Sydney
4 November 2001

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Indifference main worry, says Dr Pell

Open your hearts to the refugees, bishop pleads

Beazley visits aged villa

Health care needs more money

Two Australias: Labor backs national poverty summit

Biblical principle behind split-income tax policy

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Unity Group enjoys day in the sun

Soldier, teacher, actor, priest – Mark’s inspired journey

Why do boys lag behind?

Sacrament of Penance: NZ bishop denies ‘radical reform’ charge

Letters: Catholic schools

Conversation: An hilarious ministry - Fr Hilary Doran, Carmelite priest

Reflection: Questions that will require religious answers

Too many prisons?

Opinion: Can the West avoid a ‘holy war’ with Islam?

Having fun with Vinnies to help those in need

‘God’s engineer’

Tamil Catholics celebrate their 10th birthday

Education: Teach your children ‘how to pray – not what to say’

Inspirations: Fatima ‘prayer for peace’

Conversation: An hilarious ministry - Fr Hilary Doran, Carmelite priest

Seventy years a Carmelite, Fr Hilary Doran’s name comes from the Latin ‘hilaris’ and, among other things, means cheerful giver – which is how Fr Hilary has tried to live his vocation. He spoke to Marilyn Kerjean

Fr Hilary Doran’s name, given to him on entering the Discalced Carmelite Order, derives from the Latin word ‘hilaris’. It means joyful, cheerful and gracious.

But it means more again to Fr Hilary himself, who reflecting on 70 years as a Discalced Carmelite and 64 years as a priest, links it with his faith, his identity and the way he has tried to live his life.

“In the Latin, St Paul says to the Corinthians: ‘hilarem datorem diligit Deus’ (God loves the cheerful giver). That sums up my efforts to live my vocation,” says Fr Hilary.

His call to God has always come via his religious superiors and it has seen him sent hither and thither. It sent him from Ireland to London during WW II, then to California, later to Brisbane and Perth, then back to Ireland, then to Sydney and again to Brisbane and finally to Varroville.

“The next send-off should be to heaven, don’t you think?” he smiles.

“I’ve always tried to say ‘yes’. So my advice is always to say ‘yes’ to God and without a grumble, but with a cheerful ‘here I am Lord’. It is the way to great inner peace.”

Even in the face of bombs.

He was in London during the blitz and found it “exciting rather than harrowing”, he says.

“I was in my mid-30s. I suppose I could take it then. There was something of adventure in it! But missing sleep so often was most trying.”

The church and a large part of the Carmelite monastery in the city were destroyed by the Nazi bombers, so, after the war, Fr Hilary was made prior and given the task of restoring life there and of taking the first steps towards rebuilding the church and monastery.

Since then Fr Hilary has had responsibility for several other Carmelite communities, including, for many years, the Carmelite nuns in Oceania. He has been in Australia since 1952, except for five years back home in Ireland as a member of the Provincial Council.

“But I was exported back here again in 1965. They all thought they had had enough of my counsel!”

But the real story of Fr Hilary is not in such externals; rather it is a story of “growth in intimacy with Jesus Christ”.

“I was a very small boy when I wanted to be a priest, and I wanted to be one in an Order specially belonging to the Blessed Virgin Mary. I suppose the atmosphere of Ireland, which was filled with love for Holy Mass and love for Our Lady, must have played a large part in sowing the seeds of vocation,” he explains.

“I did not want to tell anyone. Who would think of me as a possible priest? I was a badtempered, selfish little creature always ready to fight,” he laughs.

There were no religious orders near where the Doran family lived, so Fr Hilary felt helpless to do anything about this vocation he felt so sure of until an aunt mentioned to a Discalced Carmelite she knew that her 16-year-old nephew wanted to be a priest.

He was invited to go and see the friar and immediately decided he wanted to join the Order.

“What was unvoiced in my own mind and heart – here it was before me,” he says.

“Of course, I did not understand the depth of Carmelite life at that stage. One day I asked the friar, ‘What is this Order about Father?’ He answered promptly, ‘Prayer’.

“That answer attracted me, but I was yet to learn the depth of that word.”

So began Fr Hilary’s journey into a life devoted to prayer according to the rule of his Order.

“The rule of the Carmelite Order is a wonderful expression of what God wants us to be – children of God totally in love with Jesus Christ, who draw others to love him too.

“That is the mainspring of a vocation to the priesthood and to the religious life. It is also the mainspring of perseverance in the life of the priest – his love for Jesus. If we have heard in recent times of someone falling back from this vocation, it is because the man turned his heart to something else, whereas the challenge of Jesus remains ‘Lose yourself’, ‘Die to self’ (John 12, 24-26).”

Fr Hilary is now 90, his younger brother is almost 89 and he has an older sister aged 94. The three are the surviving siblings of a family of five children.

He attributes their longevity to God’s providence and to good dentistry.

“Three cheers for dentists!” he says. “They enable an old chap to eat proper meals.”

Unlike many, Fr Hilary is optimistic about the Church and future vocations: “Christ was confident that he would be with his Church until the end of time; so of course I am, too” he says.

Christ did not say the Church would be strong everywhere or would have all the priests we might think necessary, says Fr Hilary. He is certain that God will provide for the Church, sometimes through unexpected ways.

“For example, in England the Church was quashed for centuries, priests were hunted and executed. When John Henry Newman started the move back to the Catholic Church, there were already many Irish Catholic girls in London, Liverpool and other big centres. That was part of God’s way of bringing back the Church.

“In the same way, in America and Australia, as well as in England, a lot of bishops and priests owe their faith to their mothers and grandmothers from Ireland.

“But the chief ground of confidence is the Lord’s word: ‘Pray the Lord of the harvest to send labourers into his harvest’. That prayer will not fail to find generous response from the Father.”