St Mary's South Brisbane administrator, Fr Peter Kennedy, says that if the parish is excluded from the Catholic Church, it will move to another site offered by the Queensland Trades and Labour Council. "The reality is that, if we are excluded from this church, the Trades and Labor Council have already offered us their place just down the road," Fr Kennedy said.
"I will continue. Our community will continue down there. We get 800 to 900 people coming every week. It's a vibrant, alive Mass with people from all over the city."
Brisbane Archbishop John Bathersby accused the parish of operating outside the accepted practices of the Roman Catholic Church and encouraged Father Kennedy to fall in line or face closure.
The parishioners responded to the accusations but, in a follow-up letter to Father Kennedy, dated December 22 Archbishop Bathersby said: "St Mary's has not yet adequately given proof of its communion with the Archdiocese of Brisbane and the Roman Catholic Church."
Archbishop Bathersby said that he would make a definitive statement on the fate of the parish later this month.
"We don't know what the Archbishop will do," he said.
"But he's not very hopeful. He did say he would set in train a formal process. That doesn't necessarily mean that he will throw us out of here. "Most of the people who come here are what we call 'recovering Catholics'.
"They've left their traditional parishes. If St Mary's closes down, they won't go back." Fr Kennedy said that at the end of the World War II, 50 percent of Catholics went to Mass every Sunday, but "now, in this particular diocese, 13 percent go to Mass every Sunday".
"If the Church doesn't come to terms with the fact that the Church has to operate within a liberal democracy, while it continues to act like a monarchy where all power is invested in the leadership of the Pope, then there's no hope, we'll be down to 3 percent."
Asked what Jesus Christ would make of the controversy, Fr Kennedy replied: "Well, Jesus always stood with the poor, the broken and the oppressed. Jesus was not a Christian. He was a Jew. And he certainly wasn't a Catholic and he didn't start the Catholic Church. He didn't start any church.
"Jesus railed against the religious authority of his day, the people who liked to be in the important places, with status and power and all that."
Fr Kennedy described the Catholic Church as being "caught in doctrine and dogma still". "I understand where the Archbishop is coming from," he said.
"We have a different concept of 'church'. Nevertheless, because he does what Rome says should be done, he expects me to do what he says should be done. I can't do that because I would be doing violence to my conscience; to my understanding of what the Church is about."
Fr Kennedy described leadership selection in the Catholic Church as "a very incestuous process and it starts from Rome," adding it would never change "until the people regain the right to elect their bishops."
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(Source: CTHN)