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St Mary's Catholic Community South Brisbane
Ph 3029 7000 Fax 3029 7029
smc@merivale.org.au
PO BOX 3449
South Brisbane
Brisbane, QLD 4000
Traditional Owners
We acknowledge the traditional owners of this land where we are now gathered and recognise that it continues to be sacred to them. Acknowledgement of Traditional owners
Last month, when John sent me today’s Gospel reading, the timing was perfect. The fig trees in our orchard were bulging with ripe, purple figs and we were eating fresh figs, stewed figs, figs with cheese, fig salad and fig jam. However, one of our trees has stubbornly refused to bear fruit for even longer than the three years recorded in this parable from Jesus, and so the reading grabbed my attention in a practical way.
The new sets of envelopes for the community giving system have arrived and will be available for collection after Masses on the weekend.
The various ways to donate here at St Mary’s include:
1 A cash donation is placed on the collection plate,
2 A numbered envelope is used where amounts can be written according to the contributor’s wishes,
3 A quarterly/half yearly contribution can be given and apportioned according to the members wishes using a plain envelope with details and amount enclosed,
4 Community members may wish to use their own internet banking system to transfer an amount weekly, monthly or quarterly to the St Mary’s account or approach their own bank to arrange a periodic payment to BSB 064-131 Account number: 10332933
Increasingly more members are choosing this fourth option and a form for this purpose is available giving the details of St Mary’s Commonwealth Bank account. If you are not using prenumbered envelopes we ask that you consider joining this scheme and leave your name and address on the sheet provided at Mass so that appropriate receipts can be issued for the tax deductible portions that are given.
Here at St Mary’s we have only one collection time during the mass. This collection time is just after the Homily and before the Prayers of the Faithful. One amount is given by the those present to cover the traditional first and second collections.
‘For Baptism to be valid the Catholic Church requires that the minister must pour the water and say the words in the ritual. This has not always happened in this parish. This certificate attests that a ceremony took place but is not a guarantee that the Baptism was valid. If the one whose name appears on the certificate is preparing for the reception of other sacraments such as the reconciliation and confirmation reception of first holy communion or wishing to be married in the Catholic Church please show this certificate to the priest involved in the preparation. He will do what is needed to ensure validity of the baptism.’
Peter Kennedy response
This is an excellent example of what the former Scottish Anglican Primate Richard Holloway calls the “theology of anxiety” which the church imposes upon its people, in the name of orthodoxy”.
It is moreover a nonsense to argue that a baptism is invalid – “read ‘does not work” – because the celebrant uses the words “Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer of Life” instead of “Father, Son and Holy Spirit”. We can only talk about God in metaphor – that which is unknowable, ineffable is always beyond words.
The Leadership of the Catholic Church in this Archdiocese is complicit in encouraging unnecessary anxiety in the minds of some parents. But not many I would suggest.
As Father Eric Hodgers – a priest in the Melbourne Archdiocese – said only last year: “of course baptisms at St Mary’s are valid. All you have to do is apply the ‘duck test’. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it is a duck”.
What Eric Hodgers is pointing out, albeit humorously, is that the INTENTION to baptise is what matters, not the use or non-use of a “magical” formula/metaphor.
The Catholic Church under its current leadership is rapidly descending into farce.
PETER KENNEDY: THE MAN WHO THREATENED ROME National Book Launch Dates
You and your friends are invited to attend the book launch of
PETER KENNEDY: The Man Who Threatened Rome
Flanagan, Martin et al: Peter Kennedy: The Man Who Threatened Rome.
One Day Hill, Melbourne, 2009. ISBN 978 0 9805643 6 5.
If you know of anyone in these locations, please pass on this invitation and information.
Rockhampton – Friday 12th February 7pm
All Saints Anglican Church, Simpson Street, North Rockhampton.
Noel Preston to launch the chaired by Fr Cam Venables.
Canberra – Tuesday 23rd February 12 noon
Parliament House Canberra
Paul Collins is launching the book hat day. If attending please contact Senator Claire Moore’s offices – 02 6277 3447 Parliament House..
