learnt so much, especially perhaps about the interplay of absence and presence and the relationship between text and interpretation. The Bible and the rabbis have helped me see that spiritually we are all Semites, which is why I was keen to agree when it was put to me that we accommodate Brisbane’s Holocaust Museum in our cathedral precinct. The study and teaching of the Hebrew Bible, my learning of the Hebrew language and my two longer stints in Jerusalem have helped me understand more of who I am, who the Church is, what it means to be human and why Jewish people have made a disproportionate contribution to human culture, especially in music, art, literature, philosophy and science. These experiences have also helped me to grasp more deeply and joyfully the ecology of God, to know more of who God really is.
Beyond the human world, the vision of Paradise and the service of communion expand still further to embrace the created world. Here again the figure of St Francis looms large. In 2015, the Pope published another Encyclical Letter with a title taken from the Saint, Laudato Si. These are words of his ecstatic hymn of praise of the Creator for the creation where St Francis addresses Brother Sun and Sister Moon. Again the Pope reaches back into the past to speak a word that is new, at least in the papal magisterium. Laudato Si is ground-breaking because it offers a distinctively biblical and Christian voice in the cacophony of voices surrounding questions of the environment or, as the Pope prefers to say, “care for our common home”. Pope Francis speaks not as a scientist, an economist, a politician, a lobbyist or an ideologue, but as a believer who contemplates the created world with the Creator’s eye and finds it good, as did God in the beginning (Gen 1:25) – and not only good but beautiful and wondrous, a gift beyond all telling. This is a contemplation which learns to see more, to pay attention in the way that lies at the heart of the Christian monastic tradition: the early monks, following the Stoics, called that attention in Greek prosochē. It’s the deep attentiveness of which Mary Oliver speaks in her poem “Sometimes”, where she writes this:
Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
Once you really pay attention, “see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower”, as William Blake put it, you discover the astonishing interconnectedness of all things. You see the truth that we are stardust and are connected therefore to all creatures and to all that is created in ways we had scarcely imagined. You understand why St Paul, in the Letter to the Romans, says that “the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now” (8:22), underscoring that the Resurrection of Christ is a cosmic event. You understand also why and how St Francis could call sun and moon, wind and water, fire and earth brother and sister. They are part of us, our flesh and blood, and we are part of them.
All of these ecumenisms move in ever expanding circles – from peace within the Churches, to peace among the Churches and other Christian communities, to peace within and between Judaism and Islam, to peace within and among the other religions of the world, to peace among all human beings, and to peace within and with the whole of creation. All these look to the peace of Paradise, which draws us into the ecstasy of God’s peace which, in Christian understanding, is to speak of the Trinity, the three persons bound eternally in a love so perfect that there is only one God.
In the history of Christianity, the dynamic of renewal has always been “back to the future”, which is why the Second Vatican Council stressed the need for ressourcement, a return to the sources. The further back we go, the further ahead we see. Remembrance is the antidote to myopia. As we seek new paths on the ecumenical journey, we need to go back perhaps to the beginning, as far back as we can go, back to Paradise, the garden where it all began. This is because we are constantly beset by a kind of amnesia. We are always in danger of forgetting Paradise, forgetting that the garden is our true home, that our mother-tongue is doxology or praise which is the language of Paradise, and that we will find our way into the ecstasy of God only if we find our way back to the garden. That kind of forgetting leads us to think that there is only the desert which is the land of death where brother kills brother, sister kills sister, where you are always my enemy, never my flesh and blood.
The desert is the land where the false gods reign, murderers as they are. They are the liars who always leave us where and as we are, curling up in the waste-land waiting for death which is all we can hope for. The real God, however, never leaves us where and as we are. The root-metaphor of the Bible is the journey, which is why Scripture is full of journey stories great and small. For the Bible, the real God is a dislocating God who moves us from one location to another, from the desert back to the garden. The dislocation involves a wrench which can be painful, but without it we are lost forever in the land of death and all those other “d” words – devastation, destruction, division, deceit, desolation, all of which lead to death. One crucial way in which the real God moves us resolutely in a homeward direction is by urging us to remember. That’s why the Bible is a great monument to remembering, a story which will not allow us to forget, a text for which one of the key words for sin is “to forget”, keeping in mind that sin and death are strictly correlative in Scripture (cf Gen 1:16, 3:19) and that to forget therefore is to die.
The call to remember is fundamental to Christian worship as at the epicentre of the Eucharist we recite the words of Jesus himself, “Do this is memory of me”. This is not an empty memorial of something long past or a kind of reminiscent role play. The Greek word for this kind of remembering is anamnesis which speaks of a remembrance so potent – indeed so Spirit-inspired – that it makes present the one who is remembered. Therefore, in the understanding of many Christians what we do in memory of him makes present the body broken and the blood poured out for the life of the world.
In Catholic understanding, there is a soaring ecological dimension to this, because the bread and wine placed upon the altar are symbolic of the entire creation. The Spirit’s transfiguring of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ foreshadows the transfiguring of the whole creation into Christ to the point where, as St Paul says, “God will be all in all” (1 Cor 15:28). Here remembrance becomes prophecy as words from the past foretell what the future will bring. Both the past and the future become present.
The former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams once said that as a bishop you need three things: the strength of an ox, the hide of a rhinoceros and the memory of an elephant. He was right of course, and I would say of Michael Putney that, whatever about his strength and his hide, he did have the memory of an elephant. He was a remembering man, though in the rich and deep sense that I have suggested is typically biblical. Michael saw a long way ahead because he saw a long way back, right to the beginning in fact. That’s why he could face death with such peace of soul. He knew he was going home.
He has gone before us, too early as far as I can see, though not perhaps within the providence of God. Death has claimed him, but he’s still with us in mysterious ways: as the Irish say, “You have gone no further from us than to God, and God is very near”. Michael is still with us in that grand oikumenē we call the communion of saints, the glorious connectedness which we celebrate here this evening. It is that communion which will lead us home to God at journey’s end, out of the desert back to the garden where Cain will finally know and embrace Abel his brother. Amen.