QUEENSLAND (AUSTRALIA)
Newburgh Gazette
December 19, 2017
By Dwayne Harmon
A Catholic priest in Queensland has told his congregation the church is a flawed institution, and Australian archbishops must fight for change to stop sexual abuse.
Of survivors who reported abuse in religious institutions, more than 60% cited the Catholic church, which demonstrated “catastrophic failures of leadership”, particularly before the 1990s, the report said.
Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart, the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference president, said the bishops would take the royal commission’s recommendations seriously and present them to the Holy See.
It said priests should report abuse confided to them, even in the secret context of the confessional.
“I revere the law of the land and I trust it but this is a sacred, spiritual charge before God which I must honor and I have to respect and try to do what I can do with both”, Hart said.
“I would feel terribly conflicted and I would try even harder to get that person outside confessional, but I can not break the seal”, Hart told reporters.
Archbishop Fisher, like most of the Australian bishops who testified to the commission, said in a December 15 statement he was “appalled by the sinful and criminal activity of some clergy, religious and lay church workers (and) I’m ashamed of the failure to respond by some church leaders, and … We know very well that this happens in families that are certainly not observing celibacy”, he said.
On the call for voluntary celibacy, he said it was up to the Vatican to decide.
He further noted that the celibacy recommendations would be relayed to the Vatican, but added that “I believe that there are real values in celibacy”. “But it’s a hard thing”, Archbishop Hart said.
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