Sydney – Tuesday 23rd February 6pm
The Glebe Bookshop 49 Glebe Point Rd, Glebe – (02 9660 2333
Phillip Adams is launching the book.
Melbourne – Thursday 25th February 6pm
Readings Carlton Bookstore 309 Lygon Street, Carlton – 03 9347 6633
Martin Flanagan is launching his book
Some years ago one of my brothers was in Ireland researching our family history. One day, not being sure of a destination he asked directions of a bystander. The gentleman replied, ‘Ah well, you go along here, then you turn right, and then you turn right etc etc’. It was all very complicated, and he ended with ……‘but if I was you I wouldn’t be startin’ from here.’
I am calling this talk ‘the way forward.’ One day Thomas, one of the disciples, said to Jesus, “we do not know where we are going, so how can we know the way?’ To get anywhere, then, we need to know not only our destination and the way there, but , most important of all, where we are starting from, where we are now.
TS Eliot puts it-
In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
We live in a very future-oriented world. An article by Kevin Rudd in The Australian this week is entitled – How we can achieve a more productive future. He begins …….
As we enter the 2nd decade of the 21st century, we can be optimistic about our future. But we cannot be complacent.
The catchcry of education today is –prepare them for the future. Then there are the ‘futures funds’, whose meaning escapes me entirely, and countless other futures predictions.
What many are forgetting about, is to consider where we are now, for to know where we are now is to know who we are.
To know where we are now is to know our place in history, for the way forward is the way back. The great contribution of Charles Darwin was to show us our position in the chain of evolution. And history is more than facts and data. That part is easy. History, as the word implies, is story, and story includes experience and understanding. We have all kinds of stories to investigate –more than investigate, we have to enter a story, walk around in it , absorb its message, its wisdom, and translate it into an understanding and a guide for ourselves and our own time. We have all sorts of stories – family stories, literary, ancestral, national, global, universal, cosmic etc. A crucial genre of story, in my view, is our religious story. A person I was speaking to recently dismissed our religious heritage as ‘mere fairy stories.’ Unknown to him, his statement was ironic, for fairy stories also hold wisdom.
Why are our religious stories of such importance? Because they contain wisdom. I am not , of course , speaking of literalism and dogmatism, but of the pearls of wisdom hidden in our scriptures. I beg to differ from the person who recently stated that God did not write the scriptures. Divine wisdom, in my view, is clearly evident in our Christian, as well as in the scriptures of other religious traditions.
To cut people off from their history, from their story, as happened in the dispossession of land of our own and other indigenous people; in the displacement of peoples through war and exile is to deny them their very humanity.
Of course, we don’t want to get stuck in the past, either, to cling to clearly outmoded practices or world views. The thread that binds us to our history is both strong and fragile, and brings us right down to our present time.
What , then, can we do to answer the question in Drew Dellinger’s poem
my great great grandchildren
ask me in dreams
what did you do while the planet was plundered
Drew Dellinger is a contemporary American philosopher and poet, recently in Brisbane.
In a recent interview, Andrew Denton asked the distinguished White House journalist, Helen Thomas ‘what do you see as the future of our species?’
She answered – I don’t care about the future, but I worry about how we are now. - people killed by wars, the gas chambers, people discriminated against.’ Among a battery of journalists hers was the only voice to publicly challenge George Bush on the torture of Iraqis by American soldiers She asked later- where were they, where were all the colleagues who should have spoken out in support? When Peter and Terry were dismissed from St Mary’s, unjustly, was there a single colleague, a single bishop, a single priest who came publicly to their defence or support. Where were they? We may well ask.
In a recent talk Drew Dellinger suggests that a way forward for is to listen to the voice of women. There’s no shortage of women’s voices in this community, but in most societies and communities throughout the world, despite the great feminist movement, women are still largely unheard. Most commentators judged the Copenhagen meeting a flop. Penny Wong would have been there, but amidst the large array of men in suits I didn’t notice many women.
