Mary MacKillop has moved a step closer to becoming the nation's first and only saint.
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She is the saint for all Australians, not merely Catholics or Christians. She can be fairly described as a South Australian saint. It was in the South-East, with the inspiration of Father Tenison Woods, that she donned a girlish black dress and dedicated her life to bringing her goodness to the roughneck bush community: to man, woman and child.
Her devotion extended beyond her Catholic flock. The recipients of her loving were her neighbours, especially the barefoot children.
She was ecumenical. She couldn't help it. This was March 19, 1866.
Perhaps she was peculiarly lucky. She was more than a century in advance of the stone-ground changes in the value systems of the Catholic Church when they began to happen at last.
It was almost certainly apocryphal, but many people close to the papacy claim that the Pope himself expressed the opinion that an Australian saint would be a good thing, but it would be better to offer a saint for all Australians.
The Order of the Sisters of St Joseph, the only indigenous Australian sisterhood (who began their moils and toils in Angas St, in this [Adelaide], the most sectarian city in Australia), have worked for half a century or more to make Rome aware of Mary MacKillop as the indefatigable battler.
Her goodness was allied to the Australian principle of obedience, prayer and getting things done even if it meant an occasional spat with the authorities, or finding a dollar where few dollars were to be found - a harmony of spirituality and true temporal grit.
It was about seven years ago, I think, that I came across the Mary MacKillop literature and became persuaded that this lady (who received a period of local excommunication for her feminist convictions over matters of no great moment to the Church and its disciplines) must be the saint for all Australians.
Firstly, she was an ecumenical before her time. Her consultants for all sorts of problems and programs were Mr Solomon, an elderly Jew, and Mrs Joanna Barr Smith, a lady of Anglican persuasion.
Secondly, she was a feminist who believed women should be frightened of nothing. Having taught a coterie of girls from Adelaide's poor and unwanted how to teach, she sent them where they were most in need, and alone. A system of railways was proliferating in SA. Wherever the lines extended, there were gangers, their wives and a prodigality of feral children. The Josephites followed them to the end of the lines protected only by their Christian faith and love. They slept in tents, in tin halls, and no harm came to any of them. They brought love of the kind which commands respect.
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It is strange that a sort of celibate man lived in this celibate girl. There was work, and a giving spirit. There was no such thing as a man's work or woman's work. If she could do it, she did it. Even now, the mass of Josephites have little deferential sense of gender separation.
The tradition is still present in this only Australian of sisterhoods. In the past couple of years, a West Australian sister felt she could change things in some ways if she went to the alti-plano of the Andes, grew vegetables and taught children. The teenage assassins of the Shining Path, the most vicious survivors in Peru of Maoism, poured into the village by night and shot her to pieces, slowly and tortuously.
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To me, she was a martyr. She is not presented as a martyr by the Josephites. She did what she had to do and a replacement for her was found almost on the instant.
This is also the way it worked in the Australia that once was, before female submission became the great Victorian virtue.
At this point, you may have growing suspicions that you have read something like this before. You have, and in this newspaper two years ago. My theory then was that Australians (especially its egocentric agnostics) were creating moods of mediocrity, vacuity, aimlessness of the mind and heart.
Raging materialism ceased to be what life was all about. And the SA past seemed to have died on us. Bannon, Mason, McDouall Stuart, Don Bradman - all brave models, but spiritual? Scarcely! Their forte was bravery beyond the confines of reason.
Then Mary MacKillop came into recent view - a woman, a Catholic and relatively unknown. It would be sounder journalism to back up her sanctification with colourful stories of the life of the little Penola school teacher. The task is too large.
The verification of her unique humanity, set in the Australian mind, was posited in a three-volume work of 1500 pages by Fr Paul Gardiner, a Jesuit posted to Rome, with the task of setting down every little detail of Mary's mind, motives and fidelity.
The final document went before the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints and, as I understand it, the hands of all 11 members were raised. It must have been a frustrating day for the devil's advocate! But it was a wonderful day for me. Not a single word I had written earlier had to be retracted.
But there is a bit of explaining to do. Why should a convoluted, demanding and non-rational private convention of the Catholic Church have relevance to, or tenable meanings for, agnostics, atheists, or strict Protestants, Jews or Islamics?
Phillip Adams made this point on the radio. Elderly gentlemen, he said, such as Max, have a propensity for love affairs with Mary MacKillops, ho hum! All those ridiculous miracles and visitations from the Virgin Mary.
All perfectly fair, albeit unconvincing about what constitutes a spiritual life, and whether Phillip has any aspirations towards a self above and beyond the aggregation of wisdom of which he is possessed, I don't know.
St Francis of Assisi and William Blake. These are some of my saints. Through such models, the purpose of life can be defined. The purpose of life is a kind of loving - and a defiance of hating.
It is that kind of self-questioning which asks whether you have realised the best in yourself, or live a self-delusion.
Mary MacKillop operated differently. She combined a search for the wellbeing of an isolated and desolate colonial Australia, along with a belief that each soul unconsciously aspires to a richer and better selfhood.
Mary MacKillop has moved that step closer to sainthood, an achievement of the white man's dreaming. There is no available commercial biography of what she did, so I can only invite you to join my joy at the arrival of an image of an Australian quality of goodness. You'll just have to believe me.
It has always been my idea that she should be regarded as a South Australian saint for all Australians.
I believe we need a saint. We need hope. We need ideals for ourselves. Mary MacKillop is where we can look to find the best in ourselves.
So it's off to Penola to think our way to better goals and values.
This is the final of four articles being published on this site by leading Australian writer, the late Max Harris. This article first appeared in the 'Adelaide Advertiser' (20 January 1995), and is reprinted here by permission of Max Harris' estate.
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It is strange that a sort of celibate man lived in this celibate girl. There was work, and a giving spirit. There was no such thing as a man's work or woman's work. If she could do it, she did it.
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