There's something about Mary
Sophie Cunningham
October 18
The parade honoring Mary Mackillop in her birth place, Fitzroy, was just a couple of hundred metres from where I live, so I went and watched it.
I felt as is I’d stepped back into another decade (given the combie below, I’d suppose that would be the sixties). There were men in caps, old-fashioned-looking priests, and beaming school girls. Those few un-ironic moments in Fitzroy, did feel like a miracle, the smiles on those nun’s faces was a treat, and the event was touching. But I’ve been surprised by the hypocrisy in the media about the event.
Can you imagine the headlines if non-Christian members of our society held a parade celebrating the work of a woman who has performed miracles? I point you to Jeff Sparrow’s article on New Atheism, which we published in March this year, if you want to remind yourself of the general mocking such, well, medieval beliefs, usually provoke. If it happens in the Middle East it’s fundamentalism, if it happens in small town USA, or downtown Fitzroy, well it’s a touching return to simpler times.
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