Field Notes: John Kleinsman

He earned his PhD in Moral Theology and Bioethics from the Sydney College of Divinity looking at the ethics of assisted reproductive technologies, and holds a Masters in Moral Theology from the University of Otago. John is married to Kerry and they have three adult children, two of whom are married, and one grandchild. Here, John talks with Olivia about his leadership, service, and heading an organisation offering research and advocacy on challenging ethical questions in the public square.

John, tell us about the people or experiences that have had a significant impact on your Christian life and imagination.

I’ve had a number of profound experiences, although, largely, I think my Christian journey has been … I could use the term, “a slow burn.”

After finishing secondary school, I took up studying electrical engineering. I didn’t go to seventh form—it was never on my radar that I would go to university. So, I went off to polytech and studied full-time for a year, then got a job with a small electronics company who were doing some really cutting-edge stuff.

Being a small company, I got to learn and do amazing things. If you’re building a tester for a particular electronic circuit board, you know, you’d have to go out to the workshop and make the metal case for it. And then you’d also be designing the circuitry, and then you’d be making the electronic board which involved a number of photographic and chemical processes. And then there’d be the screen printing that went with it. It was amazing. It was a great job. I loved it. But over that time, I just had this nagging idea that I was being called to something else—that I was being called to the ministry, particularly ministry in the priesthood.

Did you grow up in the church?

I grew up Catholic. My parents were Dutch immigrants, and both came from Catholic families. The Catholic faith was very, very important for them and a big part of our life. So, I was brought up very much as a Catholic: I went to a Catholic primary school and was taught by religious sisters. I was part of a Catholic youth group. My faith was always important to me; it was part of our family culture.

Being the first-generation child of immigrants and being part of a relatively big family—I’ve got five siblings, I’m the eldest—shaped the way I grew up. New Zealand wasn’t particularly inclusive in those early years of my life. We had the idea that we had to work hard to prove ourselves and to be accepted – that certainly shaped my early character development. In terms of my spiritual journey, as I moved into adulthood, in my years of spiritual and theological formation in the seminary, then subsequently as a parent, and now becoming older, my biggest spiritual challenge has been realising that I’m loved, and that God loves me unconditionally, not because of what I’ve done. I don’t have to prove myself to God or to other people.

Later, as I came to do my master’s studies in theology, working through that challenge profoundly shaped the way in which I came to teach moral theology. It’s not in the first instance about obeying rules or codes or laws; it’s about appreciating the generous abundance and the unconditional love of God. It’s appreciating that life is a gift, an absolute gift—that God didn’t need me. God doesn’t need any of us; God doesn’t need the human race. So, the very fact of our existence is an act of pure grace. It’s an act of pure gratuitousness.

Knowing that God just wants us—doesn’t need us, just wants us—changes the way you start to think about life and what it is to be ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Once you understand—to the extent that we can understand—what it means to be so unconditionally loved, the natural response to that is gratitude and leads to a desire to be the best person I can be, according to who I am.

So, the rules and the laws and traditions—and I’m not saying they are unimportant – are  but they are the signposts, the guides, which, in fact, help me live that life to the fullest I can. It’s all comes down to a sense of life as a gift. I took that sense of life as a gift and made it the heart of my PhD studies. It’s profoundly shaped me, and it’s been a long part of my spiritual journey: accepting who I am as the way God has made me and that God loves me for who I am. I’m not denying there are parts of me that are flawed, but it’s the love and awareness of the goodness of life and how life is all a grace, which, for me, needs to come first. That’s how I teach moral theology. That’s how I approach my Christian faith.

So, after electrical engineering, you went to seminary to see whether or not the priesthood was a path for you?

Yes, I studied in the diocesan seminary—that simply means that you’re training to be in a particular diocese. If I’d gone through and been ordained, I would have been ministering for the diocese in which I entered, which was Palmerston North.

I studied theology at a wonderful time when the seminary was really opening up. There were a number of Presbyterian lecturers who taught us. We were studying with lots of lay people and other Christians: Salvation Army, Anglicans and Presbyterians. A lot of the new thinking from Vatican II was only just coming out in the early 80s; within 15 years of the Second Vatican Council, there was this plethora of new thinking, new writing. I met lots of wonderful people, made many, many friends. I grew up in many ways. I became my own person in a way that I wasn’t when I entered the seminary. It was a wonderful time, a wonderful experience for me.

So, you had this pretty remarkable experience at the seminary, making all these amazing connections and learning and growing. But you came to the point where you thought, “No, this isn’t for me”?

