Rome has put pressure on Brisbane Archbishop John Bathersby and "the Vatican is a bully," St Mary's South Brisbane administrator, Fr Peter Kennedy is quoted as saying. The Weekend Australian quotes Fr Kennedy as making the comments.
But an article in Canberra journal, The Catholic Voice, that The Weekend Australian attributes to Archbishop Mark Coleridge, says that "if excommunication does come in Brisbane, which God forbid, it will come not as some ham fisted act of tyranny by Rome, but as the sorrowful recognition that a community has placed itself outside the communion of the Church by open and persistent defiance of the Church's doctrine and discipline and a refusal to engage in any real dialogue."
Archbishop Coleridge, a former personal chaplain to Pope John Paul II, was an auxiliary bishop in Melbourne before being promoted to Archbishop of Canberra in 2006.
The unsigned Catholic Voice article says the "abandonment of the Church's doctrine and discipline such as we have seen at St Mary's" defied Church authority.
"For a pope or bishop to see it in any other way would be dereliction of duty, since it is the God given task of the Pope and the bishops to safeguard and promote the unity of the universal Church by encouraging an ever deeper faithfulness to the doctrine and discipline of the Church for the sake of mission," the article says.
Canberra auxiliary, Bishop Patrick Power, recently praised St Mary's as a haven for those excluded from their own parish, Catholic or otherwise.
Archbishop Bathersby gave St Mary's until December 1 to conform to Church standards.
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(Source: CTHN)