Looking back, celebrating the present, and looking forward with hope

From marking local student achievement to acknowledging world historical events.

A message from the Executive Dean of Theology and Philosophy, Professor Richard Colledge:

Each year, the months of April and May are filled with joyous scenes across our many ACU graduation ceremonies as our students join with their families and loved ones to celebrate the completion of educational journeys and to look forward with hope to what is to come. I count it as a great privilege to join with other colleagues who robe and processes at such ceremonies to participate in the awarding of degrees (from Certificates right through to Doctorates), but also to witness the delight and satisfaction of students at close quarters as they cross the stage. “Journeys ended, journeys begun”, as the old Western Priory hymn put it. These are times that put into rich perspective our many labours as academic and professional staff of ACU.

Just as graduation season was launching in early April, a contingent of FTP researchers, led by the IRCI’s Biblical and Early Christian Studies program, were joining with scholars from across the world in Rome to acknowledge the 1700th anniversary of the landmark Council of Nicaea (325 AD), and to study its ongoing legacy. The Council was a decisive moment in the history of the Church that helped shape Christian doctrinal belief and practice, leading as it did eventually to the formulation of the famous Nicene Creed, with its classic statement of Christian Trinitarian theology.

While co-hosted by the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum) and the Augustinian Patristic Institute (Augustinianum), ACU’s Rome campus also had an important role in this four day conference, accommodating some 16 conference participants, including Plenary speakers. Our guests were drawn from both South and North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia: a truly international group coming together to look back to an event that continues to shape our present and set important terms of the future of the Church.

Of course, later that same month, on Easter Monday, we received news of another event of Church-shaping and world history-influencing significance, being the death of the Holy Father Pope Francis. While the death of one Pontiff and the election of a successor is a solemn period of prayer and reflection for Catholics, it is also a moment of great interest that captures the attention of those across many corners of the world, drawing in people from other denominations, other faiths, and even those of no formalised religious belief. Media interest is always high.

In such a season of broad and general interest in the workings of the Church and its ancient traditions, it was wonderful to see such an array of ACU talent providing expert commentary and analysis on the events around the Pope’s death, his funeral, as well as the coming Conclave.

My sincere thanks and congratulations to a great many colleagues – Professor Clare Johnson, Associate Professors Joel Hodge and Darius von Guttner, and an array of others, including (and no doubt exceeding!) Associate Professor Maeve Heaney, Rev Dr James McEvoy, and Drs Sandie Cornish and Jacqui Remond – for their preparedness to make room in already busy schedules to provide their expert perspectives to audiences of all kinds keen to understand unfolding events. Spanning print, radio and TV broadcast media and online forums, these were outstanding contributions that demonstrated again the great value of our university as a ‘go-to’ intellectual resource for the Church in Australia.

This is a contribution that I am certain will continue over the weeks ahead.