Bernard O'Brien

Bernard Michael O'Brien (9 December 1907 – 3 January 1982) was a New Zealand Jesuit priest, philosopher, musician, writer and seminary professor.

Early life He was born in Christchurch, New Zealand and was educated by the Dominican sisters at St Thomas's Academy, Oamaru and at Christ's College. His father was a surgeon. He had a sister (who later became Sister Monica O'Brien RSCJ, of Wellington) and two brothers, Arthur and Michael, who remained in Christchurch. In 1942 he was appointed to the Jesuit scholasticate at Watsonia to take care of the university studies of the Jesuit scholastics as he had before. On 2 February 1942 he was admitted to his final vows as a Jesuit. In 1943 he was appointed to Corpus Christi College, Werribee (a seminary for the training of secular priests) near Melbourne to lecture in theology. He filled this position until 1949. In late 1947 temporarily and then permanently in 1950 O'Brien was appointed to Holy Name Seminary in his home town of Christchurch. At that time it was a minor seminary with generally 70–90 secondary school age boys boarding there. By 1959, however, the school aspect had been phased out and the seminary was teaching Philosophy to men who had finished secondary school and were in training to be ordained as secular priests. The result of the change for O'Brien was that he then became a Philosophy lecturer and set about preparing courses in Logic and Theory of Knowledge and the Philosophy of Being. Philosophy hitherto had been taught at Holy Name in programs of a traditional Thomist stamp, whether taught directly from the Catholic textbooks known as "manuals", or from private course notes which represented an updated form of the scholastic system. Even in the 1950s, textbooks were still in Latin, with students expected to know enough of the language to make their way through the three-volume Summula Philosophiae Scholasticae of J. S. Hickey, or, if this was beyond them, with the simplified "dog Latin" of the Manuale Philosophiae ad Usum Seminariorum of Giovanni di Napoli. O'Brien, with his broad interests and education, and his colleagues initiated great changes and he gave Philosophy studies at Holy Name Seminary some standing and "twenty years of clergy owe, if not an appreciation for scholarship at least an acceptance of it to him." O'Brien was well remembered by his students especially for his lectures in logic and metaphysics and for his keen interest in music, art and literature. For many years he supervised the choir at Holy Name Seminary.

Later years and wisdom O'Brien taught at Holy Name Seminary until it was closed in 1979. He then continued at Holy Cross Seminary, Mosgiel where he lectured in literature and Art. In 1980 his health began to fail and he spent some time at Nazareth House (home for the elderly) in Christchurch. He died at the hospice of St John of God in Richmond, New South Wales, on 3 January 1982.

O'Brien made a considerable contribution, especially in journals and book reviews, to the Catholic church in New Zealand. He once recalled an occasion when, as a young Jesuit in Australia, he barely escaped drowning. "I came to realise that God might call me in early years. I found that I could renounce life, if God so wished. This was a salutary experience – a deepening one." He also wrote of the knowledge in every field of learning, and of the enormous change in the church since Vatican II. "Who can possibly hold that we are simply recalling the stand we took in the past, and adding to it?" He urged that Catholics should adopt what is needed for each new age. "We must learn to react to God's call when it is given, and wait for the time when it is ripe."