Tag: Archdiocese of Melbourne

Archbishop Comensoli, won’t you ever learn?

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Catholics gushing over Archbishop Peter Comensoli’s recent slightly-bishopy comments about the sacking of Essendon’s CEO, should perhaps have remained a little more circumspect. One pro-life comment maketh not the man!

For those who may not know, Andrew Thorburn was sacked from his position as CEO of the football club due to his supposedly conservative Christian worldview. (Thorburn’s rather colourful – and less than Christian – past seems to escape the notice of the majority of commentators.)

Premier Dan Andrews continued the public pile-on, then our favourite Bishop put in his two cents worth and was suddenly hailed as the new JPII.

Comensoli’s statement was released via the Melbourne Catholic website on October 5th, then later republished in mainstream media. That was only three days before the annual March for the Babies, so it would have been reasonable to expect that the Lion of Melbourne would lead his flock of pro-life warriors through the streets to boldly protest the scourge of abortion. The Greek Bishop certainly did. And Protestant pastors, bless their hearts, were out in force. A few Catholic priests dotted the landscape, in low-key fashion.

But sadly, Archbishop Peter was nowhere to be seen. Whether the good prelate had a prior engagement, or whether he was simply putting his feet up in front of the fire at Gembrook, is something unknown to this author.

However, a pattern began to emerge after it was confided to me that His Grace was, on two separate occasions, invited to celebrate Mass for a pro-life group on October 22nd, and not only did he not acquiesce, but he did not even respond.

So, to recap Archbishop Comensoli’s track record, he:

* allows pro-abortion Dan Andrews to receive Holy Communion at a State Funeral

* employs a pro-abortion feminist in his inner circle

* doesn’t attend his Archdiocese’s biggest pro-life event of the year

* won’t celebrate Mass for dedicated Catholic pro-lifers (and impolitely won’t even answer them)

So …… maybe he’s not very pro-life after all. At least, not in any meaningful way.

But believe it or not, the comments above aren’t really what this article is about. That’s just my preambular gripe. This article is actually about an upcoming Mass to mark 175 years since the Archdiocese of Melbourne was established. In a nod to Melbourne’s multi-cultural society, the Mass features music and prayers from various nations – a Filipino Lamb of God, a Torres Strait Islander Great Amen, a Croatian Psalm, and so on it goes.

The opening hymn was specially written for the anniversary, but – get this – it was composed for the combined 175th anniversary of the Anglican and Catholic Dioceses of Melbourne. It’s a catchy little ditty about God and justice and a treaty. There’s a didgeridoo solo to make the point even clearer.

The Mass setting, including the cosmopolitan hymns and prayers, is an entirely new one called The Melbourne Mass – also jointly commissioned for the 175th anniversary of the Anglican and Catholic Dioceses of Melbourne by both churches! Yes, for use in both Catholic and Protestant churches!

Mind-boggling. (On a lesser note, how much did this – the composition of a Mass – cost the Archdiocese?? It would not be cheap. No wonder parishes are being consolidated.)

Now remember, it wasn’t long ago that Archbishop Comensoli, whilst casually suppressing a few local TLMs, said that it was incumbent upon him and all of his priests to offer the Mass worthily and decorously. And yet now he has gone ahead and had a sacrilegious Mass composed for himself and his heretical Anglican buddies.

Archbishop Comensoli, won’t you ever learn?

A couple of Melbourne’s Anglican “bishops’ – they are biological siblings. Reminds one of the old adage, “the family that schisms together, chrisms together.”

Melbourne Archbishop hires a pro-abort to ‘protect children’

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Archbishop Comensoli just doesn’t seem to get it. When he’s not disrupting parishes, hand-wringing over government crackdowns or otherwise fiddling in a Masonic key while Rome burns, then he’s adding another feminist ideologue to his cohort of anti-Catholic employees.

This time, he really has outdone himself: he has hired a former top-level Marie Stopes employee to coordinate the Archdiocese’s National Redress Scheme for survivors of priestly sex abuse. That’s right, a woman who has facilitated the deaths of perhaps tens of thousands of tiny children in utero has been hired to advise a Catholic Archdiocese on how to protect children.

