Dally Messenger III

Dally Messenger III (Dally Raymond Messenger) shares with his Dally Messenger, his grandfather, a rugby player, some ancestors who were notable rowers and boat-builders. Dally Messenger III is the great-great-grandson of Thames boat-builder James Messenger, who was a Queen's Waterman, barge master to Queen Victoria, and sculling champion of the world from 1854 to 1857.[1]

He is also the great grandson of Charles Amos Messenger, the sculling champion of Victoria (c. 1875), 1881 Rowing Champion of New Zealand, and 1887 contender for the sculling championship of the world. Charles Amos also established the first boatshed on Sydney Harbour at Balmain, from where it was later transferred (by flotation) to Double Bay.[2]

According to a 1972 feature article on him in Woman's Day magazine,[3] and an article in 2011 in the Docklands News[4] (Melbourne),[5] which are on his own personal website[6] and information provided in the semi-autobiographical book, Murphy's Law and the Pursuit of Happiness: A History of the Civil Celebrant Movement, Dally Messenger III was born in Sydney in February 1938, the son of Dally Messenger Junior and Dorothy née Davidson. He was raised in Sydney, but spent most of his school years in Katoomba in the Blue Mountains where he attended St Bernard's College.[7][8]

Thereafter he returned to Sydney and spent his last year of secondary schooling at Marist Brothers, Parramatta, then worked for several years in banking and wholesale before entering a seminary, at twenty one years of age, to study for the Catholic priesthood at St Columba's College, Springwood, NSW (and later St Patricks's College, Manly).[8]

The historian Christopher Geraghty relates that Messenger had a reputation in the seminary for diplomatically challenging authority.[9]

Messenger gained his degree (Sacrae Theologiae Baccalaureus (STB)) in 1964, teaching qualifications in 1965, and was ordained a priest in 1966.

Historians Michael Parer and Tony Peterson record that Messenger was an activist and significant analyst of the changes in this post Vatican II time of turmoil in the Catholic Church.[10] Parer and Peterson also describe Messenger's disillusionment with the conservatism of church leaders and with the lack of Christian values, such as compassion, kindness, respect and tolerance, in the seminary, and in the organisational structure of the church. He was dispirited by what he perceived as errors in church teaching and practice, such as the role of church authority and the prohibition on all methods of birth control. He could not understand the resistance to what he considered to be the Vatican Council's clearly agreed reforms. He took a strong stand in rejecting celibacy of the clergy as contrary to the church's own teachings on human rights.[11][10] Messenger left the priesthood after only a year.

Referring to Messenger and others, church historian Edmund Campion records the "great wastage of talent" which occurred at this time in the Catholic Church.[12]

Campion further describes how Messenger set up the New Earth Credit Union to assist former clergy with low interest loans. At the time loans to former clergy were generally unavailable because they usually had no assets and no credit record. Severance payments and superannuation were unheard of.[12]

After leaving the priesthood Messenger moved to Melbourne, where he taught at the Presbyterian Haileybury College for six years (1969-1975). During this period he married and became the father of three daughters. In 1976 he gained a post-graduate diploma in Librarianship (teacher-librarian) from Melbourne State College (now part of the University of Melbourne).

Campbell Smith in 1986, Dance Australia's pioneer graphic artist, and editor

Messenger was also the founding editor and publisher of Dance Australia Magazine,[13] which he, with others, established in 1980. Collaborators included Brian McInerney, Marjorie Messenger (children's editor), Dennis Ogden (design artist), Jean Nugent (office management), Russell Naughton (photography), June Joubert (illustrator), Robyn Summers (public relations), Ted Pask (history features), Patricia Laughlin (reviewer and writer), Dawn Dickson (office management) and Campbell Smith (relief editor, art and design).[14] Other early contributors were the writers, Blazenka Brysha and André L'Estrange, and the photographer, Jeff Busby)[15]

His work on creating this magazine was recognised by two national arts awards. The first was an award for "Services to Dance" in the inaugural National Dance Awards,[16] presented at the Sydney Opera House in May 1997. The website citation reads as follows:

Dally had the vision and determination to publish the first dance magazine in Australia. In 1980 he began producing Dance Australia, which is still providing quality news, advice, reviews and advertising for the dance industry.[17]

Tributes to Messenger's achievement were subsequently published in Dance Australia by Keith Bain, Noel Pelly, Vicki Fairfax, Alan Brissenden and Pamela Ruskin.[18] Vicki Fairfax wrote in this edition,

What a debt we owe him and what an enormous hole there would be in our history were it not for the magazine he set up, against all the odds.

The second award was an Australian Dance Award for "Outstanding Achievement in Dance Education" awarded in 2008 and presented on 15 June at the Arts Centre in Melbourne.[19] Editor Messenger records the early struggles to establish Dance Australia in the article "A Pioneer's Reminiscence" he wrote for the 25th anniversary edition. Said Messenger:

I left Dance Australia with some huge satisfactions, which made those ten years worth while. We had chronicled, with love and dedication, a great period of development in Australian Dance. I know that by doing so we boosted, not only the art form itself, but the life of the performing arts in Australia. I speak on behalf of my originally pioneering team, when I boast that we produced successfully the first truly independent performing arts magazine in Australian history.[20]

Dance Australia is currently published (2014) by Yaffa Publishing of Sydney which purchased the magazine c. 1990.

