Fired Priest Isn’t Going Quietly

A long time ago when I was much younger and not well behaved (at all) and still drinking (a lot), my college friends and I got a touch out of control and we got kicked out of a bar.

The bouncers said it was because we were rowdy, drunk, swearing, and fighting but we’d argued that we’d been rowdy, drunk and swearing for hours and nobody seemed to mind. The fighting was the only change and we promised to stop. The massive bouncers grabbed us by our necks and shirts and tossed us out. We slurred to the behemoths that we were coming back with everyone we knew and they’d be sorry.

Well, Fr. Peter Kennedy seems to be leaving St. Mary’s Church in Australia in much the same way.

But we at least had the smarts to just go to sleep it off before we did any lasting damage. Fr. Kennedy is essentially swearing his revenge on the Catholic church by starting his own church just down the street.

You might remember Fr. Kennedy as the priest who compared himself to Jesus and had a UFO cult rally to his aid.

Father Kennedy in his stay at St. Mary’s Church has focused almost exclusively on social justice while eschewing spirituality altogether. Fr. Kennedy has allowed women to preach at St Mary’s Church and he often blesses homosexual couples. He allowed a Buddhist statue in the church and even questioned the virgin birth of Jesus.

Archbishop John Bathersby terminated Fr Kennedy’s appointment there and Fr. Kennedy tried to rally people to his cause during Sunday Mass because that’s what Sunday mass is for. And this has been going on for months. There were even bomb scares phoned in to the bishop over Fr. Kennedy’s removal.

Well, according to Australia Incognita, Fr. Kennedy’s last Mass was Sunday.

Today was Fr Kennedy’s last mass at South Brisbane, and the media coverage continues, to the end, to be blatantly biased in favour of him (take a look at this Courier Mail story to see what I mean), even as he says ever more outrageous things. Like, Is the Pope a Catholic? on ABC tv news. Or this, on the ABC website:

“Our story might give hope to all those Catholics you know who’ve left the church for all sorts of good reasons,” he said. “Those who’ve been excluded on grounds of gender or sexual orientation, or just people who have been oppressed by the doctrines and dogmas and regulations and rules of the Catholic Church.”

Well, now it seems that Kennedy has started up his own church of sorts. After his last Mass, many of the people followed Fr Kennedy 200 metres down the road after the mass to the Trades and Labour Council building where his new congregation, St Mary’s in Exile, will be based.

According to the Courier Mail:

Fr Kennedy said the majority of the St Mary’s church community would join his congregation.

“Father Ken Howell (the newly appointed St Mary’s administrator) will have to rent a crowd,” Fr Kennedy said. “They are in denial that this community will walk down the road and join St Mary’s in Exile.

“They came before because we were different. We ran liturgies for the people.”

Yes. You don’t want any of that weird God stuff working its way into the liturgy. Booooringggg!

We should pray for Fr. Kennedy and hope that he comes to his senses. And stop hanging out with Raelians.

(If by chance any of those bouncers that booted me out of the bar are reading this, I’m sorry and I’m not still gathering friends to come back. Just in case you were worried.)