The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is about to recommence its case study on the Catholic Church in Ballarat. Last week, the Melbourne Herald Sun reported: ‘Victims of child sexual abuse look set to be grilled by lawyers for Cardinal George Pell in a bid to quash explosive allegations he was complicit in a widespread cover-up.’

Cardinal Pell will have legal representation separate from the legal team appearing for the Church. He will return from Rome and give evidence at the public hearing next month.

I am one of those Catholic priests who thinks that the church’s Truth Justice and Healing Council has done a good job insisting that the needs of victims be paramount. From the start, the council’s lawyers told the Royal Commission that they would not be cross-examining witnesses, testing their credibility, and doubting their evidence of sexual abuse by church personnel.

Wanting to assist with healing for victims and wanting to learn all available lessons about how to avoid future abuse and cover-ups, the Church has been prepared to place second issues of institutional and personal reputation of church officials. The wellbeing of victims has been put first during the church’s conduct of the commission.

Our critics would say this is too little, too late. They may be right. But as a church we are in the business of repentance, forgiveness and making a fresh start.

We were given a fine example recently by the Anglican Archbishop Philip Aspinall who appeared before the commission admitting past mistakes in the conduct of two Brisbane schools, intelligently wrestling with the complex issues, and always putting justice and healing for the victims first.

Things get difficult now that the commission has Cardinal Pell back in its gaze. His reputation is on the line and the commission has spared no effort in scrutinising his past actions. No one else has been called three times before the commission.

The commission even went to the trouble of conducting a private hearing and then a public hearing with the notorious pedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale giving evidence. Ridsdale did not come up to proof, clearly causing considerable upset to Justice McClellan and his counsel assisting Ms Gail Furness SC.

The judge reminded Ridsdale the commission could track down proof of anyone having visited Ridsdale in jail between the private and public hearings. McClellan almost seemed to be suggesting that Ridsdale might have been nobbled. In any event, Ridsdale provided no credible or probative evidence.

A month after Ridsdale’s appearance, McClellan explained his reasons for calling Ridsdale and other notorious pedophiles. He not only wanted to get a sense of why these individuals offend.

But in this case study, he thought such individuals had ‘a capacity to tell us of the relationship between themselves and more senior members of their institutions, including the bishop or archbishop if they come from a religious institution. They can tell us if others knew of their offending conduct and help us to understand how the church responded or failed to respond to that conduct.’

Ridsdale told them nothing in the public hearing.

Pell has appeared before the commission in two previous public hearings — in the case studies on the Ellis Case and on the Melbourne response. Each time, the commission found some conflict of evidence between Pell and another witness. Each time the commission preferred the evidence of the other witness, doubting Pell’s recollection.

In the Ellis matter, Pell had a different recollection from Monsignor Brian Rayner, his Vicar General. Rayner gave evidence that he had kept Pell apprised of the dealings between the diocese and Mr Ellis.

Pell stated, ‘To the best of my recollection, I was not made aware at the time of any of those figures or offers. I was not consulted, as best I recall, about what financial amount should be considered. Nor was I made aware of the other factors which appear to have been significant in the way the facilitation process developed.’

The Commission stated, ‘It seems unlikely that, in light of the legal action being foreshadowed, the Cardinal, as responsible for the finances of the Archdiocese and as the Church Authority responsible for ensuring that victims were dealt with justly, would not have sought or been provided with the offers made as part of the facilitation and the outcome.’

The commission found Rayner to be ‘a truthful witness who did his best to provide an honest account’.

In the Melbourne Response hearing, the commission heard from various witnesses about a key parish meeting which related to abuse in the parish of the Foster family. Cardinal Pell had no recollection of the meeting being ‘unpleasant or rowdy’. Pell’s account basically accorded with the evidence of Archbishop Denis Hart and Ms Helen Last who worked for the archdiocese’s Pastoral Response Office.

The Commission found: ‘Notwithstanding these differing accounts, we accept Mrs Foster’s recollection of the events. Given the circumstances of the public meeting and her personal interest in the reading of the letter, she is less likely to recall the events incorrectly.

