SUGGESTIONS the Vatican is bullying the Archbishop of Brisbane and the radical Queensland parish of St Mary's South Brisbane are nonsense, according to a senior Catholic archbishop, Mark Coleridge, of Canberra. The administrator of St Mary's, Father Peter Kennedy, has told The Weekend Australian that Rome had put pressure on the Archbishop of Brisbane, John Bathersby, "and the Vatican is a bully."
In an article in Catholic Voice, Archbishop Coleridge said: "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.
He said 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."
Archbishop Coleridge's own 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. But St Mary's rejected the ultimatum. Father Kennedy has threatened that parishioners will occupy the church night and day rather than move out.
St Mary's has caused controversy for invalid baptisms "in the name of the creator, sustainer and liberator of life". Its priests do not wear traditional vestments and sometimes take a back seat in masses, which are often presided over by women.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Disclaimer
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Clerical Whispers’ for any or all of the articles placed here.
The placing of an article hereupon does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
Sotto Voce
(Source: TA)