Most ages of history have made a specific contribution to our human story eg the cathedrals of medieval Europe, the plays of Shakespeare, the inventions of modern science etc. Drew Dellinger opines that the unique contribution of our era may well be our embracing of ecology. This is more than planting a few trees, important in a practical way as that is; ecology implies understanding , entering the story of our earth; going further, to cosmology – the story, not just the scientific, facts, of the universe. Cosmology is recognising the interconnectedness of all things, and therefore treating all creatures, all things, with respect, compassion and love.
‘Lifting millions out of subsistence living should be our moral imperative’, writes journalist John Cox. Development is not necessarily a dirty word. Here again the way forward may well be the way back. Harry S Truman’s inaugural address in 1949 used the word ‘development’ to commit the US to world economic progress. ‘The present focus on terrorism and globalisation makes me pine for the idealism of the 2nd half of C20’, writes Cox. The fierce opposition in the US to Barack Obama’s proposed health reforms is born of the unwillingness of Middle America to share their wealth with the poor, especially the black poor. They are forgetting that in degrading these people they are degrading their own flesh and blood.
Then we have to wake up the dreamers, the poets, the philosophers, the statesmen, of today. A young boy, Laurie Wallis, topped the NSW HSC English course for a sequence of poems in which he meditates on mankind, nature and language. This is a voice, the voice of youth, which we could well heed.
And we have to wake up ourselves. We are all depositaries of wisdom, but on the whole we don’t know how to access it. We can’t just sit around waiting for sparks of wisdom to come forth, we have to prepare the ground. The great C16 Spanish mystic, Teresa of Avila, tells us that after spending 20 years meditating, patiently and perseveringly, she experienced a Divine and transforming illumination. Mozart wrote 41 symphonies. On one occasion he saw in his minds eye an entire symphony. But Mozart, too, had done the hard yards. From the age of three he had studied music, worked at his harmony ezercises. Then there was more more hard work, translating the wisdom of that symphony into a format that others could access. And so we can listen to the great Mozart symphonies today.
On the other hand, the spirit breathes where she will. In our Peace Dance tradition there is a beautiful song and dance. The text is
Suddenly, at any mundane moment, the infinite may come through.
If we are lucky, wisdom may simply strike us out of the blue. As the first reading for today says,
‘wisdom walks about looking for those who are worthy of her.
A pity if we do not recognise her. For Wisdom comes in many guises. She won’t always come as a full-blown symphony. TS Eliot reminds us–
The only Wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility
That, surely, is accessible to us all.
KR urged us not to be complacent; Goenka, a meditation teacher in the Vipassana tradition, says over and over. Every moment is so precious; we cannot afford to lose a single moment.We can glibly dismiss the fleeting moment as just that, but this moment, to give TS Eliot the final word,
‘is not isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
Marg Ortiz, in her infinite wisdom, called the summer edition of St Mary’s Matters “Original Blessing”. In it she writes, “As we come up to Christmas, how can we talk about the incarnation in a language that makes sense in today’s world? If we have an image of God that is in no way the OUT THERE sort, then we need to consider what incarnation means. If God is an integral part of every part of every atom of matter in the earth – as Tillich said, the Ground of All Being – then we are as much in God as Jesus was”.
What a wonderful thought as opposed to that dreadful concept inspired by St Augustine of “Original Sin”, as most of us understood it from our Catechetical Instructions. In the beginning, all of life is in a state of “Original Sin”. Separated from God until Baptism when through some magic words Original Sin is removed. Unbelievable. If you think this concept of Original Sin is dead and buried / think again.
A story related to me after one of the Christmas masses by some people who had lost their certificate for their child who was Baptised at St Mary’s some years ago. They approached the Archdiocese main office, which now runs St Mary’s, and asked for a certificate in order to enrol their child in the local Catholic school. They received a note explaining that the child was invalidly baptised and would need to be baptised again. The father of the child was annoyed and rang and asked to speak to the priest in charge. When the child’s father spoke of his concern for what effect this would have on his child to tell her she needed to be baptised again, in order to go to school, the priest responded by saying that he should be more concerned that the child is still in a state of “Original Sin”. A concept alive and well in the hearts and minds of people in high places within this diocese.
