THE caricature of Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman resting on the wall of Marist Brother Frank McGrath’s room watches over everything he does.
The English cardinal inspires Br Frank in his work and in his faith.
It’s from this small room at Marist College Ashgrove that the world expert in Newman continues his decades of involvement in studying and publishing the revered English cardinal’s work.
Br Frank, the only Australian to complete a doctorate from University of Oxford in Newman studies, has returned to Australia after many years editing Newman publications in England.
“That’s Newman in old age,” Br Frank says pointing to the drawing of the English priest who converted to Catholicism at 45 and became a leading figure in the Church.
“He visited his old friend, the dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, and he came in at the end of the service and the doorkeeper thought he was pretty suspicious, so they kicked him out.
“Hence that cartoon appeared in the London Times about a week later.”
Br Frank has devoted decades of his life to studying the literature of Newman – a task he has relished.
Br Frank’s journey from a young lad from a poor Brisbane suburb to studying in the world’s most prestigious universities has not been without major struggles.
Health problems have hindered him, but they have also helped Br Frank follow his passions and helped him study under some great minds of the world.
Br Frank was born in Paddington, Brisbane, and attended Marist College Rosalie.
“I was from an ordinary Catholic family,” he said.
“I didn’t do very well at school, I wasn’t particularly interested in it.
“When I was a kid at school you didn’t tell too many people you were from Paddo (Paddington), the other worse place was Petrie Terrace … and look at them today, they are prime real estate.
“It was a big journey from Paddington to Oxford.”
Br Frank became a teacher after school and taught at Indooroopilly State School – “back in the 1950s”.
“I did my first degree, a BA (Bachelor of Arts), part-time while teaching,” he said.
“I taught all day and went to university at night.
“I majored in French and Philosophy and I became very interested in philosophy.
“I taught as a lay teacher at Ashgrove (Marist College Ashgrove) for six years in the late ’50s.”
Br Frank joined the Marist Brothers after teaching at the school and meeting many brothers and being inspired by them.
“I was a late vocation and I went down to the novitiate at Mittagong (NSW),” he said.
Br Frank was 10 years older than the other novices and found it difficult to relate with the other young men.
“My interests and their interests were quite different,” he said.
“One day I thought to myself ‘If I’m going to stick with this bloody place I may as well find something decent to do’.
“So I walked into the library and picked up Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua and the rest is history.
“It was a spark and I thought, ‘this is worth pursuing’.
“Vatican II was going on at the same time and when I started reading some of his (Newman’s) works … when we started looking at the documents of Vatican II it started to ring bells of what they were saying in Rome this fellow said 150 years ago even as a Church of England minister.
“I think he’s a prophetic figure.
“It was such an interesting life as well, 45 years an Anglican and 45 years a Roman Catholic and a pretty good mid-life crisis.
“After that I just continued reading as much as I could on Newman, what he wrote, the age he lived in.
“I always reserved my holidays to read Newman at a sufficient depth to come to grips with his work.”
Br Frank taught in Marist schools around Australia for 20 years, but in the late 1970s opportunities and problems presented themselves.
In addition to completing studies at Sydney University he completed his second novitiate in Fribourg, Switzerland.
After his second novitiate, Br Frank spent some time in “Newman country” and visited the Oratory in Birmingham – “just to spend some time and visit it, like a pilgrim”.
“I flew to Birmingham, stayed with the Jesuits at Manresa House … then I made my way down to the Oratory where I met the editor of the Letter and Diaries (of Cardinal Newman) Gerard Tracey.
“We struck up a good friendship.
“He said to me if you ever want to come back, come back.”
Br Frank then travelled to the United States to study at Boston College where he was taught by renowned Jesuit philosopher and theologian Fr Bernard Lonergan.
“It was just a revelation to me,” he said.
“It was mind blowing.
“He taught me a lot about the psychology of research, what sort of a mindset you need to do really good, solid, deep research.
“The first thing he said was ‘know exactly what you’re doing and don’t wander too far from the centre’.”