Well, I met Kerry, the woman who’s now been my wife for 34 years. I met her while I was on pastoral placement in Lower Hutt. In years five and six of priestly formation, they sent you out on pastoral placement for the first term. So, from February through May, the idea was for me to get some pastoral experience in a parish. In my sixth year, I got sent to Wellington diocese, to Lower Hutt. There was an adult formation programme that had been brought to New Zealand called Renew. And one of the parish workers said to me, “It’d be good for you to be part of one of those Renew groups.” There was a group that was being led by this woman, Kerry Fitzpatrick, and I ended up joining that Renew group. All of a sudden, to cut a long story short, the question of celibacy became a very, very real one.

I was faced with a very difficult decision about what I was being called to, where God was calling me to. I went back to the seminary in May, or early June, and I remember talking to the staff, to my spiritual director, and saying, “I just don’t know. I’ve got to work this through. I’m not in a position to make a decision.” It was going to be a life commitment because the rest of my classmates and I were to be ordained deacons in August. That’s the point where you make your commitment to celibacy, your lifelong commitment. I didn’t know what would happen; I didn’t know what my decision was going to be.

Kerry remained in Wellington; I was in Mosgiel. I continued with my studies. I went and talked to my bishop and asked to continue and finish my studies. They allowed me to complete the sixth year. So, I did all my final exams and, on the last day of the year, I walked out with my classmates. They were all deacons, but I was still not sure what I was going to do. It was a really, really difficult time, a time that called for real trust and faith.

I came back to Wellington. I had nowhere to live. I had no job. I ended up working for approximately 18 months in drug and alcohol rehabilitation and loved that job. I learnt a lot from the people that were there but was continuing to wrestle with “where’s God calling me to?” I remember my spiritual director kept on saying to me: “Just give your deepest desires to the Lord,” so I kept on doing that. There was no blinding light, there was no blinding revelation—it was just a slow dawning realisation, an acceptance, that while I felt a calling to follow the Lord and serve Him through the church, I also had a calling to be a married man and to live with Kerry. So, in April 1988, we got married.

After working in drug and alcohol rehabilitation, you then worked for ten years with IHC, eventually becoming an area manager in Invercargill, before moving into the Catholic Education Centre. You also got your Masters and PhD in Moral Theology along the way. And now you’re head of the Nathaniel Centre. Tell us about your work with the Centre and how you came to lead it?

I first met Michael McCabe (the founding director of the Centre) when I was training for ministry in the Catholic Church. In 1998, I was employed by the Wellington Catholic Education Centre, which Cardinal Thomas Williams had set up as a private training establishment. You might recall, in the mid-90s, the National Government created the opportunity for private educational entities and funded them. Cardinal Williams saw an opportunity to create a tertiary theological provider to help form people, particularly teachers, in religious education.

A couple of years after I began working at the Catholic Centre, Michael asked me whether I would be interested in doing some work for the Centre. He wanted someone as a researcher. I had studied my Masters in Moral Theology, which is a related field, so it was a natural progression for me into bioethics. I continued working for the Catholic Education Centre, still teaching in theology and Scripture, but was seconded two days a week to work for Michael in the bioethics centre.

I really enjoyed it. I loved the work. Then Michael started making noises about finding a successor and moving on. About the same time it was suggested to me that I needed to study for my PhD. I was very open to the idea of working full-time in bioethics. In 2006, the Catholic Bishops, the Wellington Catholic Education Centre, and the Nathaniel Centre decided to collaborate and worked out a package whereby I would work for the Nathaniel Centre part-time and study part-time towards my PhD. Michael resigned in 2010 and I took on the role of director even though I didn’t actually finish my PhD until 2012, which I thought was a fairly good effort given that I was a father, and a husband, with three youngish children, and still working!

So your PhD was focussed on bioethics—with what particular emphasis?

About the time I took on the role of researcher in bioethics, there was a lot of discussion in New Zealand about human-assisted reproductive technologies. And there was no legislation in New Zealand even though a couple of MPs had tried to bring in legislation.

So, there were quite a few opportunities to make submissions around issues to do with the beginning of life. In my capacity as a researcher, I got given that job and started reading more and more in that area, and becoming more and more interested in it. That was what shaped my decision to focus on the beginning of life for my PhD.

The other influence on my PhD research was my experience of working for IHC—the Society for the Intellectually Handicapped. I worked with families with intellectually disabled children in a variety of roles: I started as a child and family support worker, then became a manager of a day base, moved into managing residential facilities for adults with intellectual disabilities, and then ultimately moved to Invercargill and became the area manager for the Southland branch.