It was a concept concocted by Saint Augustine to maintain the power and control of the patriarchal church. Put simply, you kick everyone out of union with God, and you call this state of non union, Original Sin, and say that the only way to God is through Baptism, by the patriarchal correct formulae, by a Male celibate priest in the Roman Catholic Church. Everyone else is excluded. A very important belief designed primarily to favour a celibate, male dominated Church which maintains the only way to God is through this Church.
Original Blessing is quite the opposite to Original Sin. In original blessing all of life is blessed, there is no exclusion, no saying this is sacred and this is profane/ you’re in, you’re out. God / the sacred infuses every atom of matter in the earth. Nothing anyone can say or do can bring this about. In Barbara Fiand’s book “From Religion Back to Faith: A Journey of the Heart”, she has a wonderful story that captures this concept of original blessing:
The story is told of an old monk who one night in a dream was visited by the risen Christ. They went on a walk together in quiet intimacy, enjoying each other’s presence. Finally the old man turned to Jesus and asked: “When you walked the hills of Palestine, you mentioned that one day you would come again in all your glory. Lord, it’s been so long: when will you return for good?”
After a few moments of silence the resurrected and living One said, “When my presence in nature all around you and my presence beneath the surface of your skin is as real to you as my presence right now, when this awareness becomes second nature to you, then will I have returned for good.”
The dream was very vivid and carried the monk into the next day when, deep in thought, he walked again, this time by himself – or so he thought. As he stopped and bent over a small pond to wash his face, he gazed “for a brief but eternal moment” at his reflection and at the images of the trees and the sky reflected in the water as well, and there he heard a gentle whisper: “You are my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.”
In this story, the old monk realises that he is Holy. He is sacred, infused with God, as much as all that surrounded him.
That the second coming is a realisation that there was no first coming. God has been present all along.
I wonder what state our planet would be in today if we had had a concept of Original Blessing instead of Original Sin. Would we have treated the earth as something to be used and exploited for humanity’s gain or would we have a deep reverence for the earth, avoiding the Environmental Mess we have made of our home? I would like to think the latter would have been the case.
The words of our opening song capture something of what I am trying to say, I would like to finish with them,
THE ORDINARY IS MARVELLOUS
“When we ponder on the advent story,
When we contemplate the wonderous birth, let us sing of miracle and glory
Bursting through our history here on earth.
Let us also prize the common
That which happens everywhere and often.
So we treasure all the common graces,
Live each day as precious and unique.
God is present at all times and places,
On the plains ,as on the peak.
Plain yet wonderous,every
hours,
God,within,enriches us with power.
Illuminating the St Mary’s conflict
Andrew Hamilton December 11, 2009 reprinted from Eurekastreet.com
Flanagan, Martin et al: Peter Kennedy: The Man Who Threatened Rome. One Day Hill, Melbourne, 2009. ISBN 978 0 9805643 6 5. Online
Peter Kennedy: The Man Who Threatened RomeThe conflict between Archbishop John Bathersby and Fr Peter Kennedy’s St Mary’s congregation was passionate and public. This valuable book illuminates the dispute, setting it into a human context that is both much smaller and larger than that offered by the media coverage.
The most instructive and moving contributions to the book are studies of people involved. Two interviews of Kennedy by Martin Flanagan serve as book ends. Flanagan catches the contemplative and detached character of Kennedy’s personality. These make his understated religious leadership so formidable and so attractive.
Michele Gierck’s profiles of a range of people involved in the life of the congregation are also deeply insightful. She allows them to speak for themselves, perhaps more eloquently than they knew they could speak. The stories of people help you see the depth of what is involved in the building and pulling down of communities, the precarious lives that find some mending, the desired connections made, the broken people who find nurturing.
These pieces, together with the autobiographical reflections by people who have known St Mary’s, suggest why and how the St Mary’s congregation will survive its separation from the Brisbane Catholic church.
The large themes of the story bear wider reflection. Most contributors emphasise the importance of the congregation, expressing disappointment and surprise that it was not consulted during the conflict. This suggests disconnection between the inclusive and self-effacing leadership offered to the community by its two priests, and the place in the Catholic Tradition of the priest as teacher and as responsible to the Bishop for his community.
