Frank Brennan SJ and memories of 50 years ago – joining the Jesuits
Catholic Outlook
Was being a Jesuit or a priest something you had thought about growing up?
From the interview in Eureka Street by Jim McDermott – including the MSC story that Frank has often told.
I’d thought about being a priest. I’d never really thought about being a Jesuit. I came from Queensland and Northern Australia, where there were very few Jesuits. I had an uncle who was a Jesuit, Tom O’Hara, but I hardly knew Tom. He’d spent most of his time in Rome at that stage.
I’d been taught by a very good group, the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, who had a very down-to-earth spirituality. But they told me if I joined them, I’d probably teach in schools or work with Aboriginal people, and at that stage I wasn’t much interested in either of those, so I looked farther afield.
In my last year of university I went to Melbourne and I stayed a few nights with the MSCs. And the Aboriginal leader Pat Dodson, who at that stage was a Missionary of the Sacred Heart, said you should go and check out the Jesuits at Parkville.
It was holiday time, so there were not many of them around, but I was very fortunate in that two of the Jesuits I met and had long conversations with were Mark Raper, who later became a lifelong friend, and Bill Dalton, who was a very fine scripture scholar, later rector of the Biblicum.
Bill had an infectious love of young people, and he was very enthusiastic about the prospect that someone like me who’d studied law and was interested in politics might be interested in joining the Society. Insofar as I understood anything about the Holy Spirit, I thought this made sense. So I decided to check out the Jesuits.
And the rest, as they might say, is Jesuit history.
Jesuit Social Services
From a long interview with Frank in Eureka Street – subscribe to Eureka Street for online delivery.
