Adventurous Life
‘Three times I have been beaten with rods; once I was stoned. Three times I have been shipwrecked; a night and a day I have been adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brethren; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure’ (2 Cor 11:25-27).
Since I joined the Columbans in 1972 I have visited 32 countries, even if some of them only very briefly. For 22 years from 1978 to 2000 I was assigned to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
Living in and visiting other countries, I have known the helplessness of not having a clue what is going on around me, of not knowing what someone was saying to me, or how to ask even the most basic (and necessary) directions!
In my life I have learned (and mostly forgotten) eight languages – each time reduced to being like a baby, yet as an adult feeling the utter frustration of not being able to form even the simplest of sentences.
Dangers Faced
I have been robbed eight times on three continents. I have been bound hand and foot. I have been blindfolded. A revolver was shoved into my face and I was shown the bullet that would kill me if I resisted – I felt the cold press of the barrel against my left temple while the assassin’s finger indicated on my right temple the spot where the bullet would explode outwards ending my life. I have been stood against a wall for execution.
I felt publicly humiliated when a Church/Community Hall building project I was overseeing was halted following an unexpected outcry from a local minority opposition; all my efforts over the next year and a half to bring about a settlement proved fruitless. I feared the skeletal shell of the unfinished building would forever remain a public monument mocking my presumption. I had even named it in my own mind as ‘Pat’s Folly’!
I left for a course overseas. Within days, against all the odds, and without any further appeal, the opposition accepted the compromise I had first proposed when the crisis first erupted. In that moment my successor in the parish inherited, not the ‘mess’ I had started and had to leave behind, but a clear path to resume construction and to oversee the work through to completion.
Some months later I had the immense joy of celebrating the first Eucharist in the still unfinished building, but I was not able to be present for the official blessing and opening of the completed Community Hall.
It’s still God’s work
I had begun that work with great expectations. In the events that unfolded all my personal ambitions were crushed. But despite the sense of personal failure, and contrary to all expectations, the project was achieved in ways that I can only call ‘miraculous’ – God was at work!
I worked in three parishes in the Archdiocese of Lahore, starting as Parish Priest at the tender age of 26 (I look back now with horror on how naïve I was!) and ending nearly twenty years later as Assistant Pastor (to colleagues ordained and arriving in Pakistan many years after me!). Besides the Community Hall mentioned above, I have overseen the construction of four extensions to three different schools in these three parishes.
After seven years of primary school, five years of secondary school, seven years at the Columban seminary, two years in language school in Pakistan, and three years of Arabic and Islamic Studies in Rome . . . my real education took place in the villages and neighborhoods of the Punjab. From the dusty highways and byways of Lahore I returned to the more pristine hallways of Australian academia in 2000 and completed a two-year Masters in Theology. Now in mid-life I am again a student (I must be a very slow learner!), this time working on a PhD in theology.
Adventures in the Academe
I have also crossed around to the other side of the desk. I lecture at the Catholic Institute of Sydney. I am a Catholic priest teaching Islam, and Interreligious Dialogue . . . but I am still a learner when it comes to the academic bureaucracy!
Besides the classroom, I have also addressed schools, parishes, justice groups, catechists, activists, teachers, religious, conferences, and pub audiences. I speak to Christian groups, Muslim groups, Christian-Muslim groups, Jewish-Christian-Muslim groups, interfaith groups, multi-faith groups, and once to a Hindu group. In one particularly hectic week last year I attended a Jewish Passover, led the Easter Triduum at a Catholic University, and was guest at a Muslim celebration of the Birth of the Prophet Muhammad.
I have given testimony for Muslims who felt their faith was vilified by Christians, including the grueling experience of being cross-examined on the witness stand for more than two days – so I am the first Catholic priest in Australia (and possibly in the world) to have defended Islam in a court of law. I have been verbally abused for my stance, accused of betraying Christianity, and assured of a place in hell! To keep the balance, I have also challenged Muslims when I felt my Christian faith was misrepresented.
I have been Columban Bursar, Pakistan Mission Unit Coordinator, member of the Conference of Major Religious Superiors of Pakistan, of its Men’s Branch, and of its Executive. I have been Hospital Chaplain. I represented the Archdiocese of Lahore on the National Rabita Commission (Commission for Christian-Muslim Relations) in Pakistan, and am currently a member of the Bishops’ Commission for Ecumenism and Interreligious Relations in Australia. I am the Columban Vocations Coordinator, calling young men to an adventurous life of faith like my own.
Life Extreme
I have known tears and laughter, joy and grief, ecstasy and despair, love and hate, community and loneliness, success and failure – all to their extremes, or at least that is how it seemed to me at the time.
All this happened in my first years as Columban Missionary Priest. I wonder what the coming years will hold? If the first stage is anything to go by, it certainly won’t be boring!!!
(Besides, while the restlessness still moves me, there are many more countries in the world that I hope to visit before I reach my eternal rest!)
One of the 32 countries the author, an Australian Columban, has visited is the Philippines. Your editor interviewed him on DXDD, the radio station of the Archdiocese of Ozamiz, early in 1979 when Father Pat was on his way to Pakistan. You may email him atpatrickmcinerney@columban.org.au or write him at St Columban’s, PO Box 752, NIDDRIE, VIC 3042, AUSTRALIA.