Geraldine Doogue

I often remember the observation of this priest: Sanctity is merely the doing of one’s allotted task in life to the best of one’s ability.

I love that phrase. I use it in my life. It’s eloquent for me. I find it liberating because it’s not explicitly inviting me to heroics and martyrdom.

It invites me to turn-up but of course it’s not as passive as maybe on first hearing. It invites me to experience the satisfaction of discerning a role… and I think to re-evaluate it (and I’ll say some more about that) and then to persevere.

Today I suppose I’d like to achieve two things: to give you my insights about how individuals may refresh themselves and pitch themselves towards their full potential, so that turning-up both has meaning and fun attached; but also to consider the wider setting within which they work, and for you of course, that means the Church.

For me it does too but I speak to you as a lay-person, a more agitated one than I’ve probably ever been… but I hope constructive too. My setting (within which I work and live) is of course the secular world. And it has reformed itself in many, many ways in terms of its attitude to its workers and its people… and I’m not really sure that Church officials quite realise the depths of it…. and how much they could learn from it.

Please don’t think I’m Pollyanna. I read the headlines. I know the abuses and neglect of loads of people without power in our working world. But I also know and have reported on about 10-15 years of slow but definite change in the attitude about the people of an entity being the greatest resource: it was just rhetoric but it’s morphed, in my view, to something more substantial, full of much better values… be it in sporting teams, corporate boardrooms, places like the ABC.

It’s not shallow. It’s not perfect but it’s not shallow. And I think the Church needs to observe closely. So I’ll come back to that and what it might bring to you, in your roles and what it might ask of you?

Living within my limits… but stretching myself too

The realisation of my limits was initially the source of some despondency.

Oh, I’m not going to be great then! I’m destined to achieve only so much! Change will be incremental. Is it just here is it, as a media worker, that I’ll reach the apogee of my public contribution. Because the private realm for me, as a mother and wife, I think is the one that still dominates my sense of self that would most trouble me if I judged it to be a failure.

What I’m saying is that boundaries loomed vividly… of gender, of time, of talent! (That was the big one) Could my famed exuberance be relied upon if I had to set my sights lower, to harness my bigger dreams? And we live in times of considerable change, due to the ICT revolution… which is changing citizens’ mental geography (to use that great phrase of the late American management guru, Peter Drucker… referring originally to the railroad of the 19th century but then extrapolated to the email and e-commerce, as all conferring a truly different sense of community-possibility for people).

We have to forgive ourselves a little. We didn’t choose to be born into this turbulence and we didn’t prompt it. But would I have preferred my parents’ dilemmas, with the war etc: no thank-you! With the new possibilities on offer, how does one dutifully and ethically marry them with the original job description? For me, in my 2010 life, the question has become: where is that blessed focus that might produce modern sanctity? I also remember that powerful wisdom derived from the highly respected psychological researcher Mihaly Czichsentmihaly, from the University of Chicago, about the patterns they’d discovered in people who felt they were living a good life… and by various objective measures, were. They stretched themselves slightly! They did not aim for tranquillity. They steered clear as much as possible, of outright failure. But they did define ‘beyond their comfort zone’ and stepped there… or didn’t resist being taken there. Therein lay happier men and women.

It’s quite a challenge hearing this, I do believe, when so many of us feel we’re constantly pushed well outside our comfort zone.

In different incarnations of it, both you who work inside the formal church and me whose working world is quite different, I think we’re small ships being swept up by powerful seas. That’s just the truth of it. To some extent, we’re flotsam and jetsam. It can seem all immensely brittle with too little that’s noble or lasting. Will anything we do really matter? Will we matter? Deep down, I’ve come to believe that maybe the world beyond the institutional church is a kinder, gentler place, full of more conscientious ethics and values and care for others, than the official Church. That is, the muchcriticised secular world in which lay people live (and receive lectures on!) is probably more functional, more ready to conscience-examine, than the institutional Church. What an extraordinary thing.

And as a result, that it is more welcoming of the real challenges of the 21st century, warts and all, for its citizens with all their pains, hopes and dreams, than the Church itself. For me, this was an epic moment. Some of you might well say “she took that long did she?” Well yes she did.

