Idealism often leads people who belong to idealistic groups to live and work among the marginalised. In time they often feel marginalised and are seen as marginalised within the organisations to which they belong. They are said to 'go native'.
This is often seen as an event to be avoided and as a problem to be solved. Wiser counsel suggests it is a fact to be accepted. If you live at the margins, you will be marginalised, if you work at the boundaries you will be seen to be outside the main game, if you dwell beyond the frontiers you will lose your citizenship. That is what happens. The real question is: how do you handle this fact of life?
Edmond Campion's stimulating new book describes the process of marginalisation, and suggests lines of reflection on it. He tells the story of Ted Kennedy, a notable Sydney priest whose desire for an engaging form of ministry led him to Redfern in the 1970s. There he found and was found by the Aboriginal community. He opened his church and his house to people as he found them — which often meant drunk, dirty and abusive — and stayed with them for 25 years. In his language, he found Christ in them.
He also felt and was seen as marginalised. Acting as if nothing mattered more than to respect and be with his people soon brought him into conflict with police and landowners. It also alienated him from some of his parishioners and brought him into tension with church authorities whom he believed to have only a perfunctory interest in Indigenous Australians.
He came to see the world and church through the eyes of Aboriginals. This perspective inevitably diverged more and more sharply from that of officers of church and government who saw them only in relationship to their own institutions and their own kind of people.
This is a common experience and fact of marginalisation. Its logic is to alienate people from the group in which they found the inspiration to live at its edges. That is a pity because it cuts off a basically well-disposed group from the bridge that could be made to the marginalised community. How then can people handle the fact of marginalisation in such a way that they can feed back their experience to their broader community?
The structure of Jesuit thinking may be helpful