Playing the timely tune, singing the timely song
By Archbishop Patrick O’Regan
Published in the Southern Cross Newspaper
Generations of young Australian children grew up watching Play School and well knew its signature tune, 'There’s a bear in there'! Few would know that it was written by Richard Connelly. More would be familiar with the hymns that he wrote with the famous Australian poet, James McAuley (1917-1976). In the 1960s the pair’s work anchored the Living Parish Hymn Book, edited by Fr Tony Newman which would go on to sell more than one million copies over the next decade, enabling congregations to sing hymns in a distinctively Australian voice. Connelly died recently on May 4 2022, aged 94.
This collaboration between McAuley and Connelly bought a freshness and a theological literate character to the hymns we sang and the tunes we hummed. We no longer only sang hymns from afar, we also sang hymns from near. Hymns that were both poetic and prayerful, graceful and memorable.
Part of the Wikipedia entry for Richard Connelly says:
In December 2009, he was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Arts by the University of Notre Dame Australia in recognition of his ‘extraordinary contributions to Catholic liturgical music in Australia’. In his acceptance speech he said the hymns he had made with James McAuley were ‘the centrepiece of my liturgical work and, of all the things that I have made, apart from my family, the best’.
Connelly’s tunes and McAuley’s poetry gave us a language of faith which was profound, not simply just because it was new and Australian but because it represented the very best of what it is to collaborate and speak (sing) our faith with a hopeful and life-giving voice.
The Plenary Council, the most significant event in the life of the Catholic Church in Australia for 80 years, comes to its conclusion in early July in Sydney, with the second session.
For most people who have been on the journey of these past six years it has been a fruitful time. My own experience is that while the process was unfamiliar to me, it is not an unfamiliar pathway of the Church over 2000 years. I have found that one can only understand what synodality is all about when you are part of it. Just because it is unfamiliar; just because it has called us to learn new, or forgotten skills such as listening, collaboration and discernment; just because it is not perfect, does not mean that the process is wrong or that we should as those signs on the highway say ‘Go back wrong way’. It is a legitimate pathway forward.