St Mary's

From HuffingtonPost.co.uk by Terry Sanderson Posted: 11/02/2013 12:42

And so we are to see an end to the rule of Joseph Ratzinger at the Vatican. At such times it is usual to break out into a chorus of Ding, Dong the Witch is Dead from The Wizard of Oz, but we fear that Ratzinger’s successor will be as bad, if not worse, than the man himself.

Ratzinger has ruled for decades at the Vatican, even before he became Pope. He was chief inquisitor under the rule of John Paul II, and as the old Pope’s health failed, Ratzinger ramped up the reactionary agenda. (Not that John Paul II was any slouch at authoritarianism and bigotry).

TITLE: The Pope’s war: why Ratzinger’s Crusade has imperiled the Church and How it can be Saved

AUTHOR: Matthew Fox

I first encountered Matthew Fox in the early 1990s when I read The Coming of the Cosmic Christ. He was then a priest within the Catholic Dominican Order, and already a prolific theologian whose special interest was named “Creation Spirituality” (an amalgam of mysticism, liberation theology and eco-theology) . Personally, I was greatly enriched by his writings. 

CHAIRPERSONS REPORT

Thank you for attending the third AGM for St Mary’s Community Ltd. St Marys continues to be a place where some of our aspirations for a better world find expression. A place where we can affirm the sacredness and interconnectedness of all life, the inherent and equal worth of all persons, and the supremacy of love expressed actively in our lives as compassion and social justice and a deep care for the earth and the poor and oppressed. It continues to be a place where there is a willingness to question tradition and where people who have experienced the isolation resulting from their spiritual growth or faith development in a traditional church setting can connect with others who have had similar experiences yet continue on the quest for meaning.

Sherla Quonoey  from the Redfern community in Sydney made the aboriginal patch work cloth on our table.

This Sunday, October 14 2012, our Sunday morning mass will be under the old fig tree near the Dutton Park Men’s Shed, T.J. Doyle Memorial Drive, Dutton Park (off Gladstone Road).

There will be no other masses this Sunday, for further information see Connections Page

http://tedxcanberra.org/talks/peter-kennedy-what-you-do-is-more-important-than-what-you-believe/

I had the opportunity of meeting Richard Holloway at the 2012 Brisbane Writers Festival held at the State Library of Queensland. This meeting followed his talk titled “Leaving the Church”.
When I told him I was from St Marys in Exile South Brisbane he said “Let me give you a big hug”.
He spoke so glowingly about our stance and how he admired what we did.

From Sofia – the journal of the sea of Faith network UK December 2011

Troublesome Priest

There are two St Mary’s churches in Inner Brisbane suburbs on the Southside of the river.

Malcolm Turnbull July 07, 2012

For many years, I gave little thought to the question of whether the law should describe same-sex couples’ unions as a marriage. I took the view that the marriage issue would be a major obstacle to achieving the more substantive reforms in terms of equality of treatment – and I think I was right in that respect. The HREOC [now Australian Human Rights Commission] recommendations that were legislated in 2008 would not have been passed had marriage been part of the package.

WHEN my aunt was dying in hospital in the late 1990s, she asked to see a priest. The hospital’s Catholic chaplain was away sick, so I knocked on the door of a nearby, inner-suburban presbytery.

The kind priest who answered was unable to help me himself but he made a couple of useful suggestions. As I thanked him and turned to leave he added, “But whatever you do, don’t go near the cathedral.” The implication was that my aunt deserved tender compassion, not judgmental nonsense: it was the late 1990s, Archbishop George Pell was in charge at the cathedral and had become emblematic of a type of Catholicism many Australian Catholics wanted nothing to do with.