AMAIC Manifesto

The Australian Marian Academy of the Immaculate Conception [AMAIC]
Manifesto for an Australian Marian University

Contents:

1. What is the Australian Marian Academy of the Immaculate Conception (AMAIC)?2. How did the AMAIC come about?3. What are the Purpose and Function of the AMAIC?4. What is Distinctive about the AMAIC?5. What Subjects may be offered by the AMAIC?6. What are the Resources and Tools of the AMAIC?7. What are the Short-Term and Long-Term Goals of the AMAIC?
1.What is the Australian Marian Academy of the Immaculate Conception (AMAIC)?
The Australian Marian Academy [AMA], as it was initially known, was formed in the early 1980s largely by a group of academics and teachers devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary, particularly under her title of Our Lady of the Rosary (at Fatima). In May of 1988 this was the description of the Australian Marian Academy written into our Constitution (p. 19):As a recognized “aggregate of persons” [CJC Can. 115] the Academy “is a private association of Christ’s faithful striving with common effort to foster a more perfect life … and to promote Christian teaching” [Can. 298]. Its Constitution has been reviewed by the competent authority [Can. 299 §3]. It chooses to exercise its juridical personhood through an Executive of 7 members. [ Can. 115, §2]. On this solid footing we wish to affiliate with the mother Academy in Rome : the “Pontificia Accademia dell’Immacolata Concezione”, at the request of its present head, the Vice-President of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, Father Marino Maccarelli.With reference to our Constitution, the Most Reverend John Jobst, Bishop of Broome ( Western Australia ), wrote:“I welcome the establishment of the Australian Marian Academy which could be associated with the Marian Academy in Rome . One cannot but notice the role of the Mother of God in “crushing the serpent’s head” throughout the history of the Church …. [Pope John Paul II] has spoken out clearly and encouraged any efforts promoting the devotion to Mary the Mother of God. For these reasons the Marian Academy is very timely …. I can only say that the statements made in the Constitution are true and in keeping with the Church’s sound teaching …”.And respected theologian and canon lawyer, Dr. Harry J. Jordan (MSC), of Sydney Australia, agreed with these “sentiments” expressed by Bishop Jobst:“Yesterday’s postman brought me your ‘Reflections’ [first draft of the AMA Constitution] …. I do congratulate you and I concur with the sentiments of its worth from that valiant Bishop John Jobst”.
In 1990, in a meeting in the Vatican with Andrzej Maria Cardinal Deskur, a compatriot and very close friend of then Pope John Paul II - President of the Pontifical Academy of the Immaculate Conception (formerly President of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications) - His Eminence insisted on our adding to the Academy’s title the phrase “of the Immaculate Conception”. Thus our Academy became:
The Australian Marian Academyof the Immaculate Conception2. How did the AMAIC come about?The seeds of the AMAIC were sown in the 1970s from the determination of a group of Australian Catholics to counteract widespread doctrinal and moral error and to uphold the light of truth. The notion of Academy was already in the minds of members due to their associations with schools, colleges, seminaries, and other academic institutions, also through philosophy (e.g. Plato’s Academy), and the Thomistic influence of the famous Aquinas Academy of Dr. Austin Woodbury (S.M.), in Sydney.The cherished phrase, Marian Academy , to which we added our national designation, Australian, was inspired by St. Maximilian Kolbe, who had said:“If the Immaculata wants it, we shall found a Marian Academy to study, teach and publish for the entire world what the Immaculata is – an Academy even with a doctorate in Mariology”.We owed this last piece of information to Kolbe Missionary and former Legionary of Mary, Josephine Mary Nethery, of Sydney Australia, who had provided us with E. Piacentini ’s “Panorama of the Marian Doctrine of Bl. [now Saint] Maximilian Kolbe”.
Finally, as already noted, His Eminence Cardinal Deskur invested our Academy with the concluding phrase of our title, of the Immaculate Conception.
