Carmelite Librarians Meet

Prague Reading libraryprague4
Philip Harvey, Librarian at the Carmelite Library, Middle Park

Positioned in 24K window seat to Prague via Dubai, any time of day, which turns anytime soon to night, can be spent touching the in-flight screen. A poke of the dropdown box gives eight pages of Essential Albums. A deft jab with the index finger will display enough movies to watch for several circumnavigations of the planet. A nudge with a knuckle gets the screen keeping constant updates on the flight, including camera shots of terra firma below and nimbus or cirrus or astra ahead. But interestingly, in all of this magical mystery tour of 2012 culture, not one text screen. Not one file of great Czech poems to inform the traveller of the Bohemian soul. Not one short essay by Vaclav Havel. Touching is changing how we access our listening, watching, and reading. It is changing how we access. The flight screen is an in-your-face reminder of the contemporary declaration that the fold is dead. Books fold, magazines crinkle, we dog-ear the page before taking a catnap. But the flat screen is altering the habits of a lifetime, if not precisely replacing them. A child of five knows which spot on the screen to touch next, quicker than I know how to find the table of contents in my compendious monographic companion. Travelling at a ground speed of 581 miles per hour toward Prague I choose instead to sit back and enjoy through headphones the sensationally great opera that had its world premiere in that city in 1787, Mozart’s ‘Don Giovanni’.

Information Technology Revolution
libraryprague2 Rumours of the death of the fold are greatly exaggerated. Delegates at the Tenth Carmelite Librarians’ Meeting (Decima Riunione Bibliotecari Carmelitani) know in advance that the information technology revolution has clarified the role of librarians. In particular, it has shown us that books are not the main business of librarians. Our main business is the keeping of memory, the provision of reading, the selection of essential knowledge. By which I mean, reading in whatever form it may be presented, via whatever carrier the words are delivered. The codex, or fold, was not the first mode of transmission left to the care of librarians, and it won’t be the last. Nor do we hear laments from the rooftops for the loss of the fold, even if some of our borrowers ask inappropriate questions about whether librarianship is a thing of the past, now that ‘everything’ is online. Plainly our job is not to waste time explaining away their misconceptions, but to ask what it is they are looking for. Chances are we will have the answer, or know where to find it for them. More than likely the answer will not be online, but in the lines of a folding item in the library. Thus the conference kicks off, delegates ever sensitive to what our users read and how they read.

As the distance increases between writer and reader, reliant on robots as intermediaries, it is unsurprising that words have become text – undifferentiated and perpetual text. Streaming of information creates an illusion that one set of words is of equal value with any other set of words, just as the stupendous availability of music online has created the illusion that all music is simply downloadable product, without distinction, notated wallpaper. The word ‘robot’ is a Czech contribution to English vocabulary. In his science fiction play of 1920, Karel Capek introduces to the stage robots, who are mass-produced out of organic matter in a factory. These are artificial humans who can do all the work for humans, which is helpful, until some of them turn hostile and end up destroying the world, leading to the extinction of all humans. Not helpful, and not very bright. ‘Robot’ has a fraught history in English usage, as a robot can be a creative and practical extension of human utility, but also an unmanageable and dangerous threat to human potential. It can be a good servant, but a bad master. When it comes to reading, this paradox can have consequences. How much text can we take from the robots until it is all too much? The robots keep on keeping on. While the robots keep on sending text in unmanageable quantities daily, how do we, the fragile humans with our soft retinas, decide what is readable, and not? For every librarian replaced by a robot, there is one less conversation about knowledge that could make a difference to our future.

After Capek wrote his robot play he recognised that it was a re-telling, probably unconsciously, of a Jewish legend closely associated with the city of Prague: the legend of the golem. This Hebrew word occurs once in the Bible, at Psalm 139, 16. John Wyclif in English makes golem “unperfect thing”, out of which the King James Bible (1611) says “Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written.” It seems to be variously translated inanimate matter, amorphous unformed material, unformed substance, or embryo, depending on your translator, but was used previously in the Middle Ages for a human made from the earth. In Jewish mysticism this clay person was brought to life by the insertion of a slip of paper with one of the mystic names of God, under his tongue, rather as we validate a ticket to go on the metro, or write in a password to go to the next part of a website. As with Capek's robot, the golem would then follow the directions of the one who created him. Related to this new found power over an inhuman human was the fear that the golem might get out control and take things into his own hands, making him a precursor of Frankenstein and other technological inventions that do the opposite of their creator's wishes. As with robots too, the golem in some stories turns on his own creator and kills him, thus exemplifying one of the more unhappy metaphors for human invention. Yehudah Liva ben Betsal'el, Chief Rabbi of Prague in the late 16th century, is the person given highest profile as the creator of the golem, and when I say 'creator' I don't mean literally, because the golem is created out of reading. Reading makes him so. He is a magical creature invented from stories, from a Jewish mystical tradition involving Hebrew Scripture, letters and numbers. That a golem might or might not exist seems to be at the heart of subsequent stories emanating from the Jewish Quarter of Prague. At different times in history there have been serious attempts to identify an actual golem, including unsuccessful inspections of the attic of the Old-New Synagogue in the city, where legend has it that a golem has lived in secret for centuries.

Caech Carmelite Treasures libraryprague3
The Carmelite Czech Delegation welcomed delegates. We were given a potted history of Carmelite presence in Bohemia, which started in 1347, and not by accident at the same time as the founding of Charles University. In the first period there are no surviving books. They were possibly transported to Vienna, all lost. But by chance a liturgical book was discovered more recently, a book containing two late medieval books bound together. The first book is a little less than 100 years older than the second book. The first is a Gradual with Carmelite themes, circa 200 pages. It contains no name of a pope or emperor, but mentions Saint Wenceslas and one Bishop John, so must have been made before or around 1390. The book is so ancient that there is no reference to the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, a date that later became central to the Carmelites’ year. But Our Lady of the Snows is mentioned, with a special dedication, leading to the conclusion that the book must be Carmelite. (One of the great churches of the city is named for this dedication.) The colophon to the second book is dated 11 April 1473. The book contains a Latin poem about a legend of Mary in which it snows in Rome in August. This legend is related to the formation of Santa Maria Maggiore, the basilica church in Rome dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. These books had been used by Benedictines for their Christmas Vigil. It was only through reading an article in a journal that the attention of local Carmelites was drawn to this bound set, and thus a link with their more remote past. Today the historic volume is held in the National Museum at the top of Wenceslas Square. Such stories remind us that generations of readers gave their complete attention to the ultimate meaning of the words of worship, only very secondarily to such niceties as provenance or date. The words themselves, properly used, their meanings repeated and learned, make redundant the demands of time and place. In hearing about the two books in one, I could not help seeing it as a descriptive metaphor of Bohemia itself, in which different periods of history, at odds with one another, are squashed together unceremoniously. The physical layout of the city, seriously attractive as it is, is also a record of historical periods pressed against one another. It is left to the visitor to differentiate one thing from another, one period from the next, as for the locals this has already been absorbed, the continuities registered.

Discovering Prague
carmellibraryprague1 Going out into the city, there are various ways of finding your bearings. You can download the Prague App, which gives a full guide to the city simply by hitting your hand screen. A couple of delegates took this option. ‘Top 10 Prague’ (D&K Eyewitness Travel, 2011, c2003) is big on main features, contains lift-out maps, and has a droll commentary (“… architecturally it embraces every epoch from Romanesque to the Brutalist style of the Katva department store.”). This full colour Baedeker has clearly not been updated however, as the Globe Internet Café (“An expatriate institution”) I found closed, empty and covered in graffiti, due to the onset of wifi. Indeed, at airports, hotels, and every other tourist locale, it is now assumed that the traveller has her own laptop and can just plug in. I could find only one internet café in all of Prague, down a side street, rate of one crown per minute. Or, if you are a Melburnian for whom sitting for hours on trams is a form of spiritual sustenance, then the way to discover Prague is to buy a 110 crown all-day ticket and let the next tram take you where it will. Prague is blessed with one of the best tram (Habsburgs) and metro (Soviets) systems in the world. Furthermore, English readers are privileged everywhere they travel, as most public signs are in Czech and English.

