Val Noone

He is a recognised authority on Irish emigration to Australia, especially Victoria, since the time of the great Irish Famine (1845-1852).

Noone has a particular interest in the history of the Irish language in Australia, its preservation, and the understanding of its social, cultural and linguistic aspects.

He is an Honorary Fellow of the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne.

Valentine Gabriel Noone (born 9 May 1940) is an Australian writer-editor, historian, social activist and academic.

Partly because of the nature of his intended vocation, and partly because the intellectual turbulence of the 1950s and 1960s, Noone, though officially studying scholastic philosophy and theology, found himself grappling with other issues.

These formative questions included the embedded Catholic fear of communism, the anti-social nature of extreme capitalism, the changes seen as needed within the Catholic church, the plight of Australian aborigines, the White Australia policy, the Catholic support of the National Civic Council, the division of Catholics within the Australian Labor Party, and the universal consternation and angst of possible Nuclear warfare.

During these eight years Noone studied and achieved tertiary qualifications in Biblical studies, as well as philosophy and theology.

Following his ordination to the priesthood, Noone involved himself in pastoral work in various churches in the Melbourne Archdiocese.

In 1955, aged 15, Val Noone was specially chosen to represent Victoria in the Sun Advertiser Youth Travel Group, dubbed "Australia's Schoolboy Ambassadors" which involved an educational journey to parts of the Middle East, Europe, and Great Britain.

In 1957, at the age of almost seventeen, Val Noone began his seminary studies for the Catholic priesthood at Corpus Christi College at Werribee, a suburb on the southern outskirts of Melbourne.

Noone spent eight years (1957–1964) at this college and experienced the last years of a unique and dedicated way of life and training regimen.

He was required to participate in a program of cooperative manual labor somewhat akin to the ancient monastic Rule of St Benedict.

Students were required to tend gardens and farm work, carry out maintenance normally performed by tradesmen, and a variety of other tasks which ensured the smooth and efficient running of the college as a religious community.

In the mid-1960s, Noone was appointed assistant priest to Con Reis, the parish priest of St Albans.

In the turmoil and change of the 1960s Noone found himself, in addition to his normal priestly duties, challenged by a range of social and moral issues.

At the time the catholic-pervaded Australian Labor Party experienced a serious division which led to the offshoot Democratic Labor Party.

There were bitterly opposing views about support for General Franco in the Spanish Civil War.

Some Catholics were passionately advocating rural alternative living as antidote to the evils of capitalism.

There was serious moral argument and angst about the indiscriminate atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Above all there was a fearful consciousness of the nuclear arms race and the possibility of world annihilation.

In May 1968, Noone was assistant priest in the Parish of Frankston.

His shocked reaction to the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae (On Human Life) and his disagreement with his archbishop, James Knox, was leading to a personal crisis.

With fellow priest, Garry McLoughlin, Noone had founded an independent magazine for priests and ex-priests entitled "Priests Forum".

Its articles were an expression of radicalism, and an attempt at reform within the Catholic Church.

This rise of critical thought was clearly stimulated by the Second Vatican Council which had highlighted a broad range of issues which the Catholic Church had to face.

The original instigators of this house in June 1969 were Val Noone's brother, Brian Noone, a former worker for the Salvation Army, and Mary Doyle, a social worker who had been assisting alcoholics.

It was also home for Vietnam War Draft Resisters during the time of opposition to the Vietnam War.

These included Michael Hammill-Green, Tony Dalton, Merv Langford, John Wallen and Roger Naphthine.

In May 1970, Noone and McLoughlin were instrumental in organising a national meeting of priests in Coogee, a beachside suburb of Sydney.

They hoped this conference would discuss some of the burning issues of the day, namely the War in Vietnam, the question of priestly celibacy and the imposition of birth control on married Catholics.

These controversial issues did not get much traction due to the resistance of conservatives.

It was, however, considered a beginning at some level.

An important outcome of the Coogee Conference was the formation of a National Conference of Australian priests.

This took place in Sydney in 1970 with the participation of 400 priests from all over Australia.

He was awarded a medal of the Order of Australia in June 2009.

In 2013 the Senate of the National University of Ireland (NUI) in Dublin conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Literature, honoris causa, for his contribution to Irish Studies in Australia.

This National Conference of Priests was still active in 2020.

Noone and McLoughlin, on their return to Melbourne, became openly critical of their own Archbishop James Knox and his support for the Vietnam War.

Shortly after, Val Noone requested leave from the priesthood and after several months returned to life as a private citizen and anti-war activist.

On leaving the catholic ministry, Val Noone became involved with a group of dynamic and idealistic young Catholics who, in the inner city Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy, informally practised community living, voluntary poverty, and open house hospitality including the provision of caring accommodation for homeless men.