Sometime in the next 24 hours Pope Benedict will announce Mary MacKillop’s recognition as officiallybeing a Catholic saint.

The formal canonisation ceremony will be later this year.

Then what?

Will Australians then suddenly change their ways and start living by the principles which Mary MacKillop lived by?

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What principles did Mary MacKillop live by?

(1) Mary MacKillop believed in poverty — always ensuring that she had as little of this world’s goods as humanly possible.

Will we copy that?

(2) Mary MacKillop opposed government funding of Catholic schools.

She raised money, instead, by begging. All her nuns, including herself, begged — both in the streets and door-to-door.

Today’s church schools accept government money. Catholic teachers demand pay equal to government teachers.

(3) Mary MacKillop believed in obedience — expecting her Sisters to give absolute submission to the Rule of their Order, and to herself as their Superior.

Do Catholics today obediently submit to, and live by, Church teachings — or only to those teachings compatible with their worldly lifestyle?

(4) Mary MacKillop believed that God wants everybody to be a Catholic.

She requested prayers for her friends and relatives who weren’t Catholic, that they should convert.

So-called “ecumenism”, popular in today’s Catholic Church – the notion that God is happy with any religion so long as we’re sincere — was unknown to her.

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So why is Mary MacKillop popular with Australians — most of whom have no intention whatever of living as she did?

We think we like her because we have created a FAKE Mary MacKillop.

A “feminist”, a “rebel” — that’s what we like to think she was.

But she wasn’t.

The “Mary MacKillop” we admire is a fraud of our own invention.

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Do you want to learn what Mary MacKillop was really like, and to seek after God in her spiritual footsteps?

Then read about her — study what she herself actually said, wrote and did.

Don’t read just any old book about her, or you’ll end up misinformed.

What you need is a book about the REAL Mary MacKillop.