St Mary’s, South Brisbane is certainly a Catholic parish and in communion with the Catholic church.
Masses celebrated at St Mary’s are real Catholic masses.
Baptisms at St Mary’s are true baptisms.
All you have to do is the duck test. If it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck and looks like a duck, it is a duck.
Go to Mass there any Sunday and you find the church full of Catholics who have gone there precisely to celebrate Sunday Mass. They and all the locals of South Brisbane know it is a Catholic church and it is Sunday Mass.
Go to a baptism there and you find the family with their baby, their godparents and friends all gathered round. What are they there for? A baptism. So, a baptism it is. Anyone who quibbles that saying the wrong words makes the sacrament invalid are not applying the duck test. Invalid means it was not a real baptism. I once baptised inadvertently saying “I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”. Was it invalid – i.e. not a real baptism? Anyone present will tell you it was a baptism. That is why they came and that is what they celebrated.
Does the celebration style matter? Do the ritual words and actions matter? Of course they do; but they do not make or break the reality of the celebration. They are a matter of taste. And that is precisely why St Mary’s is important. For those people St Mary’s style suits their taste while it puts others off; just as reverting to the Tridentine mass suits the taste of some and puts others off.
Archbishop Bathersby is well known to be a genuinely pastoral bishop. And he is being pressured from the current reactionary and power obsessed Roman administration – because people turned off by St Mary’s style have dobbed them in – to Rome.
Archbishop Bathersby has other parishes where the sacramental ministry is bad but nobody is dobbing them in. These parishes are dismal and lifeless while South Brisbane is alive.
To condemn this matter of style under a rubric of non-negotiable doctrine is to misread the discourse, misunderstand how sacramentality works and to act not as a bully but as a tyrant.
To say they are outside the Church’s communion is dangerous hubris.
The best solution is to take as long as it takes to organize a win-win solution.
