Paul Beirne, an autobiography: Vagabond - The Journey Home
A Review by Vince Carroll MSC
2024. 509 pp. Available on Amazon. C $10.
Paul Beirne is a past student of Downlands, former SVD priest, Dean of the University of Divinity, Director of the Heart of Life Centre, 2014-2021
This is a very personal story of Paul’s life as a Divine Word Missionary priest (SVD) and his Missionary work when in training, his studies/work in the USA, and his later work as a Formator for the SVD’s of Pre-Novitiate Candidates, and finally his time as founder and Superior of the SVD Region in South Korea. Disillusioned with the church there and also his society I feel, he left the order and the priesthood after 34 years, married and happily now has two children with Anna.
He writes very beautifully and intimately. I believe he attacks no one in the process, but reports it all as part of his journey. I think the Home he is referring to is the Home of his heart. Deferentially, he thinks of himself as a Vagabond. His writing is very honest, and probably too much so for some. He does not shrink from reporting his sexual exploits, but also for unveiling much of the conflict that was below the surface in (some) SVD communities he worked in/or led. I do not think he left the priesthood over sex/sexuality specifically – that was part of it – but that deeper factors were in play, as he searched actively for his personal meaning/purpose in life.
I was particularly attracted to his work as I too thought of becoming an SVD and also experienced a similar Novitiate as the SVD experienced in Marburg, Queensland (where my mother grew up and I know intimately); likewise I worked in PNG for seven (7) years as he did for two. My experiences there were mild in comparison to his – but then I was much older: I 40 years plus, he 19! Then too I have experienced OS Mission in the church, in post-apartheid South Africa (18 years - in two language groups), as well as in PNG (7 in two places) and among the Aboriginal people of Australia (especially the Tiwi of Bathurst island). My experience in those places did not give me the burdens he had to bear in South Korea. But they were demanding enough for me.
I warmed very much to his description of the land and the landscape found in many places in the book, as I also claim to be an environmentalist and warm to the Land, the vegetation and the wild life that he describes in several parts. His experience there it seems to me comes to best expression in his stories of the Fish that flew and the grove of trees in South Korea, that mediated earth, God and sky to him. This Book of Nature is one that reveals God to us. I believe in Paul’s latter chapters he has not quite depth the meaning of this and, for me, the book trails off towards the end.
The flip side to this quasi-mystic engagement with the earth was his growing urgency round sex and sexuality, and finally his obvious contentment in his Marriage and Family Life, which for him is the Home for which he had struggled.
But the road there had been very bumpy: I think he tells some stories of the novitiate days “with advantage” as Shakespeare says – as we all tend to! Then his accounts of his time as Formator in Melbourne is pretty “blokey” – as were our own experiences and for anyone in those days in seminaries. (Football and Grog!) From the conflicts established in a free wheeling pre-novitiate experience that he allowed, he began to find solace in the more and more frequent company of women. This tension, between his vowed celibacy and his priesthood, was not new to him, but eventually added to his reason for departing the priesthood.
His studies and work for the down and out in America are admirable, and it seemed to give him a direction for his Mission in life. He seemed to be happiest when working directly with the poor and down and out. But the Church in Korea with a style like the Confucius hierarchy he could not cop, nor cope with. This was the main seed of his vocation’s destruction – and yet strangely the source of new life as well. Something had to die in order for something else to grow.
This book could well be read by all priests and ex-priests, but especially those in their senior years, as they reflect on their own journey, their loyal contribution to the church and consider what is the Home to which their hearts aspire. Lay Catholics who have shared the burden of the last 60 years in the church may also relish this book. I gave it a 4 star rating.
Paul was the Captain of Downlands College (1964) and one of the earliest alumni to go by his choice to an order other than the MSC. In later life he worked for the MSC as Director in our Heart of Life Centre in Melbourne. He makes only veiled reference (two) to his boarding school life and does not mention the MSC nor Heart of Life at all. I find this remiss.
Vince Carroll MSC