The unfortunate woman’s name is Loretta Hoban: she was hired last year and the description of her role comes straight from her LinkedIn profile:

“To provide high level strategic policy advice to create a culture of safety for children in the organisation. This includes policy oversight and advice relating to child safety and the safety of vulnerable people. In addition, the role oversees the operation of the National Redress Scheme for survivors of abuse in the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne.“

So His Grace hired a pro-abortion fembot to ‘create a culture of safety for children.’ Great. Why doesn’t he get Vladimir Putin in to advise on conflict resolution while he’s at it.

Just think – only two years previously, Hoban was teaching Cambodian teenagers how to get on in life by contracepting and aborting their babies. Now she’s ‘safeguarding children.’

This is almost as bad as that former Archbishop of Hobart getting the Family Planning director into his schools to teach little children about ‘relationships’. That woman eventually went on to greater things, too – she joined Tasmanian politics and had abortion legalised through all nine months of pregnancy.

Sometimes, all those aspirations pay off.

An aspirator.

Used for performing first trimester abortions.

The cultural imperialists just LOVE handing these out in developing nations.

The appointment of Ms Hoban to the Archdiocesan position took place in April 2021, and made her second-in-charge of the Professional Standards Unit. This means that she is part of the team set up to ‘audit’ parishes for compliance with a plethora of ‘woke’ guidelines. These are ostensibly to protect children from abuse in the parish setting, but are really just a way of monitoring and controlling priests. The Boomers love it.

Of course, as anyone with half a brain knows, most child abuse occurs within the home, but that is no obstacle for the intrepid ideologues who know that there are lucrative opportunities waiting for those who want to infiltrate dioceses and further their immoral agendas under the guise of safeguarding children.

Let’s take a closer look at just how Ms Hoban spent her time before landing her prestigious job with CAM.

Well, for starters, she spent some time with the pro-aborts par excellence, Marie Stopes International, (recently rebranded as Ms Stopes’ penchant for eugenics is now known to the mainstream).

Hoban was employed there in 2015 to kick off a project targeting factory workers in Phnom Penh. Seems that those underprivileged third-world women were not sophisticated enough to understand Western ideas of motherhood so they needed Ms Hoban and her US$4 million to show them how to kill their own offspring. Sounds pretty racist to me.

Then there was that research paper she co-authored in 2016, which investigated what Cambodian career-women thought about contraception. Turns out, they were just as wedded to the idea of traditional motherhood as were the factory workers. Not surprising for a family-oriented Buddhist country like Cambodia. Buddhists hate abortion – or they did until Ms Hoban turned up.

After that, from 2016-17 she was empowering women at the UN-loving Asia Foundation and you can bet she wasn’t there to promote NFP.

Then in 2019, Hoban helped develop that cute little app for CARE, the one which lured Cambodian factory-workers into using more efficient – that is, better at baby-killing – forms of contraception. Here’s what she told pro-abort news outlet, Buzzfeed, about the app:

“Mobile games are increasingly popular in Cambodia, and the app provides a fun and interactive way to learn about a topic that people are often shy to speak about…. [The] stories engage viewers emotionally while providing accurate and easy-to-understand information about contraception.”

How thoughtful of her.

Nihilistic cultural imperialism with your hard-earned tax-dollars (CARE is funded by DFAT – the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.)

Now …. refresh my mind …. what is that mission statement plastered all over the Archdiocesan website? Is it that they have a

“Commitment to the safety of children and young people”

and that

“Safeguarding children and young people is central to our mission”??

Well, excuse my French, but how the hell can someone who thinks it’s good to kill children be trusted to protect them?

And why is this pro-abort feminist being given the authority to lecture priests about preventing abuse? No form of child abuse is more extreme than killing them!

And why – O why? – is this woman being handsomely paid by a Catholic Archdiocese when she obviously has no regard for Catholic teaching?

