Father Jerzy Popiełuszko
01/02/17 21:32
In 1979 I enacted the conscientious action of withholding my taxation from the Australian government because it had legalised and subsidised abortion and other highly questionable scientific procedures from public revenue.
In the inevitably ensuing period of litigation against me, a number of events which appeared to facilitate my action arose from surrounding circumstances. One such major event involved circumstances surrounding the 1985 political murder of Fr. Jerzy Popiełuszko in Poland. Newspaper reports documenting details surrounding the murder came into play in Australia at a crucial period of social, spiritual and political unfolding of my case. I believe there is reasonable indication that the spirit of murdered Fr. Jerzy Popiełuszko indirectly assisted my action via the published news concerning his murder. That once my action began, circumstances ‘naturally’ arose giving support and defence to the spirit of life against the spirit of death and evil.
I was/am merely a sovereign citizen under God inspired to enact civil duty and to separate my complicity from an insidious procedure for the sake of life, justice and human dignity.
The following report briefly describes the unfolding of this proposal. I have documented a series of events which played major roles in developing my understanding of abortion and the use of death, but there were more equally powerful events which subsequently strongly consolidated my understanding. For fear of making this article too long I have not included them in this document.
OVERVIEW
In the late 1970s I became increasingly aware of the diverse insidiousness of abortion and the complicity everyday citizens were marked with because abortion was proclaimed legal and legitimate and funded through the taxation system.
At the time these insights were developing I had become financially independent by way of receiving royalties from a project I had worked on in a microbiological field. I had resigned from my usual employment in Medical Laboratory Technology and depended exclusively on the royalty payments for my income. Leading to this and while still employed, my income had more or less doubled since the royalties were about the same as my regular salary. While commuting home one day in 1978 I was awakened to the realisation that I was only a hobbyist in searching for life’s mysteries, where as if I resigned and used my royalties for support I could become a full-time explorer of the mysteries and subordinate to God alone. For this realisation and a number of other factors, I resigned from my employment the very next day and began the journey of self supporting independence in the search for meaning, purpose and idealism.
With the advent of royalties I had become incorporated as Vilku Co. P/L which obliged me to submit my financial details to an accountant who in turn lodged my income details with the Taxation Department which then issued me my taxation account.
In late 1979 my (previous) employer discovered I had been accidentally overpaid with royalties by an amount of about a year’s modest income. I was informed all payments would immediately stop until new sales of the equipment paid out the overpayment. About 3 months earlier to receiving this letter I had completed my first “agenda fast” where instead of the more usual stipulated-time fasting, an agenda was determined and then sought through fasting and prayer. At the time of the inspiration to do this fast, I determined my agenda to find the ‘indivisible essence of my existence’. I believed this was synonymous with the moment of origination, the moment of being one with emergence from Divine mind. In formulating this agenda I became concerned that I might not be ready for this insight, so to invoke a procedure, I added the clause ‘Or the road to travel’ (to the main agenda). I broke this fast in which I only took breath for the first 4 days and then only water for the remainder on the 41st day, but earlier on the 35th day I had an encounter with death and also separately with, I believe, the ‘spirit of life’. There are many details of this broad daylight midday encounter in a public shopping centre, especially in regard to death.
In brief, as I was about to walk into a hardware shop in a village near my home, a darkness descended upon me and blanked out my vision of the reality in which I stood. I thought that maybe I had collapsed to the ground and only imagined myself in standing posture. I remembered that as the darkness came, I was standing very close to a shop window within easy reach of my elbow. I nudged with my elbow and I could feel the glass which confirmed to me that I was in a standing posture in a world I could no longer see. It was then a new vista opened and I saw myself as the (wave) front or forefront of all the mothers and fathers of my preceding generations and I could see all the disease and injury of my ancestry travelling through the ages. I was not aware it was death propositioning me when I was offered a new body because I could see the one I stood in was afflicted with all the disease and injury acquired across the ages of my ancestry. In naivety I accepted the offer, but the next moment an unmistakably new voice asked me “are you following life or are you following death?” The agenda of my fast was to find the essence of my life, so when I replied “life” to the question, the darkness lifted off and out of me and formed a matt black ball in front of my face. As it slowly moved away across the road and towards a carpark, the unmistakable second voice returned and said ”That was death; in the beginning there was only life; humanity brought death to life; as it was in the beginning it can be again in the future”. I didn’t realise this was the vision I sought and so I finished my shopping and kept fasting until the 41st day. But unbeknown to me at the time, this was to have a profound influence on my life. I began to recognise the use-of-death as the re-infliction of a curse humanity had brought upon itself. I began to see how, especially abortion was a human instigated entitlement which in its essence infiltrated and affected every faculty and facet of human nature with a vector of disintegration. That the governments which legalised and funded abortions had violated their mandate to attain peace and happiness for their citizenry. That legitimisation of abortion was over and above any injustice that could be expected from the day to day running of a yet imperfect and non-ideal state. Because the state was engaging dynamics of death that were outside its capacity to control or repair, it was ultimately bringing disaster to itself and afflicting demise upon the hopes, aspirations and meaningfulness of its citizenry. Importantly also, I realised I could not condone for others that which I could not condone for myself.
