Last month, the Catholic Church sacked Father Peter Kennedy, the parish priest of St Mary’s Church in South Brisbane.<\/p>\n
His crimes?<\/p>\n
Brisbane Archbishop John Bathersby accuses Father Kennedy of “presenting unapproved services including giving Holy Communion to gay and divorced people, baptising babies using unorthodox wording and not wearing traditional vestments”. As such, “Peter Kennedy is the first Catholic priest in Australia to lose his job for failing to conform to orthodox liturgy” according to Andrew Fraser (What would Jesus do?<\/a>, The Australian<\/em>, February 21, 2009).<\/p>\n Shame Peter, shame.<\/p>\n Apparently, some “CATHOLICS are questioning why the church hierarchy is determined to sack rebel parish leader Peter Kennedy, but is slow to act against pedophile priests” (Priest must resign or face axe<\/a>, Kate Dennehy, Brisbane Times<\/em>, February 27, 2009). And in his defence, Kennedy argues that Jesus too, was a rebel.<\/p>\n Jesus also unorthodox: rebel priest<\/a> REBEL Catholic priest Father Peter Kennedy has defended his church’s social activism, telling a packed St Mary’s church in South Brisbane that Jesus also was harshly criticised for unorthodox behaviour.<\/p>\n Catholic Archbishop of Brisbane John Bathersby has terminated Fr Kennedy’s appointment from next Saturday, February 21. Fr Kennedy is trying to appeal the sacking under the church’s canon law.<\/p>\n The Vatican is unhappy because the church conducts unorthodox masses, allows women to preach and blesses homosexual couples.<\/p>\n St Mary’s on Sunday once again was packed and the congregation of around 600 loudly applauded the turbulent priest after his sermon.<\/p>\n “People who are not part of our community will make judgments about us because of our so-called unorthodox behaviour,” Fr Kennedy said.<\/p>\n “But we can take heart from the words of Jesus himself, who was judged harshly for his unorthodox behaviour – ‘By their fruits you will know them’.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Kennedy suffered a collapse<\/a> following his ‘final’<\/a> sermon, has refused to resign, and has labelled his replacement, Dean Ken Howell, a ‘religious scab’<\/a>.<\/p>\n It would be wrong, however, to suggest that the Catholic Church is an unforgiving institution. Thus, last year “convicted pedophile Ron McKiernan was still celebrating Mass in Brisbane despite having served time in jail” (Catholic Church continues support of sex-abuse priest, Michael Crutcher, The Courier-Mail<\/em>, February 20, 2009). Which is as it should be: sexually-abusing children<\/a> is one thing, but giving Holy Communion to gay and divorced people, baptising babies using unorthodox wording and not wearing traditional vestments is a crime of a much<\/em> more serious nature.<\/p>\n It would also be incorrect to believe that there are those who don’t support Archbishop John Bathersby.<\/p>\n Miranda Devine<\/strong><\/p>\n Posing as a privileged conservative airhead, Devine is in fact the nation\u2019s foremost postmodern activist. She\u2019s the Bruce Wayne of radical intellectuals in this country, a seeming lightweight who\u2019s really a courageous champion of suppressed ideas and politically unfashionable causes. \u2026Devine\u2019s satire burns with contempt for the profoundly anti-intellectual character of Australian public life today. Dark and Swiftian, her satirical boldness is unprecedented in the history of Australian letters.<\/em><\/p>\n ~ Niall Lucy and Steve Mickler, The War on Democracy: Conservative Opinion in the Australian Press<\/em> (UWA Press, 2006)<\/p>\n Taking a break from excoriating murderous greens what killed all them people in the Victorian bushfires<\/a>, yuppie scribbler Miranda Devine opines ‘If you don’t like the rules, start your own church’<\/a> (Sydney Morning Herald<\/em>, February 26, 2009). According to the Devine Miss M — from her vantage point on Sydney’s desperately impoverished North Shore<\/a> — Kennedy is a ‘dupe’, a useful idiot for the un-Holy Socialist Alliance, which is using him in their nefarious scheme “to destroy organised religion”. In summary:<\/p>\n While you can feel pity for [Brisbane Archbishop John] Bathersby, the mess is his own making. Having tolerated Kennedy’s antics for years, and having presided over the transformation of Brisbane into the most progressive and least disciplined archdiocese in the country, he can hardly be surprised by the result.<\/p>\n There are plenty of religions which have protested more effectively about Catholic authority than Kennedy – he should try them. Or he could establish his own religion. He has said if he is forced out he will take his flock with him: “The reality is that, if we are excluded from this church, the Trades and Labor Council have already offered us their place just down the road.”