Winners and losers from St Mary’s

It will be a positive for many that the archbishop has not supported Kennedy’s right-wing critics - publicly at least - on the issues of gay unions and women preaching. The archbishop knows these are ongoing emotional debates. He has neither inflamed nor doused them.

The most obvious losers are the many people with mental illnesses, broken relationships, addictions and other challenges who have been supported by a loving local community within the Catholic Church. They now no longer have both. Many have expressed profound grief in recent weeks.

Also diminished is the Catholic denomination in Queensland which has lost one of its most effective and visible ministries to the disadvantaged. More than 2,200 met at St Mary's for its first week in exile. John Bathersby’s authority has suffered in failing to negotiate a better outcome.

Other losers are those whose experience has taught them that effective pastoral care for the needy requires flexibility in church practice, leadership and in the words used about God.

Many Christian outreach workers never use “Father” because of the highly negative connotations for those who have had an abusive parent or priest. There are better expressions, they claim, of the same truth.

Many have watched St Mary’s connect powerfully with marginalised people - prisoners, Aborigines, addicts and others - and win approval from a generally anti-religious watching world. It will be a great disappointment to these observers if this ministry suffers. It will be equally disappointing if other Catholic congregations which have moved towards a St Mary’s style of modifying unhelpful old practices now come under pressure to move back.

Vatican watchers who had hoped Pope Benedict XVI might be more open and ecumenical than his predecessor have also lost. Optimists anticipated the new regime moving closer towards expressions of theology and church life now shared broadly across the denominational spectrum.

There were hopes that the historic pattern of vilifying, condemning, punishing and excluding may end. For in too many cases the victims have been shown later to have been right. These hopes have been dashed.

Was it all worth it? Couldn’t Peter and John have just sorted it out over a few beers?