‘The impression the meeting left on the senior members of the Church is different, but no doubt both Cardinal Pell and Archbishop Hart have attended multiple meetings and recollections as to the impact of the events on the audience may not be as clear for them as for Mrs Foster.’

So twice, the commission has preferred the recollection of others to that of Pell.

At the Ballarat hearing, two victims, Timothy Green and David Ridsdale (a nephew of Gerald, the serial pedophile), made specific allegations under oath against Pell, allegations which had previously been publicly denied by Pell, and which were denied again by Pell in a media statement on 20 May 2015.

Green told the Royal Commission that when a school boy in the change room at the swimming pool in 1974 he said to Pell: ‘We’ve got to do something about what’s going on at St Pat’s.’ He recalls the conversation going like this: ‘Father Pell said, “Yes, what do you mean?” I said, “Brother Dowlan is touching little boys.” Father Pell said, “Don’t be so ridiculous,” and walked out.’

Pell has no recollection of Green at that time, and he has no recollection of such a conversation.

David Ridsdale gave sworn evidence that he called Pell in 1993 to report that he had been abused in the past by his priest uncle Gerald. Immediately after the phone conversation with Pell, David Ridsdale claims to have called both his sisters and said: ‘The bastard just tried to bribe me.’

He gave the commission this account of the conversation with Pell: ‘Me: “Excuse me, George, what the **** are you talking about?” George said, “I want to know what it will take to keep you quiet.” My response was, “**** you George, and everything you stand for.” I hung up the phone.’

Pell says: ‘At no time did I attempt to bribe David Ridsdale or his family or offer any financial inducements for him to be silent. At the time of our discussion the police were already aware of allegations against Gerald Ridsdale and were investigating.’

The royal commissioner has indicated that he wants to make findings in relation to these matters and also into Pell’s more generic claims that he knew nothing and could do nothing when a consultor to the bishop in Ballarat and when auxiliary bishop to Archbishop Francis Little in Melbourne. Pell will give sworn evidence. Undoubtedly he will be cross-examined.

After Green had given evidence, Justice McClellan, inviting cross-examination, warned the church lawyers who wanted to follow their usual practice of not cross-examining victims: ‘I should tell you that I would anticipate we’ll be asked to make findings about some of the matters that Mr Green has included in his statement. It’s a matter for you and those instructing you, but I should put you on notice that that’s a real possibility.’ He issued a similar warning after David Ridsdale had given evidence.

For the sake of Pell’s reputation, his lawyers will need to cross examine Green and Ridsdale testing their recollection and the consistency of their accounts, not about the sexual abuse they suffered, but about their recollections of any church cover-up.

The fact that these men were sexually abused as children is uncontested. The issue is whether their claims that Pell knew or tried to effect some form of cover-up are true and accurate recollections.

Given the high degree of scrutiny applied to Pell by the commission and the media, it’s only fair that he have his lawyers cross examine these two victims who claim that he did not want to know that abuse occurred or even worse, that he tried to cover it up. And it is appropriate given that both Green and Ridsdale have indicated they have no objection being recalled to be so examined.

It is imperative now that all parties be seen and heard in public so that we can all make our assessments of recollection and credibility up to 22 and 41 years on.

Once the commission has addressed the reputation and recollection of Messrs Pell, Green and Ridsdale, we should all then get back to seeing what changes can be made to institutions, especially the Catholic Church, so that the risks of child sexual abuse and of cover-up and inadequate response are minimised as much as possible.

Frank Brennan SJ is professor of law at Australian Catholic University. This article first appeared in Eureka Street on 23 November 2015.

This week the royal commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has published three reports relating to the Catholic Church.  Understandably the media has focused on the appropriately damning findings made by the royal commission against Cardinal Pell in his ruthless conduct of the Ellis case.

Having found that the Archdiocese of Sydney fundamentally failed Mr Ellis in its conduct of the Towards Healing process, the commission found that Cardinal Pell accepted the advice of his lawyers to vigorously defend the claim brought by Mr Ellis, in part to encourage other prospective plaintiffs not to litigate claims of child sexual abuse against the Church.  The commission also made a formal finding that the Archdiocese, the Trustees and the Archbishop, ‘did not act fairly from a Christian point of view in the conduct of the litigation against Mr Ellis’.  The commission found the Sydney Archdiocese failed to conduct the litigation with Mr Ellis in a manner that adequately took account of his pastoral and other needs as a victim of sexual abuse.