The discussion in the early 2000’s around prenatal testing was all about preventing the births of disabled babies—the children and families I had worked with for so long. And that was generating a lot of discussion, particularly in disability circles. I decided, initially, that I would look at the ethical issues around prenatal testing. I was interested in the intersection of that with a Catholic approach to understanding the rights and the dignity of human life, particularly people who are disabled.

My supervisors early on said, “Well, if this is going to be a PhD in theology, it’s going to need a more theological basis.” So, I settled on the notion of procreative responsibility: what it means to be a responsible parent in an age when assisted reproductive technologies are available. My focus was on a number of secular thinkers of “the gift.” I took this notion of “gift” as being at the core of a Catholic understanding. What intrigued me early on was that “gift” is a concept that most people think: “Oh yeah, ‘gift’ means there’s a giver, and God’s the giver.” Most people saw it as a very religious concept, which it is, but there was also lots of work being done by secular philosophers and social anthropologists around the notion of gift. I saw there was an opportunity to find some common ground.

That’s always been an important factor for me in the work I do in bioethics. Yes, we’re here to educate Catholics and for the Catholic church. Yes, we’re here to advise the bishops. But I’ve always taken very seriously, and thought it very important, that the Nathaniel Centre is also there to talk with other people: talk with MPs, be part of the conversations in the public square. And I saw in the idea of gift as an opportunity to find some shared values when it came to discussing some of the ethical and moral issues around the use of reproductive technologies.

It seems you’re very interested in finding that common ground between the secular and the religious, and putting something on the table that everyone can understand or resonate with. Through your work with the Nathaniel Centre, have you noticed any ways this has shaped legislation or made an impact on people’s imaginations?

It’s hard to say—I’d like to think our submissions have added to the richness of the debates. We consistently got very positive feedback from ACART, which is the Advisory Committee on Assisted Reproductive Technology. Our submissions were always done against a particular framework of principles, which, when you boil them down, can be traced back to the basic principles of Catholic social teaching. When you look at the ethos of the Nathaniel Centre—and this goes back to the way in which I understand Catholic moral theology—it’s about bringing together faith and reason. And that approach goes right back to Thomas Aquinas.

Thomas Aquinas, of course, was one of the Christian scholars who, in the 13th century, revived Aristotelianism. It’s this idea that while the authority for what we teach, what we believe in, is found in the Scriptures, we must also draw on the social sciences and what we know about what it means to be human.

So, when I’m teaching people, I always say that being Catholic, being Christian, doesn’t add a body of knowledge as such. There’s no secret Catholic or Christian book in which all this stuff is written down about bioethics. As I understand it, what my Catholic tradition brings is a set of principles and values that shape the way we think about what it means to be fully human and what it means to flourish as a human being. So, we don’t simply have to rely on quoting the Scriptures or Catholic teaching. And I’m not saying we don’t quote the Scriptures. If you look carefully at the writings of the Nathaniel Centre over the years, I would argue that it’s very, very faithful to the Scriptures and the Catholic moral tradition. But what you don’t often see, particularly when we’re doing submissions to parliament, is a lot of religious language or scriptural references—but they’re there in the background.

Again, even if we’re not quoting Scriptures, even if we’re not quoting Catholic documents, I would say that we’ve been utterly faithful to the tradition. We’re trying to speak about it in terms of human flourishing because, at the end of the day—and this is one of my favourite Scriptures—it all comes back to John 10:10: “I’ve come that you may have life and have it to the fullest.” It’s about human flourishing. God wants us to flourish as human beings.

We know we are beings who are called to be in relationship with other people; we are not isolated nomads. In thinking about the euthanasia law, for example, one of the things we keep coming back to is the growing social isolation that many older people experience and many disabled people experience. That’s not a particularly Catholic insight. And yet it should be a fundamental Catholic Christian concern. By speaking into that space, all of a sudden, we’re able to argue our position on euthanasia because we can show that it ultimately comes back to our concern for the well-being of a particular group of people who we believe, being as vulnerable as they are, will become susceptible to abuse under that law. So, we were arguing against euthanasia on the basis of our concern for people, coming out of a particular understanding of what it means to flourish as human beings, and we didn’t need to quote Scripture to be able to make that point.

You have been at the forefront of many submissions to parliament on bioethical questions, particularly the recent End of Life Choice bill, which was introduced to New Zealand legislation in 2019. As a leader of the Nathaniel Centre during that period of submissions and lobbying, how did you process the disappointment of that law being passed?

