A Gentle Unfolding: Circling and Spiralling into Meaning

Judith Scully is one of the many people who left religious life in the years following the Second Vatican Council. Those times, she believes, were critical ones in the development of the Catholic Church. Later generations will look back and analyse their importance and the effect these moves had on the way women and men minister in the Australian church.

Judith, a fourth generation Australian, was a toddler when World War II began. Her memorabilia box overflows with bits and pieces from her years as a religious sister teaching on Aboriginal settlements, marriage, parenting five children, three of them fostered and two adopted, running a general store, the untimely death of her husband from Motor Neurone Disease, and nearly two decades as a pastoral associate in Catholic parishes. Judith built on the formation and education she had received in religious life, giving it a breadth and focus that was different. That experience fuelled her passion to affirm the way women live out their spirituality in the ordinariness of everyday.

In retirement Judith has re-discovered her love of words and these days she posts on her website Words from the Edge.