Ep79. A Bridge Between, Katharine Massam

I sat down with Katharine Massam to talk about Spanish Benedictine Missionary Women in New Norcia in Western Australia. We discuss the way this strange, surprising, complex, and sad story helps chart a path for thinking about religious and colonial history in these lands now called Australia. We talk about the way this small mission town both reflected and balked the broader trends in the colonial project of assimilation, changes in C20th Catholicism, and the experience of women in religious orders (with particular attention to the story of Sr Veronica Therese Willaway OSB). We also cover how one writes history that doesn't praise anyone, and holds the complexity of a story that should never have been with the fullness of feeling of those most impacted.

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Katarine Massam is a historian of religion who teaches at Pilgrim Theological College within the University of Divinity in Melbourne. She has published on monastic theology, the history of education and, mostly widely, on the lived experience of faith and belief.

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