Dally Messenger III is most noted for his long involvement in the civil celebrant program, first in Australia and then in other English-speaking countries. In the 1960s Messenger was the first person ever to apply to become a Civil Marriage Celebrant under the provisions of the new Commonwealth Marriage Act of Australia (1961).

In the 1970s he was one of a group of marriage-reformers who helped persuade the reforming Attorney-General Lionel Murphy to introduce civil marriage celebrants in Australia.[7]^{: pp.52–59}[21] Murphy's reforms have since served as a model to other English-speaking countries,[22] though in none of them has civil celebrancy, to date, become as firmly established as in Australia. In Australia by 2015, 74.9% of couples chose civil celebrants. The use of registry office marriages in some states has also been greatly reduced or has disappeared altogether, as in the Australian Capital Territory.[23]

Ray Dahlitz, author of the Secular Who's Who, describes Messenger as a humanist, educationalist, and defender of cultural rights, and records that he was appointed first secretary of the Association of Civil Marriage Celebrants of Australia (ACMCA).[24]

A great number of sources are available during his forty years of involvement to describe his celebrancy career, his public statements and his ideals.[25][26][27][28] He was appointed a Civil Marriage Celebrant by Attorney-General Lionel Murphy in 1974. They both shared a revulsion at the way secular people were humiliated at the Registry Office civil marriage "ceremony". At Murphy's suggestion, Messenger became committed to near full-time work as a celebrant. In this profession he sought to progress Murphy's vision.[29]

Campion describes how Messenger became national media spokesperson for the main body of civil celebrants.[12] He is variously described as the "Don of Celebrancy", the "Doyen of Celebrancy", "Pioneer Celebrant" and similar.[30][31]

English law had long attempted to give clergy, and especially the clergy of the Established Church of England priority if not monopoly in solemnizing marriages. Similar rights had gradually been extended to clergy of other denominations; and perfunctory “registry office marriages” were now permitted for non-believers and those divorced persons whom the clergy refused to marry. However, it was a major innovation when, in the 1970s, Attorney-General Murphy created independent civil celebrants who were not bureaucrats but had license to devise and perform ceremonies with substantial and meaningful content.

Messenger regarded registry office staff as legal functionaries, licensed to record and validate marriages, rather than as authentic creators and providers of ceremonies. To make the distinction clear, he and other reformers introduced the term celebrancy. They insisted that celebrants must be trained in practical skills such as creative writing and effective ceremonial public speaking. Messenger promulgated that to be powerful and effective, such ceremonies had to be framed by the visual and performing arts. Great care had to be taken in creating and choosing the poetry, prose, stories, personal journeys, myths, silences, dance, music and song, as well as the shared meditations, choreography and symbolism which comprised a ceremony.[7]^: 3–8

In these legal and cultural changes, Australia led the way among those nations whose marriage laws were primarily modelled upon Britain’s. Non-bureaucratic civil celebrancy, at least as defined by Messenger and his allies, evolved first in Australia.[44][45][46][47] Yet it required apostles and advocates before it could spread to other Anglophone or British-influenced countries. Messenger played a pivotal role in this, as did the college of civil celebrancy that he founded in Melbourne. After it began to enroll aspiring civil celebrants from countries including New Zealand, the USA, and UK, Messenger changed its name to the International College of Celebrancy, to express its agenda of spreading the concept of celebrancy to other countries.

In the 1990s Dally Messenger was active in spreading the civil celebrancy movement to New Zealand and the UK, countries where it was less well established. He was invited to New Zealand as guest keynote speaker at three annual conventions in the 1990s and in 2000. These were in Christchurch, organised by celebrant Frank Crean on 27 June 1998; in Hamilton, organised by celebrant Yvonne Foreman on 23 July 1999 and in Auckland, organised by celebrant Sherryl Wilson on 27 July 2001.

Celebrant Yvonne Werner records that the New Zealand government recommended Dally Messenger's book, Ceremonies for Today, as a basic text for all their celebrants.[31]

Celebrant Yvonne Werner also records, "During this same period (the late 1990s) Dally followed up an invitation by Roberto Pravisani and Carol Pool who had established a small group of celebrants in England. He gave a number of lectures and teaching sessions in the UK before returning to Australia."[48]

The Scottish author and celebrant Neil Dorward, acknowledges Messenger's contribution to funeral celebrancy in the UK and refers to him as "the father of civil celebrancy".[49]

In 2000-2002, supported by Gaile and Pat Sarma, Messenger was the key training instructor in establishing civil celebrancy in the US. He gave the launching address to the newly formed Celebrant USA Foundation in New Jersey on 5 June 2002 at the Montclair Library. For two months prior to this, Messenger lived in Montclair, New Jersey, training the first civil celebrants, five of whom, at that stage, had graduated with diplomas from the International College of Celebrancy,[50] including the newly appointed director, Charlotte Eulette.[51]

In 1995 he established the International College of Celebrancy,[52] and has since been active in endeavouring to achieve "best practice" in civil celebrancy.

In later decades Messenger has often been a critic of bureaucrats in the Australian Attorney-General's department who tried to reduce the training requirements for persons appointed as celebrants, or who wished to train them primarily as marriage-orientated paralegals rather than as skilled in creatively combining the evocative use of language, symbolism, poetry, history, storytelling, music and ritual into powerful ceremony.[53][54]

Messenger now lives in Melbourne with his wife since 2005, Remi Barclay Messenger (née Barclay, a.k.a. Bosseau).[55]