Well known, shaven-headed, t-shirt wearing, modernist South Brisbane priest, Father Peter Kennedy was recently sacked from his parish.

Why?

His boss, mild-mannered, correctly-vestmented, Archbishop Bathersby, had warned him that he could not tolerate Father Kennedy using non-Catholic Mass liturgies and non-Catholic formulas in his Baptisms — i.e. not mentioning the Holy Trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost — and his “blessing” of so-called homosexual marriages.

Did Father Kennedy leave quietly?

He did not. He started conducting services in a nearby building, in opposition to the Masses being celebrated by the new parish priest who replaced him.

Archbishop Bathersby warned him again of further penalties if he continues his disobedience — the loss of all, or nearly all, his faculties as a priest or even being excommunicated.

Fr Kennedy’s response?

He said threats of punishment were to be expected, because his so-called “St Mary’s-in-Exile” congregation poses a “confrontation to the Church’s patriarchal and hierarchical culture.”

Some people are applauding Father Kennedy as a persecuted “reformer” — calling him “the Mary MacKillop of our day”.  (CathNews.com, May 5 2009)

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Yes, Blessed Mary MacKillop was, in fact, excommunicated by Bishop Lawrence Sheil, from September 1871 to February 1872 . . . but there any similarity ends.

Blessed Mary’s excommunication was never about doctrine — but more about personalities and misunderstandings.

Nobody has ever suggested that Blessed Mary dissented from belief in the Trinity or any Catholic doctrine, or desired non-Catholic forms of worship.

Bishop Sheil himself withdrew her excommunication and it was officially confirmed — including personally by the pope of the day to Blessed Mary herself — that the excommunication had never been valid.

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Blessed Mary and her Sisters always supported the Church having a “patriarchal and hierarchical culture”.

They had no desire to rebel against their bishop or priests.

After the excommunication, Blessed Mary wrote to Father Woods that her attitude throughout was to seek “a calm resignation of myself into the arms of my good God whom I then most lovingly reminded that I was far from feeling rebellious towards my bishop”.

She also said, “They (her Josephite Sisters) have not refused to obey him (the bishop) nor any priest who in his sacred character required anything of them which they could do in accordance with the Rule. But they firmly and respectfully refused any change in the Rule.”

Some priests had been, wrongly, giving Sisters orders that would have meant deviating from their vows before God to obey the original Rules of the Josephite Order. That had led to differences. 

But there were never any differences over matters of Catholic faith and worship.

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So the MacKillop’s-Eye-View of the current Brisbane affair is this:

Father Kennedy is in the wrong.

His performances would have had no support whatever from Blessed Mary MacKillop.

It is Archbishop Bathersby who is in the right.