After the study and another trip back to the Birmingham Oratory, Br Frank returned to Australia, but he was “restless”.
“It’s what Lonergan called the intellectual Eros at work,” he said.
“I got shunted to a school and I tried to do my best, but I wasn’t settling in.
“So the provincial sent me down to Melbourne for a three-month personal development course.”
The direction of Br Frank’s life changed one morning in Melbourne.
“One morning I got up and I could hear a lot of traffic noise outside and I looked out and didn’t see any traffic,” he said.
“I came in and could still hear the traffic noise. I went to have a shower and could still hear it.
“I realised something was wrong with my right ear.”
Br Frank visited the hospital and the ear, nose and throat specialist said ‘look we don’t know what has happened but you’ve lost your hearing’.
“He said ‘you could have had a stroke, it could be a tumour or it could be some sort of a virus’, I said ‘that’s great news’,” Br Frank said.
“I admitted myself and they did a variety of tests and he came in and said ‘the bad news is you’ve lost your hearing, but the good news is it’s a virus of unknown origin’.
“He said ‘you’ll never get your hearing back again’.”
Br Frank pondered what his life would now become with severely reduced hearing.
“I was lying in hospital and I thought ‘teaching is out of the question’,” he said.
“I wasn’t going to be assigned as an assistant librarian in some backwater somewhere for the rest of my life.
“Then I got the idea that this is a good opportunity to do some further graduate work on Newman.
“I was thinking about doing it at Sydney University, but I wasn’t happy with that.
“I thought ‘why not do it at Oxford, do it on Newman’s home turf, take him on there’.
“My provincial came to see me and said ‘what do you want to do?’
“I said ‘this is what I want to do’ and three months later I was at Oxford.
“Really the loss of hearing became a plus; it was like a second spring.”
Br Frank completed his doctoral studies in four years.
“I stayed over there six years, then we had a new provincial and he got in touch and said it’s about time to come back,” he said.
“I came back and then I had this job with John Coles doing the Foundations course in Theology.
“I used all the research experience gleaned from Lonergan and Oxford on writing the courses.”
Br Frank is proud of the achievement of writing the courses and having thousands of students across Australia read his work.
During this time Br Frank was in the process of having his doctoral thesis turned into a book “John Henry Newman: Universal Revelation.
“I had that published in 1994,” Br Frank, who’ll mark 50 years as a Marist Brother next year, said.
“Then I retired at the venerable age of 65.
“I was looking forward to it as I was then preparing a critical edition of Newman’s writings on the Church Fathers.
“I published that in 2001 and after that I started to do a critical edition of Newman’s essays Critical and Historical Volume One and Two.
“But I was working on that when I got a phone call one Saturday morning.
“Gerard (Tracey) had just passed away at the age of 48.”
Br Frank was then asked by the Oratory Fathers of Birmingham to finish his old friend’s work on Newman.
“I got on a plane, arrived there, had the funeral and went to a meeting the next morning and it was proposed that I take over as full editor of Newman’s Letters and Diaries and complete the project and then turn to his unpublished Anglican sermons,” he said.
“From 2002 to 2010 I did that full-time in Birmingham at the Oratory.
“I worked 24/7 on those.
“I finished the three volumes of the Letters and Diaries, nine, 10 and 32 – they were the three remaining of the 32 volumes.”
Br Frank’s was also briefed to “knock off” Anglican Sermons.
“They are the final years of Newman as an Anglican,” he said.
Several volumes of the Anglican sermons edited by Br Frank were launched in Brisbane and Melbourne recently.
“Nobody else has this job,” he said.
“It was a real blessing. I don’t think I’ve worked harder in my life than I did after I had retired.
“But it’s not hard work if you love it.”
Br Frank said his own faith had been strengthened and reinforced by his years of work on Newman publications.
“He’s a remarkable man,” said.
Br Frank will continue to work on Newman publications from his Ashgrove base with Blessed John Henry Newman’s caricature and influence watching and guiding him.