European Reformations
The privilege of reading is an originating cause of the European Reformations, the Czech version of which defined national character. What is the Christian religion? The foundation words of the Gospel? The practices that arose out of those Gospels? In every generation we observe the pull between the knowledge setting of society and how Gospel is used to interact and interpret that setting. The Catholic priest Jan Hus knew his Wyclif. Wyclif translated Scripture into the native tongue and believed that the uneducated could understand the words just as well as the educated, the laity as well as the clergy. His sermons were direct expositions of Scripture itself, something not common from pulpits at the time. Scripture may be, indeed must be read in the vernacular, where it is available to all. Hus was not some local Prague troublemaker, he was the Chancellor of the University, and the challenge he gave to the established order in Bohemia was to have vast repercussions across Europe, one hundred years before Martin Luther. He preached in Czech, inspiring both aristocracy and the common people. How do we read Scripture? And who has control of the interpretation? Hus placed Scripture as superior to church authority, indeed as the only authority, making himself predictably enough unpopular with church authority.

The abiding influence of Jan Hus on Czech identity is evident in many subtle ways in Prague. Their way of noticing the opposite position and veering towards it, is one basic example. When Hus was betrayed and killed at the Council of Constance (1414-1418), his martyrdom forced the latent divisions within Bohemian society. War followed and, eventually, the assertion of Habsburg authority over the country. When the Catholic Reformation reasserted the power of Rome (and Vienna), one way was to build vast and impressive buildings. The term re-Catholicisation is used in their history books for the process. This mission strategy by architecture resulted in two of the most impressive building complexes in Prague, the Loreto and the Clementinum, the latter an educational institution built by the Society of Jesus upon a Dominican foundation. It shouldn't be a surprise to learn that the indefatigable Peter Canisius SJ was responsible for the construction: is there anywhere in the world he didn't go? Today the Clementinum is not run by the Jesuits, but houses the National Library. It holds the national treasure, an 11-th century illuminated Gospel Book called the Codex Vyssegradensis, which records the foundation of the kingdom of Bohemia as well as containing the earliest known representation of the Tree of Jesse. As though to keep things in balance though, the library also contains original documents signed by Jan Hus, the surviving library of astronomer and alchemist Tycho Brahe, and a superb collection of Mozartiana. A deal was announced last year with Google Books for two hundred thousand Czech books in the Clementinum to be digitised for common use, nearly all imprints between the 16th and 18th centuries.

In ‘The Secret Miracle’, a short story by the blind librarian Jorge Luis Borges, the main character, a playwright named Jaromir Hladik, has a dream about the Clementinum where the librarians look for God in the books of the library. Borges wrote this story during the Second World War, when Prague was occupied by the Nazis. Hladík, who is living there during the occupation, is arrested and charged with being Jewish as well as opposing the Anschluss. He is sentenced to die by firing squad. He goes through raw terror at the prospect of death, but then turns to an unfinished play, titled ‘The Enemies’. His previous works he feels to be unsatisfactory and wants to complete this play, the one by which history will judge and vindicate him. With two acts left to write and his death sentence imminent, it seems impossible that he could complete it in time. On the last night before his death, Hladík prays to God, requesting that he be granted one year in which to finish the play. That night, he dreams of going to the Clementinum, where one of the books contains God within a single letter on one of the pages, which the cranky old librarian has been unable to find despite looking for most of his life. (Interestingly, in Borgesian terms, he complains of almost going blind looking for this letter.) God is in one of the letters of one of the pages of one of the four hundred thousand books of the Clementinum. Someone returns an atlas to the library; by chance Hladik touches a letter on a map of India and hears a voice that says to him, "The time for your labour has been granted". The next day at the appointed time, two soldiers come and Hladík is taken outside and lined up before the firing squad. The sergeant calls out the order to fire. Time stops. The entire world becomes motionless, including Hladík himself, standing in place before the firing squad. However, although he is completely paralysed, he remains conscious. After a time, he understands: God has granted him the time he requested. For him, a year of subjective time will pass between the sergeant's order and the soldiers firing their rifles, though no one else will realize that anything unusual has happened - hence, the secret miracle of the story's title. Working from memory, Hladík mentally writes, expands and edits his play, shaping every detail and nuance to his satisfaction. Finally, after a year of labour, he completes it; only a single epithet is left to be written, which he chooses, and time begins again and the volley from the soldiers' rifles kills him.

How to preserve the past
It was not possible for anyone to look for this letter during the week of the Meeting as the Clementinum was closed for repairs. Alchemy and numerology had to wait; the delegates had to look elsewhere. Meanwhile our conference enjoyed raising the perplexities of reading and storage. We heard about the ageing of print. The text on photocopies using outdated chemical methods is literally disappearing before our eyes. Yet the instant solution of digitising these rare copies is itself risky if, as we are being warned, the CD or the file itself could become redundant or inaccessible as one technology supersedes another. What will last and what will not? Built-in obsolescence is nothing new and can make new into nothing. We hear about reprint books where the old lettering blurs on the flat page, rendering words illegible. We can see the letters perfectly in the incunabula, but the 21-st century reprint turns them into swatted flies. Print-on-demand, an astonishing publishing explosion directly caused by the digital revolution, is a mixed blessing. A scanner that misinterprets accents produces a book that is a schemozzle of indistinguishable signifiers and signifieds. This must be particularly problematic with Czech, a language bristling with acutes, haceks, and dipthongy things. O, one utters, for the ancient text in all its papery glory! Spinoffs of this sort glut the market, ghosts of the originals, and not least on Amazon.

The keyboard itself has entered a whole new era, now that computers can only be spoken to by keying and mousing. There are times when we speak our mind to the computer, but that’s another matter, and only a matter of time. The qwerty has become the subject of international dispute, where nerds with time on their hands may write petitions for a better way of arranging the letters. These arguments do not have much leverage while qwerty is an historical and international reality as fixed as diplomacy. Having said that, Czech keyboards are fun for the novice, as their range of diacritics requires extra keys and registers. (The Arabic keyboards at Dubai Airport had more graphemes than there are stars in the sky above.) This led to a comedy of errors when I needed to send emails, as my passwords included figures that are located in unorthodox Czech parts of the console.Frustration gave way to relief as it was explained how the settings can be changed from Czech to English via a feature on the toolbar. The keyboard has become our means of touring the internet, our readiest way of finding what we wish to read next, our search guide for reading the newspapers, but it is fallible and prone to error.

Everyday the newspapers are full of all the most awful news about what humans can do. Even though we tell ourselves we will stop reading the newspaper, enough is enough, still we go back and read more of this awfulness. We seem to have a compulsion to go back for more, taking it all in with private relish and reacting in the same old appalled way. These thoughts were given, but much more succinctly and in perfect German, by Franz Kafka in his diaries. (One of the most famous entries is for 2 August 1914: “Germany has declared war on Russia. Went swimming in the afternoon.”) I relate Kafka’s thoughts from memory as I do not have the Diaries in front of me. Newspapers. Does anyone still cut columns from them to paste into scrapbooks? Does anyone cut and paste from online newspapers and store them in their cloud? And if so, do they go back and read them later?

Franz Kafka was a writer I discovered when I was at secondary school. His effect was direct and subversive. Perhaps his best known story today is ‘Metamorphosis’, about a young man who wakes up one morning to find he has turned into a cockroach. An insect at least, but always cockroach in my mind. Even today, after living with this story half a lifetime, there is still something utterly shocking about it that defies easy explanation. He wrote ‘The Trial’, a novel about a man who is arrested for a crime that he doesn’t know about, but by the end has come to believe he is guilty of committing. And then there is ‘The Castle’, another story about sinister and inexplicable bureaucracy that controls people’s lives. All of these stories express the state of existence in late imperial Prague, most evidently ‘The Castle’ because the inner city is overseen, from almost any river vista, by the immense hilltop edifice known as Hradcany Castle. Kafka was a novelist deeply aware of the multiple demands for attention on the modern educated reader, hence his agony about why he wastes so much time reading newspapers. He knew that there was no point writing a novel unless it was going to have an immediate and lasting impact on the reader. “A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us,” was not said by someone intending to produce a nice read, or who saw reading as simply a way to pass the time. Any book written by Kafka had to be powerfully memorable. It had to change your life. It is this high personal expectation that is behind Kafka’s directive to destroy all of his manuscripts at his death. Fortunately his literary executor defied the author’s wishes, which is why visitors to Prague today can seek out the city’s Kafkaesque aspects, whether obvious or not.

