St Columba's College, Springwood Liturgical reform within the Catholic Church (Vatican II) Edward Phillip "Ted" Kennedy OAM (27 January 1931 – 17 May 2005) was an Australian priest and activist.

He was best known as the parish priest of St Vincent's Roman Catholic church in the Sydney inner-city suburb of Redfern, where he commenced his ministry in 1971.

He was a harsh critic of the Tridentine seminary system and its objectives, to which he had been subjected, and lamented the lifelong bad effects it had on so many of his brother priests.

[3]: p362ff After his ordination and before he went to Redfern, Kennedy worked in the Sydney parish of Ryde, where he sought to improve the standard of liturgy and music.

[4] From 1957 to 1962, with Roger Pryke and others, he was a participant in a series of lectures for nuns at Sancta Sophia College within Sydney University.

[6] Partly through Kennedy's introduction and encouragement, composer Richard Connolly and poet and academic James McAuley became involved in creating suitable and appealing Australian Catholic hymns, especially for various sections of the Mass.

[5]: 164 Kennedy arrived in Redfern in 1971, appointed to head a team ministry by the then Archbishop of Sydney, James Freeman (later a cardinal), with colleagues John Butcher and Fergus Breslan.

He served as parish priest in Redfern continuously under archbishops Edward Bede Clancy and George Pell.

[8] Author and former Jesuit Peter Norden recalls that on wet nights up to one hundred people slept at the St Vincent de Paul catholic presbytery.

This was a public debate triggered by comments from Cardinal George Pell, who had argued that the "doctrine of the primacy of conscience should be quietly ditched, at least in our schools, or comprehensively restated"[14] largely because of his concerns that too many liberties were being taken in a society that over-emphasised the philosophy of individualism.