AUSTRALIA
Christian Today
James Macintyre 13 June 2017
A leading Australian writer and former politician has likened child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church to ‘terrorism’ and extremism, arguing that it is responsible for many deaths, mainly by suicide.
Kristina Keneally, a former Australian Labor party leader and premier of New South Wales, wrote in the Guardian that the label ‘institutional sexual abuse’ was inadequate and ‘too bland to confront us with the terror and deadly impact on the victims’. She added: ‘It allows abusers – individually or as a class – to continue hiding behind the institution.’
Instead, Keneally wrote: ‘The end result of this flawed theology and ecclesiology is the nauseating, terrifying, grotesque, ritualised and repeated violent assaults and rapes of children by Catholic clergy and religious.
‘Should we label this “Catholic terrorism”? The Australian victims of sexual abuse have been terrorised by the Catholic church, no doubt. Is it “radical Catholic ideology” or “extremist Catholic belief” to cover up the sin of sexual abuse for “the greater good”? It’s hard to deny it. As a Catholic, I shudder at the thought. But I know that such labels would be truthful. ‘
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