During a (dream) around this period of life and death encounter I was visited by a spirit that told me “when you finally realise your vision, begin restaurants as a way to bring the vision into this world”. At the time of this visitation I thought the message was a false fabrication of my mind as a result of not having eaten for so long. But there was a sense of substantial solidity in the encounter so I replied “if your message is real, corner me into realising it”. From there I virtually forgot the experience until 3 months later when I received the letter informing me of being overpaid. Upon reading the letter I became frightened about what I could do. I was paying a house mortgage and I had a family to care for. However, there was a strong sense that going back to my old work was a backward step. I thought maybe my exploratory journey had its wings clipped, or even that I had been delusional. It was somewhere in the early moments of searching for my options that I remembered the message from the fast to start restaurants. With the few hundred dollars I had remaining on hand and within a week of having received this news, I opened my first ‘open house’ vegetarian restaurant on the bottom floor of my house in the Dandenong Ranges near Melbourne. Amazingly people came on the first night and there has never been a night in 37 years and four sequential different locations when no body came and through out its unfolding has provided all needs. This restaurant operated exclusively by donations and there were no prices on the menu.
In the 1978-1979 taxation year I owed the taxation department $930.71 from royalty payments. By the time of the due date for payment, my conscience strongly guided me to wield my citizen power and to notify the Taxation Department that because taxation revenue was paying for abortions and other human death related procedures, I would withhold my payment and any future payments at least unless this funding stopped.
I realised that as a result of the forthcoming litigation against me, any assets I had would be vulnerable to sequestration by government departments, so I sold my family home in outer Melbourne and set myself and my family onto a journey in search for sanctuary. The restaurant which I had operated on the bottom floor for 9 months closed with the sale of the house.
After about a year of legal threats from the Taxation Department and my reiteration of my stand, I was summonsed to the Melbourne Magistrates Court which due to its jurisdiction inevitably upheld the Commissioner Of Taxation and I was ordered to pay my taxation. I appealed this ruling and although I received sympathies from Master Baker of the Appeal Court, the magistrate’s ruling was nevertheless (albeit apologetically) upheld.
After traveling Australia and eventually the world with my family searching for sanctuary, we settled for a period in Mildura Victoria where I opened another vegetarian restaurant using the last of the money from our house sale. The rented building for the restaurant was sufficiently large enough to accommodate my family and even a part-time restaurant worker. The settling in Mildura was also partly to allow my children to develop lasting friendships rather than the fleeting ones when we were constantly moving. It was while we were in Mildura that the sheriff of the Mildura Police Station was issued a court order to take away my furniture and any valuables. My eldest 15 year old daughter happened to be home from school that day and stood in the presence of myself and the sheriff. The sheriff tried to induce me into giving up my stand and a number of times insisted I would give the police a bad name if I forced them to take away my belongings. I kept telling him that there was nothing of value to take because all the items were cheap or handmade by myself. Out of frustration he stood with his left hand on his hip and the other on the butt of his service pistol and said “Do you realise that if this was any other country than Australia, we wouldn’t argue with types like you, we’d just take you into the backyard and shoot you?”. While I realised that this was only his vain attempt to weaken me, I saw my daughter’s eyes darting between myself, the officer and his gun. For her this was real and I didn’t realise until later that she had been traumatised by this experience. The sheriff left without taking anything, but returned some days later for a second attempt, but again gave up and angrily left with nothing.
In May of 1981, before we settled in Mildura, I was inspired to not be what someone referred to me being - a ‘needle in a haystack’ - and put myself before the people of Australia to substantiate my statement about withholding taxation. I was moved by this suggestion and decided to deliver a letter to every member of federal parliament and to park my Kombi van on Parliament House lawns, and as a prayer, fast for 7 days on water so I would be contactable by any member of the public. I lived in the Kombi outside Parliament House while my family stayed with friends in Canberra. I was both confronted and supported during these 7 days, but a group of mainly lesbian and a less number of feminist protesters, protesting cuts in government support for women’s refuges, who camped down a stone’s throw from me tore down my placards and slashed 3 of my Kombi tyres while i slept inside. I was also told by Federal Police officers they were worried about my wellbeing because they suspected and foiled an attempt by a group of women to invade my car as I slept. I received strong backing from Senator Brian Harradine who asked me to supply him with a number of statements I had written and one I wrote on that day which he later tabled and had incorporated in the Senate Hansard. These statements may be found in the May 29 1981 Senate Hansard pages 2400 - 2401.
I was eventually sued for bankruptcy to the Federal Court in Melbourne. The legal people assisting me advised me that there was no hope of success in this court and suggested that as a final gesture of resistance I should refuse to attend court. Intuitively I was guided to attend and was informed by the presiding Justice Sweeney that there was a precedent with which I could defend myself. I was granted a 3 month adjournment in which time I engaged a close friend who was a Contract Law specialist teaching at Melbourne University Law School.
