AUSTRALIA
The Tablet (UK)
04 October 2016 | by Mark Brolly
Respected Jesuit priest and law professor issues reminder that Catholic Church is not a government department
Australian sex abuse commission must not lecture on structure, theology or doctrine
Australia’s long-running federal inquiry into child sexual abuse should not “trespass on the holy ground of religious belief and practice”, Jesuit priest and law professor Fr Frank Brennan has warned.
Brennan, Professor of Law at Australian Catholic University, told the Freedom for Faith conference in Melbourne on 23 September that the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which has announced a “wrap-up” hearing into the Catholic Church for February 2017, “will need to be very careful about taking on the mantle of royal commission infallibility and lecturing to the Church about its structure, theology and doctrine in light of contemporary secular Australian notions of truth and right”.
The Royal Commission, which was announced by then Prime Minister Julia Gillard in November 2012 and began work in early 2013, is to conclude with the delivery of its final report in December 2017.
Fr Brennan said he welcomed the assistance of the state to put the Church’s house in order as the repeated evidence before the Commission had convinced him that the Church had been in serious disrepair, putting at risk many victims who could have been spared lives of living hell if only appropriate safeguards had been in place.
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