WAITING to see whether her critically ill father would survive his heart bypass operation at Redcliffe Hospital in February 2011, Antonia Pizzey drew strength from his teaching about God’s love and grace.
Halfway through a doctorate in theology at Australian Catholic University, the 25-year-old certainly had intelligence, but now it was knowledge of the heart she was experiencing and drawing on for strength.
“My father had always taught me that we are saved by God’s grace; that we just need to be grateful and thankful and He would take care of the rest,” she said.
“When my father was sick I really relied on this teaching.
“He’d had to have emergency surgery after a heart attack. The surgery started at midnight and didn’t finish until after 4am, so it was a very long night and the worst day of my life.
“I spent the whole night up praying … asking God that my father’s operation would be successful; saying: God all things are possible.”
Antonia tells the story in response to a question about a crucial moment in her faith journey.
She has also been speaking of her awakening to Christ’s message as a 19-year-old at ACU.
“I suddenly saw Christianity and I saw that it was beautiful and it was sane and I thought this is how the world should be,” she said.
Baptised a Catholic, Antonia never went to church as a child.
Yet in October last year, she was one of only three Catholics to attend the World Council of Churches international Global Ecumenical Theological Institute conference in South Korea.
The conference aimed to raise up new leaders for the ecumenical movement.
In April, Antonia will present a paper on the power of hope in ecumenism at a conference at Oxford University, England. She will head to New York in June in response to an invitation to attend a conference on receptive ecumenism.
Antonia also regards as a great gift her time spent as a catechist with the RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults) program in her home parish of the Holy Cross, Redcliffe.
“I learnt so much in this time as I became involved in other people’s spiritual journeys,” she said. “I also came to treasure how accepting the Church is of all its members.
“Our parish priest would say to people coming into the Church, for example those coming from the Pentecostal tradition: ‘We don’t want you to stop being who you are; we want you to bring your gifts into the Church to enrich it’.
“That’s what I’ve come to love about being Catholic … it’s very vast and very diverse; there’s so much richness.”
The journey to this fullness of faith started many years earlier.
Her parents Stephen and Linda, although Catholic, were what she calls “alternative” and were “kind of like hippies”.
The family stayed in various places around Australia including Coonabarabran, Sydney and Warwick before finishing up in Redcliffe.
“From as young as about ten I started to become interested in the meaning of life and spirituality,” she said.
“I read a lot of books, eventually starting formal school at 15 since I was home-schooled. At 19, I went to the ACU to continue tertiary studies.
“I’d spent a year at UQ (University of Queensland) studying psychology but didn’t like the way it looked at the person.
“It was so two-dimensional … the person was just parts, but a human being is more than that.
“Then I came to ACU and immediately liked the atmosphere.
“They have a system where you have to take two theology units no matter what degree you’re studying. One unit was God, Faith and the Search for Meaning.
“When I was listening in classes there was this feeling that this is true … and that kind of blew me away.”
Antonia “got the bug” for theology, changed her degree to theology and having attained this went on to an honours degree, then a Masters and is now in her final year of a doctorate on receptive ecumenism.
She described “receptive ecumenism” as an exchange of gifts between the faiths which involves humility and openness.
“Pope John Paul II referred to an exchange of gifts in ecumenism,” she said. “We’re exploring this in our examination of receptive ecumenism.
“In other words, what can we learn from each other? What gifts do we have to share?”
When Antonia attended last October’s GETI conference, she had a chance to put this “new and exciting form of ecumenism” into action.
“I was the only Australian participant and one of only three Catholics out of 160 delegates,” she said. “Also the Catholic Church is not a member of the WCC … it just works in conjunction with the organisation … so I was in quite a different position to most of the group.
“I found a lot of curiosity about Catholic beliefs … and a lot of misunderstandings.
“The Eucharist is such a big one … three or four different people wanted to know why they couldn’t receive the Eucharist.
“A Lutheran woman didn’t see a problem; she said her understanding was that she was there to commune with God and the Catholic community.
“The other parts of the Church’s teachings around the Real Presence in the Eucharist were not registering with her.”
She encountered positive attitudes to Pope Francis, the sacraments and the Church’s approach of enculturation whereby aspects of a country’s culture such as African drums are incorporated into the liturgy.
“Many people said how much they loved and admired the Pope,” Antonia said. “Though not Catholics, they were so ready to listen to what he had to say … I found that amazing.”
Antonia left the conference having encountered on a deep personal level people from many other churches – the Church of Sweden, Greek Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran and Pentecostal churches.
“It was receptive ecumenism in action,” she said. “I was able to learn from their rich traditions – the Reformed churches emphasis on the Bible and the importance of the word; the Orthodox Church and its emphasis on the mystery of God and perhaps not such a great emphasis on doctrine as the Catholic Church – and many other insights.
“These are all gifts I hope to share back in my own parish and other communities.”
Antonia said her dad survived the bypass surgery and recently got a clean bill of health.
“I learnt so much from that experience – for example humility,” she said. “I learnt I have to trust in God … I can’t do much at all but God will do it.”
As for her great passion ecumenism, Antonia is clear on its ongoing importance and centrality to the life of the Church.
“Pope Francis has said disunity is a scandal which affects Christianity’s credibility,” she said.
“Ecumenism is not an option but an imperative because Jesus has said we should be one. If we love Jesus we should follow his request.”