19881988, the year the Academy’s Constitution was published, was a most significant year, being a Marian Year, and, for Australia , the Bi-Centenary Year. The Constitution was “our contribution to the Marian Year, and to the Australian Bi-Centenary Year” (Constitution, p. 37).
3. What are the Purpose and Function of the AMAIC?
This is outlined largely in Chapter Four of the Constitution. Basically (pp. 28-30):According to the tenets of the ‘Perennial Philosophy’ of St. Thomas Aquinas, the way a being acts is determined by its nature. This is the well-known ‘Natural Law’: “Anything that acts must act according to its given nature, leading to the perfection of that nature”. If it is the nature of the Marian Academy to be an instrument of salvation for souls in accordance with the latest teachings of the Magisterium of the Catholic Church, then it is to be expected that the Academy will strive to be engaged in the most appropriate activities in order to be such an instrument. This leads to the twofold function of the Australian Marian Academy
(i) to discern how and where the Holy Spirit is truly at work in the Church,
and(ii) to cooperate as fully as possible with this Divine impetus.If the Australian Marian Academy is serious about being attuned to the work of the Holy Spirit amidst the poor and the weak …, i.e., “amongst all those who toil and suffer” [St. Pius X in “OUR APOSTOLIC MANDATE”, 1910], then the plight of the poor and the weak must be found as a preferential love at the heart of the Academy. Our Holy Father Pope John Paul II not only anticipated what we see as the function of the Australian Marian Academy, but in … [a] passage of “REDEMPTORIS MATER” in which the Pontiff formulates the ideal which the A.M.A. takes as its own, he also describes the conditions under which we may expect to operate “at the close of the Second Christian Millennium”:“The Church which even ‘amidst trials and tribulations’ does not cease repeating with Mary the words of the Magnificat is sustained by the power of God’s Truth, proclaimed on that occasion with such extraordinary simplicity. At the same time by means of this Truth about God, the Church desires to shed light upon the difficult and sometimes tangled paths of man’s earthly existence”.Ours is therefore to be essentially a work of “intellectual charity”, to adopt a phrase favoured by John Paul II and used more recently by Pope Benedict XVI (e.g. 11th March 2008 address to students). Along such lines, the Congregation for Catholic Education has decreed a characteristic preferential option for the weak and the poor – whether victims of old or new forms of poverty: e.g., marginalisation, unemployment and the masses seeking for truth (“Consecrated Persons and their Mission in Schools”, e.g. §6). Such sentiments in turn echo the earlier view of Pope Pius XI who, in a comparison of St. Thomas Aquinas with the patriarch Joseph, had written (Encyclical, Studiorum Ducem, 1923, §28):Accordingly, just as it was said to the Egyptians of old in time of famine: "Go to Joseph," so that they should receive a supply of corn from him to nourish their bodies, so We now say to all such as are desirous of the truth: "Go to Thomas," and ask him to give you from his ample store the food of substantial doctrine wherewith to nourish your souls unto eternal life.And all of this accords well, too, with this next section from the AMAIC’s Constitution (p. 30):The Church’s journey therefore near the end of the 2nd Christian Millennium involves a renewed commitment to Her mission. Following Him who said of Himself “God has anointed Me to preach the Good News to the poor” [Lk. 4:18], the Church has sought from generation to generation, and still seeks today, to accomplish that same mission. The Church’s love and preference for the poor is wonderfully inscribed in Mary’s Magnificat” [37].…. And pp. 31, 32:Following the Holy Father, we turn to the Gospel [Lk. 4:18] where we hear Our Blessed Lord spell out ‘His own function’ with the famous quote from Isaiah:“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, for He has anointed Me. He has sent Me to bring the Good News to the poor, to heal the contrite of heart, to proclaim liberty to captives, and new sight to the blind. To set the downtrodden free. To proclaim the Lord’s Year of Favour”.