Daly River

To get a clearer idea of what went down in the missions, we can refer to Father Tony Caruana, MSC, who did a one month relief stint at the Daly River mission in the early 80’s on his way back from a Papua New Guinea posting. This is around the time Fyfe was in charge of the Daly River mission - all the missions for that matter.  O'Loughlin, meanwhile, was a fixture as Bishop.

(note: Bishop as a piece in chess was also a Catholic culture-power-play - it used to be an Elephant in the original Indian game, but THE Church saw a re-branding opportunity in the mid 1200s, juiced-up the power while it was at it. Not as momentous as the earlier BC/AD coup, but typical of the cultural Catholicisization of human thinking.)

Father Caruana was interviewed for a thesis titled For the Love of God (PDF) on MSC’s NT mission work.  Caruana's observations, as an outsider, ring alarm bells …

For the Love of God (Beresford-Maning):

Tony Caruana .. was singularly unimpressed when he was welcomed to Daly River by a group of young girls who volunteered to ‘come home with you, Father, and look after you and give you anything you might want’.

When Father Caruana declared that he would look after himself the offer was repeated, and again rejected. The girls were clearly affronted and thereafter he was ignored by the greater part of the community for the duration of his stay.   Father Caruana’s refusal of their offer was based on his understanding that the girls were offering sexual favours rather than housework. (p210) (author conversation with Caruana)

Was reading this the first time, thought to myself:  guess they picked the gay-one! - then thought:  no, don’t be flippant - maybe Caruana, was the one MSC with a conscience who was genuinely appalled by this off-the-rails sexualized culture happening at the missions …

Let's see ...