Come one, come all

ROME MUST GO – ST MARY’S STAYS - Workers Bush Telegraph

The Courier Mail claimed that having an "estimated" 1500 people turn up at Mass with Peter Kennedy last weekend "may have dealt a blow" to the Archbishop's plans to remove the priest from the parish.

Apart from mild curiosity about the accuracy of that count (and noting that not many of them hung around for the afternoon's "rally"), it's worth pointing out that Peter Kennedy has not been shy about drumming up support from all quarters.

Have a look at the post above that appeared last week on Worker's Bush Telegraph, a website that seems devoted to things like organising protests against Starbucks, unconditional support for Hamas, etc.

The post is not by Kennedy, but he takes the opportunity in comments to invite everyone to come last Sunday, and "to bring all your friends and neighbours." (Religious affiliation is clearly optional.)

The comments are actually worth reading for the contribution of John T, who appears to be a local activist type (probably aboriginal?) who has some major issues as to why many people attend St Marys. It's worth pasting a big slab of it here:

I cannot understand why radicals and intellectuals have totally bought into this bullshit that St. Mary’s does such good work with the poor and oppressed, a narrative repeated in tonights 7.30 report as a key element of the church.

On Saturdays and Sundays a travelling show comes into South Brisbane. Like ants, the St. Mary’s congregation come from all over south east Queensland to have a special experience with each other and then they return to their communities. Hardly any of them are locals who are likeley to run into the poor and oppressed at the shop or have them knocking on their door asking for a cup of sugar.

These outsiders administer the biggest welfare agency in Brisbane, not just South Brisbane, that deals with homelessness. Micah is a government funded organisation that operates within government policies and programs regarding homelessness. It is government outsourcing.

While the social workers are administering their programs, the St. Mary’s community remains insulated from the poor and oppressed including those of the South Brisbane community just as church goers in every other congregation in Brisbane do. St. Vinnies, run by amongst the most conservative catholics, operates on a direct engagement between congregation members in each parish and the welfare clients. The congregation actually gets to meet the people they are helping which is more than what occurs with the St. Mary’s mode.

St. Mary’s is just another West End illusion that people from outside West End come to experience, just like the coffees shops are for people from all over Brisbane come to be part of the West End experience.

Not every activist is so keen on the parish, then.