Some revealing correspondence... (Main Forum)

by Brian Coyne , LINDEN, NSW, Wednesday, May 02, 2012, 21:09 (384 days ago) @ Cliffy

Cliffy, I am always interested to hear your views as a veteran journalist. There are always snippets of wise advice about the craft of journalism. Just one the other day were your comments that someone needed to do a bit of digging to get the real truth behind the Peter Slipper scandal that's been unfolding for months in the Federal Parliament. Lo and behold in the last 24 hours we learn that that good Catholic-educated Liberal Party member Christopher Pyne has been having some meetings with Mr Ashby — the person who has filed the complaints — and Mr Pyne and Mr Abbott seem to have had some problems in recalling much about this little association.

I have been reminded about this while following, and trying to understand, the extraordinary story that Seven News has picked up on about Fr Kevin Lee. Usually when a priest leaves to get married the last thing they want is any great public revelations about the situation. As a journalist one is forced to ask what are the background agendas driving this story at the moment? Fr Lee says that it's because he wants to highlight various wrong things going on in the Church. It seems a very curious way to go about things. Channel 7 of course are only interested in what might be described as "the immediate scandal and sensationalism" aware that their audience only have the attention to grasp the significance of any of this at a pretty surfacey level. They're hardly likely to dig much deeper. By tomorrow they'll have moved on to find something else to titillate and amuse their audience with for a few minutes.

Unfortunately religious affairs today is of little interest to the mainstream press — even what is left of the quality press. They reason so few people are bothering to attend Church anymore, or listen to bishops and priests, that it isn't worth employing full-time specialists on the religious affairs round. When a religious affairs story comes up it is more than likely to be something sensational or scandalous and like the electronic media that can be exploited for a 5 minute titillation of their audience.

One hopes that these new media, with more resources than we presently have here at Catholica, such as the Global Mail, might take the time to dig a little deeper and examine the background of what is going on here.

A good place to start might be Fr Lee's background and also the "ecclesial politics" presently being played out in the Parramatta Diocese under the new bishop, Anthony Fisher. It is well-known that since his arrival in Parramatta, this youngish friar bishop has embarked on a course of appointing individuals with very orthodox connections to key places in the diocese seemingly in some sort of obedience to the agenda of his former master in the Sydney diocese to "clean up the Church in Australia". The conservative movement Opus Dei appears to have been given a big invite to clean up religious affairs in the Parramatta Diocese [See, for example, the story on the diocesan website HERE].

Fr Lee is reputed to have come from one of these very conservative backgrounds and for a time might have been considered for a significant promotion in the diocese. The attached letters might indicate something of the problem the bishop might have had as to why such a promotion was not made if at some time it was contemplated.

The letters relate to a letter Fr Lee had published back in the Catholic Weekly in 1996 complaining about some priests who he felt were too liberal at a seminary in Hunters Hill. The two letters that have been passed to me are Fr Lee's response to Fr Dan Donovan who had written to Fr Lee following the publication of the letter in the Catholic Weekly. Fr Lee's letter to Fr Donovan is very revealing of the very conservative outlook Fr Lee has about a lot of matters. The language in that letter is revealing in itself and Fr Donovan ended up passing it on to the Bishop when he heard rumours of the proposed promotion of Fr Lee. One wonders if Fr Lee's outburst in the media might be connected with some disappointment at being overlooked, or perhaps it might be the final rebellion of a person who has been subject to a very repressive set of rules and theologies imposed by others, perhaps even family or peer group imposed, or whether it is genuinely the matters he aired publicly on Seven News?

Here's the text of the letters. You can view the originals as a pdf file by clicking the image of page 1 of Fr Lee's letter below or the link at the bottom of the page. At the end of the article I also provide links to Fr Lee's appearances on the Seven News bulletins last night and tonight.

THE RAW TEXT OF FR LEE'S LETTER TO FR DONOVAN
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam

St Margaret Mary's Merrylands
Catholic Presbytery,
5 Chetwynd Road
NSW 2160 Australia

Friday, 16 August 1996

Rev. Daniel M. Donovan
Secretariat NSW Division
179 Albert Road
Strathfield, NSW, 2135

Re: Kevin Lee's letter to the Catholic Weekly June 16, 1996

Dear Daniel,

Thanks for writing to me. I can't believe you actually tried to defend the position of the "non¬traditional" Trinitarian formula. In fact, I spent a bit of time wondering whether you really are a Catholic, or just someone pretending to be so that you would be in a position to destroy the Catholic Church "from within". Let me ask you a few questions, Dan.