There may also be a larger tension between the Australian preference for association between equals and the hierarchical structures of the Catholic church. This tension expresses itself occasionally in conflict of the kind experienced at St Mary’s but more often in the quiet withdrawal from the Catholic Church by people who identify it with authoritarian ways of relating.
Many contributors also express outrage that blow-ins who came to St Mary’s to tape sermons, photograph ceremonies, and denounce it to the Archbishop and to the Vatican were given credit by Church authorities. They see this as noxious as welcoming blowflies to Christmas dinner. Certainly, it is hard to imagine anything more alienating to its members than a school, a society or a church that encourages tell-tales and snitches.
But the contributors return to the break between the St Mary’s community and the Brisbane Catholic Church. Much of the comment deals with the underlying tension between the inclusiveness of the community worship and its symbols and the insistence by the Archbishop on the universal symbols of the Catholic Church. I found myself most exercised personally by this question.
I take it as axiomatic that Christian communities should offer hospitality to the hesitant, doubtful, searching and disconcerted. That is a Christian ideal, and also reflects life in any congregation and seasons in the life of most Christians. Congregations that claim to be models of untroubled faith and Christian living simply suffer from lack of self-knowledge.
The merit of St Mary’s is that the diversity of the congregation is evident, and that its welcome to those on the margins of the Catholic Church is explicit and is honoured in its practice as well as in its rhetoric. That is why the separation is such a loss for the Brisbane Catholic Church. If one of the traditional identifying qualities of the Catholic Church is holiness, and if energetic and visible reaching out to marginalised people is an essential expression of holiness, to lose people who offer such a conspicuous example of it is to lose much.
The question the book leaves me with is not about the inclusiveness of the community, but about what people are included into. In my understanding, at the heart of Catholic faith has been the conviction that God has acted decisively for all human beings in the life, death and rising of Jesus Christ. The implications of this faith have been spelled out in summary form in the claim that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that God is trinity.
This fundamental belief shapes relationships in the Church and its teaching. It is expressed through symbols of faith in the church. The language of liturgy and the ways of praying provide a matrix within which doubt, hesitation, wonderment and disconcertment can be held. The shared symbols allow a proper tension between what is received and what is individually believed, lived and struggled with.
The reflections in this book generally focus on the tension between these symbols and creeds, and the belief of individuals or the demands of modernity. That in itself is unproblematic. Peter Kennedy himself wants to preserve a proper silence about God and to insist on the limitations of words and language.
But in the reflections that insist on the need for new words, for respect for the mystery of God, it was not clear whether the decisive investment of God in the life of Jesus Christ was an event for which new words needed to be found, or was part of the old words that needed to be superseded. I did not find any clear assertion that in Jesus Christ God has spoken a decisive word into silence, and that this is the heart of Christian faith.
A large question to be left with. And that is the significance of the dispute and the merit of this book.
Andrew HamiltonAndrew Hamilton is the consulting editor for Eureka Street. He also teaches at the United Faculty of Theology in Melbourne.
Peter Kennedy, Martin Flanagan and Michelle Gierck
Peter Kennedy; The Man who Threatened Rome, was launched on Saturday December 5th 2009 at the Uniting Church West End, by journalist Martin Flanagan along with Michele Gierck, publishers Bernadette and Milton Walters, artist Peter Hudson, commentator Paul Collins, singers/songwriters Shane Howard and Robert Perrier and Uncle Des Sandy who gave a welcome to country.
Should you wish to purchase this book then ask for it at your local book store, the publishers are One Day Hill, a Melbourne company. Copies will be sold at all weekend masses or can be requested via this website or by phoning 07 3029 7000.
$30 per book -a portion goes to Micah Projects and St Mary’s Community in Exile.
If you would like to follow this event as reported by the media then follow these links
http://www.abc.net.au/news
http://www.cathnews.com
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/
or the http://www.sunherald.com.au/
read the many comments and give your comment to enable more consideration by all readers and to continue this open dialogue.
