Archbishop John Bathersby’s recent decision to remove Fr Peter Kennedy as administrator of St Mary’s, South Brisbane, following the failure of Fr Kennedy to agree to liturgical changes that would bring the parish community back into communion with the Church, has attracted much media attention. Director of The Liturgical Commission in Brisbane archdiocese FR TOM ELICH and assistant head of Australian Catholic University’s School of Theology FR DAVID PASCOE explain what is at the heart of the issue
The bells of St Mary’s – the liturgical issues at play
By FR TOM ELICH
DILAPIDATED inner city church threatened with closure? No. Bing Crosby is nowhere to be seen and South Brisbane is not Hollywood.
Newspaper reporting notwithstanding, the community and its good work is not threatened with closure. The Archdiocese of Brisbane has rather been seeking reconciliation and integration.
The archbishop is establishing a new leadership and setting some new directions to draw the community into visible communion with the Catholic Church.
One of the key issues at stake is the liturgy celebrated at St Mary’s.
It can easily appear from the examples given that the matters are trivial and do not constitute a serious rupture with Catholic worship.
That is not the case.
Let it be said that Catholic liturgy is not the straight jacket some people assume it to be.
Vigilantes concerned only with rubrics are irrelevant to the story at South Brisbane – it is about the relationship of parish and diocese.
It is obvious that the liturgy cannot be exactly the same the world over – St Mary’s is neither the cathedral nor St Peter’s in Rome.
The Catholic liturgical books regularly invite the priest to adapt the celebration to the nature of the assembly.
The recognition of the Tridentine Latin Mass as an extraordinary form of the Roman rite demonstrates clearly that the “unity of the Roman rite” does not mean rubrical uniformity.
The problem with the liturgy at St Mary’s is therefore not about the details of what the priest wears, where people stand, who might on occasion be invited to preach, or how a liturgical text might be adjusted.
Down through the centuries and around the world, the Catholic liturgy has shown itself quite capable of embracing such variety, but the presumption is always that such variation takes place within the communion of the Body of Christ.
This is the deeper issue at stake.
What does the liturgy say about the relationship of the community at St Mary’s with the Catholic Church?
The starting point for a community which calls itself Catholic ought to be the Roman liturgy as represented in the Catholic liturgical books.
Liturgy preparation does not begin with a tabula rasa. The Lectionary, Sacramentary and ritual books are a given because they put us into contact with the Church of all times and places.
Many of our Mass texts come from the liturgical books of the sixth century. They link us with the praying Church down through the centuries. They put us into contact with communities on every continent praying those ancient prayers on the same day.
The common Roman liturgy is a powerful sign of being in communion with one another.
What happens then when a community does not use these texts, does not use even a recognised Eucharistic Prayer, and omits any mention of the pope, the bishop of Rome, or the bishop of the local diocese?
Following a Lectionary can be difficult, but is a clear sign that a community takes the Scriptures as a given and stands ready to be shaped by the word of God.
What happens when a community chooses its own readings or even chooses to dispense with the Scriptures altogether? There is rupture.
Nowhere is the rupture more acute than in the story of the baptismal formula at St Mary’s.
They were clearly told by the archbishop in 2004 to use the proper formula. They took no notice. The Holy See formally ruled in February, 2008, that the St Mary’s formula was not valid. Still they took scant notice.
The community leaders can disagree and dismiss it as trivial, but the fact remains that those who have been through a form of baptismal ceremony at St Mary’s are not in fact baptised.
When they come to first communion or marriage, they will have to be told, “I’m sorry you are actually not baptised”.
This is a serious injustice to Catholics coming in good faith to a Catholic church for baptism. And it is not just a matter of Catholic laws and bureaucracy.
The basis of the mutual recognition of baptism across all the principal Christian Churches in Australia is baptism with water in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
The community at South Brisbane rightly prides itself on its commitment to social justice and on its outreach to the homeless, gay and lesbian people, the divorced and remarried, and the Aboriginal community.