And yet, I do still look to scholars and wise ones to pull me up short, to tap into counter-cultural messages; to remind me that all is not obvious and that virtue is hard-won; and to remember that ‘let he who is without sin cast the first stone’ applies to us all. I’m aware that selfrighteousness can creep in alongside just anger… though I notice the prominent Dominican Fr Timothy Radcliffe says there needs to be more anger expressed in the Church right now, that we’ve been a bit afraid of it.

But even a compliant person like me would feel foolish at best and cowardly at worst if I didn’t have the guts to look this crisis within the Church in the eye and see devastating dysfunction at a systemic not just individual level, in an institution so close to my own valuescentre.

It really demands my own self-audit. I have to say, what next? Why am I bothering? Or do I simply retreat into something small and extremely private, in the comfort of people who feel exactly the same as I do? It is causing a major re-alignment within me, certainly. Discerning a truly constructive role for lay-people, drawing on their experience and talents in the best interests of the Church, is the major work-in-progress for me; what is asked of us, if we care about the Church and what must we ask of the institutional Church? The institutional church needs lay-people desperately, right inside its corridors of power, in my judgement, as a harm-minimiser.

Of course we lay-people have to search our own souls over this. How did we so avert our gaze from the challenges at hand, the very thing that is hurled at some of the bishops!

After all, we know what it’s been like to live in the broader world, amidst such rapid technological change. We know about the pressure-points that challenge people’s humanity: the 24-hour open-all-hours societies; the real revolution in technology that is still unfolding at breakneck pace; the consumerism which can offer great material change but much less sense of purpose and meaning; about changing family structures, the much more democratic model that is asking people to adapt dramatically fast; the sense of ‘plenty’ in the West certainly, which has all come about so fast—offering bounty and challenge, often fuelled by destructive debt of course; we’re well aware of the ‘distractables’, as I call them, the television, the car, the ipods and ITablets, the wiis that can all focus on the surface rather than the depths.

It’s an exciting brew. I like it. But I’m doing quite well out of it because I was set up quite well for it. Not everyone is, as you well know.

Reform

Another thing: we lay-people know how much reform has taken place in our work-places during all this last say 4 decades, in order to manage that breathtaking array of change. Most of us will have been through at least one major reform process.

It’s true virtually everywhere in lay organisations, even, for goodness sake, in amateur sport, that doyen of old-school behaviour! Charity workers, people in not-for-profits and community organisations: all of them, if you care to listen, have an experience of reviewing their mission, or exposing themselves to outsiders, invited in for a real overview with some prescription for significant change. There can be strong resistance but the presumption of reevaluation is really incredibly pervasive. It is, prima facie, cleansing. Most of us have seen these organisations turned upside-down at some level, as they try to better discern how they can serve their people and the changing environment?

The assumption is: look again with fresh eyes; with fresh energy. (I might add this does NOT seem to have happened inside the law, to my considerable surprise.) Did we seriously imagine the Church could escape this?

If something goes seriously wrong in the lay world, there is much more inclination to explore what did elude people’s best efforts. This is called accountability, one of those words like transparency that can seem like a catch-all tag, value-free, tossed around gaily and sometimes backfiring. But look at the Royal Commissions into the Black Saturday fires, e.g. or the deep soul-searching over the misdeeds of Dr Jayant Patel, not only hearing of his victims but posing an explicit and implicit question: how did Queensland Health let this happen?

Now this is altogether healthy and it develops a habit of competence, of extending our talents in the service of others. Sometimes, it can drift into a distinct lack of mercy and a whiff of witchhunt, which I deplore. But to my eyes, there’s incredible dedication to the task when someone of note is invited by the government or Governor to ask questions on behalf of their fellowcitizens and find out how we can avoid this happening again. Dare I say, it is humility on behalf of the system, (as well of course as trying to protect one’s own job) But quite a few of the ubiquitous features of our modern working-world – formal appraisals, accountability, KPIs, rules against unfair dismissals, industrial tribunals, anti-discrimination procedures and so on – really they are riddled with good values.