This friend failed to find the precedent mentioned by Justice Sweeney and made the search an assignment for some of his students. The Crown Solicitors acting against me were also unsuccessfully searching and formed a committee with the law school on this quest. With only a week or so remaining of my adjournment, the committee had been unable to find the precedent and I was notified that the committee ‘fairly well’ unanimously concluded that it didn’t exist and that Justice Sweeney must have been troubled by his own conscience over my cause and therefore offered me the non-existing detail to soften the blow of my loss.
With only a few days of my adjournment remaining I met an assistant parish priest and my personal friend,Fr. Kevin O’Brien, on the street in Mildura who casually asked how my case was progressing. Hearing the information I had received from the law school he replied “I’ll see what I can do”. It was Fr. O’Brien’s intervention that lead me being phoned by Mr Bob Santamaria, a highly respected social leader and political mentor with whom I had previously met and discussed my stand. At the time of the earlier meeting Mr Santamaria tested the position that although what I was doing was correct, since I had a young family, I should give it the priority and cease my action. However, he accepted my counter that the insidiousness of abortion would destroy the entire sustaining social fabric and bring collapse to human integrity and thereby destroy any potential family sustainability. My action was therefore actually prioritising my family and even though hardship was inevitable, this hardship would hopefully be significantly more endurable than if I ceased my action.
I briefed Mr Santamaria on the details given by the law school and he in turn contacted one of his sons, Paul Santamaria who was then a barrister. Paul phoned me a short time later and after telling him the details we discovered that he was a close friend of Justice Sweeney’s assisting barrister.
Under jurisprudence no one can approach the presiding judge of a current case, in or out of chambers. But there are no restrictions on approaching his assistant which Paul did and consequently was directed to the precedent. This precedent concerning a civil case had been established with a full Federal bench of 3 judges of which Justice Sweeney was one. It had been gazetted, but lay inconspicuous about half way into a large continuous paragraph. The searchers had read past it without consciously isolating it and erroneously concluded it did not exist.
Earlier in this vicinity of events I made a routine visit to my bank in which I held an account for the withheld taxation money and a separate account I used privately. As I approached the teller, the manager came out of his office and called me over to an isolated part of the counter. Leaning over for privacy, he quietly uttered “Someone has been looking at your accounts. You know what that means don’t you?” A cadet journalist with the local Sunraysia Daily news paper, Melinda Tankard, had been assigned to follow my case and had already written a number of articles, so it was no surprise the bank manager knew of my situation.
I immediately withdrew all the money in both accounts and was walking down the street wondering where I should conceal it. I was actually passing the Sacred Heart Parish Church when completely unexpectedly and without previous consideration I was inspired with “Ask the bishop to hold it with the promise of not handing it over to the government”. I crossed the street and entered the church grounds where I was met by Fr. Les Sheehan who was then the senior parish priest. I told him what had happened and asked whether the church could hold the money. He seemed favorably intrigued with my proposal and said he would contact me after firstly discussing the matter with the diocesan Bishop Ronald Mulkearns. Fr. Sheehan phoned me a short time later and told me that the bishop had agreed and authorised investing the money into the Parish Provident Fund. I returned to the church and opened the two accounts and invested all the money I had withdrawn.
Paul Santamaria with the assistance of Hugh McKenzie, another of my lawyer friends, formulated the precedent defense documents to submit to the Federal Court. There was a strategy to file the defense details upon the Crown Solicitors in the minimum allowable time so the court decision could be determined within the next hearing, but a procedural error caused a failure to submit our defense details to the Crown Solicitors the required minimum time before court convened and resulted in the Crown requesting an adjournment once the strength of our defense was declared in court. The Crown had come to court expecting there was no substantial defense we could have and that it would be a routine ‘open and shut case’. Justice Sweeney glanced at me and with a very slight shaking of his head as a sign of apology and disappointment remarked “I granted you an adjournment, and now to be fair I must grant one to the Crown”.
The Federal Court convened again, but for reasons unknown to me a new Justice J. Jenkinson now presided. It became clear that he had little sympathy for my action and seemed determined to overturn the precedent. In this time, and as a sign of the Crown’s struggle to overcome the precedent, Hugh McKenzie passed me a message from the Crown Solicitors “What you are doing could be seen as treason”. I took this to be similar to the sheriff’s comment. Bishop Mulkearns informed me he was in dialogue with Mr Bob Hawke the Prime Minister, but that he couldn’t tell me the details of the discussion. A number of hearings and adjournments followed and in late September of 1985 Justice Jenkinson announced he would reserve judgment. On November 4 1985 he ruled in favor the precedent.
Within a day, my access to the Sacred Heart Provident Fund accounts was blocked and the threat of an 18 month jail sentence, unless the money was paid forthwith’, was issued against Fr. Frank Monaghan who was by this time the parish priest of Mildura and the director of the provident fund.
