AUSTRALIA
Eureka Street
Frank Brennan | 21 April 2016
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has now published its Case Study 26 on the Neerkol Orphanage in Rockhampton.
The Commission finds that the response by the bishop and by the Sisters of Mercy to victims making complaints prior to 1996 was often inadequate and lacking in compassion. It also makes a damning finding that the bishop was dishonest in a letter he sent to the diocese.
I still have a problem with this commission making findings on issues like the want of compassion. When it reported on the Ellis Case, I said the royal commission (being appointed by the state rather than the church) had no business finding that Cardinal Pell ‘did not act fairly from a Christian point of view’. I thought they should simply have found that the Cardinal did not act fairly. Similarly I wonder about the competence, utility and power of a royal commission to make findings on compassion. Sure, the Christian churches espouse compassion as a Christian virtue, but I don’t see that it is something usefully to be assessed or mandated by a royal commission. To find how compelling the commissioners’ findings on compassion were, I would first want to know how compassionate each of them is, and that’s basically none of my business. They are royal commissioners performing a legal task for the state. Would the commission make findings that other institutions (like Swimming Australia or the State Department of Child Welfare) did not act compassionately?
The word ‘compassion’ or ‘compassionate’ appears 21 times in this case study report. I have no problem with church people or other individuals adversely judging church leaders for a lack of compassion. There may even be a case for politicians doing it, and then arguing the toss on whether they are more compassionate than the people they are criticising. But I don’t think it’s the job of a royal commission. If it is the job of the royal commission, why do they stop at compassion? Why not also offer judgments about whether the responses are loving, merciful and self-sacrificing? I think by over-reaching itself in this way, the commission actually blunts its findings about the adequacy of responses, including compliance with protocols and sensitivity to the needs of victims. The issue is not whether church leaders measured up to the ideals of the Christian virtue of compassion but whether they measured up to the standards properly expected by the Australian community, regardless of people’s religious commitments and views. You would hope that church leaders would do more to assist victims than merely to comply with community standards. To date, the commission has unearthed countless instances where the church leaders have not even complied with those community standards. But I am uneasy about a royal commission making assessments about virtue which go beyond the laws and protocols which might be set down for all institutions and for all individuals.
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