Bishop Peter Elliott was ordained a bishop in Melbourne, Australia, June 15.

A convert to the Catholic faith, he was ordained a priest in 1973.

After studies in Rome, he worked as an official of the Pontifical Council for the Family from 1987.

As such, he represented the Holy See at the U.N. Conference on Population held in Cairo in 1994 and the U.N. Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995.

He is author of Ceremonies of the Modern Roman Rite.

He spoke to Register correspondent Father Raymond J. de Souza June 25.

What was your religious upbringing? What did your family think about you becoming Catholic?

My father was an Anglican vicar, in the classical high church tradition, not predominant in Melbourne. My mother was a practicing Anglican, less “high,” but devout. Living in a vicarage [Anglican rectory] meant that the whole family in various ways was drawn into ministry to others. In the mid-1960s my grandmother perceived that I would become a Catholic. Then I went to Oxford to study theology for Anglican ministry.

The crisis began in October 1967, when I put myself in the hands of Our Lady, praying one night in the Anglican shrine at Walsingham. Soon after that, my parents were rather shocked when I wrote to tell them that I believed I would soon be a Catholic. My father took it more calmly and argued in theological terms and in the valid perspective of loyalty to the Anglo-Catholic cause, already embattled in new ways in the post-conciliar era. Mother thought I would become a monk, and that they might never see me again.

But we corresponded, and it all settled down once I was reconciled in June 1968. But they could not wait to get over to England the following spring to check me out!

When they found me sane and peaceful, and when my father explored Catholic Oxford, all was well, but my mother did remark in a letter, “I think I’ll die if I meet yet another Jesuit!”

What were the greatest surprises for you after becoming Catholic? Were there unanticipated difficulties?

I cannot think of any surprises, unless the way it was all so normal can be taken as a surprise. I had to overcome a certain preoccupation with religious details, some stubborn personality quirks and a snobby attitude to popular devotions. The remarkable chaplain at Oxford, Father Michael Hollings, who received me, took me to task for making a mildly derisive comment about Padre Pio, a priest he knew personally.

When I became a Catholic, I was already training for Anglican ministry within the Anglo-Catholic tradition, so I knew I would offer myself to serve as a priest. I already understood what a priestly vocation meant, and part of the crisis of becoming a Catholic was tied up with facing the reality that I was called to Catholic priesthood, in communion with the successor of St. Peter.

I soon developed a devotion to Padre Pio! He is part of my life, and he was included in the Litany of the Saints at my episcopal ordination.

Your sponsor upon being confirmed as a Catholic was a young priest named Father George Pell. Now as cardinal archbishop of Sydney, he was one of the bishops who consecrated you — surely an emotional moment for you both.

It was indeed, a very moving moment for me, and for His Eminence, although he can conceal his emotions better than I can. I was once corrected in the Vatican, when I worked in the Pontifical Council for the Family, for not concealing my feelings at a rather formal meeting of prelates!

You converted while at Oxford, a place of many great Catholic figures in the last centuries. Are there any in particular that are especially important to you?

The Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman was a deep influence. But I really only came to know him once I was at Oxford. I recall a very depressing visit to Littlemore a few months before my reception into the Church. Then I read The Development of Christian Doctrine, and my later visits to Littlemore have been joyful. I was privileged to celebrate Mass in the room where Blessed Dominic Barberi reconciled him to the Church. But there was another figure, also an Oxford man, who triggered [my] confronting the issues — St. Thomas More.

I had played Wolsey in “A Man for All Seasons” in 1965 at Melbourne University, and saw the film in 1967 a few months before my conversion crisis began. With St. John Fisher, the heroic bishop, St. Thomas More was also there, in the Litany of the Saints at my episcopal ordination.

On their feast day, I celebrated Mass for senior high school students from two of our leading Catholic schools, and called these 17-year-olds to look to these two men as witnesses for Christ in our times.

You are perhaps best known for your book on the liturgy, Ceremonies of the Modern Roman Rite. Has the book had the effect you were hoping for? Is it something of a burden to be known as a liturgical authority, being asked to referee disputes far and wide?

Ceremonies of the Modern Roman Rite has had an impact beyond what I imagined, because seminarians are using it. That marvelous “new breed” of men preparing for priesthood today want to celebrate the liturgy well, as reformed by Vatican II, but with reverence, dignity and splendor. They are most encouraged by our beloved Pope Benedict, whose deep understanding of the liturgy inspires so many of us.

But there are times when I do regret writing books on ceremonial because some of the e-mails I receive are depressing — abuses still continue, even matters involving sacrilege. Then there are e-mails that are, well, slightly kooky and a bit obsessional. But if I can be a liturgical Agony Aunt, so be it.

One delightful surprise involved in writing the Ignatius Press books was the way many laity are using them, for formation and education.

You have also been instrumental in developing a new religious curriculum for Catholic schools in Melbourne. What are the principles you used in drafting the new curriculum?

The 13-volume series, kindergarten to Grade 12, “To Know, Worship and Love,” was based on: 1. the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2. the General Directory for Catechesis and 3. the protocols for religious education resources produced by the U.S. Conference of Bishops. The last document gave us the template to plan doctrinal “overviews,” and shape curriculum.

I am grateful for the U.S. bishops who provided such a sound guide. At the same time we brought together the three major methods of religious education: doctrinal, kerygmatic (Scripture, liturgy, etc.), and existential.

We had suffered from an overdose of the existential “life situation” approach, but we retained its emphasis on relating religious education to life today. We honored the formal doctrinal content and the need to explore Scripture and Tradition as sources of Revelation, one Word of God, according to Vatican II. The books use modern layout, vivid art, everything from traditional to modern, and are marked by catechesis in our Catholic cultural, aesthetic and ethnic traditions.

The website kwl.com.au is a guide to these texts used — now the mandated resources in Melbourne, Sydney and five other Australian dioceses.

Often Catholic school teachers today are themselves weak in the knowledge of their faith. How have they reacted to the new curriculum?

That is the heart of the problem. But, after initial fears, based on a mysterious hostile beat up in the secular press, teachers took up the texts and, by and large, they are happy, even enthusiastic, about them. A year or so after we produced the first elementary level books, a young teacher remarked to me, “You know, I’m learning a lot from this new book myself.” I asked her what level she taught. Grade 3!
Now that we have all the high school texts in place, I believe this more complex material is having a good effect on teachers. You cannot blame many of them when you find out that they were in Catholic schools themselves, those years of the lean diet served with lots of cotton candy.

But remember that in Australia, with federal and state aid, we have a thriving and growing Catholic system of parish and high schools, and there is no interference from the civil authorities in our religious teaching or in the Catholicity of our schools. Governments expect our schools to be “Catholic” in their identity — not copies of public schools with a cross, possibly, stuck on the wall.

Father Raymond J. de Souza was the Register’s Rome correspondent from 1999-2003.