AUSTRALIA
Eureka Street
Frank Brennan | 03 September 2013
Remembering the passing of Seamus Heaney let’s commence with the first stanza of his poem ‘From the Republic of Conscience’:
When I landed in the republic of conscience
It was so noiseless when the engines stopped
I could hear a curlew high above the runway
At immigration, the clerk was an old man
Who produced a wallet from his homespun coat
And showed me a photograph of my grandfather
The woman in customs asked me to declare
The words of our traditional cures and charms
To heal dumbness and avert the evil eye
No porters. No interpreter. No taxi.
You carried your own burden and very soon
Your symptoms of creeping privilege disappeared.
Attentive to the silence, the curlew, the old man, and the woman, let’s reflect on the burdens we carry and the privileges which are disappearing as we confront the enormity of child abuse in our society and in our Church.
Putting the case for state intervention in Church affairs
On 31 October 2012, I was privileged to deliver the 2012 Law and Justice Oration at Parliament House in Sydney. I said:
You will all know that these are not easy times for Catholic priests; and they have never been easy times for those children in our society who have been sexually abused, a disproportionate number of them by Catholic priests. When in Sydney in July 2008, Pope Benedict XVI apologised in these words: ‘I…acknowledge the shame which we have all felt as a result of the sexual abuse of minors by some clergy and religious in this country. Indeed, I am deeply sorry for the pain and suffering the victims have endured and I assure them that, as their pastor, I too share in their suffering. These misdeeds, which constitute so grave a betrayal of trust, deserve unequivocal condemnation.’ I adopt his apology without demurrer.
Whatever our religion or none, whatever our love or loathing of the Catholic Church, what is to be done in the name of law and justice? Clearly, the Church itself cannot be left alone to get its house in order. That would be a wrongful invocation of freedom of religion in a pluralist, democratic society. The State may have a role to play. As our elected politicians prudentially decide how best to proceed, they need assistance from lawyers committed to justice, not lawyers acting primarily to protect the Church or to condemn it. The Catholic Church in Victoria has admitted that ‘in the past 16 years, about 620 cases of criminal child abuse have been upheld by the Church in Victoria’. In the Archdiocese of Melbourne alone, 301 complaints have been upheld since 1996.
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