Pericles
Suppose that Soofworth is a franchise whose motto is The Fresh Foods People, whem in fact most of its stores sell rotten food.
You are one of the exceptions and do sell fresh food, and have the
temerity to criticise Head Office. Head Office retaliates and tries to close you down.What do you do?
Do you meekly submit or do you defy Head Office?

Unfortunately , for Father Kennedy at least, if we are to live in an ordered society, there must be rules. In this case it is the rules of the Catholic Church with which he must abide if he is to remain a member. As someone has pointed out previously, the CC is a theocratic organisation and any change in the rules can only come from above. (By "Above", I am not referring to heaven or God, only those who would purport to represent same.) That is not to say that those below should not strive to change the minds of those above, but they should not hold their breath whilst waiting for a change.

If the good Father wishes to continue doing his good work, in the same manner as he has done previously, he really has no choice but to shift camp to some other venue where he may be able to operate under a different set of rules, not under the auspices of the Catholic Church. I sympathise with his dilemma, but his bishop or even Cardinal Pell have no room to move in any other way. Them's the rules.

David

George,
As we have moved to a secular government and society, I can happily accept your defence of an institution, quite simply because as an organisation (and this can and should apply to many other contibutors here also), the Catholic Church doesn't pose (or at least certainly shouldn’t) any real threat. This applies to any other religious organisation. Thank God, and under a secular ‘authority’, any exception/s to the ‘rule' are acknowledged and importantly, acted upon.

Pericles makes an interesting analogy with regard to brand name and packaging – i.e. if you don’t like the Catholic ‘brand’, simply don’t 'shop' there. Pericles and many others profess to not only dislike the ‘brand’ but also the ‘product’. St. Mary’s may also be a Church or ‘product’ that many dislike (or hate) – but many 'love' this Church, afterall, parishioners are able to sit anywhere they like, including on the altar, communion is freely given to practicing homosexuals, open acknowledgement is given to the traditional owners of the land on which the church is built and the homeless are allowed to sleep in the church when not in use. Kennedy openly calls some church leaders power hungry and bigoted, Muslims and Jews are welcomed into the church and are allowed to participate in the church and invited to Mass (communion) - where all three religions combine to worship the God of Abraham and Isaac. I guess Kennedy upsets more than just one religious ‘brand’. Yes.. it is all rather challenging and it certatinly ‘informs’ my conscience at a level lying well beneath that of officialdom.

Ironically, Father Kennendy, by also saying, "there are many paths to God, not just through the Roman Church" incensed one Parishioner to the point of mistaking the image of a praying monk, in St Mary’s, for a statue of Buddha. It does cause one to reflect, no matter the 'packaging', people will generally only ‘open it’ in order to find their own content (or perhaps in reality, their true lack of substance).

So, taking all into account, the controversy doesn't surprise me at all.

Please don't invent stuff, relda.

>>Pericles and many others profess to not only dislike the ‘brand’ but also the ‘product’<<

Only insofar as I exclude it from my personal life. I have absolutely nothing at all against the "product", whether you are referring to religion in general or Christianity in particular.

As for the brand, I only object when it is used for purposes that infringe upon those freedoms that I personally hold to be important, or as a weapon to hold people in fear or with which to foment hatred against others.

But once again, I do not "dislike" the brands or the products per se. I have seen them do a lot of good for some people, I just don't see myself as one of them.

With that small quibble aside, I entirely agree with your observations.

Pericles,
I’m certainly glad we can come to an entire agreement on the observations I've made previously. But, as you’re a stickler in correcting the misconceptions of others – and enjoy their roasting (and both, might I add, are rather appropriate to this forum), I too have a slight quibble.

From you last post : “…I have absolutely nothing at all against the "product", whether you are referring to religion in general or Christianity in particular.” does not quite stack up with your recent, “..I have found Hillsong folk to display some of the least objectionable traits of any brand of Christianity. Right up there with the Salvos, in fact.” The “...least objectionable traits of any brand of Christianity” really does bear direct contradiction to saying that you “have absolutely nothing at all against [it]”

A minor quibble I know… because, I imagine, we both hold high admiration for freedom, and also as something tantamount for our sense of well-being. And, does our real freedom come, not so much from within our sense of modernity - with the ability to do what we like, but does it come in the ethical sense, with the ability to do what we should? Spinoza argued that all human behaviour is explicable by causal laws (genetic determinism). Karl Marx claimed history was made by ‘material’, specifically economic, factors. Sigmund Freud contended that actions are the result of unconscious and irrational drives, the chief of which relate to the early years of childhood, especially the Oedipus complex. All three ‘arguments’, in reality, deny freedom – where, ultimately, we can neither ‘choose’ to do what we ‘like’ or do as we ‘should’.

Liberty is not a given of the human situation. As with art, literature, music and poetry, libertry is a distinctive achievement of the spirit. The training, discipline and apprenticeship, demanded in its achievement, are often forgotten.

Hi Gary,
While agree with Gramsci's analysis of the Catholic Church I believe you have misaligned it in the context of St Mary's. St Mary's does not represent the intellectual traditiion within the church, far from it. In my dealings with St Mary's over the last twenty years there has been a lack of intellectualism in this community, so much so that I am yet to find a left-wing catholic theologian or philosopher comfortable with the mish mash of ritual that is practiced at St Mary's. St Mary's represents a striving peasantry (only in the sense of Gramsci's analysis as most attendees are University educated but not in Religion), lacking the intellectual rigor that becomes obvious in their rituals. I have to admit that I have had to remove myself from baptisms in the church in the past because as a catholic intellectual and a student of Aboriginal Religion I was offended by their lack of respect to both traditions.
This is not entirely the fault of St Mary's but more to do with the Churches complete disinterest in educating its laity.
A better analysis of this situation would be a use of Raymond Williams' understanding of the split between culture and society best explained in his book of the same name and further developed in his book The Long Revolution after he read Gramsci.
St Mary's has strived to reverse the trend in modern capitalism to bifurcate Culture from Society by experimenting with its liturgy to make it an expression of the the thoughts, desires, anxieties of a left leaning catholic community in urban Australia. Its only fault has been its lack of understanding the depth of its own subaltern tradition within catholicism. Perhaps the Universal Church could be a little more understanding and help this little community to understand its own tradition rather than acting in such an imperious way