Meeting Bishop Fisher of Paramatta

No, it wasn't him.

Here's a little bio on Bishop Fisher from Salt and Light org:

"Most Rev. Anthony Fisher OP, was Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney, Australia and served as Coordinator of Sydney's World Youth Day 2008.  He is now Ordinary of the Diocese of Parramatta in Australia.  Bishop Fisher received a doctorate in bioethics from the University of Oxford in 1995 and became the founding Director of the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family in Melbourne." 

Here's a link to an interview with Bishop Fisher on the scientific dilemmas around stem cells and many of the important moral and bio-ethical issues of our time:

http://saltandlighttv.org/witness/anthony-fisher-bioethics.php

And here he is:

The Bishop Fisher I met (and of course I thought of one of my heroes, Bishop John Fisher of Rochester, UK, martyr) came in a white Holden (looks like a British Camry) in the rain. We were all assembled at Karin and Ryan's home: Kozinskis, Messmores, and--oh yes, not a nickname--Peter Pelican, who is the new Dean of Students for Campion. 

All I knew about Bishop Fisher was that he was a well-known bio-ethicist.

He came in the door in his plain, white Benedictine habit, the only thing marking him as a bishop being the simple, gold pectoral cross hanging down his chest, partially obscured by the cowl. Looking just slightly older than myself, he is not a tall man, and seems all of one blonde color. He looks a little English, a little Scandinavian. This white-blonde-cream blandness was only apparent. 

As we ate together, Bishop Fisher became visible. He has a stance at times, when the Bishop part is there: he instructs and answers questions as one used to constant interviews; at other times, he was busy winning wit ripostes with Thaddeus (I've only seen one other person turn Thaddeus' own wit upon himself: in this he reminded me of Jason Baxter); at times he laughed more deeply, and seemed deeply interested in what someone was saying; at other times he looked suddenly tired and lonely. 

He said that he first thought of being a priest at fifteen, and then became ordained ten years later; he said, "Bio-ethics chose me" meaning that it was the call of need in culture that took him in that direction. He wanted to work, for a doctoral degree, under John Finnis, and would therefore go wherever Finnis was (Bishop Fisher did not know at the time). I asked, "If he'd been in Egypt, would you have gone?" 

He laughed and said, "Sure."

Finnis was at Oxford, and so Bishop Fisher attended there, and began his work as a religious bio-ethicist. About bio-ethics he said, "Of course philosophy is essential here; yet there is also the moment when you meet the person who is asking you to shoot them because they are in a burning car, and in these extreme lines, often only revelation answers us adequately. Thus, in this field, you need people who are not simply scientists or philosophers, but also theologians and doctors. You need someone who can see the reality of the thing, not get into these--" and here he rolled his eyes delightfully, and continued, "--these stupid formulas like the ones coming out of Georgetown. Just absolutely stupid stuff, such as 'balancing respect for autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence, and justice'--with that kind of nonsense, you always end up preferring autonomy over everything else. It just doesn't work in real life."

From several comments he made throughout the night, I gathered that his time is simply rarely his own. I asked, "Do you have time to write in your field?" 

He said, "These days, my subject matter is usually chosen for me, by the needs of the moment, by the conferences and speeches--" and he waved his hand around lightly. 

His face did light up when he spoke about World Youth Day in Brazil; he said, "We took the youth to Peru, also, for a week of helping the poor. Most of them have never seen such poverty; in Lima, there is no water to speak of because it never rains. And if it did, the little villages perched on the sides of hills would disappear." For next World Youth Day in Poland, he thought of perhaps taking Aussie youth through India for a similar exposure. "It changes them profoundly," he said. 

We asked him about the Catholic culture in Australia. He said, "The Catholic population in Australia is the largest religious group here; in most areas of institutions and politics, the largest group is made of Catholics, the second-largest is people who were Catholics at one time. It was, in the beginning, the Irish, but in Paramatta, since WWII, it has been waves of immigrants from Lebanon, India, Sri Lanka, the Phillippines, and even the Mediterranean. What's interesting is that within a generation, the Italians and many Mediterranean people were completely secular; the Filipinos, though, and the Lebanese have held on to their faith and traditions. I think they have a deep and consistent value on family and family prayer life."

He related that he was going to do some public event with Miss World, who is a Filipino woman. "Unlike most beauty queens who want to talk about world peace, she talks about the rights of the unborn and respect for family life. Should be interesting."

When he laughed, or was interested in something, he had a light-filled, sparking expression in his blue eyes; he had the alternating deep interest and sudden tedium of those who are deeply intelligent, as if his own brain sometimes made his spirit tired. At times I sensed what I often sense with celibate religious, which can come across as something like contempt for us in the world...but I think that is only what it feels like. I think perhaps there is a little envy for the simple pleasures of family life; a certain sense of loss around little children, and a single-mindedness about the duties of the vocation. But what do I know? I would have to walk in those shoes to really understand the gap of emotional connection I sometimes feel around those called to the religious life. I've met a very few priests and nuns who seem to be able to live emotionally in both worlds; I am thinking of the few golden moments with the pastor of the little church in Friday Harbor, WA, who was able to love me deeply and listen to me while yet having one foot away in heaven. Instead of making me feel far away from heaven, he pulled me in with him, it seemed. 

This bishop is not like that generally, although there were moments when he was; he mostly seemed like a man whose heart was deeply embedded in the call to obedience, to the cross.

He seemed to relax, though, as we joked about the Arnold Schwarzenegger cross in the cathedral; he seemed to take delight in Thaddeus' absurdities about funny things in liturgies and Catholic stereotypes gone bad, in Peter's questions about his life, in Ryan's enthusiasm for Campion, in Karin's comments. He paid especial attention to little Katie Messmore and told her she grew more beautiful every day. 

He struck me as one, like Pope St. Gregory of the sixth century, who was called out of study, reflection, into that beautiful cross of kenosis, the especial masculine form of self-emptying for the sake of the other. It seemed his life was guided, to me, not by his own desires, but by the needs of others; not even his own considerable talents were what lit up his eyes, but rather the conversion of the youth.

When I kicked Thaddeus for bantering about his cathedral, the Bishop turned to me and laughed, "A bishop called to his cathedral is like a husband called to a wife he's never met; sometimes you lift the veil and she's missing an eye and has a mustache...yet you love her, anyway."