The modern Gnostics of St Mary's (in exile, not due back any time soon)

I should really stop watching the services from "St Mary's in exile", but they hold a sort of morbid fascination for seeing how far the self delusion of Peter Kennedy and his followers can go.

This is, remember, a congregation which thinks it's terribly unjust and unfair that they should be told by their Archbishop that they are outside of the Catholic Church.

Yet, in today's homily, (not in written form on their website yet, you have to watch the video from the 10 minute mark) we learned from Peter Kennedy that:

* "the jury is still out" as to whether Jesus really existed or not. If he did exist, he was nothing like the Catholic Church has traditionally told us he was like. But anyway, it doesn't really matter if he existed or not. Because:

* the early Christians were all Gnostics who didn't see Jesus as a real historical figure, but only as a metaphor for "awakening" (the awakening being that God is all, All is One; you know - that sort of mystical mystery stuff.)

* that Constantine and the Council of Nicea is what stuffed up the church by going all anti-Gnostic

* modern scientists say there are billions of galaxies (true) and billions of universes (highly speculative)

* that the term "relational matrix" is a cool one for "God"

* that the power of goodness keeps coming out of creation. (I suppose the "relational matrix" sees to that, but it certainly makes it rather unclear as to what Kennedy thinks of animal suffering and evolution.)

As I've said before, I'm no university educated expert on theology and the history of Christianity, but I know enough to be mightily irritated by Kennedy and Fitzpatrick's modus operandi, which is to take a grab bag of whatever bits and pieces of revisionist history, scriptural exegesis, modern physics and speculative science they have found of interest over the last 20 years, and preach it to their congregation as if it were not academically controversial, and not a clear repudiation of Catholic doctrine and teaching.

Every homily contains statements which are exaggerations, over-simplifications, or simply misleading; but if it appeared in one of Peter or Terry's favourite recent authors, they'll repeat it anyway.

I still can't work out Peter Kennedy. I don't understand why his congregation think so highly of him. While this may be unfair, he comes across to me as probably an overly emotional man (with this aspect accounting for what some people describe as his "spiritual" nature,) but a not particularly bright one who is easily swayed by whatever radical re-assessment of Christianity he has read last. It remains my conviction that he should have just left the priesthood early in his career and led a normal life, instead of just having the ersatz family he found by living with a priest who had a son.

But instead, he seems to have decided to make a career of deliberately encouraging people to follow into his mystical, Gnostic, quasi-Eastern mystery-based replacement religion for Catholicism, under the pretence that this was clearly the way of all early Christians before it was corrupted. Perhaps I am being unduly charitable in suggesting that it's all because he is not so bright; maybe there is an element of dishonesty in there too.

Surely some in his congregation are going to start saying to themselves soon "gee, I don't really know that we are Catholic anymore," or even "perhaps I should read some counterclaims to a lot of this stuff Peter goes on about." We can only hope.

UPDATE: I see that the St Mary's blog has linked to this post. Welcome, gnostic heretics!

I note that, since this post was written, there was a later sermon in which Peter Kennedy claimed that a lot of his recent ideas were from books that his congregation had suggested he read, so that it was more a case of the congregation had led him to these radical ideas, rather than the other way around.

Well then, my characterisation of Kennedy as leading his group into Gnosticism may be wrong, but it makes no difference to my key point that it is rather ridiculous for them to claim they are upset that the Archbishop should say they are not Catholic if their position is that the physical reality of Christ himself (not just his resurrection!) is neither here nor there.

Visitors may also be interested in my recent post regarding Karen Armstrong's new book on God. After all, someone has probably already handed a copy of it to Kennedy to read.