David Pincus, PERSONAL THOUGHTS AFTER THE MEETING AT ST MARY’S, FEBRUARY 6 2011
I must first of all congratulate Terry on the skill with which he ran the meeting today. His forbearance in allowing anyone to have their say was as necessary as it was commendable. The meeting had the laudable result of allowing members of the community to send messages to the Board as well as gathering ideas on where we should go from here.
I may be talking to the wrong people, but the St Mary’s people to whom I talk do not criticise the Board, even though our anti-authoritarian hearts hate unelected bodies. They will disagree with some details of the way things are going, but there is no widespread feeling, that I can detect, that we are going the wrong way. There is some exasperation with the pace of decision making, but I think most realise that this is inevitable with a group in which decisions are to be made from the bottom and not from the top.
There were a number of matters raised today which I consider could have been left until the important issue of who is eligible to be a voting member of St Mary’s is decided.
(a) Finance. Most of us will have been involved in running some organisation or another in the past and know that finance is important but that financial decisions can be made only after a governing structure is in place.
(b) Survey. There is a prevailing fiction that a survey is neutral and the outcome does not depend on the tone and nature of the questions asked. Anyone who has conducted research knows that the results obtained depend to some extent on the form and content of the questions asked. Having a survey is a laudable idea at this stage, but I would agree with the board’s position that it must be vetted first by the authority in place at the moment.
We come back to the difficult matter of the criterion or criteria by which membership of the community will be judged. I stated my ideas today – that anyone who asserts both their intention to try to follow Christ in day-to-day living and their intention to worship with the St Mary’s community should be automatically put on the list of members by the Board. I think that a lot of the difficulty (and the reason for the variety and divergence of the group suggestions which were circulated on the printed sheets) is that there is concern that non-members will be excluded from attending Mass at St Mary’s. Surely there is no possibility of this disastrous and divisive happening!
Finally, mention was made today of the necessity for not re-inventing the wheel. The form of a meeting, with an agenda circulated beforehand, minutes, motions, formal votes and time for general business, has been validated by experience over centuries. I realise that it would not have been appropriate today as it is necessary that the thoughts and feelings of all involved in St Mary’s needed a forum at which they could be expressed. I consider that the General Meeting at which the structure of our community will be decided should be formal, and on the orthodox lines.
David Pincus.
19/02/2011 at 10:25 am Permalink
The list of groups who’ve broken off from Catholicism to found their own denominations is long indeed. So you don’t want to join “Liberal Catholics” or other already well established groups with their own church buildings, and “Progressive Christianity” seems most apt, yet it’s not a denomination. Well make it one. SME has drawn together from the old St Mary’s and elsewhere a pool of people who would certainly warrant a church premises in Brisbane that is part of an international network of churches. Is there the managerial talent and legal and other talent required at SME to make this happen? I’m not involved enough to know. I suspect Peter, Terry, Doc, Marg, and others will be the patrons of such a church, but it will need more talent to step forth and show the leadership needed to found a denomination and make SME more than house church. House church is not a terrible outcome tho. St Mary’s always had that “virtual community” to it – many moved away, or only visited St Mary’s even only once every few years but still considered St Mary’s their spiritual home, and the internet now might provide that virtual community it’s home. It’s clearly not all happening on this website tho! Hop on facebook and find SME or old St Mary’s members keeping in touch with each other, and crossing that great divide that we’re not supposed to cross. The archbishop said those who went to SME would not be considered part of the church. Does that include facebook ha ha?
20/02/2011 at 2:43 am Permalink
The trouble with “following Christ in day-to-day living” is that you may be legitimising hippies who wander around Nimbin in a drug-induced stupor believing that their caricature has some sort of spiritual validity. Hopefully your brains can override your “anti-authoritarian hearts” with respect to the anything goes liberalism which we have seen far too much of these days. Any hippies who can report profound spiritual experiences I would urge to write in and contradict me. I advise them that any passages lifted from the likes of Carlos Castaneda will be exposed on the google search engine. Sure long hair is a sign of poverty but it isn’t much of a virtue if you have simply spent all your money getting high on drugs.
