When You Learn, Teach; When You Get, Give
By Fr Nicholas Murray
Fr Nicholas Murray died in his native Ireland on 21 April, Holy Thursday, ten days after his 73rd birthday. We first published this article in May-June 2004. The late Father Murray went to China after serving for 12 years as Superior General of the Missionary Society of St Columban. Though he made ‘it very clear that I am a practicing Catholic, to enhance the witness value of my presence’ he found himself in China being a missionary in a very different way from his years in the Philippines where everyone called him ‘Father’. His Chinese students knew him as ‘Mr Nick’.
I’ve been teaching English in a university in Chongging in southwest China since September 2002. I chose to work in this part of China because it is somewhat less developed than the east and the government is now making efforts to develop the west. Chongging is at the center of that effort. I teach Oral English and a course in Western Culture for AB students majoring in English. The latter course in particular affords great scope for communicating values, with topics such as the Bible and Christianity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance and Reformation, to name but a few.
