In January 2023 Dr Anthony (Tony) Fitchett stood down from the Dunedin Diocesan Trust Board (DDTB). This marks the completion of a remarkable contribution to the Anglican Church in this Diocese, as well as the whole of Aotearoa and beyond. In part one of a two part article, Tony tells us of some of his whakapapa and mahi in the Church.

Tony Fitchett and the Anglican Church - Part 1

Anglican Roots

My parents were both clergy children – Mum’s father was an Anglican priest who had previously been a Presbyterian minister [he was one of the first two priested in the new St Paul’s Cathedral in 1919], and Dad’s father, one of the first lot of students at Selwyn College, who then went to St John’s College, Auckland, then Selwyn College Cambridge,[1] was Vicar of the Dunstan, and then of St John’s Roslyn, before being elected Bishop of Dunedin in 1934. Dad’s grandfather had been a Methodist minister, but left that ministry ‘because of the intolerable burden of itinerancy’[2] – it’s likely that condemnation by the Australasian Methodist press of his liberal views on evolution, expressed during the ‘Dunedin Debates’ of 1876, which led to him being blackballed from election to the board of the YMCA, may also have been a factor. He applied to Bishop Nevill for ordination as an Anglican priest, and was offered the living of All Saints, Dunedin, “conditional on [his] being deaconed”. He stayed there nearly 50 years, and for the last 35 years was also Dean of Dunedin. So one could say I was born into the Anglican church.

The Dean, grandfather, and Dad all served on General Synod, the first two from Dunedin, and Dad for Nelson Diocese [his first Session, in 1952, was granddad’s last]. Dad was also Diocesan Chancellor for Nelson, and chaired its Trust Board for many years – my younger brother John also filled those posts. Dad was also People’s Warden at Christ Church Cathedral, Nelson and served on the Erection Board which finally completed its building.

There was a family interest in canon law. Granddad had initiated legislation to bring the canon on the election of bishops into line with the Constitution, and Dad was involved in quite a lot of drafting of Bills – I grew up in an atmosphere of Canons and Bills.

As a child I initially attended the Cathedral Sunday School and then 11.00am Matins, then we joined All Saints’ parish, and I sang in its choir as a treble until I went off to Christ’s College, Christchurch, in 1958. The daily pre-school chapel services there were a helpful support as I adjusted to, effectively, leaving home at age 13. All boys were also involved in Sunday services [morning and evening for boarders, only one required for dayboys], and in an hour’s whole school singing practice in the chapel on Saturday mornings – we sang a number of service settings for choir and whole school.

When I came down to Dunedin to Otago University and Selwyn College in 1963 I went to the Cathedral, rather than All Saints’ [next door to Selwyn] because my grandmother (Bishop Fitchett’s widow Emily) and Aunt Stella[3] were parishioners there. During the rowing season I was often a few minutes late for the 11.00am service, because of training, so was often sitting at the back. On the Sunday following my last exams that first year I was about to go forward to meet up with Granny and Stella when Robbie Martin tapped me on the shoulder and asked “Would you like to join the Choir?” I assume that someone had noticed that, after 5 years at College, and choir experience before that, I automatically joined in the hymns and psalms. That immediately threw me into the flurry of preparations for Advent and Christmas [I was working in the Education Department at the Dunedin branch of Whitcombe and Tombs for the holidays], and I stayed in the choir for the rest of my time at University[4], and rejoined (with some breaks) for many years, until 1990, after we returned to Dunedin, in late 1972, from my work as House Surgeon, SHO, and then Registrar at Waikato Hospital. When I retired from the choir for the first time [? 1987] Bob Mills asked me to become a Lay Reader, and Precentor for Choral Matins/Evensong.

On one occasion I was precentor for 11.15 Choral Matins, and for the start of the service the Dean was downstairs with those having morning tea after the 10.00am family service, thanking the RSA Choir for singing at that service. As I finished the last of the first Preces Richard Hutton nudged me and whispered “someone’s on the floor behind the pulpit” [he could see a couple of boots]. I shot round there while the choir sang the response, and then the psalm, and found the verger for the service unconscious and in cardiac arrest, and began CPR, helped by another choir member, while Richard shot downstairs and rang the ambulance. A doctor and a nurse in the congregation came to help, and I got one of them to go and get my bag of emergency equipment [I was a member of the GP emergency team] from my car, and we tipped it out on the chancel steps to get laryngoscope, ET tube, IV equipment and drugs. By the time the ambulance arrived he was intubated and being bagged, and had a line in, and after several shocks and three lots of IV lignocaine his ventricular fibrillation was reversed. He was extubated and speaking by the time we took him to hospital. The Dean had come up during all that, and led the congregation in prayer, and then continued with the service when we left – I got back from ED before it finished.

