ohn Bathersby and Fr Peter Kennedy's St Mary's congregation was passionate and public. This valuable book illuminates the dispute, setting it into a human context that is both much smaller and larger than that offered by the media coverage.

The most instructive and moving contributions to the book are studies of people involved. Two interviews of Kennedy by Martin Flanagan serve as book ends. Flanagan catches the contemplative and detached character of Kennedy's personality. These make his understated religious leadership so formidable and so attractive.

Michele Gierck's profiles of a range of people involved in the life of the congregation are also deeply insightful. She allows them to speak for themselves, perhaps more eloquently than they knew they could speak. The stories of people help you see the depth of what is involved in the building and pulling down of communities, the precarious lives that find some mending, the desired connections made, the broken people who find nurturing.

These pieces, together with the autobiographical reflections by people who have known St Mary's, suggest why and how the St Mary's congregation will survive its separation from the Brisbane Catholic church ( )