…. It is the task of the Marian Academy not only to articulate this program amidst trials and tribulations but, on the express command of the Supreme Pontiff, to link it with the terms of the “Magnificat”, thereby giving it a distinctive “Marian Dimension”. [R.M., 45].But there is more. In his Encyclical the Holy Father has indicated to us a definite way in which he wants this dimension expressed, by holding up to the whole world the Marian spirituality of St. Louis de Montfort. [48]. Before this authentic Marian Spirit can be grasped correctly and before Truth can be built up, error must be torn down. St. Louis de Montfort [using the language of the time] admirably explains this in his “True Devotion”:“…. With one hand they shall fight, overthrow and crush the heretics with their heresies, the schismatics with their schisms, the idolaters with their idolatries and the sinners with their impieties. With the other hand they shall build the temple of the true Solomon and the mystical city of God; that is to say the most Holy Virgin, called by the Fathers the Temple of Solomon and the City of God. By their words and their example they shall draw the whole world to true devotion to Mary”.In more recent times, Our Lady at Fatima would warn of the universal “spread of error”. So, in a Third Millennium context, our Academy’s precise task would be to strive to push back this tide of error so as, in the spirit of St. John the Baptist, to ‘prepare straight paths’ (e.g. Mark 1:3), now for the promised Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, leading to the Triumph of the Divine Mercy and the New Springtime of the Holy Spirit for the Church.4. What is Distinctive about the AMAIC?It is an Academy of the Cross, its members being dependent on Christ’s Cross for spiritual development and progress and for the attainment of true wisdom and knowledge. Thus pp. 41-42 of the Constitution:…. Our chief Teacher is Our Blessed Lord Himself teaching us from His Cross the most unloved truth and the most rejected wisdom of all: the Wisdom of the Cross. Next to Him and inseparably connected to Him “as the Body is to the Head”, or as the “New Eve is united to the New Adam”, stands His Holy Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary. With Christ She is our chief teacher for of Her it is written: “Next to the Cross of Jesus stood His Mother Mary”. We accept the holy Catholic Church as our teacher for of Her it is written that “She is the ground and pillar of Truth” [1 Tim. 3:15]. In Her dwells the Spirit of which the Son of God has said: “When the Spirit of Truth comes He will lead you to all the Truth”. [Jo. 16:13].Similarly, Chapter One of the Constitution (pp. 10-11):At the root of all true perfection, sanctity and knowledge, lies the knowledge of the Cross by which we are led to ALL Truth: Supernatural Truth as well as natural truth. The Wisdom of the Cross is called “the super-eminent Science” by St. Louis de Montfort, for it is precisely in this remarkable fact: that through the Cross we not only attain to true holiness and perfection, but that ALL knowledge and understanding are acquired as well, that the Mystery of the Cross lies revealed. The Cross of Our Lord is the purifying instrument, the scalpel, that changes the soul, cutting away all attachments to the world, the devil and the flesh. This truth is so alien to fallen human nature that all the great Saints and Mystics, in imitation of St. Paul , have named this Wisdom ‘folly’: The Folly of the Wisdom of the Cross.P. 16:…. “Until we all attain to the unity of Faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature and fullness of Christ”. [Eph. 4:13].These words of St. Paul go a long way towards explaining why the Cross, though a ‘scalpel’ and a ‘purifying instrument’, nevertheless is embraced, and why the knowledge it provides is sought after so diligently by all the “shrewd merchants”. By it we attain to the full measure and stature of Our Lord Himself, even here on earth.The other way in which the AMAIC is distinctive is that it is an entirely Australian enterprise. Though many cultural and intellectual influences of non-Australian origin must have been at work in shaping its members and their ideas, the AMAIC has not consciously based itself on any overseas model, as is what Australian colleges usually tend to do. With the incorporation of a model comes the incorporation of certain erroneous ideas and preconceived notions as well. For instance the model, though it may be largely a good one, may bear some pronounced socio-cultural influences that impede access to a religion and Scripture that have ‘Semitic’ origins (Pope Pius XI, Vatican Public Address, 1938); or it may have some underlying evolutionary tendencies; or it might have absorbed certain unwarranted demythologizing aspects from a non-Catholic approach to biblical study and form criticism.Nor are the AMAIC’s writers to be slavishly dependent upon borrowed writings, for the same sorts of reasons.The AMAIC and its writings, which aspire to be Wisdom-based, are largely home grown and original.That there is meant to be a distinctiveness about the Academy was acknowledged in the Constitution (p. 41):At first sight, the Constitution