The Catholic Church in Australia is reeling from the announced defection of the young woman who played the role of Mary, the mother of Jesus, during the stations of the cross performance during World Youth Day (WYD) in Sydney, in July last year.She has defected to the Pentecostal Hillsong Church in north-west Sydney.
This comes hard on the heels of the defiant stand against his sacking taken by 71 year-old Father Peter Kennedy at St Mary’s RC Church, South Brisbane.
Father Peter had allowed women to preach from the altar; blessed gay couples; denied the virgin birth; openly declared that the Church was dysfunctional.
The Church sacked him last week, but over a thousand people turned up at St Mary's with banners to support him on Sunday.
His replacement has been announced, but Father Peter won’t go. Father Peter said the priest sent to replace him was ‘a scab’.
A major stand-off, fraught with the likelihood of unlimited bad publicity now confronts the church.
The young woman who played the role of Mary is Marina Dickson, 27. The whole point of the church running WYD in Sydney was to address the rapidly declining interest in Catholicism among Australian youth, especially those attending the many Catholic schools.
Marina Dickson's defection flies in the face of that purpose. It also speaks to the lightweight nature of religious commitment among younger Australians who still experiment with religion, when she said, naively, that the Hillsong Church was about ‘lifestyle, not just somewhere to go on Sunday’.
Australia’s Cardinal George Pell was reduced to saying that ‘at least she is not leaving Jesus Christ.’ But that may only be a matter of time, as the Hillsong Church has a significant turnover of young people. They soon find the entertainment value of religion has its limits, especially when pressure is put on them to tithe.
As to Father Peter’s plight, a letter writer to the Sydney Morning Herald on 20 February, William Lloyd, said it all: “If the sacked priest had been a holocaust-denier or a paedophile, he would still have his job.”
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(Source: NSS)