From Thriving to Dying

In keeping with the tradition of this blog, I am commenting on something quite some time after it was current news. The article that follows was published on the Guardian website on January 11th, almost six months ago. It gives an update on Fr. Peter Kennedy, a heretical Catholic priest and the short-lived cult he formed at St. Mary’s Parish in South Brisbane. His actions were so egregious that Rome was forced to act on it which is an achievement given the abuses tolerated within the church over the last fifty years especially. A linked article headlined ‘Our beloved heretic’: Rebel priest going strong‘ from the same year he was dismissed in 2009 summarises the problem quite openly:

Fr Kennedy initially defied his sacking and continued to conduct weekly masses in which he would contradict core tenets of the faith – he allowed women to preach, blessed gay couples, performed illegitimate baptisms and questioned the divinity of Jesus.

This is not even the full extent of his departures with the faith and morals of the Catholic Church. He is in every sense (and by his own words), an apostate. However this open apostate still believed he should have been able to remain within the Church though rejecting the core tenets. To try to explain how irrational and unreasonable this expectation is to him or his supporters is a waste of time — they think it should be so and so it should be so. 

Happily, the most recent update on the parish some fifteen years later shows that his heretical cult has dwindled to almost nothing and will likely die with him.

The article which I will be drawing from is titled, ‘Ageing in exile: the greatest threat facing Brisbane’s rebel Catholic parish‘ and I will be responding to most of what is written. The article is interesting in that it is very positive but can’t help but reveal what a failure his “parish” has become and how pathetic his remaining adherents look.

This picture shows everything you need to know.

Fifteen years ago, 700 parishioners followed their renegade priest out of St Mary’s. The congregation survived relocation and lack of acceptance – but it is age that might finish it off

It was barren from the outset so it is not surprise that it is now dying. Kennedy’s “church” offered nothing that the secular world isn’t already awash with. There is no reason why younger generations would want to share fellowship with old, narcissistic boomers when they can get the same message everywhere else and without the religious trimmings.

They called him “the man who threatened Rome” and “our beloved heretic”. When Brisbane Catholic priest Peter Kennedy was sacked in February 2009, banned from serving the church anywhere in the world, it caused an international scandal.

Notice how the way it is framed as controversial and scandalous for the church to seek to remove a priest that quite openly doesn’t adhere to church teachings? Much like Kennedy’s beliefs, this is very much an inversion of the truth.

His crime wasn’t committing or covering up systematic child sexual abuse, backing autocrats, or fraud. Under Kennedy’s rule, women could preach, the clergy did not wear vestments, they blessed LGBTQ+ marriages and amended the liturgy, the ritual of worship, to better reflect the community he served. For this he was threatened with excommunication.

More rhetorical trickery here with the writer trying to imply that the church chose to focus on Kennedy exclusively and not more serious scandals. This is all to obscure the fact that Kennedy was openly against the universal teachings of the Catholic Church.

“They’ve got a product for selling and we’re a threat to it,” his fellow renegade priest Terry Fitzpatrick says.

“That’s why they kicked us out, because we were threatening the business model.”

Given the attendance it apparently once enjoyed and assuming the attendees were as generous with their money as they are with their words, they should have been doing very good business for the church. More empty rhetoric. 

About 700 parishioners left St Mary’s Catholic church, going into exile at the Trades and Labour Council building one block down the road. They’re still there, 15 years later.

But after a decade and a half in the wilderness, the rebel church is facing perhaps its biggest challenge yet – ageing.

This high number of attendees is often repeated but likely began to dwindle by the hundreds as soon as the media attention died down. I am told second-hand that some of the regular attendees included those in leadership within Brisbane Catholic Education which if true, does explain a lot about their failure to provide a genuine Catholic education. There is one former school principal mentioned below that gives credence to this.

Notice also here that the “church” was given space in the ‘Trades and Labour Council building’ which is no doubt because it shares the same politics. This explains part of the problem as nothing Kennedy preached had anything in common with religion. It was just left-wing politics wrapped in a pseudo-liturgical form — something totally superfluous to a worldview that already despises religion.