Remember: thousands of Catholics are out of work because they won’t take the abortion-tainted jab. But this anti-Catholic pro-abort has been brought in to ride the abuse-scandal gravy train.

Comensoli really has gone too far this time. I suggest that if you don’t want your collection money funding a pro-abortion feminist like Loretta Hoban – and she’s not the only one roaming the halls in Melbourne – then let Archbishop Comensoli know your thoughts here: archbishop@cam.org.au

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Religious freedom: mixed messages and cross-purposes

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“It’s not fair.”

That was the plaintive cry from the Victorian hierarchy when the mean old state government announced that it will be making Catholic schools hire gay teachers.

“We stood up for you”, the Archbishop could be imagined to lament. “We shut our churches, we halted the First Blessing and the Last Rites; we stopped sanitising souls and started sanitising hands, just because you told us to. Heck, we even beat you to it!”

But instead of being grateful, bad Catholic Dan Andrews went full steam ahead with his pet project. Well, maybe that was always going to be the result when the Church set the bar so low by limiting Her mission to promoting “a fair and just society in which pluralism is valued and respected.” Sounds nice, but it’s just not Catholic.

From the Syllabus of Errors:

#15. Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion, which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true.

Allocution “Maxima Quidem”, June 9, 1862; “Damnatio Multiplices Inter”, June 10, 1851.

Now, of course, for the bishops it is totally fine if they choose to allow gay teachers in their schools. (Likewise cohabiting or atheist or communist teachers.) But it’s a different matter entirely when the State compels a Catholic Education Department to stop exercising its autonomy, right?

It might seem virtuous to complain, but where exactly were you for the last few decades when parents despaired because their children were not adequately being taught the Faith?

And, as the pages of this website document, there wasn’t a peep from the Archdiocese when Dan Andrews tried to go full Nazi last month with his Pandemic powers. So this hullabaloo over restrictions on schools is not entirely consistent.

The schizophrenic state of affairs continues with an email from the chancellor to the Archdiocesan clergy, meant to apprise priests of the new laws and bills around religious freedom. The email includes links to several articles which are meant to provide reference material for the clergy.

One article is the Archbishop’s glowing appraisal of the Federal government’s religious freedom bill. That bill certainly does seem to offer some protections for Catholic schools, and may prove useful as it could override the state government’s proposals, which are clearly discriminatory (in the bad way.)

Another article is by ex-Labor MP and now Executive Director of the National Catholic Education Commission, Jacinta Collins, who thinks the proposed Federal bill will provide some necessary protections. So far, so good: with her strong pro-life record, at least she is somewhat Catholic.

For further suggested reading, the chancery includes an article from John Haldane, Professor of Philosophy of Education at the ACU Melbourne on the Victorian government’s new law. Professor Haldane rightly condemns the law, observing “the extent to which … it would curtail the operations of many religious institutions, including schools, to a point where they would struggle to continue,” and its “unwarranted restriction on the idea of the ethical.” Great. There should be more of this.

But then who else does the Archdiocese haul out to opine on the Federal bill? None other than Frank Brennan, the Jesuit arch-heretic who was so public in his support of gay marriage. And the best ammunition he can muster to support his position on the bill is the UN declaration on Human Rights!

Well, come to think of it, the choice of Brennan as apologist might be rather apt: he is the perfect role model for all those parents who like their schools “Catholic, but not too Catholic.”

(And remember that little ol’ Plenary Council? Brennan is a peritus. Just one more reason why it’s difficult to take the Plenary seriously.)

But back to the Archbishop’s lauding and lamentations – here’s a little free advice:

Anyone who is really serious about a “free and open society”, giving people a “fair go”, and avoiding “un-Australian” behaviour, would not be banning priests from attending Freedom rallies or implementing segregation in their parishes.

They would not be sacking priests for educating their parishioners about harmful and immoral “vaccines”.

They would be financially supporting Catholics who are out of work because of vaccine mandates. (Although that won’t happen here, as the Melbourne Archdiocese is broke.)

