Golden Anniversary Luncheon Celebration for the Opening and Blessing of Our Lady of the Rosary Church, Kenmore
13 July 1969 – 13 July 2019, Fr Frank Brennan SJ AO
Your Grace, Archbishop Mark Coleridge, Fr Mark Franklin, Parish Priest of OLR, Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls:
I join with you acknowledging the Jagera and Turrbal Peoples, the traditional owners of the land on which this parish was founded back in 1962. As a young boy, I remember coming to an empty field here with a makeshift stage where my father pointed out to me an old, dignified somewhat rotund gentleman in strange clothes. It was Archbishop Sir James Duhig who had come to lay the foundation stone for the new school, Our Lady of the Rosary, Kenmore, on 4 November 1962.
My sister Madeline was in the very first First Communion class before the school was built. On Holy Thursday, those girls who had recently made their First Communion wore their white dresses and their veils scattering the rose petals ahead of the procession of the Eucharist from the main altar to the altar of repose. My sister Anne remembers that my mother made her a special veil so that she could join her sister Madeline in the 1963 procession. She still has that veil. It is one of her prized possessions. It is a token of a mother’s love.
When the church moved from the old house to the new school building, I became an altar boy. The altar servers were dominated by the McCluskey boys. Their Dad was the local car dealer. The older McCluskey boys allocated the places. Inevitably I was allocated a middle slot which meant that I did not get to ring the bells, hold the priest’s chasuble at consecration, or carry the plate at communion time. It was a ‘do nothing’ position. It helps to explain my life long aversion to the middle seat on a plane.
One morning, I knocked over a vase of flowers on the altar when extinguishing the candles. My mother immediately rushed on to the sanctuary to clean up the mess. Some parishioners were horrified – not because I had spilt the water but because a woman had come on to the sanctuary.
We would come for the early morning weekday mass whenever one of us had a birthday to celebrate. The Brigidine Sisters would turn up from their Indooroopilly convent in their Morris 1100 with Mother De Montfort at the wheel. There were times when all seven Brennan children would be licensed to throw stones at the presbytery window to rouse Fr Tom Carroll from his slumbers. Fr Tom would then come for breakfast and then drive the younger kids to school. This was in the days before seat belts and child protection regulations.
When the new church was built, we tended to occupy the second front pew on the lectionary side. This could be a little embarrassing when, from time to time, Dad thought it necessary to absent himself from church in the wake of some theological utterance from the pulpit which he thought erroneous. A leading parishioner was Ric O’Sullivan the co-owner of Think Big which won the Melbourne Cup in 1974 and again in 1975. Each time, Ric took Fr Carroll with him to Flemington as an honoured guest. Each time, Fr Carroll asked the parish to pray for Think Big. For Dad, that was one prayer too many.
We were a young parish, a pioneering parish, made up of large and expanding families. Vatican II was not long finished. Kenmore, Chapel Hill, and Brookfield were brand new suburbs. The mothers’ tennis club provided the one social outlet for the busy mothers tending young families and new homes. Sunday mass was the main family outing of the week.
With seven children, Mum and Dad had to choose a new car. It was the time that minibuses were coming in to fashion. The Dalys had one with their large tribe. My sisters were adamant that they would not be seen dead getting out of a minibus at Sunday mass. We ended up getting a Nissan Cedric and later a Toyota Crown sold of course by Mr McCluskey. Each of these cars had a third seat in the boot. The boys had to ride in the third seat whenever we came to mass, as the girls thought it would be infra dig to be seen by their classmates and friends emerging from such a position.
The parish was the families gathered in prayer and working together to provide a local Catholic education for their kids. Many of these families would need a whole pew to themselves. There were the Freers, the 13 Dalys who came in 1968, the O’Donnells, the Dwyers (two lots of cousins), the Hargreaves whose Dad designed church schools, the Ruddys, the Wadleys whose Mum Denise wrote the ‘cabbages and kids’ column in The Sunday Mail describing the doings of the kids, the Crowleys who came often to daily mass with John sporting a bow tie, the Marchants, the McMenimans, the Oakhills, the Keeffes, the Drydens, the Barretts (and how good it is to see Cassie here today, aged 93), the Morriseys with tall Charlie organising all the collections, the Browns, the Lynches, the Wertheims who were academics from Melbourne who came and stirred the pot, the Delamothes, the Deutzes, the Nassers, the Rombouts, the LaMasses, and the Faggs. I am sure there are many I have missed. But you have the picture. The parish was the families – young, growing, pioneering, and happy that the Church provided them with a locus of meaning and celebration.
The midnight masses at Easter and Christmas were actually at midnight. Some kids came in pyjamas. And at Christmas, everyone was keen to get home to see what Santa had brought. Sometimes Santa was spotted from the back seat of the car on the way home, or even en route if Santa was getting ahead of himself that year.
I came back here in 1985 to celebrate my first mass. There were Aboriginal dancers and singers. And the parish choir was at its best with Mary McGuiness at the organ and Pat Logan with the baton. How good to see them here today.
Toasting OLR for these past 50 years and for the next 50 years, let’s call to mind the observations of Pope Francis in Evangelii Gaudium: ‘The parish is not an outdated institution; precisely because it possesses great flexibility, it can assume quite different contours depending on the openness and missionary creativity of the pastor and the community.’
Today I met one of you for the first time who told me that this parish saved your life, at a time when you were really down and when Vinnies came to the rescue. Pope Francis says a true parish ‘really is in contact with the homes and the lives of its people, and does not become a useless structure out of touch with people or a self-absorbed group made up of a chosen few.’
He describes a parish as ‘a sanctuary where the thirsty come to drink in the midst of their journey, and a centre of constant missionary outreach.’ I am delighted to return to my Catholic roots here at OLR Kenmore today, to celebrate a parish which has given life, liturgy, and purpose to so many families especially in those early post-Vatican II, pioneering days. Congratulations. May OLR Kenmore on the busy Moggill Road long be a sanctuary where the thirsty come to drink in the midst of their journey, and a centre of constant missionary outreach.
With thanks,
Fr Frank Brennan SJ AO