The temptation is strong then to turn the Sunday liturgy into an opportunity for advocacy, education and consciousness raising.
The homily can become merely an address on an important issue, which anyone in the know can deliver.
While there is an educational dimension to the liturgy, it is not primarily a teaching/learning opportunity. It is about worship.
Worship centres on God and gives God thanks and praise. It acknowledges human dependence on God’s loving providence.
Proclaiming the Scriptures opens the hearers to receive God’s word and this is then unfolded in people’s lives through the preaching.
The homily is part of the proclamation of God’s mercy in the Scriptures.
The liturgy feeds our commitment to justice in a more powerful way than just delivering a message.
Using the Roman liturgy and its texts puts us into solidarity with believing communities on every continent.
We are one in the Body of Christ and, as we partake in the one offering of Christ on the cross, we are profoundly united with the starving or AIDS-ravaged communities in Africa, with the persecuted Church in war-torn Iraq, or the basic Christian communities in the impoverished barrios of South America.
This makes it impossible for us to celebrate our unity around the table of the Eucharist, to drink the wine of the new covenant in anticipation of the banquet of heaven, without an active commitment to those in need with whom we offer the Church’s liturgy.
The media have reported scandalous statements from South Brisbane rejecting basic Christian doctrines about Christ, the incarnation and redemption.
Not only is there a theological problem here but one is left wondering what mystery of salvation the community celebrates at Christmas and Easter.
Fr Kennedy’s reported statement that his authority is only derived from the community of St Mary’s is not an orthodox statement of the meaning of Catholic ordination.
But it is this distorted understanding of priesthood which is manifest in the way the community celebrates the liturgy. The priest has all but disappeared.
We do not suggest that the liturgy is celebrated only by the priest with the people present as mere spectators.
The Catholic Catechism says that the liturgy is celebrated by Christ – the whole Body of Christ.
The assembly of the priestly people is the celebrant of the liturgy.
But the Body of Christ is not properly constituted unless the priest is present, for by his ordination he makes present the headship of Christ.
The vesture worn by the priest, the place from which he presides, the texts he speaks on behalf of all show that his participation in the priesthood of Christ is different not only in degree but also in essence, as the Second Vatican Council put it.
All leadership in the Church, of course, is a leadership of service, revealing to all the baptised a common dignity as sisters and brothers of Christ.
The archbishop is not moving against a vibrant community and the good it does but rather against a leadership, which has allowed the community to drift out of communion with the whole Church.
His appointment of a new administration will lead the community to refocus and adjust its direction.
One part of this will be a renewal of the community’s liturgy, not to make it uniform and indistinguishable from any other parish liturgy, but to bring it back into embrace of the Catholic liturgical tradition and into communion with the church of every place and time.
A bishop has ultimate authority in a diocese
By FR DAVID PASCOE
THE Second Vatican Council is one authority that has not been questioned in the sad division within the Catholic Church around the standoff between the parish priest of St Mary’s, South Brisbane, and Archbishop John Bathersby of Brisbane.
On the one hand, Fr Peter Kennedy publicly appeals to Vatican II for how St Mary’s is an expression of the council’s teaching.
On the other hand, Archbishop Bathersby grounds his assessment that St Mary’s is not in communion with the Catholic Church on the council’s theology of communion.
For some, of course, the above opposition might be all too easily resolved. My side is in the right; the other is in the wrong!
But going beyond this all too simplistic view one way toward some resolution is to go back to the sources and ask the question: what does Vatican II teach on the legitimate authority for the ongoing formation of the Church?
A helpful first point of departure is Fr Tom Elich’s article on the matter of liturgical issues, The Bells of St Mary’s.
He connects the tradition of the Church’s liturgy to ongoing communion in the Church, both over time and in the present, but with legitimate diversity.
He acknowledges that, “the Catholic liturgy has shown itself quite capable of embracing such variety, but the presumption is always that such variation takes place within the communion of the Body of Christ”.