But in an Archdiocese where Catholic students can attend a formal with their gay partner, where a public sinner like Premier Daniel Andrews can receive Holy Communion at a celebrity funeral, where a Catholic college persecutes students who don’t follow their LGBTI agenda, and where the process of amalgamating parishes is being deceptively promoted as non-amalgamation, consistency is obviously not its strongpoint.

Maybe that’s why it’s so hard for the hierarchy to understand that for a Catholic school to merit the right to employ the staff of its choice, that school would have to actually be Catholic, in ethos and practise.

Divine Wreckovation in Melbourne

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The following letter is being circulated among the clergy of the Melbourne Archdiocese and reveals the brewing discontent regarding Archbishop Comensoli’s plan to restructure his territory. While priests and parishioners are being assured that this is not an amalgamation process, there really is no other way to describe it.

DEFEND OUR PARISHES

Dear Brother Priest Do you share my concern at the Archbishop’s newly announced plan to divide up the parishes?

The propaganda. The first thing that smells is the massive propaganda effort underway to sell it. It’s led by “Ron Huntly Leadership Coaching” (Sounds like something from California.) People are being trained up to spread the good news by reading prescribed hand-outs. The ones I’ve heard sound like scripts from The People’s republic of North Korea. Clearly, it’s the best thing to hit us since the Ascension. Even the name of the programme is a propaganda steal – ‘The Way of the Gospel’ (The WOG). I’m glad I’ve finally found the way of the Gospel. My days are running out so its just in time.

The Proposals.

The first part of the plan is to make the parishes more missionary in focus and not rely on maintenance. Nothing wrong with that. Although where parishes have strong congregations, mainly in the outer suburbs, some maintenance is in order. If we don’t help these people keep the faith, Catholicism in Australia is finished.

The second part of the plan is to divide the diocese into zones comprising three of four parishes joined together in one big parish called a ‘mission’. One priest will be in charge of each big parish, he will be called a ‘moderator’. He has all the authority and power over the ‘mission’ district. The other priests, known as Priests in Solidum (PIS), are from the other three parishes in the zone. What happens to them? What is their status?

What’s the problem? We are running out of priests and people. Something has to be done.

The Diocese of Melbourne is somewhat schizo. In the older parts, closer to the city, the Faith is dying. The upper middle class areas, The Camberwells, the Kews, and along the beachfront from Mentone to Gardenvale, once thriving parishes are now largely empty. Likewise, the inner city or yuppie areas. On the other hand, in the outer suburbs, in mainly immigrant areas, the parishes are thriving with viable congregations. The solution for the inner suburbs has been to put one priest in charge of half a dozen parishes. The Archbishop says these experiments are going well. (Not what I’ve heard.) But now, the Archbishop has decided to extend this experiment to the whole of the diocese, willy-nilly. That’s the problem. The parishes have been divided up, into threes or fours, and a priest, a Moderator, put in charge of each conglomerate. Parish priests will become helicopter priests, boundary riders, or fly-in-fly-out priests – whatever metaphor you use, it’s clearly a betrayal of the diocesan priesthood and the deep bond such priests develop with the people of the parish where they live. The laity in these parishes, great Mass-goers still, are seething because they see the spectre of priest-less parishes. They’re not wrong.

The consequences of the Comensoli plan

Short term What happens to the other parish priests in the mission zone? They are to be called Priests in Solidum (PIS priests) and as such they will be subordinate to the Moderator (If this is not the case, the Comensoli plan is no different to the old, deanery boundaries. And it is clearly meant to be more than that.) For centuries the basic structure has been the parish priest and his bishop. Now, under the new plan, it will be parish priest, Moderator, and bishop. Three our of every four parish priests have been demoted, made second class parish priests and indeed, redundant – solemn guarantees about us being parish priest(s) “in law with the same rights, responsibilities, and stability” notwithstanding.

Long term In time, when the PIS parish priests retire, die, or move on they will not be replaced. The Moderator priest will become the only parish priest in the missionary zone as was intended from the beginning.