There was a quiet period while we all waited for the next unknown event.
Bishop Mulkearns lodged my case onto the 1985 Australian Episcopal Conference. I was not permitted to address the conference even though I had made a number of requests to do so, but a theological advisor was commissioned to interview me and then submit a report to the conference which was held at St. Patrick’s College in Sydney. The day before my case was scheduled at the conference, Fr Kevin O’Brien strongly urged me to drive the 12 hours to Sydney and address the conference anyway. I drove from mid afternoon and through the night from Mildura and arrived at the conference center about mid morning, but by the time I reached the hall in which the conference was being held, I stood in the foyer before the 41 or 42 bishops as they exited the hall. Four or five of the bishops recognised me and momentarily gathered to inform me they had voted to support me. A brief discussion between the handful of bishops and myself followed, but I received no details of the minutes.
Some months after the issue of the jail threat against Fr. Frank Monaghan (and/or Bishop Mulkearns) I was given a verbal message repeating what Bishop Mulkearns had sent to Fr. Monaghan. “Murray is taking this issue too far. We’ll all end up in jail; and since they are going to get the money one way or another, sooner or later, you might as well hand it over on their next legal demand”.
Melinda Tankard, the journalist with the Sunraysia Daily news paper had been assigned to follow my case. Some days after I received the message that Bishop Mulkearns was giving up, Melinda visited me to see if there had been developments. I told her of the message. Her reply was “let’s print it”. So with some trepidation I agreed and a rather large article was published documenting this development.
In the close vicinity of time of this publishing, an article relating to the murder in Poland of Fr. Jerzy Popiełuszko was published seemingly in a number of newspapers around Australia.
Some short time later the same messenger of the bishop’s message came to me and told me that two women, somewhere in the diocese of Ballarat had taken both articles to Bishop Mulkearns and showing him said “read these. If we were in Poland, we’d expect you to die for what we believe in; here there are only 18 months jail threatening you. Be strong and hold on”. Until this intercession, it seems Bishop Mulkerns was leaning towards surrender and it may well have been here that Fr. Jerzy Popiełuszko’s influence stabilised the lean.
So it was. Instead of a new demand to Fr Monaghan to hand over the money, a surprise came. I was on my routine shopping run for the restaurant when I bumped into Fr. Frank walking towards the post office. I joined him for a chat and walked along. He opened his letter box and inside was one letter with the Crown Solicitors insignia. He showed me the envelope and in a tone of fear and maybe even horror, he said “I’m going home. I’m going to make a cup of tea, have a biscuit and then open the letter. Come around in about 15 minutes”. I walked into his presbytery kitchen to see him spread open armed over his chair. In front of him was the table with a cup of partly drunk tea and one open letter on it. He motioned with his hand for me to look at the letter. “The order against you has been lifted and the money may be returned to the tax payer”. We were both in indescribable elation.
The very next day I received a letter with the Crown Solicitors insignia. “Give us the money or else” or words to that effect. This is still where the situation is 30 years later.
I strongly believe that the spirit of Fr. Jerzy Popiełuszko ’s martyrdom stabilised the fear in all of us, not just Bishop Mulkearns and Fr. Monaghan. Over the earlier years, upon reflection, I felt his role in this unfolding. I had read an article about his murder, but never thought there was going to be a connection to my case. Either through newspaper error or my own, I thought this murder had occurred in Malta and I referred to him as Fr. X of Malta. It was only after some years of internet availability that I found the true story.
In 1997 I fell to serious doubt that my action of withholding tax and my reasoning was valid. I thought that maybe I had made an error in my deductions and understanding of the agenda fast in which I was informed that death was a self-infliction by humanity. I was inspired to embark on another agenda fast to seek empirical evidence that my work brought permanent good.
On the 40th day of that fast I received a phone call from a friend, a girl living near Sydney and who didn’t know I was fasting. The first thing she said to me was “Poppy is born”. My reply was “who is Poppy?”. She reminded me that she had phoned me about 6 months earlier and told me how she had become pregnant with her 3rd child and had decided to have an abortion. She had booked into a clinic and was already in stirrups in a medical cubical awaiting the doctor. She had begun to reminisce about our earlier conversations together concerning abortion. She decide she was not going to abort, pulled herself out of the stirrups, got dressed, booked herself out of the clinic, went home and phoned me to tell me the story. Now that child had been born!
Some months earlier I had watched the movie Schindler’s List in which I was intrigued by a reading some Jews made to Schindler from the Talmud. The Hollywood version of this passage was misquoted “He who saves even one life, saves the world entire”. (The actual version is “He who saves even one Jewish life, saves the world entire”, but I was impacted by the Hollywood version). I didn’t realize this birth was the evidence I had set out to find and kept fasting until the 44th day. I realized that if someone lives that would not have, the entire world rearranges to accommodate that person. I broke the fast on the 44th day in acceptance that this was the empirical evidence of my agenda. In the occasional time of doubt that afflicts me, I am reminded of Poppy and I cautiously accept validation of the insights I received from my first fast.