of the AUSTRALIAN MARIAN ACADEMY appears to be unusual. We could say it differs from any other Constitution inasmuch as the A.M.A. differs from any other ordinary Academy. Ours is not an Academy in the ordinary sense of the word. Or else, maybe it is one on which any other Academy could be modelled. For in the A.M.A. all are students intent on learning the most important science.That is not to say that the AMAIC is not open to non-Australian members. Far from it! Our emphasis on Australian is meant purely to underline our Academy’s originality and does not stem from any exclusive nationalism. In fact this element in our title, Australian, was recommended by a founder-member who was not even born in the southern hemisphere. No nationality, age group, or class, is to be excepted (Acts 2:7-11). This universalism (Catholicism) becomes quite apparent as we read our way through Constitution Chapter Two (pp. 20-21):The Australian Marian Academy has its Catholic roots firmly embedded in that part of the Mystery of the Church which [John Paul II] considers of great importance:“Drawing from Mary’s heart, from the depths of Her Faith expressed in the words of the Magnificat, the Church renews ever more effectively in Herself the awareness that the Truth about God who saves, the Truth about God who is the Source of every gift, cannot be separated from the manifestations of His Love and preference for the poor and humble …. The Church is thus aware … not only that these two elements of the Magnificat cannot be separated but also that there is a duty to safeguard carefully the importance of the poor and of the option in favour of the poor in the word of the Living God”. [‘REDEMPTORIS MATER’, §37].“Drawing from Mary’s heart ….”The most important point about any member of a truly Marian Academy therefore is that he or she learns, and learns from Mary’s own Immaculate Heart “the truth about God who saves”. We know this as “the Wisdom of the Cross”. And here the importance of the poor and the humble … then becomes manifest. They are our teachers. For a Marian Academy, first and foremost, is an Academy of children … of the poor and the sick; of the pure and humble; a college of prayer and penance; of suffering and of victimhood! It is a School in which one learns from children how to be childlike; from the poor and the sick how to be patient and dependent on God; from the pure and the innocent how “to keep ourselves spotless and uncorrupted from this world” [Ja. 1:27]. It is to be a School in which one learns from the great and universal suffering “how to be obedient” [Phil. 2:8; Hebr. 5:8]; how to “come to the rescue” [1 Sa. 17:35 and 36]; how to be “our brother’s keeper” [Gen. 4:9] and even how to stand in for him when he is in trouble as St. Maximilian Kolbe did unto his death.Then, having done our best to learn all these things with Mary at the foot of the Cross, and endeavouring to put them into practice, we may find ourselves to be well on the road to discerning from the teachings of Popes and Doctors of the holy Church how to become proficient in that other aspect of an Academy: how to teach and instruct so as to pass on the Catholic Faith, to the next generation.5. What Subjects may be offered by the AMAIC?Over the years the AMAIC has written on a vast array of subjects in books, articles, newsletters and correspondence. Broadly speaking, the subject classifications would be: Spirituality; Philosophy; Catholic Education; and Biblical Studies. We have now in fact four inter-linked web sites corresponding to each one of these areas, respectively:Spirituality (“ Australian Marian Academy of the Immaculate Conception”)http://australianmarianacademy.blog.com/Philosophy (“AMAIC Philosophy”)http://brightmorningstar.blog.com/Catholic Education (“AMAIC Education”)http://amaiceducation.blog.com/Biblical Studies (“House of Gold”)http://houseofgold.blog.com/These four broad categories, for potential Faculties/ Departments (also Internet Libraries), will be fully fleshed out in the ‘Interim Syllabus’ accompanying this Manifesto.AMAIC members have taken degrees (including post-graduate degrees) and diplomas, in these subject areas. The AMAIC has a team of teachers/academics.Courses in the perennial philosophy (metaphysics) have been taught by AMAIC members in the past, with some of this written down as well in book form.It is our hope that these studies will deepen any prospective student’s appreciation of the richness of his/her Catholic faith, and offer the intellectual tools needed for that student to be an effective apostle in the third millennium towards the founding of a new “civilisation of love”. To sum up: The AMAIC members seek Wisdom-based knowledge, rather than knowledge for the sake of one’s being knowledgeable.