With numbers dwindling, Kennedy long retired and his pupil, Fitzpatrick, now 67 and set to retire this year without a clear replacement, the former priest believes the flock’s days are numbered.

Here the false shepherd shows how little he cares for the flock he led out of the promised land.

Most of the church-goers the Guardian spoke to either flat-out don’t believe in God at all, or have a more complex view of the beyond, including both Fitzpatrick and Kennedy. Most don’t call themselves Catholic; one described herself as a “Catholic alumnus”. So why does a person who doesn’t believe in God attend a Catholic-style church?

Why indeed? It shouldn’t be hard to work out why something this empty is now dying. 

The traditional church is about an authority making an occasion holy, Fitzpatrick says. But at St Mary’s “it’s because we come together it happens, not because this priest comes in and says the magic words”.

This kind of talk suggests the attendees were unlikely to have ever had any real belief in Christ and his Church in the first place. 

The average age is above 60. One member of the parish, Barbie, who turned out in a fine white dress with gold inlay, stood up to declare she had turned 90 a few days before. She was once a cloistered nun, a member of the Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, who silently pray in shifts around the clock, every day. Others are former religious leaders themselves.

As can be inferred from the picture above and others within the article, this is a group of bitter old boomers and mostly always was.

“One of the things about this community is that people have lived very rich and full and challenging lives, and many have experienced great hardship, great grief,” Clifford says.

“Whereas in our institutional church, you have a limited richness … you might have a bishop and three priests. You’ve got a very limited perspective coming from very limited lives.”

There’s a celebrated story from the days before exile. The silence and peace of midnight mass was disturbed when a homeless man entered. Two parishioners made to move him on. Fitzpatrick or Kennedy stopped them. He was welcome, just like everyone.

They meant it too. Members of the church founded Micah Projects, now Brisbane’s largest homeless not-for-profit.

The presumption here is astounding. What do they know about the lives of others within the church? Does one having the title of “bishop” or “priest” mean they’ve had the same experience of life and one that is no different to their parishioners? Also too the implication that this is the only “church” doing anything about those in need and that other churches would actually turn away a homeless person whereas Kennedy wouldn’t. All demonstrably false.

At one point St Mary’s was one of the best-attended churches in Brisbane.

I have to really wonder now if this seven hundred number was ever repeated in more than one census. 

There are many theories about why numbers have dwindled in the years since. And it’s far from the only church facing the problem. Only about 8.2% of Australian Catholics attend church on a given weekend, a rate barely higher than overall church attendances in the country.

The article provides all the information necessary to draw a conclusion.

The Guardian heard stories of parishioners who’d struggled with funerals and baptisms as a result of attending St Mary’s, even before they left the fold. One says a member of her family had been baptised twice in order to receive priority enrolment at Catholic system schools because Fitzpatrick’s amended version didn’t count. (His marriages, though, are recognised under Australian law).

Here again is what can only be wilful ignorance. If you depart from the teachings of the Catholic Church, you can not simultaneously expect to still be part of it because their real-estate is more convenient for you. Kennedy’s baptisms did not use the correct wording and were thus invalid. This means that this family member had to be baptised properly and not “twice” as claimed.

“Teachers within the Catholic system have been told, ‘We prefer you not to go to that church’, actually, ‘We encourage you not to go to that church’ if you are looking for an ongoing career,” Fitzpatrick says.

I have strong doubts about this. This sounds more like something they were told to report on behalf of the Archdiocese, which they did but had no intention to actually enforce. From my direct experience I can confidently state that there are very, very few practicing Catholics working in Catholic Education. 

There have been attempts to reconcile, none of them successful.

Just last year, St Mary’s was invited to use a church building in Brisbane’s north-west by the Jesuits and held a few Sunday services there in October.

Several members of the St Mary’s community told the Guardian that all was set for the group to move to the inner Brisbane suburb of Auchenflower until a meeting between the Jesuits and the archbishop.