Strahov Monastery libraryprague1
One morning our Carmelite guide distributed the tram tickets for our trip through town, across the Vltava and up Hradcany to the Strahov Monastery. This is one of the great historic landmarks, founded around 1140 and the scene of the fortunes of Prague itself: false starts, constructions, additions, fire, plunder, rejection, reclamation, repairs, triumphs, disasters, quiet, noise, looting, closure, destruction, decoration, re-opening, almost everything but defenestration. Holy people do not throw people out of windows. Ushered through large portals and long corridors we arrived at an unassuming door that led us into one of those library rooms we only dream about. Heavy floorboards led the eye inward toward the invisible point of perspective. Sunlight glowed across shelves matched strictly to the height of the books, surely nothing after 1900. Above us swirled one of those Baroque stucco ceilings that seem to have been modelled on whipped vanilla icecream. Frescoes circled above us as well, each one containing a scene with a scriptural passage that links knowledge with Wisdom. Above the door was painted the well-known saying: Initium sapientiae timor Domini (Psalm 110). This is the Theological Hall, completed in 1679. We put our shod feet into big felt slippers in order to slide across the boards without making a dint. It was difficult to restrain the temptation to pull large folios from the shelves, to read their title pages, to check out the inscriptions, to gaze inside some of these rare imprints, to listen to long ago theologians forwarding a premise. Not only is the readerly impulse as natural as breathing to a librarian, so is the interest in finding out how the books are arranged, how did they bind that multi-volume Augustine, and what is the truly rarest, by which we don’t mean the oldest, of all the books. (Google Image ‘Strahov Monastery’ if you are wondering what I am talking about.) So many rarities, so little time.

The monastery is Premonstratensian and even though the library rooms themselves are post-medieval it is unavoidable in such a setting not to think of the different kinds of reading practised by those Benedictine men throughout the Middle Ages. The existence of the book as a practical means of individual memory evolves in that period. Single manuscripts of theology were circulated to houses, where they would be read aloud (lectio) and in silence (meditatio) until the readers had memorised the contents. Public and private reading were organised for optimum remembrance. The ideas promoted in such works then became the personal knowledge of each reader, their added collective possession. The teachings became their teachings, though dispute was inevitable where newfangled notions were introduced. When it came to worship this was all the more important. It becomes self-evident that a single illuminated missal, or other liturgical or scriptural work, would be treated with the utmost care and reverence by individuals for whom this was the only copy in their house and maybe the only copy they would use in a lifetime. The words were their way into wisdom, so methods of reading, whether voiced or studied in silent retreat, were vital to existence. We can see, in such a world, why the coming of the printing press had such a rapid effect on their way of life, and also on their actual ways of thinking, trained as they had been for generations in reading solitary texts, solitarily together.

One of the most exquisite practical objects in the Theological Hall at Strahov is a rotating desk. Called a compilation wheel, it has ledges taking three or four books each, fitted into a circular hold that can be turned by a handle. The ledges keep to the horizontal by gravity, the engine having about six or eight of these ledges, so that a reader or translator can have as many as a dozen or more books open at once at a glance. This 17th century marvel provides ideal service for intertextual research, with no fussy delimiting of screens, tiresome online searches for forgotten quotes, or piles of sources to trip over. It is an object lesson in the needs of the Renaissance and Enlightenment reader, who worked with many texts at once and would work for the first time with many of them open, pages turned at a moment’s notice. With the tip of a hand a small library of books was available to read, all in real time.

Another exquisite object is in the adjoining Philosophical Hall of Strahov Library. It was all explained to us in impeccable Czech by the librarian, then through our charming translator into English. A tall free-standing cabinet bookcase is situated along one side of the room. It was the gift of the Austrian Princess and second wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, Marie Louise. In the autumn of 1812 she sent books to Strahov, a Viennese set of porcelain, and a four-volume catalogue listing the printed works in the first Louvre museum. This set was a piece of high culture propaganda, a political stunt masterminded by the French Emperor himself. However, when the exclusive publication was completed, he had the whole print run destroyed, after it was explained that it listed a large number of works that had been looted from other countries during his campaigns, most especially Italy. The Bonapartes’ propaganda coup turned into what nowadays is laughingly called a public relations disaster. Even as the donation was being received Napoleon was engaged in his ill-conceived Russian invasion, thus in a very short time leaving Prague with one of the handful of first edition Louvre catalogues still in existence. It is safely locked behind the cabinet glass, a curiosity kept from the cataclysm, like so many curiosities in this place. The reader can only wonder at libraries lost and found as she studies these grandiose records of unbridled ambition.

Information and Propaganda
A developed reading habit will begin to distinguish between information and propaganda, between the presentation of the words and their maker’s intentions. We were reminded of this truth after leaving Strahov Monastery and arriving down the street at the Archbishop’s Palace, directly adjacent to Hradcany Castle. The plan was to say Mass in the chapel of the Palace, but first our Carmelite guide, the erudite Father Gorazd Cetkovsky, told us a story at the castle gate about Josef Beran, Archbishop of Prague from 1946 until his death in 1969. In 1948 the archbishop declared in a sermon that the Catholic news in Czechoslovakia was not official but was being controlled by the Communists. At the time church services were being interrupted by hecklers and at this service the Reds derided Beran, whistled and yelled loudly. In a detail already suggestive of legend, Fr Gorazd said that the children in the church ran crying to the altar, which one took to mean a place of security for the children. Consequently the archbishop was put under house arrest by the State, leaving one to ask: what are we reading? What reading is official? What official publications are in fact not official? What do the officials want us to know? When living in a police state, either pre-1945 Nazi Prague or post-1948 Soviet Prague, how much is being made public? What is being repressed? Especially when the organization is the church, which philosophically disagrees with the State but publicly maintains an appearance of cool agreement with or tolerance of the State, simply in order to survive? Beran was separated from his people and his diocese for twenty years. Ordinations were conducted secretly, sometimes in the small chapel that we were about to worship in. Unable to minister properly to the congregations and their clergy, Beran lived a life of suffering and prayer. When Rome advised that it wished to make him a cardinal, the Communist authorities told Beran that if he went to Rome he was not to come back. After painful deliberation he left Prague, attending the last session of the Vatican Council, and dying in Rome. It was therefore with a sober sense of history and religious commitment that we filed through the large rooms of the Archbishop’s Palace and into the ornate Baroque chapel, aware that for all its beauty this was a place of prolonged imprisonment, suffering, and dedicated service.

Unexpected Support
An unexpected course of behaviour is recounted in an essay by the novelist Milan Kundera. Himself an atheist, Kundera started supporting the Christians through this period, and even started going to Mass, when he saw them being bullied publicly and privately by the Communists. We may call his reactions honourable; they were also very Czech. Czechs are conscious of their religious inheritance, even when they disagree with the religion, and see any outside imposition of injustice as unacceptable. Obviously Kundera’s reactions have a political motivation as well, but he was defending the freedom and right of religion. To judge by his essays, Milan Kundera’s central belief is in literature, and in particular the centrality of the novel as the locus of changing human consciousness. In this respect he is not very distant from Franz Kafka. Anyone who believes that the novel says it all, or says it best, will have an enormous faith in readers. He must also of necessity have faith in the reader to get it right. Kundera represents the Western Humanist tradition that says a creative fiction has its own internal life and references that can only be fully appreciated inside the reading life of that fiction. It is therefore easy to understand why Kundera disapproved of the film of his novel ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’, set in the period of the Prague Spring in the late 1960s. In the Czech edition of the book, Kundera remarked that the movie had very little to do with the spirit either of the novel or the characters in it. As a result of this experience, he continued, he was no longer allowing any adaptations of his works. Such a standoff plays right into the purpose of one of the most common conversation openers in society today: was the film as good as the book? Or, would you read the book after seeing the film? Et cetera. We have become so used to book and film being interchangeable units, as though one were the same as the other, that we have lost sight of the quite complex differences that exist between the visual and the print media. Kundera will be saying in words a hundred things that a film can only hint at, or cannot communicate at all. How can it? Likewise, in a few frames we can see graphic reconstructions of the events of August 1968 in Prague that Kundera must either stretch to make credible or assume the reader knows about beforehand. The novel has philosophical and literary connections from page to page that a filmmaker may only be able to transmit by a choice of poses, sets of shades, or symphonic hints. While Kundera may be right to give up on the idea that a film can ever say what he says, the belief that a film could do that anyway is in itself a mistake. Without being a snob about it, Milan Kundera’s decision seems to be based on the belief that the reader will only really be able to understand him by reading his words. The relationship between writer and reader is fixed on the page; everything else, films included, is commentary after the fact.