As a Catholic I am heartened to see that the royal commission moving from Sydney to Toowoomba made no adverse findings against Bishop William Morris.  In fact, the commission was quite complimentary to Morris. The commission’s key finding in relation to Morris was:

That on being advised of Mr Byrnes’s offending and the response of the school and the Toowoomba Catholic Education Office to the September 2007 allegations of child sexual abuse, Bishop Morris responded appropriately by:

• commissioning an independent investigation into what occurred and seeking advice and recommendations as to any actions that needed to be taken to better protect children
• appointing an independent mediator [retired High Court judge Ian Callinan] to assess and give advice as to reparation to victims and their families
• establishing a Child Abuse Response Team to develop and oversee both the pastoral and professional response and to give advice to the Diocese about improvements to child protection.

Bishop Morris ‘asked Mr Callinan to assist in ensuring that each victim received fair compensation for what had happened to them’.  Bishop Morris ‘felt that it was important that the matter be dealt with quickly and fairly so as to avoid any further suffering which might be caused by a lengthy and difficult legal process’.

These contrasting findings highlight the tragedy that such a pastoral bishop and decent man as William Morris could be sacked by Pope Benedict for failing in his duties as a bishop.  Mind you, I don’t think the royal commission (being appointed by the state rather than the church) had any business in finding that Pell ‘did not act fairly from a Christian point of view’.  The commission should stick to its brief.  The finding should have been more stark: Cardinal Pell did not act fairly towards Mr Ellis.  The commission should leave assessments from the religious point of view to religious communities.  We should maintain our proud separation of church and state.

To give Cardinal Pell his due, he did in the end apologise to Mr Ellis.  Just before leaving the witness box, Pell said:

As former archbishop and speaking personally, I would want to say to Mr. Ellis that we failed in many ways, some ways inadvertently, in our moral and pastoral responsibilities to him. I want to acknowledge his suffering and the impact of this terrible affair on his life. As the then archbishop, I have to take ultimate responsibility, and this I do. At the end of this grueling appearance for both of us at this Royal Commission, I want publicly to say sorry to him for the hurt caused him by the mistakes made and admitted by me and some of my archdiocesan personnel during the course of the Towards Healing process and litigation.

We now await the response to the commission’s findings from Archbishop Fisher and the Archdiocese of Sydney.

We’ve never been given a coherent rationale for Pope Benedict’s sacking of Morris.  When Morris was sacked, Pell had explained to an American Catholic news agency that ‘the diocese was divided quite badly and the bishop hasn’t demonstrated that he’s a team player’.  The royal commission’s report on Toowoomba shows just what a team player Morris was.  On the other hand its report on Sydney provides evidence of a fairly disorganized team led by His Eminence.  The report reveals a considerable disconnect even between Cardinal Pell and his Vicar General/Chancellor Monsignor Brian Rayner.  There was confusion whether Rayner had kept Pell informed of the Archdiocese’s formal dealings with Ellis.  In his statement Cardinal Pell had said, ‘To the best of my recollection, I was not made aware at the time of any of those figures or offers. I was not consulted, as best I recall, about what financial amount should be considered. Nor was I made aware of the other factors which appear to have been significant in the way the facilitation process developed’.  The commission reports:

Much of Monsignor Rayner’s evidence concerned his usual practice. However, he gave evidence that he did tell the Archbishop the results of the facilitation and the amount put forward by Mr Ellis. We accept that Monsignor Rayner was a truthful witness who did his best to provide an honest account.

We do not accept the submission put by the Church parties that Monsignor Rayner’s evidence ‘was substantially a reconstruction and would not be accepted in the absence of any corroboration from another witness or documentary evidence’.