Since I am not your spiritual director, I can't demand any answers. But I assume you are a priest or brother or something (you attached the prefix "REV" in front of your name). I also assume you have been a religious or whatever for some time more than me. Were you ever bound to read/recite/pray the Divine Office? Do you pray it? Regularly or whenever you find the time? I realise that, for me to keep my heart set on God and His will and ways, I need to pray. In fact, when I get slack in keeping my promises at ordination of praying the prayer of the Church, I start to get these feelings to say what Kevin Lee thinks rather than what Scripture teaches and Tradition upholds. 1 wonder if you read the Office of Readings today for St. Irenaeus? It seems divinely inspired and applicable to the topic in question. The noble martyr said (all those centuries ago) echoing the timeless truth of sacred tradition : "God sustains the universe in being. His nature and His greatness cannot be described by any of the creatures He has made. But He is known to all of them. The Word proclaims to all that there is one God, the Father who holds all things in being and gives being to all creation. It is written in the gospel that no one has ever seen God apart from His only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father: He has proclaimed the Father. The Son has revealed the Father from the beginning for He was with the Father from the beginning.. "

Irenaeus knew that from the beginning God was Father and Son. He was not the Creator until creation existed; and there was no redeemer prior to the redemption, just as we don't call a sculptor such until he has made something, nor a player such until he has taken the field. St. Irenaeus wrote this in the second century and clearly had a better understanding of the Church's view than you who have been influenced by the secular "justice and equality" mentality which finds Catholic theological expressions troublesome.

Ireneaus further observed of the Son : "He sheilded the Father from human sight so that man would never undervalue God through familiarity but would always have something to strive towards." In my lifetime I have noticed a movement away from looking up to God where He "lived in unapproachable light" to a time where scripture scholars invent a familiar name for God "Yahweh"1 and He is no longer Father but sometime "mother", He is brought down to a level where we no longer hear statements from the Old Testament such as "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Fools despise wisdom and instruction." (Proverbs 1:7) Or Psalm 2: 11 Serve the Lord with fear: and rejoice unto Him with trembling. Just read psalm 13 man, to get an idea of what the problem is, and the inevitable pitfall of academics who treat God as a subject of study instead of the Unknowable: "Destruction and unhappiness in their ways: and the way of peace they have not known: there is no fear of God before their eyes."

But wait! That's the Old Testament! Jesus changed all that! God was different after Jesus! Its Eucharist man! No longer "Holy Communion", no longer sacrifice, its now CELEBRATE! This mentality-which fits in well with modern passive-receptive entertainment seeking is not going over too well with a generation which is starving for true spirituality and divinity. That is why cult music and Gregorian chant is selling so well, as are candles and religious symbols as fashion . accessories - because young people want something sacred and they want a God, not a mate. The current focus of contemporary spirituality taught at pseudo-academic institutions like the A.C.U. and C.T.U. is derived from the reactionary views of frustrated celibate nuns who grew up in a male-dominated patriarchal church. The majority of Catholics now see the present Church as irrelevant because it does not go close to addressing their real needs. The average Catholic does not give a shit if a priest is male or female, they just want some religion, not ego-centric feeling oriented "find your number" enneagram crap. These sort of courses are giving religious who have lost the plot of their vocation, something to do to fill in their time. Do I sound cynical? I'm not cynical. I am just pissed off. Pissed off with being embarrassed at the lack of presence of the Catholic Church in the world. Instead of being the proof that God is real and Jesus is alive, it is again the meaningless and self-centred church that catalysed the Protestant reformation. I will not be worried about what "people" try to label me Dan, because I believe that I am trying to live the beatitudes of "Blessed shall you be when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you and shall reproach you and cast out your name as evil, , for the Son of man's sake. Be glad in that day and rejoice: for behold, your reward is great in heaven, For according to these things did their fathers do to the prophets". Luke 6: 22-23 and "Woe to you when men speak well of you: for this is how their fathers treated the, false prophets "(v.26) (as they do of you who don't challenge the society in which you live, but rather you co-exist with it and wear your secular clothes. Not from a sense of humility, but for shame to be identified as a religious that non-Catholics might wonder about why you are not living as everyone else). The Catholic Church in Australia is probably at its weakest and most gutless stage it has ever been seen in. It has been castrated by feminist nuns who, at the post-menopause stage and are looking for meaning as celibate religious. They are angry women looking for a fight, and fighting for a cause. Creation spirituality and environmentalism have become the religion of the nineties

