Two weeks ago, 750 guests gathered at a dinner in Sydney Town Hall, supposedly in honour of Mother Mary MacKillop, soon to be made Australia’s first saint.

It was a fund-raiser — plus an opportunity for Prime Minister Gillard to make a speech:

“For all Australians who share a country in which we put freedom of religion into action everyday by respecting each other’s beliefs, this is a time of celebration . . . whether you believe Mary MacKillop’s a saint, whether you believe she was a great Australian pioneer providing education to kids who needed it, whether you believe both – this is a moment to celebrate.”

Then she promised $1.5 million to assist the canonisation celebrations.

Then everybody got down to eating.

Perhaps some of the guests gave the Gillard a clap.

One thing is for sure, if Blessed Mary MacKillop had been present in visible form, she would NOT have clapped.

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Even in her own lifetime, people tried to domesticate Blessed Mary and treat her as a “pioneer” or something.

Priests and others made so many demands on the Sisters that it threatened to interfere with their regular prayers. Mother Mary complained to one such: “Are we not Religious first — Teachers second?”

The original “Rule” of the Josephite Order spelt out the proper priorities of the Sisters:

“Those persons who enter religion do so first of all for the salvation of their own souls . . . the spirit of the Institute is a spirit of Poverty and Prayer.”

The same point was made by Pope John Paul II at Mother Mary’s beatification in 1995:

“Dear friends: Mary MacKillop cannot be understood without reference to her religious vocation.

“. . . Mother Mary of the Cross did not just free people from ignorance through schooling, or alleviate their suffering through compassionate care. She worked to satisfy their deeper, though sometimes unconscious, longing for ‘the unsearchable riches of Christ’.”

* * *

Australians don’t need yet another “pioneer” or “celebrity” to fuss over.

They need somebody different — somebody whose mind was totally God-centred.

That’s what Blessed Mary MacKillop offers.

But will we ever hear about that from the modern-day Josephite Order?

They seem happy to trivialise her as a dinkum Aussie or some kind of glorified social worker.

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