20/02/2011 at 9:49 pm Permalink
H.St.John, here’s a typical profile of the liberal “hippy” you are talking about that goes to SME.. 73, studied medicine as a kid, then did his residency and studied to be a specialist, spent the next 40 years working 12-15 hours days 5-7 days a week including getting called out sometimes to hospitals at 2am in the morning, and raised a family of 6 kids at the same time all leading meaningful and productive lives contributing to their communities.. retired in his mid 60s, and has enjoyed retirement among other things playing music in orchestras that raise money for medical charities and the like. They play in concert halls and their audience are typically business people, medicos and their families, and other professionals. Because of all the stress and hell this SME member working such hellish hours all his life to be a good health worker, he knows something about caring for people, and that’s why 16 years ago he went to St Mary’s where he found a nurse turned social worker who was starting a welfare agency from scratch to help homeless people. Through his money and support and the support of many other good people, that’s agency became has become highly regarded, altho, according to its original charter, independant from the church now. Is that hippy enough for you? Give it your best shot H.St.John – satarise and mock this SME member too – it will mean nothing. You clearly know *NOTHING* about SME, Harasser St.John.
21/02/2011 at 5:43 pm Permalink
To “H St. John” who is not part of our community and clearly has a very odd and confused idea of what we are on about- can I ask “Don’t you have anything better to do than to write cowardly offensive remarks towards a community you clearly have no idea about?”
We are not “hippies”. We have various hair lengths. I have not observed any drug use within our community.
So why this tosh…?? Nobody is really that interested in what you have to say.
Please go and get some help. I think you need it.
22/02/2011 at 2:03 pm Permalink
Sorry to have to say this, but you are an ass H St John. Anyone who mistakes the caricature for the real thing really is an ass. All that garbage about drug induced stupor has nothing to do with the letter of David Pincus or the efforts of Christian people to follow Christ in day to day living.
marg
23/02/2011 at 7:59 pm Permalink
I’m OK with being demonised. Should anyone wish to comment on what I actually said, that’s OK too. I am a bit bored with new-age liberalism taking pot-shots at the keepers of history. The general complaint seems to be that the historical society is not progressive enough. I am a bit interested in exploring these contradictions and pointing them out, but hardly passionate about it. So if abusing me spares someone else from your pent-up vitriol then that might be the best thing that comes from it. If people can learn self-control and to manage their emotions, even better! Good luck on your journey.
24/02/2011 at 8:51 pm Permalink
You’re missing the point H. St John.. it’s not JUST about ‘debating’ here on this little local church blog – Marg’s a real person – i know her – so’s Dave – i don’t go to their church, I certainly don’t agree with everything they say or have done or SME does but they are real people on this website – people know who they are – people know who i am. No one’s asking you to not put your point of view across – what’s being asked is for you to IDENTIFY yourself – if not by name, then to give a general picture of who you are – we’ve learnt absolutely nothing about you on the human level other than you are pro-porting to be some sort of ‘defender’ of the Catholic church. I go to an orthodox Catholic church. But I think what you are doing on this website is not ok – it’s unfair. You are using your anonymity as a weapon in your style of debate – you reflect absolutely nothing of yourself (other than you are being “abused” or “attacked”), and then focus in the rest of every message you post on this sort of “policing” role and defender of the Catholic faith and attacking other blog contributors, who in the tradition of SME and St Mary’s where people share of themselves, you take advantage of anonymity to critique other blog blog contributors whilst no similar critique can be returned in your direction. That’s not fair, and that’s truly being a coward, and for that you’ve been made an example here for your pseudonym, and rightly so!
26/02/2011 at 9:36 pm Permalink
On the contrary I think it is Tim who is missing the point. Tim, if you don’t know Howard St. John, that would be because he is one of probably a billion English-speaking people across the world whom you don’t know but at any time might have answered the invitation ‘hi stranger, leave a comment’.
26/02/2011 at 9:39 pm Permalink
Note to H.St.John:
With all the emphasis here on asking you to IDENTIFY yourself, I sometimes wonder if this website is not really a very elaborate personal identity theft scam. (smiley face thing)
Cheers
Perry Mason
27/02/2011 at 4:45 pm Permalink
As much as I enjoy being vilified, off-topic debate won’t be entered into.