An Unholy Mess: Addressing Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church

By Des Cahill
ABC Religion and Ethics
November 21, 2012

http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2012/11/21/3637725.htm

A proactive plan of action must emerge from next week's Catholic Bishops Conference, which addresses the underlying issues as well as the immediate demands of government inquiries.

Next week, the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference will hold its normal November meeting beside the tomb of St Mary of the Cross, Australia's first saint. It is noteworthy that the bishops will discuss the holy and unholy mess created by the clerical sexual abuse scandal and the forthcoming Royal Commission into the institutional responses to child sexual abuse, as well as the continuing fallout from the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry.

The Church has already lost the public relations war. The evidence of the Victoria Police has made very sure of that by the evidence of their statistics. These show that between January 1956 and June 2012 in their Victorian jurisdiction, of the 519 "distinct victims," 71.29% occurred within the Catholic Church system as compared to the Anglican (7.13%), Salvation Army (6.94%) and Jewish (3.47%) figures - although, of course, these figures do not pertain just to ministers of religion.

My own statistical analysis shows that at least one in twenty who graduated as priests from the Corpus Christi seminary which serves Victoria and Tasmania between 1940 and 1972 eventually became child abusers. This in many ways mirrors the study of the John Jay College for Criminal Justice of 105,000 priests, commissioned by the United States Catholic Bishops, which found that 4% became convicted abusers.

Also noteworthy is that it seems that Archbishop Denis Hart from Melbourne and Archbishop Mark Coleridge from Brisbane have taken up the public relations running. The television interview last week by Cardinal George Pell to an overflowing press room was uniformly assessed to be a disaster. He was bumbling, poorly briefed by his advisers and simply wrong in some of his comments, especially in suggesting that clerical sex abuse amongst the Catholic clergy is no higher compared to other cognate professional and religious groups.

The Cardinal appeared drawn and tired, worn down by this ongoing saga and bearing the intolerable burden of two false accusations over the years, along with his unwise appearance with a serial paedophile priest in court in a well-intentioned act of priestly solidarity. To use Aussie Rules parlance, for sixteen years since he became the Archbishop of Melbourne he has been playing in the ruck and he now needs to rested in the forward pocket. Other Church leaders must take the running.

The question now becomes: what proactive plan of action will emerge from the Bishops Conference, and will it seriously address the underlying issues as well as the immediate demands of government inquiries where the archbishops will be "monstered" if they do not have a serious proactive plan of action?

Firstly, the bishops must accept that the clerical failures in abusing children and teenagers and the episcopal failures in responding inappropriately to criminal as well as sinful acts are part of an historical, worldwide and systemic phenomenon. It has become clear both from the statements of the Cardinal and the Bishops Conference that there is some resistance to accepting the systemic nature of the phenomenon. Yet the empirical research data is overwhelming, not least in the fact that the phenomenon has been noted so far in about forty countries, many of which are far less open than Australia regarding a phenomenon that strives to be kept secret all the time.

Secondly, the Catholic bishops have to take on board the measured and affirmative comments of the globally key figure of former Bishop Geoffrey Robinson who has been derided and mocked privately by some bishops. And finally, they need to consider the outcomes and failure of outcomes of the Irish Royal Commission.

What would a proactive plan of action look like? I have consistently said that clerical celibacy is not the direct cause of the phenomenon but it is the lynchpin of a clericalism that Cardinal Pell himself recently challenged in an interview he gave in Rome. Since the 1960s, the celibacy debate has always masked the issue of the exercise of priesthood in the contemporary world. Catholic priesthood needs to be rethought and repositioned for the new millennium. If done properly, it will again show the genius of Catholicism in responding to historical contingencies.

I suggest that the following elements might constitute a proactive nine-point plan of action:

The development and implementation by an expert committee, including experts in victimology, of a multifaceted strategy of healing and reparation involving the whole Australian Church.

The same expert committee to develop a strategy to address (i) the situation of the non-offending priests to meet their spiritual and psychological needs and (ii) the situation of those priests wrongly accused of sexual misconduct by psychologically unbalanced or vexatious or fraudulent persons.

The re-introduction of the third rite of reconciliation as a strategy to offset any legislative action against the confessional seal, to bring about healing and reconciliation for those impacted and to bring back within the Catholic population the sense of both individual and communal sinfulness and the connection with criminal behaviour.

The formation of a working party, co-chaired by an eminent active priest or bishop and an eminent former priest, to plan and guide the implementation of the process of re-integrating former priests in good standing with the Church through the mechanism of Anglicanorum Coetibus, being used currently to integrate married and celibate Anglican priests into the Catholic priesthood.

The same working party to develop a plan of action to admit to the Catholic priestly ministry viri probati (proven men of experience) through the mechanism of Anglicanorum Coetibus, while remaining true to the Latin-rite tradition of priestly celibacy.

The formation of an expert working party, chaired by a religious sister with expertise in psychology and religious formation, to review the selection and education of candidates for the priesthood in a consultative process with the Catholic people and to deal with the fall-out among seminarians of the implementation of recommendation 5.

The involvement of the religious orders, male and female, in providing advice to the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference and in the implementation of any plan of action together with a media strategy.

The holding of a National or Archdiocesan Synod with full lay involvement in late 2014 in Melbourne which will be charged to deal with the theology and practice of the Catholic priesthood in and for the new millennium.

The appointment of episcopal ambassadors or envoys or a group of eminent Catholics to liaise with church and non-church persons and groups at all levels of the church and of society to outline and explain the plan of action.

Globalization theory teaches that to be global is to be local and to be local is to be global. All change begins locally, as did the Incarnation with the local birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. But it changed the world. The issue for next week's Australian Catholic Bishops Conference is this: will the bishops adopt a thorough proactive plan of action that will underpin a healthy and evangelizing Australian Church? And perhaps a healthy and evangelizing global Church?

Des Cahill is Professor of Intercultural Studies at RMIT University, and is a world leading researcher in the areas of immigrant, cross-cultural and international studies. You can hear him in conversation with Andrew West on the Religion and Ethics Report on Radio National.