1 (I can take further of your time to refute this translation of the Hebrew statement of God in Exodus 3:14. "Moses said to God: I shall go to the children of Israel, and say to them: The God of your fathers has sent me to you. If they should say to me: What is his name? What shall I say to them? God said to Moses: I AM WHO AM. He said: This is what you shall say to the children of Israel: HE WHO IS, has sent me to you. "

The transliteration of (YaHWeH - which should be read from right to left) comes from the statement : I(Y) Am(H) Who(W) Am(H), but it would be inaccurate to use this statement as His Name because that is God speaking about Himself. Just like me saying about myself "I am strong", you can not then say "Hello, I-am-strong". The statement God made about Himself is not His name. God said : "He WHO IS" has sent you. Not ` I AM has sent you' as some inaccurate translators have written. (Our scripture teacher Wim Hoekstra taught us this at Manly C.I.S. where I studied).

for many nuns and the remaining religious are so lost as to have no concern for the real needs of our community but spend their efforts on championing the cause of the homosexual.

Now I decided to write rather than calling you (you so generously offered me that opportunity) to save time, so I don't want to write a long letter to you, although I type very fast. Let me get straight to the point...

The formula we use in expressing the nature of the Trinity is a statement of who the members are in relation to each other, not in relation to nature, us or anyone else.. therefore the expression "The Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier" is a statement of who these Persons are in relation to the outside world, particularly humankind, and says nothing of the intrinsic relationship between the three Person who are one God (I can't believe I am teaching this fundamental stuff to a bloke occupying such a position in the Catholic Church in Australia! ! What the @#$% has happened to the Catholic hierarchy that they would be stuck with the nongs they have purporting to be Catholic teachers! I go along with the statement I heard recently: "those who can't - teach, and those who can't teach - teach the teachers.")

Yours faithfully in Jesus Christ the Lord of the Universe,

Kevin Lee

By the way, by not printing your letter in the Catholic Weekly you did save some embarrassment for yourself, because the majority of its readers would have been shocked at your attempt to justify what was criticised. I received streams of letters and calls asking me "Is it really true?!"

p. s. chucking in a few bracketed Latin terms does not make your argument any more convincing or orthodox.

"Grace be to you and peace, from God the Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with spiritual blessings

in heavenly places, in Christ: As He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and spotless in His sight in charity." (Ephesians 1:2-4)

FR DONOVAN'S LETTER TO THE BISHOP
Bishop Anthony Fisher
Diocese of Parramatta Offices
12 Victoria Rd
Parramatta NSW 2150 April 3 2011

Dear Bishop Fisher,

Recently, it has come to my notice that in your revamping of the structures of the Diocese of Parramatta, Fr Kevin Lee has been given consideration for an official position. On the chance that this report has even a modicum of truth, I enclose a copy of a letter which Fr Lee sent to me in 1996. He was responding to a letter which I had forwarded to him commenting on a letter of his published in the Catholic Weekly concerning the naming of the Trinity. As memory serves me, Fr Lee based his argument on a third hand report concerning liturgies at the then seminary at Hunters Hill.

Perhaps after reading the text of his letter with its assumptions about me, odd theological reasoning and disgusting expletives; you might consider Father's increased involvement in diocesan matters could well be counter- productive?

Sincerely,

Fr Daniel Donovan

Link to the pdf file of the originals of the above letters:
www.catholica.com.au/misc/LeeLtrs-A4.pdf

Link to the Seven News story on Tuesday night:
http://au.news.yahoo.com/nsw/latest/a/-/newshome/13570958/catholic-priest-admits-secret...

Link to the Seven News story on Wednesday night:
http://au.news.yahoo.com/video/nsw/-/watch/29157461/married-priest-ex-communicated/

Fr Lee is still listed as parish priest on the parish website (that might be because Fr Lee is the only one with access to the password to change the website):
http://www.padrepio.org.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&layout=blo...
His name has been removed on the Diocean website:
http://www.parra.catholic.org.au/a-z-diocesan-directory/a-z-directory.aspx?org=93

The word around is that the bishop will be saying the masses in the parish this coming weekend and the Diocesan Vicar General, Monsignor Bob McGuckin, will be the immediate administrator of the parish while something more permanent is worked out.

Brian Coyne
[Editor & Publisher]