St Mary's

We invite comment from members of the Catholica Forum and Letters to the Editor from subscribers expressing your views on this Open Letter, or offering further suggestions that might help build the Church in positive ways in Australia and help foster a win-win outcome for the St Mary’s Parish Community in South Brisbane, the Archbishop, the institution, and for all the stakeholders in this present impasse…

Fr Peter Kennedy, Fr Terry Fitzpatrick
and the community at St Mary’s Parish
South Brisbane

Dear Frs Kennedy and Fitzpatrick and members of the St Mary’s Community,

On behalf of the Catholica OnLine Community, I would firstly like to congratulate you on the now long and impressive legacy of good works which you have established at the Parish of St Mary’s and which has become a shining beacon certainly at the national level and possibly even at the international level. Some members of the Catholica community are also members of the St Mary’s community and other members of Catholica who have visited Brisbane have made it a point to attend St Mary’s and, without exception, have been unstinting in their praise of the spirt of goodwill and hope that emanates out of your endeavours.

I know I echo the general feelings of the Catholica community that have been expressed to me in our forums, via emails and telephone calls that the recent events at St Mary’s following your being reported to the Vatican by a small canker group within the Catholic Church have caused deep disquiet to many. While, in spirit, Catholica members have been supportive of your endeavours at St Mary’s I have also picked up a certain disquiet over some of the confrontational tactics adopted in response to Archbishop John Bathersby. For that reason over the past week or so, in an endeavour to reflect the mix of feelings at Catholica I have adopted a more moderate editorial line and toned back our support for what was being proposed.

Our concern has been two-fold: firstly we believe focusing your attack on Archbishop Bathersby was misconceived and likely to draw attention away from the real causes of your problems, and the general problems of the increasing lack of relevance the institutional Church has for the vast majority of baptised Catholics in this nation. Secondly we were concerned that the calls of yourself, Fr Kennedy, to establish some new community outside the institutional structure were likely to be counterproductive for you personally, for the community at St Mary’s, for the wider Church and, most especially, for all those people of good will seeking to agitate for an institutional Church more responsive to the spiritual and other needs of the vast majority of Catholics in this country, many of whom now feel disenfranchised from the Church built by their forebears.

Late yesterday, following the action of Archbishop Bathersby to terminate Fr Kennedy’s administration of St Mary’s I began to receive reports that your own response was becoming more moderate. This was confirmed by overnight press reports which I have drawn attention to in our forum. My sense is that the members of the Catholica community will be most welcoming of this change in both tone and tactics.

Feedback to Catholica…

The feedback reaching me, as editor of Catholica, has not always been totally supportive of some of the liberties that have been taken in liturgical practices and wording, even from some members of the St Mary’s community, nevertheless, there has been tolerance shown out of a sense of solidarity for the greater objectives of what the St Mary’s community represented. We do believe that perhaps more might have been achieved if, earlier on, a more cooperative line might have been adopted in negotiations with Archbishop Bathersby and that might have been more mindful of the difficult political position he found himself placed in. At this stage that is now largely “water under the bridge” and the strategic positions that existed at earlier stages for yourselves, or for the Archbishop cannot now be recalled. It is our belief that over the years Archbishop Bathersby, like ourselves, has been broadly supportive of your endeavours at St Mary’s. It has been our assessment that he has turned a “blind eye” to many of the complaints that have been directed to him out of a sense of broader solidarity and support for the objectives of your community and the important outreach it represented to those who have perhaps not been well served by the institution. His “blind eye” has not been motivated principally by laziness or indifference but from a sense that he viewed there was much good being achieved at St Mary’s despite some of the liberties that might have been adopted in liturgical styles.

With the events of yesterday, and your responses in the media overnight, it would seem you also sense the strategic landscape has been radically altered.

With this Open Letter I hope to trigger discussion on the Catholica Forums that might help you gauge the level of support you can now count on from those in the Catholica community who are broadly supportive of your efforts to recapture the spirit of the Second Vatican Council that was discerned as the call of the Holy Spirit by the vast majority of the bishops of the world. I believe the members of Catholica will be more supportive of a more moderate line by yourselves including your canonical appeal and the planned rally of support on Sunday particularly if the focus is shifted away from some personal attack on Archbishop Bathersby and instead directed to the authorities in Rome and their constant appeasement of this tiny, totally unrepresentative canker who have caused so many difficulties for yourselves over the years and who have also been largely responsible for driving so many out of the pews of the wider Church over a period of many, many decades.

Changing the focus of any protests…

I am hopeful, given the more moderate and strategically intelligent and nuanced line you seem to be adopting, that members of the Catholica community in Brisbane might now get behind the planned rally or peaceful, non-violent expression of solidarity with all that the St Mary’s community has endeavoured to stand up for over many years. I would urge all those who attend Sunday’s rally not to turn this into some effort to bloody the nose of Archbishop John Bathersby but that it be simply a peaceful, and non-liturgically or in other ways provocative way of sending a forceful message to the powers-that-be in Rome that it is time they started listening (a) to the more pastoral bishops of Australia and (b) through them to the spiritual and liturgical needs of the vast majority of the faithful in this Great South Land of the Holy Spirit.

I invite members of the Catholica community through comments on the forum or via emails for publication addressed to me (editor@catholica.com.au) to make further comment on the sentiments expressed in this open letter and to air other suggestions they might have that might assist you in maintaining the spirit and value of all that has been established at St Mary’s under the new administrator, Fr Ken Howell.

I would also urge, strategically, that those in the more progressive and mainstream sectors of the Church need to recognise that institutionally we have a responsibility to be tolerant towards those who understand, or express, their faith in more simplistic or legalistic or liturgically and devotionally conservative ways. They have a right to their beliefs and their ways of worship. The focus of any protest should not be directed at their beliefs or practices other than the single belief they seem to have that they can dictate the entire belief and worship agenda for the whole of Catholicism.

Brian Coyne
Editor & Publisher

Links:
SMH article 20 Feb 2009 (“Priest fired for unholy communion”)

We welcome comments in the forum from members, or as Letters to the Editor from Catholica subscribers, expressing your views on this Open Letter and perhaps offering further suggestions that might offer a positive way forward give the new landscape that lies before all of us.