It was hugely disappointing. I felt that we’d given it our best shot. I thought we’d put up some really, really good arguments. The Nathaniel Centre was part of the Care Alliance, which was a collaboration between 10 or 12 different groups. Some of them were church based, such as the Salvation Army, but the Alliance included the key providers of palliative care and also groups like Not Dead Yet—a disability advocacy group—none of whom were coming at this from a Christian perspective. Yes, the defeat was very disappointing. A lot of energy went into the campaign. It was quite difficult for me personally to pick myself up and carry on, knowing, “We’ve fought this fight, but we didn’t win it.”

For a long time, I found it very difficult to read material and to engage with that subject. I’ve had to once again because I think there is still a significant challenge. Previously, euthanasia was something that the law didn’t allow—it was theoretical and in many ways an abstract concept. But I think the challenge for us now is to make euthanasia as unthinkable as we possibly can. For example, knowing that social isolation is a factor in why people come to choose euthanasia—there’s been lots of research on that—the question from a Catholic Christian perspective is to say, “Well, how, as Christian communities and as the church in New Zealand are we making sure our elderly people feel cared for and aren’t isolated?”

In a sense, everything has changed, but, in another sense, nothing has changed. The tasks for us, Christian or otherwise, are to work to protect the people who, under this law, are vulnerable. And we also know that, in the future, there are going to be those who seek to make the law even more permissive. That’s exactly what’s happened in other countries, and there’s no reason why it won’t happen in New Zealand as well. So, there is still a huge challenge in front of us.

How did you pray through that disappointment in almost having to pick up the pieces again, still recognising that the challenge remains?

It was just a continuous going back to the Lord in prayer and saying, “Look, you know, I’ve given this my best. Give me the strength to continue; show me how we can go forward.” I did feel like we’d given everything, that we had been faithful, that we had stood up for what we thought was true, what was right. So, there was some comfort, some consolation in that.

I guess, too, over time, coming to an acceptance that this is what it is: people make choices; we live in a society that makes choices that won’t be consistent with what we as Christians think is best for people. But that’s part of living in a democracy and living with other people. We have to get up and keep on working with those people.

One of my favourite verses is from Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd, there’s nothing I shall want.” The Lord is ultimately in charge. And going back to Psalm 139: there is no where we can go, there’s no way our society can go, there’s no where as persons we can go, where God won’t be with us, even in the depths of Sheol. So, I take comfort and a lot of consolation from those particular Psalms and verses. They’ve been a source of spiritual strength.

Living with disappointment, living with the central reality of our own sinfulness, the simple reality of the world, is part of the Christian path, I think. And not losing faith and hope at those times—just being constantly reminded of that, by others, by Scripture, through prayer, by other Christians, by other good people.

What do you make of your working career in light of that difficulty to discern your calling?

In a roundabout way, I thought that I had given up my calling to work for the church when I chose to get married. And yet I’ve now spent the best part of my life working for the church—in a different way from what I originally thought I was being called to, but I know God has called me to this work. I have no doubts about that. And it hasn’t been a straight line. It hasn’t been an easy ride. But through all the ups and downs, I can actually look back and see God’s hand in all of this, that I’m now here doing what I was called to do those many, many years ago when I headed to the seminary.

How would you describe the way that you lead as a result of your life to this point?

I have always talked a lot to people. I seek out people I know and trust and I converse and listen a lot. Yesterday, as I was preparing for this interview, I thought back to a previous manager I worked under many years ago—a lot of people thought he was slack, and they didn’t have a lot of respect for him. They used to joke that his office was the golf course.

But, actually, he was a man of high integrity. What I came to realise was this: the reason that his operation was so successful, one of the most successful and forward-thinking in the country, was because he wasn’t scared of gathering people around him who were, if you like, better than he was. I think that that’s had quite a profound influence on the way I work and lead.

I look for people who I can build relationships with who are really good at their work, who are experts in their field. I have always made a point of not being threatened by people who knew more than me or who were perhaps better qualified than me. I also have a friend, a mentor of mine, Peter Bray, who did his PhD in leadership. He didn’t embrace the model of “the leader.” He took the approach that leadership was always exercised within a team or within a group. While there might be one person who might be called the chief executive or director, who ultimately had responsibility for and was held accountable for the direction of the organisation, he always had a view that you exercise leadership well when you are able to draw on the gifts and talents of the people you are working with, when you are able to get their trust and get them to buy into a shared vision.