Confirmation of this assessment is articulated in the opening words of Vatican II’s document on the liturgy, which gives the council its direction and purpose.
The council upholds both principles of a deep continuity with the long historical tradition of the Church along with an acknowledgement of the possibility of the need to adapt those structures of the Church, which are subject to change.
This is not a matter of just anything goes!
There is a clear creative tension between a holding-onto the Church’s tradition, with an adaption in various circumstances that always remains in accord with the Church’s tradition.
This tension is very real and raises the further question, how is legitimate adaptation decided in the Church? By whose authority?
The Second Vatican Council did a great many good things, which has brought the Church to re-forge its identity and renew its strength of purpose for mission in proclaiming the Gospel in the world.
One of these good things is how the council re-configured the Church’s focus on the significance of each and every local Church; that is, each and every diocese.
All Catholic dioceses together form the one communion of the Catholic Church.
Twenty years after the close of the council, the 1985 Synod of Bishops looked back at Vatican II and determined that the most appropriate key for interpreting the council was its self-understanding of the Church in terms of “communion” (communion within God, the Church’s communion with God, communion within a local church, and communion between local churches).
With this re-focus Vatican II did two things, which cannot be separated from each other. Simultaneously, the council focused on the bishop as the one entrusted with the task of safeguarding this sacred communion within and between every diocese and all the people who are the Church in each diocese.
Grounded in renewed emphasis on both the rights and obligations of all who are baptised the council sought to promote the full, active, conscious participation of all the faithful, which of course includes the bishop, and particularly in the Church’s liturgical life, as its aim before all else.
Since Vatican II this emphasis on liturgical participation has had a flow-on to many aspects of people’s understanding of participation in the whole life of the Church.
Along with this is the council’s teaching on the relationship between the bishop and the people within a diocese and particularly that between the bishop and priests in a diocese that informs our discussion on legitimate authority in the Church as a communion.
Vatican II teaches that the bishops are the legitimate successors to the apostles. Together, all the bishops, with the pope, as teachers and pastors, continue the apostolic college in the Church: “all of them jointly are responsible for the whole Church”.
As diocesan bishops each bishop has particular care of a local church or diocese. Vatican II teaches that the bishop has the authority in this local church in the areas of sanctifying (liturgy), teaching (belief) and governing (order).
This does not reduce or take away from the apostolic character of the whole Church, of all the people who are the Church.
Rather, the bishops, together and individually re-present the apostolic nature of the communion of the Church.
Vatican II describes the local church dimension of the relationship between the bishop, priests and people in one place in these words:
“the principle manifestation of the Church consists in the full, active participation of all God’s holy people in the same liturgical celebrations, especially in the same Eucharist, in one prayer, at one altar, at which the bishop presides, surrounded by the college of priests and by his ministers.”
The council continues its discussion on these relationships in a local church realistically acknowledging the necessity of parish groupings of the faithful, which are set up even more locally “under a pastor who takes the place of the bishop”.
It is in the light of this understanding that Vatican II teaches on the relationship between the bishop and the priests of a diocese.
Parish priests, while collaborators with the bishop are “under the authority of the bishop” in their care of a parish.
Vatican II continues with this understanding:
“In exercising the care of souls parish priests and their assistants carry out their work of teaching, sanctifying and governing in such a way that the faithful and the parish communities may feel that they are truly members both of the diocese and of the universal Church.”
The above does not attempt to respond to all the issues of authority and governance in the Catholic Church.
Rather, in a situation where divergent claims to the one accepted authority – here Vatican II – are made, a return to what this original accepted authority actually says is presented.
An implication of the above is, for example, for a parish priest and/or local parish community to claim ultimate authority for adaptation of the Church’s liturgy is simply not the case.
The bishop of a diocese has the ultimate authority in a diocese in all the areas of liturgy, belief and governance, as he holds this in communion with all bishops together who are in the communion of the Catholic Church.
