The Hell family is not happy. Alex and Sue Hell went to the media this week after St Peter the Apostle primary school, Hoppers Crossing, in the Western suburbs of Melbourne, refused admission to five year old Max on account of his name. They could have changed the boy’s last name to Wembridge, Sue’s maiden name, but decided against it. The school would not budge until the story hit the Australian news headlines. Now the Hells, a Catholic family, are unsure about whether they’ll enrol Max in the local school after all.
Winston Churchill said that if you’re going through hell, keep going.
Hell is a traditional Austrian surname meaning bright. There are six Hell families in Victoria, two in Queensland, one in Northern Territory. There’s a Heck living in Victoria. I wonder if they used to be called Hell and changed because of similar problems.
On Friday afternoon I was part of a panel responding to Dean Hoge’s lecture on young adults in the Catholic Church.
Dean’s a Presbyterian who’s been lecturing in sociology of religion at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC for thirty years. He was part of the team that published the 1994 book, “Vanishing Boundaries: The Religion of Mainline Protestant Baby Boomers”. On Friday Dean was presenting research on Catholic young adults in the United States, to an audience consisting mostly of Catholic educators and youth ministry staff from Brisbane.
Dean Hoge is pictured below (left) with my fellow panel members Selina Harris (Sunnybank Catholic Parish) and Paul Mergard, (right) photographer and Salvation Army church planter in West End, Brisbane.