That’s very much the way I try to exercise leadership. For me, it’s all about having a vision and being able to nurture and cherish the vision, then having people around you who are capable of translating the vision into action, especially if they are people who are better or more qualified than I am.

A piece of Scripture that inspires my attitude to leadership is the washing of the feet in John’s Gospel, where Jesus totally turns upside down the social expectations of the day. As I understand it, washing someone’s feet was a task the master couldn’t even ask a slave to do—it was something seen as so demeaning. You can imagine in those days when there was animal excrement around, probably human excrement as well, that, at the end of a day’s walking, your feet were pretty gross.

So, it’s absolutely radical where the master becomes the one who washes the feet of the disciples. That’s one of the pieces of Scripture I keep on going back to—it highlights that leadership is very much about service rather than being served or giving orders.

The other piece of Scripture that stands out to me, and it came up in the cycle of readings in our church recently, is from Exodus where Moses gets Aaron and Hur to hold up his arms while the battle is happening. Moses is the leader, but he can’t do it on his own. As soon as his arms get tired and drop down, the Israelites start to lose. And when he raises his arms up again, the Israelites get the upper hand in the battle. In the end, Aaron and Hur come along, they stand there, they put his arms on a rock, and they also help support them.

That’s quite a powerful image in terms of the importance of prayer but also in terms of the need for leaders to surround themselves with other people who can actually help exercise their leadership as well.

I’d like to ask you about humility—what would you like to say about that?

You can’t really talk about leadership within the church at the moment in New Zealand, particularly the Catholic church, without thinking about the Royal Commission and the impact of that, not just on church leaders, but Catholics and Christians as a whole. It’s a shameful part of our history. My broader reflection is that as Catholic leaders, as a Catholic church—I won’t speak for other churches—we’ve lost a lot of our moral authority. And I understand why that is.

The current context calls for a significant amount of humility and an acceptance of why that is. As Catholic leaders, we are not in a position to pontificate, if I could use that very Catholic word. We’re not in a position to judge others. This has raised the question for me as to how we are meant to live out our discipleship. It came up recently in some debates and discussions around how as a church, how as Catholic schools, we might respond to some of the questions being raised by different groups around gender and sexuality, LGBTQI+. I think we still need to stand up for what we believe in, but we can’t impose.

I think more and more of Acts 2:42–47, how the early church remained faithful to the teaching of the apostles, to the brotherhood, to the breaking of bread, the prayers—and everyone was filled with awe. There were many signs and miracles. Those who shared the faith owned everything in common; they worked together and supported each other, they sold their goods and possessions and distributed the proceeds amongst themselves according to what each one needed. And then that final sentence: day by day, the Lord added to the community those destined to be saved.

So, if we are to be a witness in this time, it’s going to be less about what we say and more about who we are and how people see us. More and more, as Christians, we need to show our faith, and the beauty of what we believe, the truth of what we believe in, will be shown more by who we are rather than what we say. That’s a particular challenge in this time, particularly for people like me whose role is very much tied up with speaking into the public square on controversial ethical issues.

And that backlash is certainly something I’ve experienced, from time to time, where the label “Catholic” causes people to close off. Again, I understand why that is—I think it’s sad, but I do understand why. We have to live out our Christianity in a particular way in these times which is probably more akin to the way things were in the early church because Christians also experienced a great deal of antagonism from their fellow Jews and from others as well. So, for me, that’s where humility comes in.

What would be your encouragement to people of faith from around Aotearoa who are working or leading in challenging workplaces, churches, or organisations?

Continue to be faithful, because God is faithful to you. You asked before about people who’ve had an impact on me, and one of the people who has had an impact on me most recently is Pope Francis. He’s really shaken up the Catholic Church and turned a whole lot of things upside down. One of the things he talked about early on was how shepherds—ministers—need to have the smell of the sheep on them. We need to get out of our sanctuaries, out of our church buildings, and go out and find Christ and meet Christ in the messiness of the world, in the chaos and danger of the world. It means making ourselves vulnerable.

Pope Francis has repeatedly used the image of the church as a field hospital. For me, this conjures up images of wartime, danger, and working in really challenging conditions. It’s being able to live with that messiness, with that chaos, and knowing that that’s where God is.

Somewhere in all of that, too, we need to know the importance of planning prayer time, taking time away, being part of a faith community, and surrounding ourselves with other like-minded people who encourage us—these are also critically important at this time. If you’re in a field hospital, you can’t just work 24/7. You have to take time off and take time out.