We find it compelling that, by the time Mr Ellis’s solicitors had foreshadowed legal action, the Cardinal knew that amounts of money would have been discussed as part of the facilitation and that no agreement had been reached. As set out above, the Cardinal agreed he had an acute concern that people who had survived abuse by clergy would be justly dealt with. It seems unlikely that, in light of the legal action being foreshadowed, the Cardinal, as responsible for the finances of the Archdiocese and as the Church Authority responsible for ensuring that victims were dealt with justly, would not have sought or been provided with the offers made as part of the facilitation and the outcome.

The Sydney curia was not a smooth running team.  Though I don’t suppose Pope Francis will demote Cardinal Pell, it would be nice to see him reinstate Bishop Morris.  The Australian Church needs pastoral down to earth bishops like Morris who have been proved to ‘get it’ when it comes to dealing pastorally and professionally with child sexual abuse.

Following up on the Relatio Synodi, the Vatican has now released the lineamenta (http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/synod/documents/rc_synod_doc_20141209_lineamenta-xiv-assembly_en.html)

for next year’s synod on the family.  They have appended a list of 46 questions and they want the world’s Catholic bishops’ answers by April.  This will be a demanding task for the Australian bishops for three additional reasons.  First, they have not shared with the public the results of the first round of questionnaires circulated before this year’s synod.  Second, the country is about to retire for the summer recess.  Third, the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference (ACBC) is not due to reconvene for a plenary meeting until May 2015.

Before being asked to consider the 46 specific questions, the bishops are asked: “Does the description of the various familial situations in the Relatio Synodi correspond to what exists in the Church and society today? What missing aspects should be included?”

It is useful to consider some Australian statistics to set the scene.

Australians and marriage

The Australian Institute of Family Studies has a wealth of reliable statistics.  Here are some.

The crude marriage rate in Australia was 7.3/1,000 in 1901.  After reaching an all time high in 1942 (12/1,000), the rate fell until 1945, then increased sharply the following year, but generally fell again in the late 1940s and during the 1950s. The 1960s saw the rate increasing again.  It peaked again at 9.2/1,000 in 1971, and then progressively decreased in the last three decades of last century. The rate has remained fairly stable since 2001 when it was 5.3/1,000.  In 2012, it was 5.4/1,000.

16% of marriages in 1975 were preceded by cohabitation. By 2000, the proportion was 71%. The proportion was 78% in 2012.  Most young couples live together before marrying nowadays even if they are Catholic.

In 1908, 97% of marriages were performed by ministers of religion.  In 1999, there were for the first time in Australia more marriages performed by civil celebrants than by ministers of religion. In 2012, most marriages (72%) were conducted by civil celebrants.  Across the states and territories, civil marriage ceremonies are most common in the Northern Territory and least common in New South Wales.

Cohabiting couples are twice as likely to have a civil marriage ceremony than couples living separately.  When a religious celebrant is chosen to perform a marriage ceremony, the rites are most commonly Catholic (33%) or Anglican (19%).  Catholic ceremonies are the most common religious ceremonies in all states and territories except Tasmania.

The majority of Australian children live with both their parents until they leave home and begin to form their own families. In 2006, the living arrangements for children under 15 years old were:

74% with both of their biological parents;

18% in a lone-parent family (virtually all with their mother);

6% in a step- or blended family; and

2% in other living arrangements.

Australian Catholics and Church 

In February 2014, Dr Robert Dixon, Director of the Pastoral Research Office of the ACBC addressed a church conference telling us that Sunday mass attendance was now down to 12.2%, with overall mass attendance figures having declined by 23% just between the years 1996 and 2011.  In 1996, about 136,000 young Catholics (aged 15-34) attended mass on any Sunday in Australia.  By 2011, it was down to 80,000.  Attenders aged 15-19 make up 4% of the congregation, while those over 80 make up 8%.

While only 5% of young Catholics attend Sunday mass regularly, 30% of those in their 70’s do so. The attendance rate across the age spectrum for Catholics born in Australia fell from 17% to 10% in just fifteen years from 1996 to 2011.  Catholics born in non-English speaking countries have maintained a strong 24% showing.