Marijonas Vilkelis-Curas
In the inevitably ensuing period of litigation against me, a number of events which appeared to facilitate my action arose from surrounding circumstances. One such major event involved circumstances surrounding the 1985 political murder of Fr. Jerzy Popiełuszko in Poland. Newspaper reports documenting details surrounding the murder came into play in Australia at a crucial period of social, spiritual and political unfolding of my case. I believe there is reasonable indication that the spirit of murdered Fr. Jerzy Popiełuszko indirectly assisted my action via the published news concerning his murder. That once my action began, circumstances ‘naturally’ arose giving support and defence to the spirit of life against the spirit of death and evil.
I was/am merely a sovereign citizen under God inspired to enact civil duty and to separate my complicity from an insidious procedure for the sake of life, justice and human dignity.
The following report briefly describes the unfolding of this proposal. I have documented a series of events which played major roles in developing my understanding of abortion and the use of death, but there were more equally powerful events which subsequently strongly consolidated my understanding. For fear of making this article too long I have not included them in this document.
OVERVIEW
In the late 1970s I became increasingly aware of the diverse insidiousness of abortion and the complicity everyday citizens were marked with because abortion was proclaimed legal and legitimate and funded through the taxation system.
At the time these insights were developing I had become financially independent by way of receiving royalties from a project I had worked on in a microbiological field. I had resigned from my usual employment in Medical Laboratory Technology and depended exclusively on the royalty payments for my income. Leading to this and while still employed, my income had more or less doubled since the royalties were about the same as my regular salary. While commuting home one day in 1978 I was awakened to the realisation that I was only a hobbyist in searching for life’s mysteries, where as if I resigned and used my royalties for support I could become a full-time explorer of the mysteries and subordinate to God alone. For this realisation and a number of other factors, I resigned from my employment the very next day and began the journey of self supporting independence in the search for meaning, purpose and idealism.
With the advent of royalties I had become incorporated as Vilku Co. P/L which obliged me to submit my financial details to an accountant who in turn lodged my income details with the Taxation Department which then issued me my taxation account.
In late 1979 my (previous) employer discovered I had been accidentally overpaid with royalties by an amount of about a year’s modest income. I was informed all payments would immediately stop until new sales of the equipment paid out the overpayment. About 3 months earlier to receiving this letter I had completed my first “agenda fast” where instead of the more usual stipulated-time fasting, an agenda was determined and then sought through fasting and prayer. At the time of the inspiration to do this fast, I determined my agenda to find the ‘indivisible essence of my existence’. I believed this was synonymous with the moment of origination, the moment of being one with emergence from Divine mind. In formulating this agenda I became concerned that I might not be ready for this insight, so to invoke a procedure, I added the clause ‘Or the road to travel’ (to the main agenda). I broke this fast in which I only took breath for the first 4 days and then only water for the remainder on the 41st day, but earlier on the 35th day I had an encounter with death and also separately with, I believe, the ‘spirit of life’. There are many details of this broad daylight midday encounter in a public shopping centre, especially in regard to death.
In brief, as I was about to walk into a hardware shop in a village near my home, a darkness descended upon me and blanked out my vision of the reality in which I stood. I thought that maybe I had collapsed to the ground and only imagined myself in standing posture. I remembered that as the darkness came, I was standing very close to a shop window within easy reach of my elbow. I nudged with my elbow and I could feel the glass which confirmed to me that I was in a standing posture in a world I could no longer see. It was then a new vista opened and I saw myself as the (wave) front or forefront of all the mothers and fathers of my preceding generations and I could see all the disease and injury of my ancestry travelling through the ages. I was not aware it was death propositioning me when I was offered a new body because I could see the one I stood in was afflicted with all the disease and injury acquired across the ages of my ancestry. In naivety I accepted the offer, but the next moment an unmistakably new voice asked me “are you following life or are you following death?” The agenda of my fast was to find the essence of my life, so when I replied “life” to the question, the darkness lifted off and out of me and formed a matt black ball in front of my face. As it slowly moved away across the road and towards a carpark, the unmistakable second voice returned and said ”That was death; in the beginning there was only life; humanity brought death to life; as it was in the beginning it can be again in the future”. I didn’t realise this was the vision I sought and so I finished my shopping and kept fasting until the 41st day. But unbeknown to me at the time, this was to have a profound influence on my life. I began to recognise the use-of-death as the re-infliction of a curse humanity had brought upon itself. I began to see how, especially abortion was a human instigated entitlement which in its essence infiltrated and affected every faculty and facet of human nature with a vector of disintegration. That the governments which legalised and funded abortions had violated their mandate to attain peace and happiness for their citizenry. That legitimisation of abortion was over and above any injustice that could be expected from the day to day running of a yet imperfect and non-ideal state. Because the state was engaging dynamics of death that were outside its capacity to control or repair, it was ultimately bringing disaster to itself and afflicting demise upon the hopes, aspirations and meaningfulness of its citizenry. Importantly also, I realised I could not condone for others that which I could not condone for myself.