Longer term The question will arise as to who looks after the parish with the PIS parish priest gone. Who will administer the place, and give day to day pastoral care? Obviously, lay people will be appointed. Mr and Mrs, or perhaps just Mrs “parish priest” in the presbytery. A Melbourne-produced video on Youtube (since taken down) admonishes Catholics to pay them a decent salary so they “can feed their family”. Fair enough; it’s basic social justice. There’s just one question – is the Comensoli plan Catholic?

Why was this decision taken?

Property. Perhaps we have to sell lots of property. This plan is just a long way of freeing up property for sale. There should be a discussion about it. Catholic schools no longer serve to hand on the Faith to our children. Sell them, not the parishes.

Shortage of priests. The probable reason. This plan will only make it worse. The helicopter priest will inspire no one. We used to bring in priests from overseas and were doing so until recently. A great success. They are wonderful priests, loved by our people. We have depended on overseas priests for most of our time in Australia. At the very beginning it was the English Benedictines. Then for the next 150 years it was the Irish. Now it’s the Indians. Glory be to God.

Extremist theology. Some extremist theological views have long advocated priest-less parishes.

What can we do?

We must do all we can to fight back. Make sure our people hear the other side to the issue, not just the propaganda version. Archbishop Comensoli says he has the Canon Law aspect all tied up and so is impervious to pleas and petitions. I saw on the internet a video about the diocese of Detroit (if not that, a major diocese in the US). There they introduced the same plan, calling the new divisions not zones but ‘families of parishes’. The priests fought back fiercely for their rights, appealed to Rome. They won. I am old enough to have known the great priests of the past here in Melbourne. What marvellous men. What holy men. They would have fought this new plan of Dr Comensoli with every fibre of their pastoral souls. Let’s follow suit. These men fought the introduction of modern catechetics into our schools in the 60s and 70s. They lost that battle. We know the result – generations of young Catholics totally ignorant of the Catholic Faith, the practice of which they continue to abandon in droves. Don’t let us lose this current battle. Pray, Protest, Publicise. It’s a fight to save the Church.

A Melbourne priest.

The laity have also begun to push back against Comensoli’s plans, organising a group involving dozens of parishioners from various parishes. That group recently held a meeting which came to the conclusion – one which is obviously not lost on the clergy – that the Archbishop has provided a flawed solution without examining the fundamental question.

That question is: precisely WHY are parishes dying??

(HINT: the Bishops have not been doing their job. For quite some time.)

However, all that can be whitewashed by throwing around a few catch-all words like Discernment and Mission. As almost everyone outside of the Archdiocese machine knows well, ‘discernment’ is only valid if the pathway discerned is in the line with an Archbishop’s own proposal!

As an aside, a quick search of Ron Huntley Leadership Coaching unearthed a few interesting tidbits. Ron Huntley hails from Canada – not a bad guess on the part of our anonymous priest above. He has been involved in the Divine Renovation movement, promoting Alpha, which is either good or bad, depending where you sit on the tradition scale. (If you’re a charismatic Modernist, then that would be a ten. If you’re a TLM attendee, that would be a score of -1.)

Huntley’s first job was as a sales rep for PFizer (!!!!) but I suppose we shouldn’t hold that against him. You can check out his LinkedIn profile here. It seems that Ron Huntley is currently holding Zoom conferences with selected members of the Archdiocesan clergy, training them for their role in Comensoli’s Brave New Archdiocese.

According to the CAM website, the Archbishop began consultation with his clergy about the ‘Way of the Gospel’ in March and April 2021. But here is part of a talk given by Ron Huntley in Melbourne in 2018, the topic of which was “Developing a healthy parish culture”. Perhaps Archbishop Comensoli’s plans have actually been in the pipeline far longer than he is letting on?

(And by the way, Your Grace, “consultation” usually involves ASKING people for their opinions, not TELLING them what you have decided to do to their beloved parishes.)

Just one more thing about Ron Huntley: he says he can detect the toxicity-level of a parish culture very quickly and presumably, he can do the same with dioceses. Maybe it’s time he paid another visit to the Archdiocese of Melbourne; it wouldn’t take him long to see that the toxicity-levels are off the charts.