Australian - Novelist | October 7, 1935 -
And I think my sexuality was heavily repressed by the church, by the, you know, the design of the mortal sins.
Thomas Keneally
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And I was very interested in the priesthood.
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So I remember both medicine, because I frequently sick, particularly with asthma for which there was no proper treatment then, and in religion I had a strong sense of there being a patriarchy.
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So nonetheless given the importance that was placed on sport in Australia, I wanted to be part of that scene, particularly since I had felt very strongly in my early schooling being marginalised even in the Catholic school.
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And I definitely wanted to be a writer, but I felt a duty now, having used up those educational resources, I felt a duty to the church and my parents to become a priest.
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And I found both literature and the church very dramatic presences in the world of the 1950s.
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And I liked pluralist Australia. I got a taste for pluralist Australia. I like, I like Australians and I can't believe that they're going to go to hell because they tell a good dirty joke, you know.
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And it is a folly to try to craft a novel for the screen, to write a novel with a screen contract in mind.
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And so um, I knew that I really didn't want to be a priest and didn't want to be a celibate, though I could probably manage it. Um, and um, ultimately I left.
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Australia integrated the - brought on the ships and unleashed in the society the dogs of sectarianism, which had existed in other places - in Glasgow, in Liverpool and of course in Ireland, north and south.
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But I was also a brat. I used to belong to a gang that went looking for fights with other gangs.
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But in practice Australia - the pluralism of Australia - sorry the sectarianism to an extent stopped at the time you took your uniform off after coming home from school.
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