A
LONG WAY FROM ROME
Edited version published:
Sunday Life (12 April 2009)
He calls the Catholic church “a dysfunctional
family” but does black sheep Father Kennedy – who’s
been sacked and exiled as the priest at Brisbane’s St Mary’s
church – see hope for the resurrection of organised religion in
Australia?
For the past few weeks, it’s been Lent in South Brisbane,
and the local Catholics have been observing the usual customs: replacing
meat with fish; cutting back on alcohol; trying to attend mass more regularly.
But while this period leading up to Easter is usually been observed as
a time of quiet reflection and restraint, recent dramas involving this
suburb’s Catholic community have almost reached New Testament levels
of theatrical intensity.
At first glance, St Mary’s doesn’t
seem like a site for religious warfare: a beige and apricot building
with pigeon crap gently layering its roof. Built in 1892, its history
dates back far enough that Mary McKillop—Australia’s closest
candidate for a saint—taught in St Mary’s original wooden
chapel in 1870, before she was temporarily excommunicated from the Catholic
Church. Her misdemeanour: resisting a bishop’s attempt to control
her order. St Mary’s has a history of attracting rebels it seems.
Now it has become the unlikely epicentre of a long-burning row for the
past few months that goes straight to the Vatican. By the end of last
year, St Mary’s priest—the slow-talking, sharp-thinking 71-year-old
Father Peter Kennedy, who’d been there since 1980—had been
accused of performing non-traditional baptisms, blessing same-sex couples,
keeping a Buddhist statue on the premises, to allowing women to read
at the pulpit, none of which he denies.
Kennedy’s unconventional
services meant he always had a fraught relationship with Brisbane’s
Archbishop John Bathersby, though Bathersby usually turned a blind eye
to Kennedy’s approach. That changed in October last year, when
an orthodox Catholic parishioner attended St Mary’s undercover,
compiled evidence against Kennedy, and sent copies to not only Bathersby,
but each of the Vatican's official congregations, and one to Pope Benedict
himself.
All of this prompted a searing exchange of letters between Kennedy
and Bathersby. Their fight culminated on one bright Sunday in February
where more than 700 people gathered at St Mary’s for mass, spilling
out of the lawn, to hear Kennedy read out the letter Bathersby had sent
him: “I will terminate your appointment as Administrator of St
Mary’s Parish effective Saturday, 21 February 2009 unless you resign
otherwise,” it read. With that, Kennedy was sacked: a move completely
without any precedent in Australia.
Still, Kennedy refused to hand in
the keys to St Mary’s. Embarrassingly, Father Ken Howell—the
replacement priest Bathersby assigned—had no way of getting in.
Former high court judge Ian Callinan was called in to mediate, but Kennedy
refused to attend, since Bathersby made it clear the meetings were only
to determine the practicalities of transition, not the sacking itself.
Finally, in late March, after an epic eight-hour negotiation between
the Catholic Church’s solicitors and St Mary's council, it was
over: Father Kennedy could preside over Easter mass at St Mary’s,
but then he would leave on 19 April. Sitting inside the church on a quiet
Monday, Kennedy says he’s not surprised by the outcome. “Their
solicitor made it clear that if we didn’t move peacefully, then
the Archdiocese would come in at the dead of night and shut the whole
place down,” he says. “Put fences around. Change the locks.
It’s an awful thing to do, but it’s what the Catholic Church
does.”
In light of all the mudslinging, Kennedy describes the
modern-day Catholic Church as a “dysfunctional family”. He
adds that leaving isn’t an option for him. “Everyone was
born into a certain family,” he says. “A mother, a father,
maybe siblings. It’s quite possible that you fell out with one
of your parents, or you might never have gotten along with your siblings.
But it’s still our family.” Running with that analogy, would
that make Father Kennedy the black sheep teenager, whose remarks scandalise
everyone around the family table? He bursts out laughing at the suggestion. “Well
yes!” he says. “That’s right. But when the chips are
down, we’ll stand up and be counted for.”
Worldwide, the
Catholic Church itself estimates that between 2005 and 2006, its number
of baptised followers grew by 1.4 percent, and its authority in Rome
remains strong. In Australia, Catholicism has been since robust since
federation in 1901, when 97 per cent of its population declared themselves
as Christian, a quarter of them Catholics. In 2001, one in five Australians—more
than five million people—identified themselves as Catholic at the
census.
However, Father Kennedy argues that there’s a distinction
between Catholics on paper, and ones who actively practise. According
to him, roughly 50 percent of all Australian Catholics went to mass every
Sunday after World War II; nowadays, it’s only about 10 percent. “The
others have walked away from the church,” he says. “They’re
what I call ‘recovering Catholics’—recovering from
institutional Catholicism.”