During a (dream) around this period of life and death encounter I was visited by a spirit that told me “when you finally realise your vision, begin restaurants as a way to bring the vision into this world”. At the time of this visitation I thought the message was a false fabrication of my mind as a result of not having eaten for so long. But there was a sense of substantial solidity in the encounter so I replied “if your message is real, corner me into realising it”. From there I virtually forgot the experience until 3 months later when I received the letter informing me of being overpaid. Upon reading the letter I became frightened about what I could do. I was paying a house mortgage and I had a family to care for. However, there was a strong sense that going back to my old work was a backward step. I thought maybe my exploratory journey had its wings clipped, or even that I had been delusional. It was somewhere in the early moments of searching for my options that I remembered the message from the fast to start restaurants. With the few hundred dollars I had remaining on hand and within a week of having received this news, I opened my first ‘open house’ vegetarian restaurant on the bottom floor of my house in the Dandenong Ranges near Melbourne. Amazingly people came on the first night and there has never been a night in 37 years and four sequential different locations when no body came and through out its unfolding has provided all needs. This restaurant operated exclusively by donations and there were no prices on the menu.
In the 1978-1979 taxation year I owed the taxation department $930.71 from royalty payments. By the time of the due date for payment, my conscience strongly guided me to wield my citizen power and to notify the Taxation Department that because taxation revenue was paying for abortions and other human death related procedures, I would withhold my payment and any future payments at least unless this funding stopped.
I realised that as a result of the forthcoming litigation against me, any assets I had would be vulnerable to sequestration by government departments, so I sold my family home in outer Melbourne and set myself and my family onto a journey in search for sanctuary. The restaurant which I had operated on the bottom floor for 9 months closed with the sale of the house.
After about a year of legal threats from the Taxation Department and my reiteration of my stand, I was summonsed to the Melbourne Magistrates Court which due to its jurisdiction inevitably upheld the Commissioner Of Taxation and I was ordered to pay my taxation. I appealed this ruling and although I received sympathies from Master Baker of the Appeal Court, the magistrate’s ruling was nevertheless (albeit apologetically) upheld.
After traveling Australia and eventually the world with my family searching for sanctuary, we settled for a period in Mildura Victoria where I opened another vegetarian restaurant using the last of the money from our house sale. The rented building for the restaurant was sufficiently large enough to accommodate my family and even a part-time restaurant worker. The settling in Mildura was also partly to allow my children to develop lasting friendships rather than the fleeting ones when we were constantly moving. It was while we were in Mildura that the sheriff of the Mildura Police Station was issued a court order to take away my furniture and any valuables. My eldest 15 year old daughter happened to be home from school that day and stood in the presence of myself and the sheriff. The sheriff tried to induce me into giving up my stand and a number of times insisted I would give the police a bad name if I forced them to take away my belongings. I kept telling him that there was nothing of value to take because all the items were cheap or handmade by myself. Out of frustration he stood with his left hand on his hip and the other on the butt of his service pistol and said “Do you realise that if this was any other country than Australia, we wouldn’t argue with types like you, we’d just take you into the backyard and shoot you?”. While I realised that this was only his vain attempt to weaken me, I saw my daughter’s eyes darting between myself, the officer and his gun. For her this was real and I didn’t realise until later that she had been traumatised by this experience. The sheriff left without taking anything, but returned some days later for a second attempt, but again gave up and angrily left with nothing.
In May of 1981, before we settled in Mildura, I was inspired to not be what someone referred to me being - a ‘needle in a haystack’ - and put myself before the people of Australia to substantiate my statement about withholding taxation. I was moved by this suggestion and decided to deliver a letter to every member of federal parliament and to park my Kombi van on Parliament House lawns, and as a prayer, fast for 7 days on water so I would be contactable by any member of the public. I lived in the Kombi outside Parliament House while my family stayed with friends in Canberra. I was both confronted and supported during these 7 days, but a group of mainly lesbian and a less number of feminist protesters, protesting cuts in government support for women’s refuges, who camped down a stone’s throw from me tore down my placards and slashed 3 of my Kombi tyres while i slept inside. I was also told by Federal Police officers they were worried about my wellbeing because they suspected and foiled an attempt by a group of women to invade my car as I slept. I received strong backing from Senator Brian Harradine who asked me to supply him with a number of statements I had written and one I wrote on that day which he later tabled and had incorporated in the Senate Hansard. These statements may be found in the May 29 1981 Senate Hansard pages 2400 - 2401.
I was eventually sued for bankruptcy to the Federal Court in Melbourne. The legal people assisting me advised me that there was no hope of success in this court and suggested that as a final gesture of resistance I should refuse to attend court. Intuitively I was guided to attend and was informed by the presiding Justice Sweeney that there was a precedent with which I could defend myself. I was granted a 3 month adjournment in which time I engaged a close friend who was a Contract Law specialist teaching at Melbourne University Law School.
