Cassocks in the Wilderness: Remembering the Seminary at Springwood

In Cassocks in the Wilderness, the author tells the story of his highly regulated life as a young seminarian locked away in the isolation of a sandstone building in the Blue Mountains. He reveals how he came to be there, the characters he lived with, his teachers and his companions. His memory of events and occasions is captured with a certain barbed humour, sharp and surprisingly honest, but at times with a touch of sadness and a dose of anger. This book reveals a world which was closed to most of us, one which has passed away, but which has left scars on some who lived in it and an indelible mark on all who passed through it.

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Chris Geraghty, a judge in NSW. He has taught theology, ministered in several parishes and worked as a public servant in the Health Departmant. He has been a legal reporter for a commercial television station, a solicitor to a large city firm, and a barrister. He was one of the counsel assisting the Woods Royal Commission inquiry into the scandals at the Chelmsford Hospital. Geraghty is well placed to describe the seminary system. He has been part of it for so many years. His memory is strikingly accurate, his eyes sharp, his observations sometimes acid, but often amusing. It is an entertaining read for anyone who wishes to learn what the seminary system, and the Church behind it, was like in the fifties. It is compulsive reading for Catholics who lived through the harsh ironclad system, for generous men and women who thought they had a vocation and tested it in fire, and of course for the many boys who took the train trip to Springwood Station and then the old rattlers to the college.