If we listen ONLY to regular Sunday mass attenders, even less than half of them accept the Church teaching that pre-marital sex is always wrong.  40% of them do not accept that the divorced and remarried should be denied communion, with a further 16% undecided.  54% of those aged 15-34 attending Sunday mass regularly admit to using artificial means of birth control, and 48% of those aged 35-59.  So image the percentage for those between 35 and 40!

The 46 Questions 

Approaching the specific questions, the bishops have been urged to start ‘from “life’s periphery” and engage in pastoral activity that is characterized by a “culture of encounter”’.  They are invited on the path ‘of recognizing the Lord’s gratuitous work, even outside customary models, and of confidently adopting the idea of a “field hospital”, which is very beneficial in proclaiming God’s mercy.’  In their reflections they are asked ‘to avoid, in their responses, a formulation of pastoral care based simply on an application of doctrine, which would not respect the conclusions of the Extraordinary Synodal Assembly and would lead their reflection far from the path already indicated.’

While being asked what they are doing to demonstrate ‘the greatness and beauty of the gift of indissolubility of marriage’, and ‘in light the Church’s teaching in which the primary elements of marriage are unity, indissolubility and openness to life’, they are to address many complex issues including the three neuralgic ones highlighted by the more contested votes at the synod: the pastoral care of those living together without a sacramental marriage, the access to the Eucharist for the divorced and remarried, and the place of gays and lesbians in the Church community.  These issues arise particularly in questions 33, 38, 39, and 40.  Here are the questions:

33.  (In light of ‘the difficulty of young people to make lifetime commitments’), is the Christian community able to be pastorally involved in these situations? How can it assist in discerning the positive and negative elements in the life of persons united in a civil marriage so as to guide and sustain them on a path of growth and conversion towards the Sacrament of Matrimony? How can those living together be assisted to decide to marry?

38.  With regard to the divorced and remarried, pastoral practice concerning the sacraments needs to be further studied, including assessment of the Orthodox practice and taking into account the distinction between an objective sinful situation and extenuating circumstances. What are the prospects in such a case? What is possible? What suggestions can be offered to resolve forms of undue or unnecessary impediments?

39.  Does current legislation provide a valid response to the challenges resulting from mixed marriages or interreligious marriages? Should other elements be taken into account?

40.  How can the Christian community give pastoral attention to families with persons with homosexual tendencies? What are the responses that, in light of cultural sensitivities, are considered to be most appropriate? While avoiding any unjust discrimination, how can such persons receive pastoral care in these situations in light of the Gospel? How can God’s will be proposed to them in their situation?

How heartening it is to see buried in Question 43: ‘The Christian lives maternity or paternity as a response to a vocation.  What formation is offered so that it might effectively guide the consciences of married couples?  Are people aware of the grave consequences of demographic change?’  In a world of 7.2 billion people, in an Australian Church of declining mass attendance, I wouldn’t be saying too much about Humanae Vitae.  When Paul VI issued that encyclical the world’s population was less than half what it is today. Very few sexually active Catholics are now helped by this papal teaching when making conscientious family planning decisions. There comes a time for some past papal utterances to be quietly dropped even by our bishops working in the ‘field hospital’ proclaiming God’s mercy.

On returning from the synod, Archbishop Denis Hart, president of the ACBC said, ‘Pope Francis has reminded us that we still have one year to mature, with true spiritual discernment, the proposed ideas and to find concrete solutions to so many challenges that families must confront, and to give answers to the many discouragements that surround families.’  There are only four months (including a long hot summer) to consult the faithful and send answers to Rome.  Let’s start with the facts, and if there’s time, let’s be attentive to the voice and experience of the young who are living together unmarried, the divorced and remarried, the gay and lesbian, as well as that minority of Catholics who are happily married and fronting up to mass every Sunday with the kids.

Fr Frank Brennan SJ is presently the Gasson Professor at Boston College Law School

Speaking of the financial reforms in the Vatican, Cardinal Pell says:

‘The first principle was that the Vatican should adopt contemporary international standards, much as the rest of the world does. 

The second principle meant that Vatican policies and procedures would be transparent.

