AUSTRALIA
Eureka Street
Sandie Cornish
December 05, 2012
In an effort to encourage and support Catholics shaken by clergy sexual abuse scandals, Bishop Greg O’Kelly of Port Pirie wrote a pastoral letter to his people on 20 November. He rejected generalisations and inaccuarcies in some media reporting, insisted that responsibility for wrongdoing lies with ‘individuals within the Church’ rather than with ‘the Church’, and pointed to the good done by many church organisations.
Much of what Bishop O’Kelly says is true, but he misses the opportunity to examine the relationship between personal and collective responsibility. There is such a thing as social responsibility and the Catholic Social Teaching concept of structures of sin can help Catholics to understand and deal constructively with their shame.
Bishop O’Kelly objects to the assertion that ‘the Church’ has committed sexual crimes against children, shielded offenders or obscured police investigations, yet presents examples of ‘all the good that the Church continues to do’. I don’t think we can argue that ‘the Church’ is responsible when individuals and Catholic organisations do good things, but that ‘individuals within the Church’ are responsible when evil acts are committed.
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