SEVENTY years after a doctor announced to an alarmed parent, “The child won’t live”, the remarkable memoirs are publicly available of the Australian-born priest whose life began with that pronouncement.
Fr Terry Southerwood, parish priest, now aged 70, and recently involved in pastoral and administrative duties at deanery level in Tasmania, initially prepared his memoirs for an audience of family and friends, significantly to “celebrate what God has done in and through my vocation of priest”.
In a social climate where life is sometimes denied to the unborn Southerwood’s life story has a powerful message.
Invitations, affirmative comments and interest from brother priests, family members and members of the Australasian Religious Press Association and the Catholic Press Association of Australia and New Zealand brought Southerwood’s memoirs into the public domain.
For the biography not to have reached the reading public would have deprived many people an opportunity to enter into the joys, sorrows, contradictions, tensions, rejections and challenges inherent in a priest’s life-journey as year by year he lived “the divine invitation to share God’s love in a special and unique way”. (Southerwood, p506.)
Meticulous in detail, this biography provides windows into Catholic schooling of the past, pre-Vatican II seminary formation of priests, the euphoria of change with accompanying doubts, challenges and break-throughs, travel and appreciation of the Catholic presence worldwide, and nostalgic recounts on life.
From a very uncertain beginning, Terry Southerwood’s life “has borne much fruit”.
Students of social and domestic comment will not be disappointed in the first four chapters of Southerwood’s biography.
In these he explores family life and values, and Catholic schooling of the period and the experiences and exploits of young men in training for priesthood as well as the conduct of some professors in the pre-Vatican II seminary context.
As a highly skilled and competent journalist, he engages the reader effectively.
Nevertheless, it is helpful to remind oneself during the reading that the storytelling style of narrative was not initially for scrutiny in the public domain.
Contemporaries of Fr Southerwood in the Australia Church might cringe as he discusses the social and cultural idiosyncratic behaviours of the time, often through humorous insights and comical anecdotes, but always with reverence and respect for the Church, which nurtured his priesthood vocation.
Ordained in 1962 and encouraged enthusiastically by the late Archbishop Guildford Young of Hobart, Fr Southerwood embraced the radical liturgical changes brought about by Vatican II.
Additionally, his passion to communicate led him to involvement in religious journalism and the radio and television media.
His contribution to religious publications, newspapers and journals earned an invitation to accompany Archbishop Young to Rome for specific writing assignments.
Southerwood describes his immersion at parish level in the development of movements for the empowerment of the laity. He bravely but sensitively contested some hard-nosed issues that he saw as thwarting the spirit of Vatican II.
Chapters 5 to 8 are rich in the challenges of priesthood in the “halcyon years of post-Vatican” when the landscape of Church life was painted with kaleidoscopic interpretations.
Southerwood, in reflection, describes “living through times of flowering promise, mingled with wintry periods of discontent … as a modern Catholic I realised I was entering a future which heralded the unknown and unpredictable”.
Chapters 5 to 9 provide compelling reading. Involvement as a contributor to both Catholic and ecumenical developments among the Christian Churches brought tensions, misunderstandings, rejections challenges and triumphs which Southerwood views in retrospect with appreciation.
In very detailed description, Southerwood celebrates enjoyment of his pastoral commitments as priest, and the significant coming together of brother priests to share experiences, dilemmas and spiritual insights and to grow in understanding of their vocation in the post Vatican II Church.
He obviously treasured his capabilities as a writer and as a respected contributor to religious journals and the secular media.
Notwithstanding his awareness of criticism and negativity from some spheres of social and Church life, in the context of his engagements, Southerwood articulates with optimism his experiences.
His chronologically orchestrated narrative covers topics such as overseas travel, disagreements at times with his Archbishop, affirmations by and conversations with many of his contemporaries in the Australian Church, deaths of colleagues, departures and new assignments. No one could deny that Southerwood’s life is commandingly inspiring.
“The Child Won’t Live” deserves recognition as a social and religious history of pastoral life in the post-Vatican II (1965-2008) Australian Church.
Fr Southerwood is foremost a joyous priest “who like all who have been baptised in the waters of Life and confirmed in the gifts of the Holy Spirit, as an ordained minister, try to make more transparent in life the special graces conferred”. (Southerwood, p.507.) Recommended reading.
Available from Fr Terrance Southerwood, 44 Margaret Street, Launceston, Tasmania. 7250
