CARDINAL PELL AND THE BISHOP PROBLEM: Blessed Mary MacKillop, pray for us.
Australia’s Cardinal George Pell is in the news:
(1) His new book: “Test Everything: Hold Fast to What is Good”, was launched last Friday.
(2) He is rumoured soon to become Prefect of the Pope’s Congregation for Bishops in Rome – a tricky job.
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The world’s 5000 bishops are getting a bad press – much of it probably deserved.
In March 2010, Pope Benedict, in an “open letter”, condemned Irish bishops for “grave errors of judgement”.
He called for “decisive action . . . this must arise, first and foremost, from your own self-examination, inner purification and spiritual renewal.”
Cardinal Pell himself has said similar things.
At last week’s book-launching, he claimed, “I have said many times that Catholic ‘lite’ doesn’t work – there is very little cut-price Christianity and there’s no cost-free Christianity.”
But is Cardinal Pell, himself, willing to pay the cost?
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The Australian Catholic Church’s greatest asset is the admiration ordinary Australians have for Blessed Mary MacKillop.
They are waiting for the Church to reflect her Christ-likeness.
They want the Church to stop painting Blessed Mary as a “rebel”, “feminist”, “multiculturalist” etc. . .
THEY SUSPECT THAT SHE WAS NOTHING OF THE KIND.
Exactly the opposite, in fact.
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Meanwhile we have an emergency on our hands.
Australia’s step-fathers, uncles, boyfriends of single mums — school teachers, sport coaches, television programmers — are sexually corrupting children for fun and profit, day and night, all around us.
Priests are only a tiny fraction of the problem.
To create a pure society, respectful of the innocence of the young, is not God calling us to turn to our greatest Australian — the REAL Mary MacKillop?
The Church’s bureaucracy — perhaps even her own Josephite Order — might angrily resist such a move.
Cardinal Pell knows this. Could he lack the fortitude to trigger off a culture-war over our Saint?
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To discover the truth about Mary MacKillop — her relevance to today’s spiritual chaos — do NOT read the books about her in Church bookshops.
They are part of an industry of betrayal.
Would it be immodest of me to suggest that you would do better to read my book, purchasable online via this site?

