An unexpected season of “silence, solitude and stillness” following his retirement helped Emeritus Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge craft his newly launched book The Other Voice: Selected Texts of Later Years. Source: The Catholic Leader.
Speaking at the book’s launch in Brisbane on Thursday, Archbishop Coleridge reflected on his transition from public life to what he described as an almost hermit-like existence.
The collection, launched by Brisbane Archbishop Shane Mackinlay, gathers homilies and addresses from the later years of Archbishop Coleridge’s time as archbishop and marks the first publishing project of his retirement.
Archbishop Coleridge said that, after many years in the public eye, some time spent in seclusion was not unwelcome.
“In other words, a time of silence and solitude and stillness,” he said. “I’ve done a lot of looking back since I retired. It has been a life that has had to learn the lesson of silence, solitude and stillness, but has found them difficult to inhabit because of external circumstances.”
It was from that space, living alone for only the second time in his life, that the writing in The Other Voice emerged. He said he had surprised himself with the amount of work he had produced since stepping down.
“I have written in a kind of frenzy, almost,” he said. “I have amazed myself at the amount of writing I’ve done. I just occasionally stop and think, ‘Where did it all come from?’”
Before becoming a bishop, Archbishop Coleridge was an academic and biblical scholar, but he said the demands of Church leadership left little room for sustained writing.
“Some people can write on the run. I can’t,” he said. “I need time and I need space.”
Retirement had provided both, he said.
The title The Other Voice reflects a theme that has become increasingly important to him – the need to listen.
He spoke of the influence of the poet Mary Oliver and reflected on Pope Francis’s call for a synodal Church that listens before it speaks.
“What I’ve come to see more and more as I grow older is that Christian prayer begins with listening,” he said. “It doesn’t begin with speaking.”
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New publication launched capturing Emeritus Archbishop Mark Coleridge’s reflections from later years (By Matt Emerick, The Catholic Leader)