Meditation, prayer and new technology
The library conference continues behind closed doors in the nearby inner suburb of Karlin. A session on the new gadgets prompts repeated imaginary questions about the future. If tablets and smartphones become our first mode of reading, is there something we are also losing in that exchange? When a handheld device contains all of our reading for the next month, are we even thinking of visiting a library? Will the touchscreen really replace flimsy old breezy old paperbacks? Will there come a day when everything can be found in an ebook? Or are we creating a world divided into ebook available versus ebook unavailable? Can we concentrate for as long at a screen as we can at a paper page? Is medieval meditatio, the practice of reading at depth in silence, better done on some new untested microchip mechanism? Or is the uncomplicated simplicity of the written or printed sheet of paper, by definition, more conducive to meditatio? The same questions can even be framed for lectio. If online periodicals become so expensive that no one can afford them, will there be a publishing revolution that drives new available knowledge out online, for free? Is much of the internet little more than journalism? How much of it will be read in five years? Even more worryingly for those who believe in knowledge, how much of it will not be available in five years? And where does that leave the author trying to connect with her reader? How can we prove whether that knowledge there yesterday is still there, or not? Is there a librarian keeping tabs on the holdings of the world wide web? Is anyone cataloguing all of this stuff? If our private reading and writing habits can be monitored online, then may we not want to go private and stay offline? Are there secret police out there who can read our emails and blogs without our knowledge? Call me paranoid, but isn’t that an actual possibility? Even more worrying for writers than their work being read by people they don’t know is the idea that their writing is not being read and may even have disappeared offline, never to be seen again. What then? Start a new chapter? What exactly is being read in this world of saturation images? Are we even reading in the same way we did ten years ago? What is the internet doing to our brains? What’s it doing to our eyes? What’s it doing to our reading? Are we addicted to information but forgetting about communication? Is copying from multiple sources off the internet poetic license or creative plagiarism? If I admitted that my retelling of ‘The Secret Miracle’ by Borges drew from various unnamed sources online and off, does that make my version an unoriginal copy or a highly original mashup? These and other cheery questions keep the mind ticking over until the next coffee break.

Prague Reading
The people of Prague read books on the park benches of the river islands. Mid-morning coffee drinkers return to their history book near the Franciscan Gardens. Caricaturists, selling their charcoal sketches on the Charles Bridge, read cartoon books while waiting for the next portrait to walk by. On the red trams, old men read the tiny Czech print in immaculately bound books. Locals sit with pilseners at open-air restaurants, reading the latest trade paperbacks. Tourists stand in the glare of the square to read where they want to stare next. The process of close reading goes on, checking where they were last, what language on the present page links intimately to language elsewhere in the text, links that only the mind can make that is paying attention. The mind lives with the author's created world of words. Remembrance is not just in the printed book but relies on the remembrances in the reader's mind. Author and reader renew acquaintances, the better to achieve some stage of advanced agreement, some place of shared recognition. The people of Prague stay at their art nouveau upstairs windows, entering a book they haven't entered for twenty years. In the bookshops filled to the ceilings over two floors with books only in Czech, buyers while the time with new titles, getting the angle of blurbs, tracing the pattern in a table of contents, gauging price against contents. There seem to be not many ipads and it’s the tourists with the smartphones. The soft slow turning of the page is the quietest sound along the sides of the Vltava. There are amazing, gold-tinted towers, weeds mandatory in footpaths and along sides of even large stately buildings, its seems, and the climate is balmy before a summer shower. The vast Vltava moves at steady pace and breezes down the barriers with ducks bobbing, as another page is turned.

Coming home
Access to in-flight screens involves touching one of three choices on the homepage: I, C, or E. Information, Communication, or Entertainment. A great pity there is no K for Knowledge, L for Learning, or best of all, R for Revelation. That would be a screen to die for, maybe. Information is little different to Communication on this screen, readymade facts that serve the traveller's need for quick answers. We hardly call this reading in the real sense of meditatio or lectio. That everything else is Entertainment speaks for our age, where no differentiation is made in consumer culture between works of depth and works of inane skimming. While we can be thankful for small mercies - some of the films are good and the music excellent - the image-heavy choices on the touchscreen bespeak a view of the audience that is tellingly non-readerly. It reminds me how much reading is an active process, not a passive one. Perhaps the airlines still have to catch up with words. It is therefore with some relief that I switch off the screen and pluck out the trusty in-flight magazine from the rack. There is, furthermore, a lead article on the changing habits of reading. The plane hurtles elegantly over Baghdad in the vague direction of Australia. I have a scribbled conference pad full of jobs for home, all of them to do with reading: emails to colleagues about indexing of journals, an article to scan about 19th-century Carmelites, follow-up on documents to write on librarianship, other emails to send to overseas libraries offering donations of out-of-print books using cheap freight, lists of authors whose titles must be ordered, lists of unheard of titles that I must read myself, follow-up emails to colleagues post-Prague. But amidst the fiesta of news in the in-flight magazine, I have to sort out in my mind the meaning of an article on open innovation, Web 3.0 social financing, and crowdsourcing, deciding on the basis of words received whether or not this is something to act on in the next six months: “The platforms mentioned above only begin to scratch the surface of distributed knowledge: its potential forms and applications are near boundless. While there’s ample room in the world for individual innovators and geniuses, this generation’s most elucidatory source of knowledge will likely be the collective mind.” (‘The magical power of crowds’, by Eric M. Blattberg, in ‘Open Skies’ magazine, Emirates Airlines, July 2012, p. 92)

We need your help... support our work

With their whole hearts, our Carmelite students dedicate themselves to serve you, your loved ones and community. Be part of their journey, support our future spiritual leaders.

Finding hope, changing lives: Anacleto’s story

anacleto 450 One of our Carmelite students, Anacleto Guterres da Costa, has recently been ordained as a Deacon. His journey began in heartbreak, with the loss of his family and his early years spent in an orphanage. Yet, through resilience and faith, Anacleto has defied the odds and is now well on his way to becoming a Carmelite priest.

Reflecting on his experience, Anacleto shares:

“As I grew up, I learned to accept the reality of what happened to me, and step by step, I became aware that God has never abandoned me. In the orphanage, the Carmelite sisters loved me as if I were their son. They provided everything I needed throughout my childhood and guided me to become a good man. The Carmelites nurtured me, not just spiritually, but by their constant presence."

Thanks to the generosity of donors like you, young Timorese people like Anacleto have been given hope and a pathway to change their lives and serve their communities. Your support enables us to train the next generation of Carmelite priests, who will go on to serve in Timor-Leste, Australia, and around the world.

“My dream is to be a priest, also to be a Carmelite Priest. This is my dream. Since I was in the orphanage, although I was still young, I remember I said, 'One day I will be the Pope and my brother will be a bishop!"

Br Anacleto Guterres da Costa, O.Carm

Click here to show your support and help our Carmelite students continue their theological education.

The Carmelites - Australia and East Timor

We support people from all walks of life who have suffered both emotional and physical loss. We empower them to embrace a fulfilling life for themselves, their neighbours and their communities.

In Australia we offer programs and services which help people facing social, economic and life challenges. Through places of reflection such as the Carmelite Library, Carmelite Centre and Sancta Sophia Retreat Centre we offer people pastoral care helping to restore their faith.

In East Timor we work alongside people both in spiritual and practical ways to help overcome past hurt, restore dignity and bring them out of poverty. Through friendships formed we empower the Timorese people to rebuild their communities.

To make a donation please contact:

Fundraising Development
The Carmelites Australia & Timor-Leste
75 Wright Street, Middle Park VIC 3206
Phone:+61 3 9690 8822
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Read our Privacy Statement here

Carmelite Formation Fund

Our East Timorese and Australian students are at various stages of their Carmelite education. Each student has made a deep and personal commitment to study to become a Carmelite priest or brother. With your help these Carmelite formation students will make a valuable difference to their communities and to the people of East Timor and Australia. It costs $50,000 a year to feed, clothe, house and educate a young Carmelite student in Australia.