6. What are the Resources and Tools of the AMAIC?
Firstly, the members who have supported our efforts through their prayers and sufferings, even when unable to contribute academically. The AMAIC has many spiritual benefactors, religious and lay, living and dead, including those many whose names were written into the Constitution. “The true stars of our life are the people who have lived good lives”, according to Pope Benedict XVI recently, on the importance of good friends (“Spe Salvi”, §49):“… Human life is a journey. Towards what destination? How do we find the way? Life is like a voyage on the sea of history, often dark and stormy, a voyage in which we watch for the stars that indicate the route. The true stars of our life are the people who have lived good lives. They are lights of hope. Certainly, Jesus Christ is the true light, the sun that has risen above all the shadows of history. But to reach him we also need lights close by—people who shine with his light and so guide us along our way. Who more than Mary could be a star of hope for us? With her “yes” she opened the door of our world to God himself; she became the living Ark of the Covenant, in whom God took flesh, became one of us, and pitched his tent among us (cf. Jn 1:14)”.AMAIC members have produced books and many articles.For over two decades now the AMAIC has been issuing a Newsletter, MATRIX (‘Mater et Mediatrix’).The AMAIC also has two web sites:http://users.pipeline.com.au/~rossj/index.htm(and the AMAIC Bookroom):http://members.iinet.net.au/~raphael/index.htmlIn addition to these, we now have those four subject relevant blog sites referred to above (§ 5), plus this one one for administrative purposes.Further blog sites are listed in the Syllabus Bibliography. The AMAIC also has some large articles, mainly of a biblical-historical nature, hosted on other Internet sites.Following the example of St. Maximilian Kolbe, the AMAIC, in order to spread its important Marian message, seeks - within its means - to make use of the latest and most sophisticated technology, such as the far-reaching Internet, a medium that St. Maximilian himself would surely have welcomed with open arms in order to facilitate his dream of ‘teaching and publishing for the entire world what the Immaculata is’.Finally, we have at our disposal all of the vast spiritual, intellectual and socio-cultural resources that are provided by Catholicism and illuminated by Catholic Faith.7. What are the Short-Term and Long-Term Goals of the AMAIC?Careful, like St. Maximilian, to preface any anticipated goals with,“If the Immaculata wants it …”,we are currently, in 2008 (the 20th anniversary of our Constitution), looking to give more apparent form, structure and organization to the teaching aspect of the AMAIC in order to be able the more effectively to impart knowledge.The AMAIC is further committed to the pursuit of fully-accredited degree-granting status, whenever and however that may come about, with the hope of the AMAIC’s eventually becoming a recognized Catholic University , thereby being empowered to grant meaningful degrees. Thus it could fulfil St. Maximilian’s dream of providing ‘even a doctorate in Mariology’ for the purpose of ‘teaching and publishing for the entire world what the Immaculata is’.The AMAIC will also aim to pursue relationships with schools, colleges and academies of like-minded purpose.Whilst working towards these ends, we intend to offer for the time being non-accredited courses and diplomas, open to all age groups, in the subject areas mentioned in § 5. above.In the ‘Interim Syllabus’ we shall provide a detailed AMAIC curriculum. For any further information, please write to our e-mail address provided at the top of this Manifesto.Yours in Jesus and MaryThe Executive of the AMAIC.