MSC Magazine | Issue 4 | Summer 2020

Page 28| Missionaries of the Sacred Heart MEET FR BILL BRADY msc T oday’s MSC Update reminded us that 4 th October is Bill Brady’s 75 th birthday. On Decem- ber 13 th , he will be 45 years ordained. He has just experienced some surgery and is recovering. This article first appeared earlier this year in the OLSH Randwick Parish Bulletin – Bill is now sta- tioned in Randwick. The other photos are from the celebrations when the MSC withdrew from Hind- marsh parish, Adelaide. Bill was the last parish priest. “Fr Bill Brady has served 8 parishes and 3 schools in his 44 years of priesthood. In mid 2019, he was ap- pointed to our parish. Fr Brady tells an interesting story about how he joined the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart. ’It was 1969. I had been thinking of become a priest - a missionary one - when I read an article in the Catholic Weekly about the MSCs. I had not heard of them, so I replied to the advertisement and by late that year, at age 24 I had started my pre- no- vitiate training at the Late Vocation Centre at the Kensington Monastery'. He had left school, Woodlawn College Lismore, in 1962 and started work at the Rural Bank of NSW (coincidentally the present Provincial, Fr Chris McPhee also worked in a bank pre-ordination). His name was in the ballot for National Service in 1966 and he spent the next two years in the Army dur- ing which time he spent 6 months in Malaysia (MaIacca).There never was any real thought of priesthood at this time.‘ I was ordained on 13 December 1975 and said my first Mass at St Patrick’s Smithtown, a small town on the North Coast near Kempsey. This was the parish I grew up in. My first appointment was to St Peter Chanel College Ulapia, New Britain in Papua New Guinea. Those first three years of Priesthood were probably the most difficult. The climate, the dis- ease-carrying mosquitoes, the cultural differ- ences, the expectations and lack of resources, but worst of all I contracted an illness that bedev- iled me for 8 years’. As part of recuperation he spent 3 months at OLSH Randwick in 1978. ‘I liked it then, and that hasn’t changed’. For the next few years he held appointments at a number of MSC Colleges (Bowral, DownIands, and St Johns Darwin) found time to complete a University degree and in 1995 was appointed Parish Priest at St Paul’s Nightcliffe, Darwin. Apart from being an assistant priest at Kip- pax in ACT in 1982 this was his first real experience of Parish life. Parts of the parish were in a fairly low socio- economic area and there was petty crime around and about. The parishioners were laid back but open to change. Example? ’Moving the altar was a big ask of these parishioners but by consulting them, offering them some options meant that the decision was theirs as much as mine. It taught me that involving the laity will make changes in today’s church possi- ble’ he added. ‘(I notice in the latest MSC Bulletin the altar is now back in the more traditional posi- tion)’. Most of us can remember where we were on 9/11, the Twin Towers attack in New York. Fr Bill had been on a sabbatical, had visited Issoudon in France where the MSCs were founded and he was in the main street of Dublin when he watched it on TV. The return trip home met with some dis- comfort at Heathrow as the Americans now una- ble to return for security reasons occupied all the seats, catching up on sleep. He had to stand for seven hours at the airport waiting to board the plane to bring him home. Quite a number of appointments followed, nota- bly Henley Beach, Adelaide, four others while on loan to Townsville Diocese over a 5 year period and in 2010 he was appointed Parish Priest of Hindmarsh. Here he experienced both wonderful and sad times. It had been an MSC parish for 105 years, cared for 5 Catholic schools in the area and was one of two South Australian MSC parish- es. But with no MSC priests available the parish became a diocesan one. Sadly the number of active MSC priests is declining. And replacements are not forthcoming. At one stage there were none joining the Order for six years although there’s a trickle now in training.