In Kennedy’s mind, it’s
that institutional form of Catholicism that’s responsible for the
slew of problems that threatens its survival. He thinks women are alienated
by the church’s hard line on reproductive rights, and wants them
to play an active role in the pulpit. He openly loathes the power structure
of Rome.
“What’s necessary is that the church must become
a democracy,” he says repeatedly, adding that the church’s
monarchy-like structure was only imposed by Constantine in the 4th century. “Three
hundred years before this, the church was very different. It wasn’t
a worldwide church, just small groups of people trying to understand
who Jesus was.”
Another fundamental gripe Kennedy has is the church’s
refusal to express doubt. “People turn to religion for certainty,” he
says. “But there are no certainties, and there are no absolute
truths. But religious people say, ‘Yes, there are absolute truths!’ But
God is ineffable. How could we ever, possibly understand God?” He
quotes a 14th century Muslim mystic who once said, No one knows anything
about God, and those who say they do are just trouble-makers. “And
they are,” he adds firmly.
Amongst its followers, Catholicism is
also undergoing a gloomy period of deep ambivalence. All over the Catholic
world right now, there are what Kennedy calls “spot fires” breaking
out, just like the one at St Mary’s. “The bishops of Germany
have said recently they have lost faith in the Pope,” he says incredulously,
a response to Pope Benedict reversing the excommunication of Holocaust-denying
bishop Richard Williamson. There’s also the ongoing trauma felt
by the widespread sexual abuse of children at the hands of Catholic clergy,
which many feel was dealt with inadequately.
Episodes like these have
left everyday Catholics cold and resentful. After one Sunday morning
Lent service at St Mary’s, one parishioner named Julie—a
stay-at-home mother in her 30s—talked about her personal disappointment
with the direction of the church. “Catholics used to be very progressive,
tolerant and open-minded,” she says. “Now I feel it’s
become really conservative and out of touch.”
For all the rock
and roll hijinks surrounding St Mary’s, you’d half-expect
the church to be a haven for radicals and hippies, but the congregation
is predominantly families like Julie’s, as well as the elderly.
One typical Sunday morning service saw pensioners arrive first, filling
pews that faced one another, rather than the alter itself. Young families
streamed in afterwards, sitting on the floor as though in a friend’s
living room, holding squishy toddlers in laps. In the afternoon, the
crowd was slightly more diverse: folks confined to wheelchairs, some
Indigenous people, a man wearing a shirt that read “Smile If You’re
Gay”, and a young, curious German backpacker who was using St Mary’s
carpark overnight for his camper-van.
But when asked what Catholicism
has to offer the non-religious, Kennedy’s response is so surprising
coming from a priest, it almost floors me. “Catholicism, as it
is today, has nothing to offer,” he says. “In fact, when
people ask me, ‘Should I become a Catholic?’ I say, ‘Why
would you want to?’ and I try to talk them out of it.” He
gives the example of one St Mary’s attendee who wanted to officially
convert to the faith. “And why?” Kennedy asks. “Because
she’s a lesbian.
“Other communities welcome lesbians, but
not like we welcome gay and lesbian people. They feel comfortable here.
We can baptise their children, and they know that people know they’re
lesbians, and people love them to death.” Not surprisingly, Kennedy’s
remarks conflict with Pope Benedict’s recent insistence that homosexuality
was “a destruction of God’s work”.
In Kennedy’s
mind, the people who attend mass at St Mary’s want to become Catholics,
but only in the style of Catholicism put forward here. And the numbers
have only growing during the tensions with Bathersby—the church
has been consistently packed for both morning and afternoon services. “We’re
on the verge of change,” Kennedy says, before acknowledging he’s
getting older.
The stress of the last few months have impacted his health
too: at the height of the exchanges with Bathersby, Kennedy collapsed
in the parish house nearby. “Look, I am hopeful that this community
will have made an impact,” he says. “After all, it’s
only when the church is about to be annihilated that they change.”
All
of this has forced a Catholic community of hundreds into exile. Kennedy
will perform his final mass at St Mary’s on April 19, before moving
his congregation to the more sterile confines of the Trades and Labour
Council building down the road. Instead of being St Mary’s Church,
they’ll call themselves St Mary’s Community In Exile.
As
for the old St Mary’s church, Kennedy wouldn’t be surprised
if hardly anyone attends on that first Sunday with replacement priest,
Father Ken Howell. “Howell will say mass,” Kennedy says, “but
I don’t think he’ll have many people, unless he has a rent-a-crowd.
In time, they’ll have to close it down.”
When asked whether
the past few months have exhausted him, the 71-year-old says, “I’m
a bit tired, but not exhausted. I was thrust onto the national stage
in a sense, and you have all these emails and letters. You do get some
negative ones, but overwhelmingly, you know what you’re saying,
or trying to articulate, has enormous support. That encourages you. Actually,
it’s more than encouraging.” He pauses to think. “What’s
the word? Not enlightening. Not encouraging. It’s energising.”
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