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The Writer
Michelle Nailon
The background of Michelle Nailon is presented in the Preface of "Version Four - Five Pivotal Texts".
Any person and what they do, is largely a product of the opportunities that have been presented in their historical situation. As the member of a very large family with a father who was both a Police Inspector and a survivor as a 16 year old, from the trenches of WWI, there was first hand experience of "internalised law".
Coming from a school background where the work force consisted almost entirely of nuns and where a considerable number of girls "entered" and with a family connection to the Order, located just a block away, there was an early familiarity with religious life.
Going through novitiate training during the Catholic Council of Vatican II, there was the opportunity to be trained in the "spiritual securities" of Religious Life before the turmoil that resulted from the Council. Then there were the positive aspects of a great openness that the Council created - "when Pope John opened the windows of the church to let in a breeze and a gale blew through".
The Brigidine Order
This is a relatively small order within church spheres but in Victoria it has set up a number of Secondary Schools, known as "Brigidine".
The Order was founded by Bishop Daniel Delaney who was trained in secret as a priest in France. He later returned as the Penal laws in Ireland were being relaxed. He saw education as a key to improving the lot of people in his Diocese and he began to improve it with a group of women teaching catechism. He later founded the Patrician Brothers. Daniel Delaney gave the Order the Patroness of St Brigid.
St Brigid,
who lived around the fifth century, was so aligned in the imagination of the Irish, with the pre-Christian goddess Brigid, that the historical and mythical figures of Brigid are largely merged.
Brigid epitomises the close connection between nature and the universe and the spirituality of the Celtic people.
Far from being a figure lost to time, Brigid is being explored anew and is being used as a
mean for finding, epitomising and renewing harmony between culture and the cosmos.
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