There was a sense of festival and gratitude amongst the tables of over 140 people who came together to honour the “healing” evangelist St Luke on his vigil, and to celebrate the legacy of the revered bioethicist and public philosopher Nicholas Tonti-Filippini (1956-2014).
It is impossible to imagine the debate about medical ethics and the life issues in Australia and internationally without his presence and his voice, which was so prodigiously articulate despite living for nearly three decades with a terminal illness.
When he died on November 7, now 11 years ago, there were many tributes.
Having had the enormous and graced fortune to work with him in a number of settings, including in his support of the Thomas More Centre events at the time, I wrote:
“Nicholas possessed a restless and rapid-fire intellect with the liberality of Socratic spirit which made him a teacher in the most profound and borderless sense. Nicholas taught, mentored and befriended a vast number of those on the professional and personal ethical quest: midwives, surgeons, politicians, journalists, High Court justices, parish counsellors, fertility teachers, grieving parents, prelates and students at all levels.”
This year the TMC was delighted to to be part of the organising committee in which we collaborated with the Tonti-Filippini family and the Australian Catholic Medical Association to keep alive Nicholas’ important legacy.
This second Nicholas Tonti-Filippini Oration was delivered by a frequent colleague and great friend of the professor, Anthony Fisher OP – now the Archbishop of Sydney – at the Oration Dinner held at the Catholic Leadership Centre in East Melbourne.
Last year, the Oration was given great moral and financial support from the National Hospitaller, John Murphy, Professor David Kissane and the Victorian Sub-priory of the Knights of Malta, of which order Nicholas was an outstanding member.
Prior to the dinner, the Archbishop of Melbourne, Peter Comensoli, celebrated the first White Mass for the guests of the Oration Dinner and the healthcare professionals who would be attending the conference of the Catholic Medical Association, which took place during that weekend.
Archbishop Comensoli spoke in his homily of the tradition that St Luke the Evangelist also had a rare attention in his writing to the healing miracles and work of Jesus Christ: these healings being both spiritual and physical.
The oration address was a masterly and vigorous reflection by Archbishop Fisher upon Pope St John Paul II’s major “bioethics” encyclical promulgated 30 years ago: Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life).
This encyclical became something of a biblically and philosophically grounded blueprint for the endeavours of the Church, to promote the inherent and universal dignity of every human life and person in the face of the many moral and cultural temptations against life.
The Archbishop began his address with a simple lament: “If only Nick were here…” before listing a catalogue of ethical, legal and institutional challenges to what the Polish Pope would call the “culture of life”.
Archbishop Fisher recalled his early involvement with Nicholas as he organised Australia’s first high-level bioethical conferences.
He spoke of the need to recognise the great pioneers in the work of defending life, and the need to intercede with those who collaborated with Nick but who are now deceased: “I expect his friends, Fr Frank Harman, Fr Tom Daly SJ, Dr Joe Santamaria, Drs John and Lyn Billings, Hon. Kevin Andrews and Bishop Peter Elliott, amongst others, to join him in those prayers from heaven.”
The Archbishop surveyed the many depressing and challenging legislative and social changes, which proved these great friends and Pope John Paul II prescient in their fight for human life.
The Archbishop did not end on a defeated note. He explained the need to rouse up and recognise a new gratitude for life and what he called a new “virtuous biosphere” that extended the great insights of John Paul II and Nicholas Tonti-Filippini, not only into legislative battles but into the quotidian fabric of family, parish and community life.
Archbishop Fisher called this a new “bio character” to “the virtues (or habits of character that orient us toward the good) necessary for a sound ethics, law and community. The culture of life must, for instance, be a prudent culture. Practical wisdom requires doing what Nick called ‘the hard thinking’ before acting: asking the right questions and answering them on the basis of sound principles.”
Any building up of a “culture of life” must therefore go hand in hand with prudence, temperance, courage and the living out of the theological virtues of faith, hope and real charity.
The address was immensely thought-provoking and it received heartfelt applause from all in the room that night.
This week on October 22, the Church marked the feast day of the author of Evangelium Vitae: Pope and now St John Paul II, a gigantic figure on the world as well as the ecclesial stage.
Reflecting on Archbishop Fisher’s remark made clear the importance of the cultural and formational work in concrete and well-thought virtue within the mission of the Thomas More Centre.
There is a connection with this and the bravery and the faith of Pope John Paul’s mother, Emilia Wojtyła (1884-1929). Emilia was a daughter of an artisanal family, and she left school in Year 8 and became a capable tailor. She married the officer Karol Snr and she would have three children: Edmund who was a doctor, but would die of scarlet fever, a little baby Olga who died on the day she was born, and Karol the son who would go on to become a Pope and saint.
In recent years a Polish biography of Emilia has been published. It is revealed in this that she was warned that her pregnancy with the baby Karol was dangerous. Her doctor, a renowned obstetrician, pressed her urgently to undergo an abortion or to risk her life. His pressure was confident and persistent.
Emilia and Karol prayed knowing that they could never take this path and came to the courageous decision to seek a second opinion. The doctor they sought was a virtuous Jewish doctor who visited Karol’s military barracks, Dr Samuel Taub. They implored him to help save the life of both the mother and the baby. Dr Taub recommended his care and full bed rest for Emilia and the couple prayed to the Virgin Mary for her support.
Here we surely see the web of virtue evoked by Archbishop Fisher, seeded in daily life and which profoundly influenced the later Pope in the question of the “culture of life”.
The biography continues that baby Karol was born with a booming cry (redolent of his deep and strong voice in adulthood) with the sound of the Litany of Loreto floating into the birth room.
“The mother, the writer concludes, ‘was very excited, but also full of joy and happiness for this miracle: both the child and she were living. The impossible has become possible’.”
With thanks for an inspiring fortnight!
Anna Krohn
Executive Director
Thomas More Centre
Featured image: Archbishop Anthony Fisher speaking at the Nicholas Tonti-Filippini Oration Dinner. | Credit: Patrick Giam