In 1973 I was elected to the Vestry of the Cathedral District, and in 1976 became a Vestry Rep on the Cathedral Chapter, and Chapter Clerk [a job which I continued to do for many years, even when not a member of Chapter]. Vestry Rep again from 1995 when I became Dean’s Warden, and Lay Canon 1996.

A Synod Career in Dunedin and Beyond

In 1978 I was elected to Synod as a Lay Rep for the Cathedral District, and in 1979 to the Standing Committee.

The Bishop [Peter Mann] entertained members of Synod and spouses to dinner at Bishop’s House, spread over the first and second nights of Synod, and at the first of those we attended I was talking with Canon Pywell, at that stage in his 90s but still attending Synod faithfully [he had PTO] and reading the papers with a big magnifying glass. He could remember great-grandfather, the Dean, in Synod [probably Pye’s first and the Dean’s last, and told of an occasion when a clergyman from Southland went wittering on for a long time saying nothing meaningful – when he sat down the Dean stood up, said “It’s all words, words, words!”, and sat down again. He told me that “When your grandfather took office as Bishop there wasn’t an account in Diocese that wasn’t in the red”, and that the clergy were determined to elect granddad because they knew he was an efficient manager [someone once described Bishop Richards as “all heavenly minded but no earthly sense”].

In 1981, when a couple of the Diocese’s General Synod reps retired, I was elected to General Synod.

At my first GS, in 1982, I presented a Petition, initiated by my aunt Stella, and signed by about 500 members of the diocese, protesting at the planned change of the date of St Hilda’s day, and asking that it be kept to its traditional date. I was also appointed to the lay GS seat on the Provincial Board for Ministry, which met yearly, normally at St John’s College, Auckland.

In 1984 the Diocesan Standing Committee decided three of the statutes governing Diocesan funds needed amendment, and I was asked to draft and move the Bills to do that.

With 3 day synods the 2nd Reading of Bills was Order of the Day for the 2nd day, and during the night before the 2nd day it snowed, then thawed a bit, and then froze with a frost, so there was about ½ an inch of solid ice over the whole road network in Pine Hill, and no buses or cars could move. I only discovered the ice when I was ready to leave home, so had little time to get to Synod. I dug out my nailed boots [which I don’t think I had used since we went to Doubtful Sound at the start of 1963, in the days before the road, when one walked there and back from Manapouri], put my shoes and synod papers in a backpack, and trotted down Pine Hill Rd and across to the Wool Exchange [by the Polytech], and got to Synod just before the end of the opening prayers, and in time to move the 2nd reading of my Bills [I just had time to put my shoes on]. Late that morning I had to go to Queen Mary for a delivery [I usually had at least one delivery each Synod], and Bernard Wilkinson lent me his car to do so. Then in the afternoon I had a phone call from a patient whose wife, who was 38 weeks pregnant with her 3rd child, had become extremely unwell. I borrowed Bernard’s car again to go up her and managed to get her into hospital, where, sadly she later died, she was only 30 years old. 

Since then I have drafted a number of Bills for Synod and General Synod.

The Provincial Board for Ministry, having decided GS should set up a board to advise the St John’s College Trustees on the distribution of grants from the SJC Trusts outside the College, asked me to draft and move the necessary Bill in the 1984 GS at Christchurch. The Bill passed, and Bishop Peter Atkins [who had opposed the Bill] said to me, after it passed, that I had a responsibility to stand for the Lay GS seat on the new St John’s College Trust Advisory Board. I did, and was elected unopposed. That meant twice yearly meetings at SJC. In 1988 Peter Atkins, who had chaired the SJCTAB since its inception, retired from the Board and I became its Chair, until it organized its replacement by Te Kotahitanga, in 2000. During the period leading up to the 1990-92 revision of the Constitution/Te Pouhere the SJCTAB modelled three-tikanga decision-making, and steered increasing funds to education work in Te Pihopatanga and Polynesia.

In 1984 I became Clerk of Committee for GSTHW (General Synod), and served as such until becoming a Chair of Committee.