Become an East Timor Mission Partner

You can become an East Timor Mission Partner bringing hope and freedom to the people of East Timor.

You can help transform the lives of people like Gloria, Lucinda and Sabino by providing health care, food, clothing, books and an education.

Sabino

SabinoWeb Sabino, 20, is in Year 12 at high school in Zumalai. He lives in the Carmelite boarding house – here he has a place to live and study, food to eat, school books and uniform. Sabino wants to study English and computer skills when he finishes high school.

"The Carmelites teach us to pay attention to our studies and show us we need to be grateful for this experience by praying to God and sharing in daily prayer with the Carmelites' he says. He doesn't want to fail.

Sabino is very aware that as the oldest male in his family (his father died in 2009) he must study hard so he can get a good job to look after his mother, 10 brothers and sisters.

Gloria

GloriaWeb Then there's Gloria, who showed courage and initiative in asking The Carmelites for help.

Gloria, 19, comes from Zumalai and after completing a 12 month course in English received a scholarship from The Carmelites so she can study in Dili University. Gloria dreams of becoming a teacher, teaching English in the parish primary school and to youth in Zumalai.

An education will enable Gloria to be employed and earn an income to support her family. At the same time, Gloria will make a valuable contribution to her students and other young people by helping them learn English which will increase their chances of future employment.

As Sr Rosemary says, "It's amazing to see the transformation of these young people - to see them striving to become something, to change the circumstances of their families, their communities and their own selves."

Our Mission Partners provide courage, hope and dreams for the next generation.

Lucinda

LucindaWeb Lucinda is too ill to look after Louis, her 18 month old son. She has asked the Carmelites to find a family who will care for him. She hopes her son never experiences poverty. In order to grow up well, Louis will need lots of love, nutritious food, safe drinking water, vaccines to help build up his immune system and an education so he can eventually find work. For the next 18 years Louis will depend on caring people like you to help him grow up and break free from poverty.

It's a big commitment we are making to Louis, Gloria and Sabino. Without the inspiration of St Therese we wouldn't have the courage to ask. Without the courage of St Therese we wouldn't have the confidence to believe that together we can help them.

Over 30 caring Mission Partners believe in our mission in East Timor. They help us, through monthly gifts, to provide the practical means to transform lives and rebuild hope.

To make a donation please contact:

Fundraising Development
The Carmelites Australia & Timor-Leste
75 Wright Street, Middle Park VIC 3206
Phone:+61 3 9690 8822
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Read our Privacy Statement here

Remember The Carmelites in your Will

Leaving a Gift in your Will is a personal choice of great importance. It’s a generous gesture that will reflect your faith, beliefs and values well into the future.

By leaving a gift to The Carmelites in your Will, your legacy can create a future of possibilities. Whether it is training young men to become priests, and equipping them to become leaders of their communities, or providing young Timorese people with hope for a better future through education, your gift will sustain our work and transform lives.

To find out more about leaving a gift in your Will to The Carmelites pdf download our Gifts in Wills booklet.

You can also contact us on 03 9690 8822 or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Carmelite Prayer Cards

A selection of prayer cards for different occasions is now available.

Prayercardsweb These cards not only convey your care and concern for those in need. They also let you include those you love in the masses and prayers of the Carmelites.

Cards are available for:

sympathy for those who have lost a loved one
healing & peace for those who are ill
spiritual support for those in physical or emotional stress
special occasions such as birthdays and anniversaries
prayerful wishes for any occasion

Order your prayer cards here.

Together we can engage lives, restore people’s faith
and transform communities.

Help us bring HOPE to the lives of people who need it the most both in Australia and East Timor. Together we can engage lives, restore people’s faith and transform communities.

Help children get the best start in life.
Give HOPE to the Children of East Timor.

Together we have the opportunity to make a difference to young East Timorese children and empower them with something most of us take for granted … an EDUCATION and a chance to finally break the cycle of poverty.

With over 8,400 young people under the age of 17. In Zumalai our education programs will help stop children falling through the cracks. Your gift will give HOPE and FREEDOM to the Children of Zumalai, East Timor through these projects:

Building three new classrooms at a village primary school to cater for increased demand.
Erecting a new boarding house to accommodate 15-20 children from outlying villages so they can attend school.
Providing 10 Tertiary Scholarships so young adults can attend technical college or university in Dili and Indonesia.

We need to raise $130,000 to funds these projects. Help children achieve their dreams and change the course of their lives by equipping them with a sound foundation.

To make a donation please contact:

Fundraising Development
The Carmelites Australia & Timor-Leste
75 Wright Street, Middle Park VIC 3206
Phone:+61 3 9690 8822
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Read our Privacy Statement here

View the embedded image gallery online at:
https://carmelites.org.au/itemlist/user/63-d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e?start=150#sigProIdd01b1f7c3d

Latest News

Christmas prayers & greetings Christmas2014Web200
December 2014

We send our prayers and best wishes for a very happy Christmas to all the members of the Carmelite Family in Australia and Timor Leste.

As always, you will be remembered at Midnight Mass at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Middle Park, Vic.

We remember those victims of the recent tragedies in Sydney and Cairns – they and their families will be in our thoughts and prayers this Christmas, too.

Our New Novices Novices2014Web200
December 2014

Our new novices, Estevão Mendonça De Jesus, Luis Baptista, Francisco Xavirius Vieira Martins, Luis Mendonça Maia and Estevão De Deus Gomes were received into the Novitiate on Sunday 14 December. Fr Bruce Clark (Regional Prior & Novice Master) was the celebrant.

As well as the Carmelites present, over 120 members of the new novices' families attended. The ceremony was followed by morning tea with time for the families to see our house. After lunch there was some traditional tebe-tebe (dance). Some families came quite a distance - at least 4 hours on the back of trucks and faced the prospect of going home in heavy rain.

We warmly welcome our new brothers and congratulate them on taking this step on their Carmelite journey.

The Vine – Latest issue now available TheVine25.4
December 2014

In this issue:

•   Fr Paul Gurr sees signs of growth among the Lay Carmelites
•   Christine Wade reflects on Advent and the work of LCNC
•   Part 1 of Sr Paula’s reflection on St Teresa of Avila
•   Lay Carmelite celebrations in Rockhampton
•   Keith Belton reflects on his visit to Timor Leste for the Ordinations
•   50 years of Carmel on the Central Coast
•   Lay Carmelite Bookshop news

icon The Vine 25.4 December 2014 (1.81 MB)

St Teresa of Avila's Walking Staff
December 2014

The original walking cane used by St Teresa of Avila during her journeys across 16th Century Spain arrived at the Discalced Carmelite Friars' priory in Varroville, NSW as part of a global "Way of Light" pilgrimage to mark the 500th anniversary of her birth.

Read more ...

Magnificat newsletter - NEW! MagDes2014Web200
December 2014

Our young Carmelite students in Hera, Timor Leste write and publish a newsletter of Carmelite spirituality and reflection twice a month.

Under the guidance of Fr Paskalis, the 4 page newsletter features articles about Carmelite saints and topics as well as reflections on the Seasons of the Year and the Sunday Scripture. Articles are written in Tetum, Portuguese and Indonesian.

Next year we hope to be able to offer some excerpts from Magnificat in English for you.

icon Magnificat Advent 2 2014 (775.35 kB)

Carmelite Superiors meet in Vietnam 2014RegSups200Web
December 2014

Carmelite superiors from the Asia-Australia-Oceania region met in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam from 3-7 November. Present were Frs Benny Phang (General Councillor for the Region), Mario Esposito, (Provincial, St Elias) and Stephen Tuu Le (local superior, Vietnam), Ignatius Joko Purmomo (Provincial, Indonesia), Kuriakose Chandanaparambil (General Delegate India), Robert Puthussery (Provincial, India), Christian Buenafe (Provincial, Philippines), and Denis Andrew, (Provincial, Australia & Timor Leste).

There was a general sharing of information about Carmelite life in the various parts of the Region which has some 680 professed Carmelites. Among the issues discussed were the Global Plan of the General Council 2013 -2019 and mutual support for the leaders of the Region. ASOCINE will continue as a bi-monthly e-magazine of Carmelite News in the Region. Fr Benny Phang will make a fraternal visitation of the Province from 10 to 20 August 2015.

