The challenge of Redfern would fill a book. The historical
situation is that Fr Ted Kennedy sided with the Redfern
Aborigines around Mum Shirl and became a close collaborator
in her work. His genius was to privilege the excluded
in such a way that they became friends. His deep and
profound love of the Aborigines in Redfern and all their
relatives around Australia was expressed in his extraordinary
memory of names and places and where those names belonged.
He could identify where each family was based geographically
and knew members of visiting Aborigines' families. This
practical knowledge was matched with a keen theological
insight and edge that came straight from a political
reading of the gospel that left fellow travellers enthralled
with its freshness and cultural critique. Ted had an
eye for the angle that gave hope to the underdog and
a passion to those who stood in solidarity with the
underdog. Redfern parishioners - that strange, diverse
and sometimes tortured group of all kinds, all colours
and even various beliefs - somehow created a community
that would have made Jesus proud.
The relationship between the Redfern parish and Indigenous
people from far and wide has alluded many and is almost
inaccessible to those from outside. Very few people
who have had little experience of this Redfern genius
could possible appreciate the complex way in which Indigenous
people and Redfern Parish hold each other in respect
through a sacred symbiosis. It defies any ordinary way
of understanding mission because, like the gospel, it
turns the idea of mission on its head. Like the Syro
Phoenician woman teaching Jesus a thing or two about
God's expansive love, it was always the Aborigine who
had something to teach at Redfern.
So it is not surprising to see some cultural shenanigans
at Redfern with the arrival of the Neo-Catechumenal
Way priests. They have little time for the inverted
sense of mission that Redfern parishioners have lived
and breathed for thirty years. They find it hard to
appreciate inverse symbolic action as resistance and
the Indigenous people's rejection of their need to convert
them to repentance for their drunkenness and rebel rousing
The recent Redfern riots, as they are known, was an
act of resistance to the terrible shrinking world of
Aboriginal safety in Redfern. Like the Berrigans and
other ploughshares people of the anti-Vietnam war days,
the safe houses where "fugitives" from the law might
find respite are almost gone as Aborigines live under
the watchful gaze of our property protectors. Let's
not be fooled these are real problems and complex too
- but it is clearly the property of the whites that
is being protected while the blacks' property is being
raised to the ground and Aborigines are being rehoused
“in the community”, away from Redfern, away from family
and away from friends.
And what of Ted's faithful band. They carry on. Not
all at Redfern. Some battle scarred and needing a little
time of retreat have found other digs for Sunday succour;
others still are moving away from all church venues.
And some still bravely march the fields of Redfern parish
armed only with good humour, brave ritual, a meal for
the homeless and helpless and a staunch belief in the
God of the gospels they have heard so often
Ted is not well now - as a kind of symbol of the brokenness
of the Redfern. But for us christians, brokenness is
a phase of the paschal mystery which dawns in resurrection.
There will be a phoenix rising from the ashes - of that
we are sure in faith Just how and when is a matter of
faith. While the battle is raging on the streets and
in the parish, there is still a band of merry ones striking
a blow for solidarity with the Christ in the blacks
of Redfern.
by Peter Maher
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