Selwyn College

In 1985, horrified by information by the behaviour of some students at Selwyn College, I brought a motion to Synod asking the Selwyn Board of Governors to properly integrate the College and move to roughly equal numbers of male and female students.

The background to that was that whereas in the 1960s Selwyn had been a welcoming place for new arrivals, with Initiation taking place only in one afternoon, consisting of the Leith Run, being rolled in mud, and a bun-eating race, then everyone showering and having dinner and then having a hop at Brown House in the evening, by the 1980s Initiation consisted of persecution of freshers for a couple of weeks, including being woken at all hours of the night, and rooms being wrecked. By the early 1980s Knox and Selwyn were the only single-sex colleges in the University. Knox addressed that anomaly, giving prior notice that a significant number of women would be admitted from 1983. Selwyn’s Board decided the College would remain male only, but, because of a fall in enrolments at the university, in 1983 ended up admitting 12 in order to fill the beds, isolating them in the top two floors of the Nevill building. Some Selwyn members objected to this, and behaved badly, both to the women, and to the Warden and family. I suspected that the prospect of Selwyn remaining single-sex had meant that it attracted a higher than expected proportion of macho, toxically ‘masculine’ males, and that the only way to correct this was to make it clear that Selwyn would be a properly integrated College.

When the Synod papers were circulated there was a lot of pressure to withdraw the motion – Claire Brown, who had agreed to second it, rang me a few days before Synod wondering if we should do so, but I was adamant that I wouldn’t, despite the Sub-Warden at the time coming to see me at 8.00pm one evening and arguing against it for the next 4 hours. It was debated at length in Synod – the SCSA President was given the opportunity to speak at Synod, and opposed it - and it finally passed with only 3 members voting against it. And the Board accepted it and adapted Selwyn as requested [see ‘Selwyn College’s First Century’, Ray Hargreaves, 1993, Chapter 10].

The 1986 GS was the first hosted by Te Pihopatanga, at Rotorua. Our daughter Suzie is part-Maori, so we took her, aged 7 at the time, with us, and she just melted into the marae environment, helping with serving meals, and so on. At that GS I was elected to GS Standing Committee

1986 GS was the first time its Standing Committee was elected at large, rather than appointed by each diocese, and I was elected, so was involved with the work of implementing the GS’s decision that the Constitution needed revision. At that GS, when the Report of the Commission to look at the Treaty and its partnership implications for the church, was being debated, one of the co-chairs of the Commission, John Towle [a great person] asked me, during a tea break, to move an amendment to the motion to receive the report, to agree to one of the three options the report offered the church – it doesn’t matter which, he said, it’s just that they’re all talking politely and not seriously addressing the choices, and that would make them address it seriously. So I did, and that focused debate, and eventually, when opinion seemed to be heading in a definite direction [not what I had proposed] withdrew the proposed amendment. I was amused, some time later, to read an academic thesis by an observer which analysed [the author thought] my motivation and reasoning in moving that amendment – all moonshine.

The Dunedin GS members were the Order Paper Committee for the 1986 GS, but with the new type of SC the Order Paper Committee was appointed from among its membership. I served on it for the rest of my time on GS, and chaired it for much of that time, working closely with John Paterson, who became General Secretary of ‘The Church of the Province of NZ’ after the 1986 GS and continued as such until made Bishop of Auckland.

Footnotes: 

[1] He was ordained in Manchester Cathedral, and became Assistant Curate at St Peter’s Bury, where he met Emily Taylor. He came back to NZ, and on Emily’s 21st birthday she came downstairs wearing an engagement ring and told the family she was heading off to marry William. She travelled alone to Melbourne, where William met her, and they married the next day – in the morning they went off to buy a wedding ring, and found Melbourne shops were shut – it was Cup Day. However a sympathetic jeweller opened up for them and sold them a ring.

[2] The family version was that he wasn’t prepared to keep moving his library.

[3] She made the cushions for the Bishop’s Throne and Dean’s Stall in the Cathedral – my younger brother John and I, while students in the 1960s, helped with those for the Bishop’s Throne.

[4] Because of the Choir I tried to get holiday work in Dunedin, so worked at Ashburn Hall at the end of 4th Year, and thus met Bron, daughter of Prof Medlicott [Medical Director of Ashburn Hall]. 6 weeks later, early in 1967, we were engaged, and were married in 1968.