And a good time (and a good time and a good time and a good time) was had by all

I arrived home at 11:45pm last night after four great “parties” in a row. Here is the story:

Party One: The (mostly) Melbourne (mostly) Catholic Bloggers Get-together.
Location: My office.
Time: 4pm
Attendees: Joshua of Psallite Sapienter (the excuse for the Get-together as he was visiting from WA), Jeff Tan of One Bread, One Body, Athanasius of the Regensburg Conspiracy, and Fraser Pearce of Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum (the lone non-Catholic — he is proving very resistant to our attempts to convert him!).
Apologies: Marco Vervoost (aka Bob Catholic) of 3rd Blog from the right and Shannon Donahoo (ex-blogger, now Corpus Christi Seminary student)
Not invited because not Catholic but might as well have come anyway since Fraser was there (we’ll ask him next time just to spice up the conversation): LP Cruz of Extra Nos, Past Elder (but he lives to far away anyway)
Served: Good coffee from my office espresso machine and Halal bikkies.

Party Two: Monica O’Shea’s farewell party
Location: The courtyard outside my office at the Cardinal Knox Centre
Time: 5pm
Attendees: Monica, of course, of Miss Monification, who is on her way to London to work for the Soho parish, all the above mentioned bloggers, our hosts, Jim O’Farrell and the staff of Catholic Communications, other Archdiocesan staff and loads of interesting people.
Served: BBQ sausages and beer and good wine.

Party Three: Dr Tracey Rowland’s Book Launch of “Ratzinger’s Faith”
Location: Thomas Carr Centre
Time: 6:30pm
Attendees: Tracey, her husband Stewart who did the honours of MCing the event, His Lordship, Bishop Peter Elliot (who spoke very entertainingly about “Ratzinger’s Faith” chief publishing rival “Joseph and Chico“), His Grace, Archbishop Denis Hart, students and friends of the John Paul II Institute, and a host of other very, very interesting people
Served: Excellent finger food and loads of good wine.

Party Four: Impromptu gathering after the St Stephen’s Guild mass in the Cathedral
Location: Spaghetti Tree, Bourke Street
Time: 9pm
Attendees: Fr Gregory Pritchard, two visiting Kentucky priests of the Fathers of Mercy mission team, Fraser and self.
Served: Coffee and Brushetta (with too much onion).

A good time really was had by all.

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11 Responses to And a good time (and a good time and a good time and a good time) was had by all

  1. Joshua says:

    It certainly was great, David, tho’ I do hope you and others rightly commuted your Friday penance to something other than abstention from meat, as Paul VI counsels… ;-)

  2. Joshua says:

    BTW, one of Fraser’s comments – about how the lacksadaisical liturgical behaviour of Aussie priests, as witnessed by him as a Lutheran, seems to belie Catholic belief in the Real Presence – seemed worthy of blogging about; I’ve gone into greater detail at my own page.

    As Trent said, Irreverence can never be separated from impiety.

  3. Past Elder says:

    Whudabout Christine?

    The Aussie lay apologist Frank Sheed once wrote that it might be easier to convince people of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist if they could see a little more of a real presence of Christ in the Catholic.

    You guys still read him? I’m looking at his “Theology and Sanity”, sitting on my bookshelf right next to some Teilhard (which is in turn next to some Derrida, in turn next to a Reform rabbi’s take on Scripture, in turn next to “The Acting Person” by a guy named Wojtyla, in case you think all I do is click here, Pastor Weedon’s blog and the SSPX site).

    But thanks for the thought — and for calling me non Catholic.

    Stand firm Brother Fraser!

  4. Schütz says:

    You need a new library cataloguing system, Terry.

    And yes, Josh, I went to confession and Mass earlier in the day.

  5. Past Elder says:

    Well, these days I only bother with a few books, except when I have to look something up when out blogging — Concordia Edition ESV, McCain Edition BofC, The Lutheran Hymnal, God Grant It! (a posthumous collection of Walther passages for daily reading) and the Hertz Chumash.

    The “system” is supposed to be alpha by author — but how Derrida got between Teilhard and Sandmel (the Reform rabbi) I don’t know, but I guess it fits, him being a deconstructionist and all.

    Hey, anybody read the Jerome Biblical Commentary any more? Got that one as a gift.

  6. Joshua says:

    Oh yes, Frank Sheed is great. Unfortunately he’s on my other set of theology bookshelves, the one in Tasmania about 2970km away….

    Who is this Walther? I see that PW likes to quote him.

  7. Past Elder says:

    Walther was the first president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. He came from Germany as a missionary to the USA. He’s sometimes called the “American Luther”. There’s a fairly good article on him in Wiki.

    My particular fondness for him comes from this: he came here hoping to find relief from the state enforced union of Lutheran and Reformed churches into a generic Protestantism, only to find Lutherans here quite willing to compromise Lutheranism with generic American Protestantism, and spent his life here in the cause of confessional Lutheranism. Since we now face much the same challenge with the current face of generic American Protestantism, much of what he wrote could have been written yesterday.

  8. LYL says:

    David, does one address a bishop (not an archbishop) as “Your Lordship”? I’ve never actually met one – “only” Archbishops.

  9. Joshua says:

    David,

    May I answer on your behalf?

    In Australia and other Commonwealth countries, one addresses a bishop as “My Lord”, and an archbishop as “Your Grace”. In the third person, they are referred to as “His Lordship” and “His Grace” respectively. This derives from the English medieval aristocratic system whereby bishops ranked as barons and archbishops as dukes.

    I understand in the US the proper term is “Your Excellency”.

  10. Schütz says:

    Quite right. The Bishops in England were members of the house of Lords, hence they were all “my Lord”, whereas the two Archbishops of Canterbury and York were seated among the Dukes in the House, and hence were addressed as Dukes, “Your Grace”. This custom is followed in all the dominions of Her Maj.

  11. LYL says:

    Thankyou, gentlemen, very helpful.

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