Australia's new Zimbabwean connection ZimWeb200
December 2014

In 1956 three Carmelites from Australia, Fr William Morganti, Fr Robert Dowd and Br George Parsons travelled to Rhodesia (now called Zimbabwe) to work with the Irish Carmelites in their mission for the next 7 years.

Our Zimbabwean connection has recently been renewed when Fr Jim Des Lauriers was asked to be Chaplain to the Zimbabwean community in Victoria.

In October 2013 Zimbabwean Catholics gathered in Perth for a congress attended by Fr Constantine Masarira, OCarm who travelled from Zimbabwe to attend.

More story & photos

JPIC Newsletter - December
December 2014

Now available for you to download.

In this issue

Advent reflection
Elimination of Violence Against Women
Intercessions
Carmelite Tradition - the Carmelite NGO
Blessing When the World is Ending
JPIC Websites

icon JPIC December 2014 (524.15 kB)

Lectio Divina for December - available NOW lectiodivina
December 2014

You can download and save the scripture texts, reflections and prayers for Lectio Divina for each day of this month by clicking the link at the end of this story. Available in pdf format or eBook (for your iPhone/iPad) or your Kindle.

Lectio Divina is a traditional way of praying the Scriptures so that the Word of God may penetrate our hearts and that we may grow in an intimate relationship with the Lord.

It is a very natural way of prayer and was developed and practised by the early monks and so came to the first Carmelite hermits. Visit our Lectio Divina page. These texts are prepared by a group of international Carmelites to help all those who use the Lectio Divina method of praying with the scriptures.

Lectio Divina December 2014 PDF (871.46 kB) | icon Lectio Divina December 2014 iPhone/iPad (407.12 kB) | icon Lectio Divina December 2014 Kindle (519.54 kB)

New video from the Carmelites in Hera, Timor Leste
November 2014

Thanks to our young Carmelites in Hera, Fiona Matthews (Whitefriars College) and Sue Stuckey you can get a glimpse of life in the Carmelite community at Hera in a new video.

Sue also visited Timor Leste recently helping our students continue their study of English.

You can read Sue's story and watch the video here.

Carmelite Pilgrimage attracts record number of participants
November 2014

This year's Carmelite Pilgrimage attracted 37 participants including 7 teachers from Brisbane Catholic schools.

The 40km Pilgrimage led by Fr Wayne Stanhope (Director of Formation) took place from 7-10 November in the beautiful Yarra Valley. Along with other pilgrims the Leadership Team of St Ignatius' College, Toowong, the APRE from Southern Cross College, Scarborough and a Project Office from Brisbane Catholic Education Office travelled from Melbourne to Lilydale to begin their trek to Mt Evelyn.

Read the full story and watch the video

Regional Formators meet in The Philippines
November 2014

This week Carmelite formators in our Asia-Australia-Oceania Region of the Order are meeting in Manila.

The meeting organised by the International Formation Commission is being held at the Institute of Formation for Religious Studies and includes some 15 formators of the Region (The Philippines, Vietnam, India, Indonesia, Australia, Timor Leste) including Fr Wayne Stanhope (Director of Formation, Australia and Timor Leste) and Fr Krisna Adjningraha (one of the formators in Timor Leste).

Read more

2015 Carmelite Liturgical Guide
November 2015

Carmelite Communications has published the 2015 Carmelite Liturgical Guide.

The Guide lists the various Carmelite solemnities, feasts and memorials as well as the usual liturgical celebrations of the Roman Calendar. The Guide is an indispensable help to those wishing to celebrate Mass and the Prayer of the Church according to the Carmelite Calendar.

The hard copy version has been designed to fit inside the cover of your Breviary.

In the online version below you can use the "Bookmarks" to quickly choose the current month.

You can download the Guide here: icon 2015 Carmelite Liturgical Guide (138.13 kB)

Benefit Concert for Timor Leste WFCConcertWeb200 7.30pm Saturday 15 November
November 2014

Whitefriars College Theatre, 156 Park Road, Donvale, Vic. Featuring Joshua Bridge, Brenna Wee, Joey Cirillo, Baily Sampson, Jareen Wee, Chelsea Elder, Cathryn Young, and Naomi Bridge. Tickets: $20, Students $15.

Come along for a wonderful night of entertainment with all proceeds going towards educations opportunities for the people of Timor Leste. For tickets contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. on 9872 8238 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Last chance for tickets in the Carmelite Raffle which will be drawn at the concert.

Win a holiday for 8 people for 4 nights at the Hunter Valley Lodge valued at $4,500 including $500 towards flights - courtesy of Helping Hand Group and Freedman & Turner Travel Associates. All proceeds to our Education=Freedom programs for East Timor.

Phone (03) 9690 8822 by Thursday for your tickets. Don't miss out!

JPIC Newsletter - November
November 2014

Now available for you to download.

In this issue

Seeing through another's eyes
JPIC Calendar for November
Prayerful Reflection
Declaration of the Rights of the Child
JPIC Websites

icon JPIC November 2014 (979.41 kB)

Lectio Divina for November - available NOW lectiodivina
November 2014

You can download and save the scripture texts, reflections and prayers for Lectio Divina for each day of this month by clicking the link at the end of this story. Available in pdf format or eBook (for your iPhone/iPad) or your Kindle.

Lectio Divina is a traditional way of praying the Scriptures so that the Word of God may penetrate our hearts and that we may grow in an intimate relationship with the Lord.

It is a very natural way of prayer and was developed and practised by the early monks and so came to the first Carmelite hermits. Visit our Lectio Divina page. These texts are prepared by a group of international Carmelites to help all those who use the Lectio Divina method of praying with the scriptures.

icon Lectio Divina November 2014 PDF (818.42 kB) | icon Lectio Divina November 2014 iPhone/iPad (361.72 kB) | icon Lectio Divina November 2014 Kindle (404.5 kB)

New Lay Carmelite Community Council for Coorparoo
November 2014

Coorparoo Lay Carmelite Community met recently to elect a new Community Council. Members of the new Council are (left to right): Jennifer Porcellini, Joy Darby, Oby Emechite, Carmel Weston (Prior), together with Fr Matthew McPhee, OCarm., community chaplain.

Earlier in the year Ursula McNab and Joan Brady celebrated the 10th anniversary of their Final Profession as Lay Carmelites and the community gathered in September for a retreat on 'Carmelites: Mystics, Prophets and Servants' led by Fr Anthony Scerri, OCarm. About 50 people attended.

New E Bulletin for Carmelite Laity & Youth launched LC1 1 2014Web200
October 2014

This initiative is the result of the first meeting of the new General Commission for the Carmelite Laity and Youth of our Order. The Commission wants to strengthen spiritual formation and communications over the next 6 years. It hopes that the E Bulletin will prove to be a good way to learn more about our charism and spirituality, as well as the various projects of the laity and youth in different parts of the world.

This first issue highlights St Albert of Jerusalem and includes Lay Carmelite and Carmelite Youth news from around the world, including Australia.

Comments, suggestions and contributions for future issues are welcome. Any news regarding Lay Carmelites and Carmelite Youth, please send to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

icon Lay Carmelite E Bulletin No 1 2014 (808.85 kB)

One Page - Extra - Latest issue now available
October 2014

This special issue is about the recent UN Climate Summit. Carmelite Eduardo Scarel, noted climate scientist, represented the Carmelite NGO at the Summit.

Top 5 Takeaways from the UN Climate Summit:

Extreme weather is spurring action
We are awesome at opening & closing Climate Summit meetings. The in-between part still needs some work
The Green Climate Fund
Private companies and cities are in the lead now
We might actually keep forests around for a bit longer

icon One Page Extra - October 2014 (194.63 kB)

Visit our Justice, Peace & Integrity of Creation page

Ever wondered what the Carmelite NGO is? NGOBookletWeb200
October 2014

The Carmelite NGO gives the worldwide Carmelite Family a voice in global issues at the United Nations. Founded in 2001 the Carmelite NGO assists members of the Carmelite Family in advocating on important global issues such as education, freedom of belief, human rights and sustainable development.