This friend failed to find the precedent mentioned by Justice Sweeney and made the search an assignment for some of his students. The Crown Solicitors acting against me were also unsuccessfully searching and formed a committee with the law school on this quest. With only a week or so remaining of my adjournment, the committee had been unable to find the precedent and I was notified that the committee ‘fairly well’ unanimously concluded that it didn’t exist and that Justice Sweeney must have been troubled by his own conscience over my cause and therefore offered me the non-existing detail to soften the blow of my loss.
With only a few days of my adjournment remaining I met an assistant parish priest and my personal friend,Fr. Kevin O’Brien, on the street in Mildura who casually asked how my case was progressing. Hearing the information I had received from the law school he replied “I’ll see what I can do”. It was Fr. O’Brien’s intervention that lead me being phoned by Mr Bob Santamaria, a highly respected social leader and political mentor with whom I had previously met and discussed my stand. At the time of the earlier meeting Mr Santamaria tested the position that although what I was doing was correct, since I had a young family, I should give it the priority and cease my action. However, he accepted my counter that the insidiousness of abortion would destroy the entire sustaining social fabric and bring collapse to human integrity and thereby destroy any potential family sustainability. My action was therefore actually prioritising my family and even though hardship was inevitable, this hardship would hopefully be significantly more endurable than if I ceased my action.
I briefed Mr Santamaria on the details given by the law school and he in turn contacted one of his sons, Paul Santamaria who was then a barrister. Paul phoned me a short time later and after telling him the details we discovered that he was a close friend of Justice Sweeney’s assisting barrister.
Under jurisprudence no one can approach the presiding judge of a current case, in or out of chambers. But there are no restrictions on approaching his assistant which Paul did and consequently was directed to the precedent. This precedent concerning a civil case had been established with a full Federal bench of 3 judges of which Justice Sweeney was one. It had been gazetted, but lay inconspicuous about half way into a large continuous paragraph. The searchers had read past it without consciously isolating it and erroneously concluded it did not exist.
Earlier in this vicinity of events I made a routine visit to my bank in which I held an account for the withheld taxation money and a separate account I used privately. As I approached the teller, the manager came out of his office and called me over to an isolated part of the counter. Leaning over for privacy, he quietly uttered “Someone has been looking at your accounts. You know what that means don’t you?” A cadet journalist with the local Sunraysia Daily news paper, Melinda Tankard, had been assigned to follow my case and had already written a number of articles, so it was no surprise the bank manager knew of my situation.
I immediately withdrew all the money in both accounts and was walking down the street wondering where I should conceal it. I was actually passing the Sacred Heart Parish Church when completely unexpectedly and without previous consideration I was inspired with “Ask the bishop to hold it with the promise of not handing it over to the government”. I crossed the street and entered the church grounds where I was met by Fr. Les Sheehan who was then the senior parish priest. I told him what had happened and asked whether the church could hold the money. He seemed favorably intrigued with my proposal and said he would contact me after firstly discussing the matter with the diocesan Bishop Ronald Mulkearns. Fr. Sheehan phoned me a short time later and told me that the bishop had agreed and authorised investing the money into the Parish Provident Fund. I returned to the church and opened the two accounts and invested all the money I had withdrawn.
Paul Santamaria with the assistance of Hugh McKenzie, another of my lawyer friends, formulated the precedent defense documents to submit to the Federal Court. There was a strategy to file the defense details upon the Crown Solicitors in the minimum allowable time so the court decision could be determined within the next hearing, but a procedural error caused a failure to submit our defense details to the Crown Solicitors the required minimum time before court convened and resulted in the Crown requesting an adjournment once the strength of our defense was declared in court. The Crown had come to court expecting there was no substantial defense we could have and that it would be a routine ‘open and shut case’. Justice Sweeney glanced at me and with a very slight shaking of his head as a sign of apology and disappointment remarked “I granted you an adjournment, and now to be fair I must grant one to the Crown”.
The Federal Court convened again, but for reasons unknown to me a new Justice J. Jenkinson now presided. It became clear that he had little sympathy for my action and seemed determined to overturn the precedent. In this time, and as a sign of the Crown’s struggle to overcome the precedent, Hugh McKenzie passed me a message from the Crown Solicitors “What you are doing could be seen as treason”. I took this to be similar to the sheriff’s comment. Bishop Mulkearns informed me he was in dialogue with Mr Bob Hawke the Prime Minister, but that he couldn’t tell me the details of the discussion. A number of hearings and adjournments followed and in late September of 1985 Justice Jenkinson announced he would reserve judgment. On November 4 1985 he ruled in favor the precedent.
Within a day, my access to the Sacred Heart Provident Fund accounts was blocked and the threat of an 18 month jail sentence, unless the money was paid forthwith’, was issued against Fr. Frank Monaghan who was by this time the parish priest of Mildura and the director of the provident fund.
There was a quiet period while we all waited for the next unknown event.
