News from South Brisbane is that Fr. Peter Kennedy was not excommunicated, but fired and offered early retirement. The letter from Archbishop Bathersby to Fr. Kennedy can be read here. The link will take you to Catholica Australia where there is other commentary on this situation and it's well worth reading.
It's of note that one of Archbishop Bathersby's problems with Fr. Kennedy and St. Mary's is they wouldn't play the secrecy game.
It looks to me like Archbishop Bathersby was searching for some sort of minimal solution in the sense it might placate the complainers while not completely alienating a vibrant and growing parish. There are no plans in place to close St. Mary's, just change leadership.
The thing that still amazes me about this story is that all it took was one rich complainer, who was not a member of this Parish, flying to the Vatican to set this whole chain in motion. It's kind of mind boggling when you think about it. Apparently the Vatican has the time to listen to one self appointed savior about one parish but is unable to do a simple google search in order to find out that SSPX Bishop Williamson is an anti Semite.
Speaking of Bishop Williamson he gave an email interview to the German magazine Der Spiegel in which he says he will research more recent data on the holocaust to see if maybe he needs to change his thinking. Apparently his thinking is based on research he did in the 80's. This will take an unspecified amount of time. I suggest he try Googling "Jewish Holocaust". He seems to know how to use email, this will save him a lot of time and put him one up on the Vatican.
I want to give a shout out to the American Papist blog site for the work Thomas Peters has done on the Legion and Fr. Maciel. His coverage has been even handed and the comments from Legion and Regnum Christi members have been enlightening. The order needs to do some real hard work because Maciel's double life had to have been enabled by Legion leadership. This needs to come out and appropriate action taken.
The Legion also needs to completely rework their formation process. I'll make it easy for them. Fr. Maciel was a narcissistic sociopath who had major control and sexual issues. His formation process is designed to prey on the vulnerable and manipulate them into a state of fear based compliant control. His leadership was based on team splitting, that is pitting one person against another covered by total secrecy and allegiance to superiors. It is the sick system of a sick man. Your formation system is designed to take young teen age males and make carbon copies of Maciel. You must change your formation program.
Please, grab a copy of DSM-IV and read the sections on personality disorders. You can google this, it's easy. You will see your founder in black and white, and I'm not talking clerical black and white. Maybe you will also begin to see why the Legion insists on pre seminary training. You must change your formation program. Please.
And now for something totally the same. We have this from Major League Baseball about Alex Rodriguez. A-Rod, baseball's designated savior, was also a secret steroid user. Ooops, not so secret any more. Once again the leadership of Major League baseball has steriod egg all over it's face. Mighty Casey has struck out---again. I imagine Barry Bonds is secretly laughing. Well, maybe not, he is after all facing criminal charges over his own need to keep his personal closet door shut.
In this new Age of Integrity, there are no closets in which to hide secrets. Not for the Legionnaires, not for the Vatican, not for Wall Street, and not even for Major League Baseball. This is a time for coming clean, a time of purification. You can get with the program or you can get steamrolled.