According to church members, the final decision to refuse St Mary’s was on the basis that it was “consecrated ground” – though it will allow others to use church ground, even Protestants. Many saw it as suggesting theirs wasn’t truly a church.

In a statement the a spokesperson for the archbishop of Brisbane, Mark Coleridge, said he was not involved in the matter and declined to comment further.

Who else but the Jesuits — the religious order now almost synonymous with heresy! 

“It says to us that we’re sort of contaminated and we would contaminate a site, a consecrated space, if we were there,” Fitzpatrick says.

“And I think that’s the way our mob saw it as well. We’re unholy.”

Yes, you are.

Parishioner Madonna Treschman says “they wouldn’t want us because we’re renegades”.

Exactly. Would you let an out and proud devourer of animal flesh join a vegan club?

“What it is, it’s fear. It’s fear that if we come in there, their mob might go we like your liturgy. We don’t like this other liturgy,” Fitzpatrick says.

No. The same thing that already happened would happen again. 

In the heady decades of Catholic reform after the second Vatican council, St Mary’s in Exile didn’t seem so radical.

Schools and seminarians were fiddling with the liturgy to make it more relevant – just like the pope was.

But under popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, the movement was “crushed”, as the church swung back to the right, Fitzpatrick says.

The Second Vatican Council is often used as a justification for all sorts of novelties though seldom with reference to any of the actual documents from the council. I’m not an expert but I know enough to know that none of these documents support what Kennedy and the heretic’s apprentice have done. None of this is a political left/right issue. There is also someone who was pope for over ten of the fifteen years this boomer cult has existed that is not mentioned and who most certainly couldn’t be described as “right-wing”.

On Fitzpatrick’s LinkedIn page, he lists his profession as a “spiritual animator” and “community worker”. Since Kennedy retired in 2020 he’s been the closest St Mary’s had to a priest.

He will retire from both those positions later this year. He hopes it won’t spell the end, gradually phasing out his involvement and handing over to the church as a self-governing institution.

It was mentioned earlier that Fitzpatrick is 67 which is closer to middle-age among the clergy. Pope Leo IV turns 70 this year and he is considered relatively young. What he also makes clear here is that he doesn’t even believe his “church” needs a “priest”.

But Kennedy thinks otherwise. He thinks the whole church will “just retire” without “crying or weeping or gnashing of teeth”.

“It’s going to slowly die, it’s happening now. It’s happened the last few years. We’ve got an ageing population. I mean, there are people in their 60s, 70s, 80s. Why do you want to go to church when you’re in your 70s and 80s?” Kennedy says.

Here Kennedy displays not only a complete lack of faith but total indifference to the sheep he’s led astray. That he also believes their won’t be any “crying or weeping or gnashing of teach” or divine consequences for all this goes well beyond presumption. And one would think that old age would make one more and not less conscious of the eternity that follows death. Given the obstinacy of his words, he must really hope there is no Divine Judgement awaiting him.

If the church does finally fade away, does that mean the Catholic church wins?

“Well yes and no,” Fitzpatrick says.

“No, in the fact that we were able to maintain and be a vibrant community for at least 15 years or whatever time it takes. That’s been enormously meaningful and bought a lot of life and inspiration to people.”

The reform movement would still exist in Catholic school communities – and the minds of many.

“It didn’t win in that sense,” Fitzpatrick says.

“But in terms of us ceasing to exist, the church would prefer us not to exist, because it challenges their reason that they have to change. Our presence has always continued to challenge their inability to change and transform. That they weren’t prepared to offer us hospitality was symbol of that.”

Here they are explicitly reveal they’ve set themselves in opposition to the Catholic Church and still have the temerity to complain that they’re not allowed to be part of it. The only way to please them it seems would be to let them do whatever they want on church property with no oversight whatsoever.

This cult won’t survive its leader and is already nothing but an old, pathetic group meeting in a decaying office building. In contrast, there are many parishes within the same city and around the world with large, young and faithful communities. Who is really out of touch with the modern world?

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