Catholic church that opens its arms to gays divides parishioners

THREE or four times this year, groups of up to 50 Catholics have gathered to pray outside St Joseph's in Newtown during its gay-friendly Mass.

Sometimes they stop worshippers as they leave the service, demanding to know if they took Communion. If confronted by the parish priest, Father Peter Maher, they recite the rosary.

On other occasions, one or two enter the church mid-service, and watch from the back.

A parishioner, Paul Harris, said the incidents affected how other parishioners looked at newcomers.

''Any strangers that come along you greet them and welcome them and hope they're there for the right reasons,'' he said.

 

Those who are not have been dubbed the ''temple police'' - orthodox Catholics, either individuals or groups, who report what they see as liturgical abuses to bishops, or to Rome.

Not that all complaints make it to the Vatican. When St Joseph's began sponsoring a school in Pakistan, it was reported to ASIO.

But last month these often anonymous upholders of orthodoxy claimed what might be their biggest scalp when the bishop of Toowoomba, William Morris, was forced to resign, ostensibly for raising issues such as female or married priests.

Father Hal Ranger, an associate pastor at St Patrick's Cathedral in Toowoomba, said most of the diocese was still hurt by the loss of the bishop.

But he believed the influence of this militant minority was experiencing a resurgence in the Australian church, which was preparing to introduce a more literal translation of the Latin Mass that some priests had vowed they would not use.

''It's pretty much what the Scribes and Pharisees were doing to Jesus,'' he said. ''They were saying 'here is the law book … you have just cured a person on the Sabbath day, and the book says you shouldn't'."

A former Sydney barrister, Paul Brazier, who died recently, revealed how effective complaints could be when co-ordinated.

Through his now-defunct Australian Catholic Advocacy Centre, in the 1990s he developed a checklist that could be tucked discreetly into a prayer book to track liturgical transgressions in a Mass and used for statutory declarations to be sent to authorities.

These complaints highlighted the ''tolerance'' of liturgical laxity in the Australian church, which was addressed in a dressing down from the Vatican called the "Statement of Conclusions" in 1998.

Rome is still perceived to be suspicious about liberal elements in dioceses such as Toowoomba.

"Little wonder," wrote Mr Brazier's former colleague Michael Baker in an online tribute, "that no bishop attended his funeral at St Mary's Cathedral" last month.

But Richard Stokes, the parishioner most often associated with the term ''temple police'', told the Herald they were ''a figment of the imagination of those priests who may consider that they are a target, for whatever reason''.

Mr Stokes, who has visited about a dozen parishes to attend Mass every day, said he did not know anyone who travelled around churches looking for trouble.

But his evidence proved instrumental in the dismissal of Father Peter Kennedy as the parish priest of St Mary's in south Brisbane in 2009.

A month after St Mary's refused to hold daily Mass if he attended, he was banned from St Eugene's in north Brisbane by its assistant priest.

"I gathered from his harangue that my 'offence' was 'writing to the archbishop'. The only other words I could follow were 'stupid letter', 'nonsense', 'ridiculous', 'rubbish' and so on," he wrote in the orthodox newsletter Into the Deep.

This Victorian-based newsletter for ''orthodox Catholics who have grown tired of seeing the church we love being abused and neglected by those within it, and have begun to speak out,'' details the successes, frustrations and observations of others such as Mr Stokes.

Such as this about some colourful banners in a regional NSW cathedral: "Either there's a new rainbow liturgical season that I haven't heard of yet, or there's a strong 'gay pride' thing happening in Bathurst diocese.''

The editor of Into the Deep, Janet Kingman, used the analogy of reporting a teacher who instructs students in incorrect spelling and grammar, deeming it unimportant.

"The real question is, how can a teacher be teaching the wrong stuff? And how can the principal tolerate it, or encourage it?"

But Father Maher said he could justify St Joseph's liturgy to any bishop, though there was no way to engage with the anonymous people standing outside who thought ministering to gay and lesbian Catholics was sacrilegious.

"That is obviously horrendously incorrect, but who corrects them?"

As for the new Mass, St Joseph's would use it when it came in in November, Father Maher said.

As will Father Ranger in Toowoomba, although he said he would deviate from it should the circumstances warrant.

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