The goal of the Carmelite NGO is to actively participate in creating a more peaceful, just and loving world by advocating and caring for the spiritual and human needs of the human family and the environment. To accomplish this, we have chosen to actively participate at all levels of decision making-- from the individual deciding what affects him or herself and family to those decisions which affect the world. The Carmelite NGO is one means to accomplish this.

icon CarmeliteNGO Booklet (1.57 MB)

Visit our Justice, Peace & Integrity of Creation page

Pope Francis on Teresa of Jesus
October 2014

In a message to Bishop Jesus Garcia Burillo of Avila Pope Francis mentions the joy the saint often spoke of “in encountering the suffering of work and pain”, and how she affirmed that “the Gospel is not a bag of lead that trails heavily behind us, but rather a source of joy that leads the heart to God and urges us to serve our brethren”.

St Teresa emphasised the importance of cheerful perseverance and prayer. For her, contemplative prayer was “a close sharing between friends; … taking time frequently to be alone with him who we know loves us”.

The Pope remarks that this advice is “perennially valid”. “Teresa of Jesus recommended three things: to love each other, to free each other, to free oneself of everything, and to aspire to true humility”.

“It is this Teresian realism”, writes the Pope, “that demands works instead of emotions, love in the place of dreams, and the realism of humble love instead of eager asceticism”. He concludes, “Let us hope that everyone may be infused by this holy impulse to travel the roads of our own time, with the Gospel in our hand and the Spirit in our heart!”.

Read the full text of Pope Francis' letter.

15 October - Feast of St Teresa of Jesus TeresaofJesusWeb200
October 2014

Today is the feast day of St Teresa of Jesus (Avila). 28 March next year (2015) will be the 500th anniversary of her birth in Avila, Spain. She entered the Carmelites and made great progress in the way of perfection and was granted mystical revelations. Wishing to share in the spiritual renewal of the Church of her time, she began to live her religious life more ardently and soon attracted many companions.

Teresa also helped in the reform of the friars with Saint John of the Cross. She wrote books which are renowned for their depth of doctrine and which showed her own spiritual experiences. She died at Alba de Tormes in 1582. In 1970 Teresa was declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Paul VI.

The Vine - Latest issue now available TheVine25.3
October 2014

In this issue:

Fr Paul Gurr reflects on St Teresa of Jesus
Christine Wade reports on the recent National Council meeting
First meeting of the General Commission for Carmelite Laity
Sylvia Lucas concludes her series about Lay Carmelite Life
News from the communities

icon The Vine 25.3 September 2014 (1.52 MB)

Whitefriars College staff & students visit Timor Leste
October 2014

On Monday 15 September nine Year 11 students, along with five staff members, boarded a plane for Dili, Timor-Leste for a ten day adventure.

Even though Timor-Leste is Australia’s closest foreign neighbour, the cultural change between the two countries is significant. Wide paved roads of Australia are replaced with dust covered, pot hole ridden chaos. Motor bikes are everywhere and people drive with the sound of a horn and by pushing their way into spaces that are barely apparent. Lanes are not defined nor is the flow of traffic. There are a few traffic lights now in Dili, but for the most part it is dodgem car courage as people weave their way toward their destination. One common sight is a family of four or more on one motor bike. Mum and dad will be wearing helmets to comply with the law, but none of the children will be wearing one.

Carmelite in Van Diemen's Land

The story of Fr Samuel Coote, OCarm
1824-25

In 1824 a Carmelite priest arrived in Australia. He was Fr Samuel Coote, a Kilkenny man who studied at Maynooth and was ordained in 1818. Although he was only the fourth priest to come free to work on the Australian continent, he is a little known and rather neglected figure in Australian Catholic history.

He was known to the family of Fr Therry in Cork, and it was perhaps through them that he came to be interested in the Australian mission. In September 1823 he secured official government permission to minister to Catholics in Van Diemen's Land, and sailed from Ireland in the Ardent that November, arriving in Hobart in Mary 1824. There he met with a cool reception from the resident chaplain, Fr Conolly.

It is difficult now to reconstruct exactly what happened. Although Fr Coote had letter of introduction from the British Colonial Office and from Dr Poynter, the Vicar Apostolic of London, Fr Conolly seems to have objected that he did not have the necessary faculties from Dr Slater of Mauritius, the bishop responsible for New Holland. As a return of correspondence with Mauritius could take up to two years, Conolly in the meantime gave permission for Coote to minister at some of the outlying settlements, celebrating Mass on Sundays and teaching the children catechism. Fr Coote moved about the smaller settlements, and seems to have impressed the Catholic settlers in many of them.

Fr Conolly, however, was a hard man to impress, and within a few month the two priests had fallen out: Conolly forbade Coote to exercise his ministry, and Coote sought to replace Conolly as the official Catholic chaplain. In April 1825, 169 free Catholic settlers (probably a goodly proportion of the Catholic population at the time) petitioned the Governor, expressing their satisfaction with Fr Coote's work for themselves and their children. "This rev. gentleman has officiated in several districts", they wrote, "and the conciliatory and pious manner in which he has invariably conducted himself since his arrival in this colony, his unremitting endeavours in instruction in this confined sphere of action, and his disinterested behaviour have secured for him the highest esteem." At the same time they complained of Fr Conolly's failure to complete the Hobart chapel, despite the provision of funds for the purpose.

The Governor, however, was not prepared to support Fr Coote and in December 1825 he left the colony for England, never to return. Columbus Fitzpatrick remembers that he spent some time in Sydney, but whether he had any contact with the other two Carmelites in Sydney at this time, James Dempsey and John Butler, we now have no way of knowing. He died in London of consumption on 18 September 1837, aged fifty.

Fr Paul Chandler, OCarm

Lay Carmelites in Botany Bay

Although the first official Carmelites foundation in this country was made in 1881, the first Carmelites in Australia had arrived nearly eighty years before. They were the Lay Carmelites (Tertiaries or Confraternity members) James Dempsey and John Butler. Both were transported to Botany Bay for life for their alleged involvement in the Irish Rebellion of 1798.

Carmelite Figures

There are many famous Carmelites who have influenced generations of spiritual seekers throughout the Order's history. Here are just some of them.

Saint Albert of Jerusalem was born in Emilia, Italy in the mid 12th Century. He became a Canon Regular of the Holy Cross at Mortara (Pavia) where he was elected Prior in 1180. He was appointed Bishop of Bobbio in 1184 and of Vercelli the following year. During his 20 years there he undertook a number of missions of national and international importance. He brokered peace between the cities of Pavia and Milan in 1194 and between the cities of Parma and Piacenza in 1199. In 1191 he held a Diocesan Synod, the statutes and decrees of which continued to serve as a norm until modern times.

In 1205 he was elected Patriarch of Jerusalem and soon after nominated as papal legate for the ecclesiastical province of Jerusalem. He arrived in Palestine early in 1206, taking up residence at Acre, at the foot of Mount Carmel, as Jerusalem was occupied by the Saracens. In Palestine he continued his peace-making efforts not only between Christians but also between them and non-Christians.

On 14 September 1214 he was stabbed to death during a procession to celebrate the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross by the Master of the Hospital of the Holy Spirit whom Albert had denounced for his unjust and abusive behaviour.

Somewhere between his arrival in Palestine in 1206 and his death in 1214 the first group of Carmelites asked Albert to write for them a "formula of life" which later became the Carmelite Rule approved by Pope Innocent VI in 1247.

Saint Teresa of Avila, who almost single handedly reformed the order in the 16th century, was responsible for the establishment of the Discalced Carmelites in the latter part of the century. Her life was a colourful and supernatural series of events that had amazed and awed observers and followers of the order for centuries. Teresa was born in Avila in Spain in 1515. She entered the Carmelites and made great progress in the way of perfection and was granted mystical revelations. Wishing to share in the spiritual renewal of the Church of her time, she began to live her religious life more ardently and soon attracted many companions, to whom she was like a mother. She also helped in the reform of the friars with Saint John of the Cross, and in this had to endure great trials. She wrote books which are renowned for their depth of doctrine and which showed her own spiritual experiences. She died at Alba de Tormes in 1582. In 1970 Teresa was declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Paul VI.

johnofthecross1 Saint John of the Cross was born at Fontiveros in Spain about 1542. He entered the Carmelites and with the permission of his superiors began to live a stricter life. Later he was persuaded by St Teresa to begin, together with some others, a reform within the Carmelite friars which cost him much hard work and many trials. He died in Ubeda in 1591, outstanding in holiness and wisdom, to which his many spiritual writings give eloquent witness. His writings were first published in 1618. After his death the reform he introduced within the friars eventually separated from the Carmelite Order to become the Order of Discalced Carmelite Friars. John was canonised in 1726 and declared a Doctor of the Church in 1926.