<\/p>\n Good luck to him. No one is forced to be a Catholic, and the church – as it has been for 2000 years [sic] – is thriving the world over, wherever it has remained true to its teachings. The thousands of young people who spontaneously went to Rome for the funeral of the very orthodox Pope John Paul II were not activists trying to dismantle the church. They are the future, not Kennedy’s outdated mumbo jumbo socialism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Note that the Catholic church has a long history of forced conversions — of Jews throughout Europe, in Portuguese-controlled India, the Americas under Spanish rule and so on; the saintly<\/a> Pope Pius IX (1846–1878), who confined Rome’s Jews to a ghetto and forcibly baptised their children as Christians, referred to Jews as ‘dogs’. See also<\/em> : The Role of the Catholic Church in Yugoslavia’s Holocaust<\/a>, Se\u00e1n Mac Math\u00fana, Flame<\/em>, No.6, Winter 2000 & Christian Persecution of Jews over the Centuries, Gerard S. Sloyan, ushmm.org, January 19, 2007 [PDF<\/a>].<\/p>\n Christopher Pearson<\/strong><\/p>\n Christopher Pearson is \u2026 different. How many middle-aged, gay Catholic journalists, after all, especially ones who devote a weekly press column to espousing the virtues of conservative values and hard-line Vatican morality, can there possibly be? \u2026Pearson shows that he is nothing more than Howard\u2019s political gimp. His job is to make it seem that \u2018popular conservatism\u2019 is real, and not simply a strategic assertion designed to make it look as though the Howard government is democratically representative.<\/p>\n In some ways Pearson is no different from the other members of the less than magnificent seven in wanting to return to a time before there were baby boomers. But at least the others could go back as they are today\u2026 without having to change themselves in the process. But Christopher Pearson is different. In public, in the 1950s, he could not be who he is today. That\u2019s something he owes not to \u2018popular conservatism\u2019, but to those who answered [Isaiah] Berlin\u2019s call for difference, a call made in the name of others whose \u2018tastes and beliefs find (whether rightly or wrongly must not matter) little response among the majority.\u2019 In his refusal to acknowledge this, Christopher Pearson is a hypocrite.<\/em><\/p>\n ~ Niall Lucy and Steve Mickler, The War on Democracy: Conservative Opinion in the Australian Press<\/em> (UWA Press, 2006)<\/p>\n Christopher Pearson, another neo-conservative hack, agrees with Devine, declaring that it’s time that the Church got rid of the apostates who endanger its future, undermining its foundations through their flagrant disregard for doctrinal and sacral requirements. Absent these integral and distinctive aspects of Catholic dogma, “[a]ll that remains is a commitment to social justice, feminism and deep green ideology. No wonder the Raelian movement, a UFO cult with a similar radical Left agenda, and the Socialist Alliance should have sent members to demonstrate their support for St Mary’s.”<\/p>\n Pearson elaborates:<\/p>\n To see why St Mary’s represents a pervasive threat to the survival of Australian Catholicism, it’s necessary to say something about the sacramental system. The sacraments are rites that relate to different stages in people’s lives, held to confer particular graces through the mediation of the church, and believed to have cumulative effect. If someone’s baptism is deemed invalid it is a grave matter, foundational rather than a mere technicality, and has to be rectified by going through the rite a second time. This is because baptism is axiomatically “the gateway to the other sacraments” and no subsequent sacrament — such as confirmation, marriage or ordination — can be validly conferred on the unbaptised.<\/p>\n Until recently all the mainstream churches took a very conservative attitude towards their formulas for administering the sacraments. Safety lay in strictly following Christ’s example in the New Testament as interpreted by apostolic custom. To authorise anything else was held to be ultra vires, simply beyond the scope of their authority. What’s more, in the universal church it is a given that the laity are entitled to certainty about the validity of the sacraments offered them. A decade’s worth of controversy over invalid baptisms at St Mary’s is profoundly subversive and leaves uncertainty or worse over hundreds of subsequent church marriages. To anyone with a delicate conscience, or on the other hand anyone who may be looking for convenient grounds for an annulment, uncertainty over baptismal efficacy is a big deal.<\/p>\n
\nThe Australian<\/em>
\n(Agence France-Presse)
\nFebruary 15, 2009<\/p>\n