Bishop Mulkearns lodged my case onto the 1985 Australian Episcopal Conference. I was not permitted to address the conference even though I had made a number of requests to do so, but a theological advisor was commissioned to interview me and then submit a report to the conference which was held at St. Patrick’s College in Sydney. The day before my case was scheduled at the conference, Fr Kevin O’Brien strongly urged me to drive the 12 hours to Sydney and address the conference anyway. I drove from mid afternoon and through the night from Mildura and arrived at the conference center about mid morning, but by the time I reached the hall in which the conference was being held, I stood in the foyer before the 41 or 42 bishops as they exited the hall. Four or five of the bishops recognised me and momentarily gathered to inform me they had voted to support me. A brief discussion between the handful of bishops and myself followed, but I received no details of the minutes.
Some months after the issue of the jail threat against Fr. Frank Monaghan (and/or Bishop Mulkearns) I was given a verbal message repeating what Bishop Mulkearns had sent to Fr. Monaghan. “Murray is taking this issue too far. We’ll all end up in jail; and since they are going to get the money one way or another, sooner or later, you might as well hand it over on their next legal demand”.
Melinda Tankard, the journalist with the Sunraysia Daily news paper had been assigned to follow my case. Some days after I received the message that Bishop Mulkearns was giving up, Melinda visited me to see if there had been developments. I told her of the message. Her reply was “let’s print it”. So with some trepidation I agreed and a rather large article was published documenting this development.
In the close vicinity of time of this publishing, an article relating to the murder in Poland of Fr. Jerzy Popiełuszko was published seemingly in a number of newspapers around Australia.
Some short time later the same messenger of the bishop’s message came to me and told me that two women, somewhere in the diocese of Ballarat had taken both articles to Bishop Mulkearns and showing him said “read these. If we were in Poland, we’d expect you to die for what we believe in; here there are only 18 months jail threatening you. Be strong and hold on”. Until this intercession, it seems Bishop Mulkerns was leaning towards surrender and it may well have been here that Fr. Jerzy Popiełuszko’s influence stabilised the lean.
So it was. Instead of a new demand to Fr Monaghan to hand over the money, a surprise came. I was on my routine shopping run for the restaurant when I bumped into Fr. Frank walking towards the post office. I joined him for a chat and walked along. He opened his letter box and inside was one letter with the Crown Solicitors insignia. He showed me the envelope and in a tone of fear and maybe even horror, he said “I’m going home. I’m going to make a cup of tea, have a biscuit and then open the letter. Come around in about 15 minutes”. I walked into his presbytery kitchen to see him spread open armed over his chair. In front of him was the table with a cup of partly drunk tea and one open letter on it. He motioned with his hand for me to look at the letter. “The order against you has been lifted and the money may be returned to the tax payer”. We were both in indescribable elation.
The very next day I received a letter with the Crown Solicitors insignia. “Give us the money or else” or words to that effect. This is still where the situation is 30 years later.
I strongly believe that the spirit of Fr. Jerzy Popiełuszko ’s martyrdom stabilised the fear in all of us, not just Bishop Mulkearns and Fr. Monaghan. Over the earlier years, upon reflection, I felt his role in this unfolding. I had read an article about his murder, but never thought there was going to be a connection to my case. Either through newspaper error or my own, I thought this murder had occurred in Malta and I referred to him as Fr. X of Malta. It was only after some years of internet availability that I found the true story.
In 1997 I fell to serious doubt that my action of withholding tax and my reasoning was valid. I thought that maybe I had made an error in my deductions and understanding of the agenda fast in which I was informed that death was a self-infliction by humanity. I was inspired to embark on another agenda fast to seek empirical evidence that my work brought permanent good.
On the 40th day of that fast I received a phone call from a friend, a girl living near Sydney and who didn’t know I was fasting. The first thing she said to me was “Poppy is born”. My reply was “who is Poppy?”. She reminded me that she had phoned me about 6 months earlier and told me how she had become pregnant with her 3rd child and had decided to have an abortion. She had booked into a clinic and was already in stirrups in a medical cubical awaiting the doctor. She had begun to reminisce about our earlier conversations together concerning abortion. She decide she was not going to abort, pulled herself out of the stirrups, got dressed, booked herself out of the clinic, went home and phoned me to tell me the story. Now that child had been born!
Some months earlier I had watched the movie Schindler’s List in which I was intrigued by a reading some Jews made to Schindler from the Talmud. The Hollywood version of this passage was misquoted “He who saves even one life, saves the world entire”. (The actual version is “He who saves even one Jewish life, saves the world entire”, but I was impacted by the Hollywood version). I didn’t realize this birth was the evidence I had set out to find and kept fasting until the 44th day. I realized that if someone lives that would not have, the entire world rearranges to accommodate that person. I broke the fast on the 44th day in acceptance that this was the empirical evidence of my agenda. In the occasional time of doubt that afflicts me, I am reminded of Poppy and I cautiously accept validation of the insights I received from my first fast.
Marijonas Vilkelis-Curas