Famous Carmelites of the 20th Century include

Saint Therese of Lisieux, one of only four women Doctors of the Church, so named because of her famous teaching on the 'way of confidence and love' set forth in her best-selling memoir, 'Story of a Soul'. Thérèse Martin was born in Alencon in France in 1873. Whilst still young she entered the Discalced Carmel of Lisieux, where she lived - as Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face - in the greatest humility and evangelical simplicity and confidence in God. By word and example she taught the novices these same virtues.

Offering her life for the salvation of souls and the spread of the Church, she died on 30 September 1897. She was 24 years old. She was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1997.

Blessed Titus Brandsma, a Dutch scholar and writer who was killed in Dachau Concentration Camp because of his stance against Nazism. Born at Bolsward (The Netherlands) in 1881, Titus joined the Carmelite Order as a young man. Ordained priest in 1905, he obtained a doctorate in philosophy in Rome. He then taught in various schools in Holland and was named professor of philosophy and of the history of mysticism in the Catholic University of Nijmegen where he also served as Rector. He was noted for his constant availability to everyone and for his concern for his students for whom he collected food, clothing and blankets.

He was a professional journalist, and in 1935 he was appointed ecclesiastical advisor to Catholic journalists. Both before and during the Nazi occupation of The Netherlands he fought, faithful to the Gospel, against the spread of the Nazi ideology and for the freedom of Catholic Education and the Catholic Press. For this he was arrested and sent to a succession of prisons and concentration camps where he brought comfort and peace to his fellow prisoners and did good even to his tormentors. In 1942, after much suffering and many humiliations, he was killed by lethal injection at Dachau. He was beatified by John Paul II on 3 November 1985.

Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, a Jewish convert to Catholicism who was also imprisoned and died at Auschwitz. Edith Stein was born to a Jewish family at Breslau on 12 October 1891. Through her passionate study of philosophy she searched after truth and found it in reading the autobiography of St Teresa of Jesus (Avila). In 1922 she was baptised and in 1933 she entered the Carmel of Cologne where she took the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. She was gassed and cremated at Auschwitz on 9 August 1942 during the Nazi persecution and died a martyr for the Christian faith after having offered her holocaust for the people of Israel. A woman of singular intelligence and learning, she left behind a body of writing notible for its doctrinal richness and profound spirituality. She was beatified by Pope John Paul II at Cologne on 1st May 1987, and canonised by him in 1998. In 1999 she was declared one of the six patron saints of Europe.

Saint George Preca was born in Valletta, Malta, on 12 February 1880. Ordained priest in 1906, he immediately began working with young people. In 1907 he founded the Society of Christian Doctrine, commonly known as M.U.S.E.U.M. (Magister Unitam Sequatur Evangelium Universus Mundus). He dedicated his life to preaching and teaching. His effective ministry was the fruit of a life of prayer and constant meditation on the Sacred Scriptures. On 21st July 1918, Fr George was received into the Carmelite Third Order and one year later, on 26th July 1919, he made his profession. In 1952 he was 'affiliated' to the Order as a recognition of his efforts to spread devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary under the title of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. He died on 2nd July 1961 and was beatified by Pope John Paul II on 9 May 2001, and canonised by Pope Benedict XVI on 3 June 2007. His canonisation made Saint George the first member of the Carmelite Third Order to be formally recognised by the Church as a saint.

Hilary Blessed Hilary Januszewski was a Polish Carmelite born on 11 June 1907 and joined the Carmelites in September 1927. Following his studies and ordination in Rome he was appointed lecturer in Dogmatic Theology and in Church History for the students of the Polish province in Krakow. In 1939 he was appointed Prior of that community. World War II was to jeopardise all the hopes and projects of the young prior. On 1 September 1939, after several months of widespread international tension, Germany declared war on Poland. Twenty days later, Soviet troops launched an attack from the East. A year after the invasion, the invading forces ordered the arrest of large numbers of monks and priests. On 18 September five Carmelites were arrested including Fr Hilary, who offered to go instead of Fr Konoba, who was older than him and sick. In the concentration camp at Dachau he volunteered to look after prisoners suffering from typhus in the infamous Hut 25. After 21 days serving the sick, he died of typhus. Read the full story of Fr Hilary.

2016ETC1Web200 St Elizabeth of the Trinity was born on 18 July 1880. As a young child she earned a reputation as an incessant chatterbox and vivacious crawler. She was strong-willed and determined. As she grew up she became known for her generous and loveable nature. She was an excellent musician whose concerts won critical acclaim. At the same time her awareness of God began to grow. In the midst of a busy social life she managed to find time to help with troubled youth and seemed to radiate the presence of God wherever she went. She entered the Carmelite Convent at Dijon in 1901. She was given the name 'Elizabeth of the Trinity'. Here she grew in the Carmelite attributes of reflective prayer, living in the present moment, loving God wholeheartedly and serving others with simplicity. Much like St Therese of Lisieux, Elizabeth's way was one of simple conversation with God and a deep, abiding awareness of God's presence within. Read the full story of St Elizabeth of the Trinity.

Carmel Contact

Carmel Contact is a newsletter of the Carmelites of Australia and Timor Leste

Publications

Australian Carmelite Publications

International Carmelite Publications

Documents of the Carmelite Order

Carmelite Constitutions
Approved by the General Chapter 1995
Journeying With Carmel
Extracts from the Carmelite Constitutions 1995

Letters of the Prior General

pdf Into the Land of Carmel - 25 May 2002
The God of Our Contemplation - 1 January 2005
pdf Passion for Christ, Passion for Humanity - 9 January 2005
pdf That Carmel May Bloom - 27 March 2005
The Lord Hears the Cry of the Poor - 1 March 2006
pdf Blessed Maria Teresa Scrilli - 8 September 2006

Other Web Sites

The Holy See - The Vatican
Ordo Carmelitarium Discalceatorum - Discalced Carmelites
Society of Christian Doctrine -M.U.S.E.U.M.
Peace Communication Network
Australian Conference of Leaders of Religious Institutes
Catholic Church in Australia

National Shrine of Our Lady of Mt Carmel

olmcshrine_200 The National Shrine of Our Lady of Mount Carmel is located at the corner of Richardson and Wright Streets in Middle Park, Victoria, Australia.

This Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel was begun in 1912 and completed in 1928. It was dedicated as the National Shrine in 1944 and has been home to the Carmelite family in Australia since then.

Throughout the year special events are held at the Shrine during which we pray for the members of our Carmelite family and their needs.

These masses include the

Mothers' Mass, celebrated on the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel
Mass of Remembrance, celebrated near to All Souls Day and All Saints Day
Thanksgiving Mass, celebrated at midnight on Christmas Eve

The Church contains shrines to:

Our Lady of Mount Carmel
St Therese of Lisieux
St Mary of the Cross Mackillop
The Prophet Elijah
The Sacred Heart

and is open 8.30-9.30am Tuesday, Thursday & Saturday mornings and 4.30-6.00pm Saturday evenings & 10.00am-12.00pm on Sundays.

For more information about how you can be part of these special events please contact the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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With their whole hearts, our Carmelite students dedicate themselves to serve you, your loved ones and community. Be part of their journey, support our future spiritual leaders.

Finding hope, changing lives: Anacleto’s story

“My dream is to be a priest, also to be a Carmelite Priest. This is my dream. Since I was in the orphanage, although I was still young, I remember I said, 'One day I will be the Pope and my brother will be a bishop!"

Br Anacleto Guterres da Costa, O.Carm

The Carmelites - Australia and East Timor

Carmelite Formation Fund

Become an East Timor Mission Partner

Sabino

Remember The Carmelites in your Will

Carmelite Prayer Cards

Together we can engage lives, restore people’s faithand transform communities.

Help children get the best start in life. Give HOPE to the Children of East Timor.

The story of Fr Samuel Coote, OCarm 1824-25

Contact Us

Carmelite Rule

Safeguarding

Together we can engage lives, restore people’s faith
and transform communities.

Help children get the best start in life.
Give HOPE to the Children of East Timor.

The story of Fr Samuel Coote, OCarm
1824-25