John Molony: By Wendouree, Memories 1951-1963. Connor Court Publishing, Ballan: 2010. ISBN 9781921421402
By Wendouree is the second volume of John Molony's memoirs. It follows Luther's Pine, a vivid re-creation of his childhood and seminary days, which concluded with his ordination in Rome. An elegantly and often lyrically written work, its elegiac tone invited readers to ask what might have happened in succeeding years to explain this edge of sadness.
By Wendouree describes Molony's years of post-graduate study in Rome and his exploration of the Catholic movements that flowered in the Vatican Council. The story concludes with his resignation from the priesthood some years after returning to pastoral ministry in Ballarat.
The second volumes of autobiographical sketches rarely live up to the promise of the first. Like Maxim Gorky, whose magic My Childhood was followed by the less lustrous My Universities, Molony writes well but not as engrossingly in this second book. It inevitably lacks the sense of unlimited possibilities that Luther's Pine displayed. The patterns are already fixed, and transitions are freighted with past history.
But the personal story retains its interest, and Molony illuminates many aspects of the larger history of his times. In particular he experienced the vitality of the Catholic movements that flourished after the 1939 war. The Jocist movement led by Joseph Cardijn that animated the Young Christian Workers and Young Christian Students movements in Australia was particularly significant in his life.
He also had time to observe the broader development of Catholic Action in Europe and Australia. The relationship of the Catholic Church to politics was fraught in Italy where the election of a Communist government was a real possibility. His experience and reflection there led him to be reserved about Bob Santamaria's movement in Australia. He thought that the close relationship between the Church and political life that it entailed could only lead to grief.
He also disagreed with Santamaria's attempts to centralise control over Catholic groups in the universities and over the YCW. Molony formed very cordial relations with Archbishop Justin Simmons, Daniel Mannix's unwanted assistant. Simmons indeed would have liked him as his assistant bishop. In his judgment of people with whom he agreed and with whom he disagreed, Molony is consistently generous and perceptive.
One of Molony's early books was a perceptive study of the Roman mould of the Australian Catholic Church. His own story offers material for complex