Volume 22, Issue 3, October 2009

This simple but well-informed biography by Edmund Campion tells a great deal more than the story of an enigmatic man who spent thirty years of his life in the inner Sydney suburb of Redfern, doing the best he could as parish priest among the displaced Aboriginal people who gathered there from near and far. The title is the key to the book: it is not about a priest, or the priest, but about “priest”. It tells a story about the fragility of clericalism and church authority, a story about the impact of dispossession, a story about Catholic hopes and griefs after the Second Vatican Council, a story about finding the place of the Church in the modern world, and it tells a story about theology as mystical action. Edmund Campion concludes his book by declaring his hope that his book might contribute to a “discussion of the meaning of Ted Kennedy”. This review is written in response to that invitation.