‘Gladly wolde he lern, and gladly teche’

In this memorial and tribute, Paul Stenhouse—priest, scholar, longtime editor of Annals—has, as Auden said of Yeats, become his admirers. There are many of these, including his brothers and sisters in the religious life; eminent novelists, including Piers Paul Read; journalists, including Greg Sheridan; academics, including Michael Wilding; one art historian, in Giles Auty; one former Prime Minister, in Tony Abbott; and one Cardinal Archbishop, in George Pell. It’s a fascinating mix of contributors that reminds me of what James Joyce said (with an equal mixture of affection and apprehension) of the Catholic Church: “Here comes everybody!” Stenhouse was not only a priest of the Catholic Church; he was catholic in the related though larger sense, in that—as an editor and more simply as a man—he was interested in “all things counter, original, spare, strange”, and published a wide variety of authors in the pages of Annals, not only Catholics, but Christians of other denominations as well as non-believers.

Peter Malone, Fr Stenhouse’s fellow Missionary of the Sacred Heart, who took on the responsibility of editing the volume, has divided the tributes into four categories. There is a section devoted to Stenhouse’s life as priest and religious in the MSCs (as they are affectionately known); a section on his life as a scholar-priest; one on his ministry; and a final section of reminiscences covering the various bits and pieces of a life that are, evidently, more difficult to classify. The foreword, by Chris McPhee, opens with the straightforward and bracing statement: “Central to Paul Stenhouse’s life was Jesus,” and it is clear as the book progresses that Fr Stenhouse understood the various threads of his life—and life more generally—as united together in and by Christ, but the Christ who is forever inseparable from his mother. Two of Fr Stenhouse’s Marian prayers are represented here, the second of which concludes: “Everything I have I give you, that you may always stand by me and win for me this grace, that I may perform every action of my life only as you and your Divine Son would have it done. Amen.”

There were many notable actions. Most notably, he edited Annals from 1965 through to 2019. He was a renowned scholar, with a BA (Hons) majoring in Samaritan Studies and Arabic, and a PhD for his Critical Edition of the Middle Arabic Text of the Samaritan Chronicle of Abu ‘l-Fah—both from the University of Sydney. He had a great concern for the life of Christians in the Middle East and was something of an Australian expert on Islam. He worked with and supported Sydney’s Asian Catholic community and was regarded by some of their number—as Robert Teo and his family attest—“as a living ‘Saint’”.

Among his many scholarly achievements are two studies, one on Islam, which Piers Paul Read reviews in this volume, and another on the poet John Farrell, which Michael Wilding describes as “pioneering”. His was a full, rich life, even if not a very nutritious one—his favorite food was McDonald’s. Apart from that he celebrated Mass and recited his breviary daily, enjoyed movies (he was a close friend of the late Bill Collins), made life-long friends, and was known as a generous man.

Between the ideal and the reality, as T.S. Eliot says, falls the shadow, and Fr Stenhouse’s life—like all lives—had its shadows. This is why the most interesting contribution in the book comes from his closest friend, John Madden. Like the other pieces here, Madden’s celebrates Stenhouse’s many virtues, but these are more beautifully realised in Madden’s account because he also describes, I will not say the vices but some less attractive character traits. So, “from time to time”, Madden writes, “I considered Paul to be manipulative … impatient, proud, stubborn, defensive and irascible”. Madden also illuminates a dimension of Stenhouse’s character that might otherwise have remained a mystery both to those who knew him well and those who, like me, encountered him only briefly from time to time—namely, his social awkwardness: “A couple of years before he died Paul told me over lunch in Berrima that when he was young, he had been diagnosed as having a degree of Asperger’s syndrome.” This puts him in good company with another high-functioning sufferer, Les Murray, who, like Fr Stenhouse, also had a gift for foreign languages (though I doubt Les’s was as meticulous or exercised as Stenhouse’s).

Learning that others sometimes found Fr Stenhouse “stubborn, defensive and irascible” has helped me make sense of my own first meeting with him more than twenty years ago. Christopher Pearson, on the suggestion of Frank Devine, had urged me to meet Fr Stenhouse, and passed his number on to me. I rang him and he invited me to the monastery, but the meeting quickly took an unfortunate turn when I expressed—rather more forthrightly than was prudent—my views about the modern Roman liturgy. Having got very cranky with me, however, Fr Stenhouse (who was known to have presided over Jazz Masses in the 1980s) nonetheless urged me to study Latin. He then abruptly got up and pulled four untouched volumes of the Henle Latin course off his shelf, which he thrust into my hands, asking for nothing in return. He was turning the other cheek at what he must have regarded as my own.

One detail, included in this book, which I hadn’t heard before, says as much about Fr Stenhouse (and the Sydney Catholic Church) as any other. It emerges that Cardinal Pell had asked him to serve as his auxiliary bishop in the Sydney archdiocese. He declined, pointing out that he “was not known by the Sydney clergy”.

I hope this little volume will make him more widely known. He deserves to be.

Paul Stenhouse: A Distinctive and Distinguished Missionary of the Sacred Heart
edited by Paul Malone
Australian Scholarly, 2020, $20

Stephen McInerney is Senior Lecturer in Literature at Campion College, and Academic Director and Deputy CEO at the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation.