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Recent decades have seen many changes in the religious lives of Australian Catholics. Then and Now charts these changes while acknowledging the relevance of past experience. Its focus is on the stories of Catholic people, their leaders and their encounters with history. It explores the ways Catholics have influenced the future of wider national society. The book tells of diversity and differences in the Australian Catholic story.
‘Edmund Campion once wrote of Graham Greene that he posed questions about what it meant to be human, what it meant to be Catholic. This astute historian, writer, priest, encourager of artists, and truth-telling friend, has been asking the same questions—of himself and his world—for all the decades that he has been wielding his critical, generous pen. He is an encyclopaedia of Australian Catholicism, witty and profound, as ready to look backwards with a chronicler’s honesty and gratitude as he is to look forward in hope. We need his writing now.’
Morag Fraser am, Melbourne
‘These essays are a distillation of Edmund Campion’s scholarly and personal experience. In honouring John Henry Newman and others, he goes beyond the chronicle of events to show human complexities. One of Campion’s distinctive gifts is to show what it felt like to be a Catholic in our time. Individuals as well as powerful churchmen come to life in these pages. A unique combination of gravitas, wit and empathy, Campion’s essays invigorate our sense of the past while showing the blessings and burdens it offers to the present.’
Brenda Niall, Melbourne
Edmund Campion is a Sydney priest who taught church history at the Catholic Institute of Sydney for 25 years. A principal book reviewer at The Bulletin magazine, he was chairman of the Literature Board of the Australia Council. His books include Rockchoppers: Growing Up Catholic in Australia, Australian Catholics and Australian Catholic Lives. He was awarded honorary doctorates from the University of Sydney and Australian Catholic University.
