His previous media appearances have left me puzzled as to why he appears to be viewed as somewhat charismatic by his followers. We'll see how he comes across tonight.
Meanwhile, in this week's homily from his fellow renegade priest Terry Fitzpatrick, we have these comments about how priestly doubt is, seemingly, virtuous:
I've always quite liked the ascension: it has a certain dramatic flair that seems very apt. As I recall, Jesus disappeared into the clouds. What happened there, by way of how the destination of heaven was reached, is left open: it seems more than a bit disingenuous of Fitzpatrick to talk of Jesus bodily soaring through the galaxy. (I know people say that Jesus' followers thought heaven was just beyond the crystal sphere that is the sky. However, I am not sure how we know that with absolute certainty.)Jesus' bodily rising into heaven is an item of faith that the institutional church wants us to believe was an event that actually took place. If you do as the Christian tourist of Jerusalem they will take you to the place just outside of the Old Jerusalem where they claim Jesus bodily disappeared into the clouds and then hurtling, one presumes, through space in a journey to "heaven". Scientists tell us that traveling at the speed of light the body would still be somewhere on the outer reaches of the Milky Way Galaxy.
It is almost unbelievable that we are required, in an age of scientific understanding to submit our intellects to a literal belief in a bodily resurrection and ascension of Jesus into heaven....
The impertinence of certainty was brought out clearly for me just recently with two interviews which were on the radio. The first was on the Richard Vidler program when Peter Kennedy was asked by Richard about his views on heaven and hell and Peter's response was summed up by him saying he was not really sure about what he believed, or how he could articulate what he now believed, it was all very incredibly mysterious this life we are emerged in. The following day Archbishop Bathersby was interviewed on the Madonna King show and when asked about what he believed about heaven and hell, he said he had never been more certain and about heaven or hell.
Seems to me that Kennedy, Fitzpatrick and some undefined proportion of their followers are cultural Catholics only: in all other respects, they have at least two ready made churches to which they could belong: liberal Anglicanism or the Reformed Catholic Church (which could really do with more professional website design.)
Update: while we're talking bodily levitation, I assume that Terry Fitzpatrick takes the Mitchell side of this exchange on the topic.
Update 2: What's happened to the link to Fitzpatrick's homily? It's not working now.
Anyway, I note that in this post (which linked to his homily) they have a link to a review of a new book by Richard Holloway, who I see (via Andrew Bolt's blog) is heading to Australia for the Sydney Writers Festival. He is an ex bishop who, as the Sydney Morning Herald reports " still preaches from the pulpit, performs baptisms and weddings and even presides at communion", yet describes himself as a "Christian agnostic".
As I say, Kennedy and Fitzpatrick (and their congregation) are perfect matches for liberal Anglicanism.
Update 3: I had many interruptions while trying to watch the show last night, and it's not yet available on the Australian Story website. I did notice lots of attention given to Terry Fitzpatrick being a nice father to his son. It was all a very soft treatment of Kennedy, from what I could tell, but that's pretty typical of Australian Story generally.
Update 4: gosh, I find myself agreeing with Mark Bahnisch who writes of last night's show:
It must also be said that the show approached the genre of hagiography, and was full of half-truths at best. Unfortunately, Australian Story generally appears to be an outlet for PR spin, under the guise of human interest, and almost every episode, really, is quite an indictment of what the ABC should be about…
I think we can pretty sure that the writer of Luke wasn't writing journalism (especially as his accounts in Luke and Acts are quite different).
ReplyDeleteI am much more offended by the caricature of the account as some sort of rocket launch than by your nuanced assessment. I think knowing in your soul that Jesus was now with God and represented all you could know of God was just as hard to explain then as now.
You might be interested in my critique of Australian Story here
ReplyDeletehttp://michaelcardensjottings.blogspot.com/2009/05/australian-story-and-st-marys.html
"I'm told that the priests were concerned that the programme might have revealed more than they intended. I don't know what they feared was revealed but they were correct, there were several moments of, I suspect, unintended revelation cutting through the fog of hagiography. I want now to highlight these moments because they shed a striking light on many of the substantive issues in the saga, issues that have been ignored by the media in their persistent and dishonest 'simple caring priests being victimised by evil authoritarian Rome' narrative."
Enjoy your break.