For weeks I have been unable to bring myself to attend Sunday Mass, by Anne O’donovan, Sydney Morning Herald (March 9, 2019)

As a cradle Catholic, and as a mother and a grandmother, my response to the Cardinal Pell conviction is, as for others like me, deeply complex.

Almost daily I wake to a deadening of the heart as yet another story of abuse of children by Catholic clergy emerges, here and internationally. Catholics like me are in grief.

Cardinal Pell is an unsympathetic character, described as having a pathological lack of empathy, and emblematic of a church that is out of touch with its people. And yet he is a prince of the church: the only ranking higher is that of the Pope. How unthinkable that he has been convicted of abusing children.

I see myself as a liberal Catholic – loosely connected to St Carthage’s parish at Melbourne University, where the much-loved Father Michael Elligate ministers to a flock from every corner of Melbourne. When I go to Michael’s Mass, I come away with a thought about how to live my life – an opportunity for meditation on the deeper things.

I abhor the arrogant male exclusivity of elements of the church and long ago relinquished any regard for the dogmatic pronouncements from the Control Tower. And yet, and yet … something keeps me connected.

For me, it is a love of the ritual, something deep in my racial memory, and it’s the goodness of so many clergy and religious, the 93 per cent who are not abusers. Perhaps it’s also the debt we owe to generations of nuns, priests and brothers who gave us a start on what became fulfilling lives as successful professionals. Many in public life operate from principles of social justice imbibed in this system.

Catholic schools today are flourishing. Lapsed or former Catholics may not have much faith in the church, but many still want their children educated in a system which at its best operates from a values philosophy, living out principles of fairness and, ironically, pastoral care.

Then there is the health system. The nuns were outstanding in their efficient and inspired running of their hospitals, like St Vincent’s, The Mercy, Cabrini, which were for everyone, not just for Catholics.

In all of this, there are the unacknowledged good people. And there is so much quiet goodness. For instance the Sacred Heart Mission which feeds 500 people a day and provides a refuge for sex workers. Or Father Bob Maguire, whose car carries the slogan "In Bob we Trust": affable, lovable, doing much good. Or St Joseph’s Parish in Prahran which has turned a disused primary school into comfortable units as shelter for the homeless.

I was brought up deep within the Irish Catholic culture, on slogans like "the family that prays together, stays together" and also "mix with your own and you’ll marry your own". (Many did and are divorced now.) In my childhood the priest was a respected, often wise family counsellor, someone we were honoured to have visit our home.

Yet under the trusting protection of a respected institution, this very reverence was what protected and allowed these predators to move freely.

My friend the Jesuit priest Michael Kelly thinks it will take the Catholic Church three generations to recover. This may be optimistic, given the almost total rejection of the Church by the next crop of young parents and their unbaptised offspring. It is largely the endemic abuse that has brought this about.

Are we the last generation who will understand the meaning and the rhythms of the Kyrie and the Gloria in Bach’s Mass in B Minor or stand unbewildered by Mantegna’s depiction of Saint Sebastian and all the religious art in the museums of the world? What are we losing in our connection to a culture that has produced music and art which has moved people for centuries?

We are, as Father Frank Brennan said, a wounded nation. As well as the children and families whose lives are destroyed, we who are left – we too – are betrayed and grieving.