Lack of charity within the Church

I hear quite a few stories – and I’m sure you know them far better – of real lack of charity in dealing with the official Church’s own people, from right within your ranks. Sometimes these are attitudes that wouldn’t be tolerated, I assure you, within the wider lay Catholic community or wider world. Some of you may have read of that other example of real neglect of feelings in The Tablet recently… it really saddened me. About that big 800-strong gathering of women’s orders in Rome in early May to consider their work across the globe… held every 3 years, their emphasis this year was how to strengthen their mystical and prophetic witness in a world of suffering.

“We want our energy for ministry,” said Sr Maureen Cusick, president of the Internaitonal Union of Superiors General. “We don’t want to use it to deal with this crisis but we have to use all our energy to contain and to calm, without rendering impotent our members. How do we find words to speak with care and compassion yet give voice to the indignation we feel?” Well that remained an open question. But do you know that there was no papal audience scheduled with the Pope for this pretty impressive group… they had a very short telegram from Cardinal Bertone, the Secretary of State, Sr Cusick said, “but it would have been nice to have had a message from the Holy Father at least”… at the very least, I would have said.

I thought that was a terrible neglect of those nuns. How callous that no-one thought to alert the Pope or someone high up that this was a special group, meeting just down the road from St. Peter’s, who laboured their hearts out for the Church and those they served.

In a lay world, someone would have belled-that-cat… would have openly questioned the attitudes inherent in such a neglect. People in public life and indeed at senior levels of business expect to look-over-their-shoulder now and be queried over about their public acknowledgement of people down-thepecking order…and if anything, I think this is growing again, as a sentiment. It might have some hypocrisies associated with it, but I think it’s got real promise. These moments of good grace DO matter.

I’ve heard commentary that offers the deceptively simple observation that we’ll know Catholic schools by the way their staffrooms operate. That is, to serve students well, the school has to serve its individual teachers well and support its staff, in the expectation that this will be returned. I wonder how you feel about this, given your knowledge of staff-rooms; but it certainly dove-tails nicely with what I have come to believe ought to be the hallmark of Catholic institutions: a care and concern for justice, yes, but also grace between people; a personability that takes some effort, that is not just routinised but is modelled by the associated structures.

In other words, I am re-evaluating some of the attitudes I took for granted inside the Church which have always bothered me but which are now yelling at me: the institution doesn’t seem to prize the people who serve it.

Change

We, as lay-people, are starting to imagine something different. Many are simply walking away, I acknowledge. But many are not though we’d like to see a more expansive, hope-filled institution because, as I say, many of us have learned what that can yield in our own working environments; where things that we thought were set in stone and unfixable, COULD BE CHANGED.

Maybe you have more capacity than you think to affect the course of events… maybe it is a slight stretch… maybe it is a re-definition of your allotted role in life.

Geraldine Doogue

Whilst originally planning a career as a schoolteacher after completing her Arts degree, in 1972 Geraldine applied on an impulse for a journalism cadetship with The West Australian instead. Since then she has thrived on that impulsive decision.

Within the first ten years of her career, Geraldine had carved out a reputation in print, television and radio, including two years at the London Bureau working for the Murdoch group’s Australian papers.Her entrance into television was unexpected.

Whilst covering a story for The Australian, an ABC Television reporter interviewed her for a Four Corners program. She moved to Sydney to host the NSW edition of Nationwide and established herself as one of the most respected and popular personalities on national television. Geraldine then worked for a time on commercial radio with 2UE and on commercial television, co-presenting Channel 10’s main news bulletin, before returning to the ABC in 1990. She played a major role in ABC TV’s coverage of the Gulf War. During this period Geraldine was awarded two Penguin Awards and a United Nations Media Peace Prize.

In 1992 Geraldine began presenting Life Matters, a new ABC Radio National program which set out to cover the full gamut of social issues in everyday life. In 1998, she also became host of ABC TV’s Compass program, which looks at issues of spirituality, philosophy and belief every Sunday evening. After 11 years with Life Matters, she moved to Saturday mornings to host a program focusing on international politics, Australia’s role on the world stage, and business, called Saturday Extra.

In 2000 Geraldine was awarded a Churchill Fellowship for social and cultural reporting. In 2003, she was recognised with an Officer in the Order of Australia for services to the community and media.