The third important principle within the Vatican was that there should be something akin to a separation of powers and that there would be multiple sources of authority.’

Imagine if the same approach were taken to administrative processes in the Holy See. I daresay Bishop William Morris would have received a fair hearing and we might all have known why he was sacked and who was pulling the levers. See:http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/issues/december-5th-2014/the-days-of-ripping-off-the-vatican-are-over/

There was an interesting exchange on CBS 60 Minutes here in the USA on Sunday night between Cardinal O’Malley and Norah O’Donnell

(See http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cardinal-sean-omalley-works-with-pope-francis-to-reform-catholic-church/).  Here is part of the interview:

Norah O’Donnell: The church says it’s not open to the discussion about ordaining women. Why not?

Cardinal Seán O’Malley: Not everyone needs to be ordained to have an important role in the life of the church. Women run the Catholic charities, the Catholic schools, the development office for the archdiocese.

Norah O’Donnell: Some would say women do a lot of the work but have very little power.

Cardinal Seán O’Malley: Well “power” is not a word that we like to use in the church. It’s more service.

Norah O’Donnell: But they can’t preach. They can’t administer the sacraments.

Cardinal Seán O’Malley: Well…

Norah O’Donnell: I mean, some women feel like they’re second class Catholics because they can’t do those things that are very important.

Cardinal Seán O’Malley: Well, they, but they’re, they have other very important roles that, you know, a priest cannot be a mother, either.

The Cardinal stated the official position:  “The tradition of the church is that we have always ordained men. And that the priesthood reflects the incarnation of Christ, who in his humanity is a man.”  Here Cardinal O’Malley was being quite consistent with the approach taken by Pope Francis.  Francis wrote in Evangelii Gaudium, “The reservation of the priesthood to males, as a sign of Christ the Spouse who gives himself in the Eucharist, is not a question open to discussion, but it can prove especially divisive if sacramental power is too closely identified with power in general.” Surely it must be even more divisive if those who reserve to themselves sacramental power determine that they alone can determine who has access to that power and legislate that the matter is not open for discussion.  Given that the power to determine the teaching of the magisterium and the provisions of canon law is not a sacramental power, is there not a need to include women in the decision that the question is not open to discussion and in the contemporary quest for an answer to the question? Francis’s position on this may be politic for the moment within the Vatican which has had a longtime preoccupation with shutting down the discussion, but the position is incoherent, as the TV world experienced on Sunday night seeing Cardinal O’Malley trying to make the official position credible.

No one doubts the pastoral sensitivity of Pope Francis and Cardinal O’Malley.  But the Church will continue to suffer for as long as it does not engage in open, ongoing discussion and education about this issue.  The official position is no longer comprehensible to most people of good will, and as demonstrated on Sunday night, not even those at the very top of the hierarchy have a willingness or capacity to explain it.

The claim that the matter “is not a question open to discussion” can not be maintained unless sacramental power also includes the power to determine theology and the power to determine canon law.  Ultimately the Pope’s claim must be that only those possessed of sacramental power can determine the magisterium and canon law.  Conceding for the moment the historic exclusion of women from the sacramental power of presidency at Eucharist, we need to determine if “the possible role of women in decision-making in different areas of the Church’s life” could include the power to contribute to theological discussion and the shaping of the magisterium and to canonical discussion about sanctions for participating in theological discussion on set topics such as the ordination of women.  As Francis says, “Demands that the legitimate rights of women be respected, based on the firm conviction that men and women are equal in dignity, present the Church with profound and challenging questions which cannot be lightly evaded.”

Sunday night’s CBS discussion got even more difficult despite the enormous good will and rapport between O’Malley and his interviewer. This is how it unfolded:

Norah O’Donnell: But in spite of that, does the exclusion of women seem at all immoral?

Cardinal Seán O’Malley: Well, Christ would never ask us to do something immoral. And I know that women in...

Norah O’Donnell: The sense of equality. I mean, just the sense of sort of the fairness of it, you know. You wouldn’t exclude someone based on race. But yet you do exclude people based on gender.

Cardinal Seán O’Malley: Well, it’s a matter of vocation. And what God has given to us. And this is, you know, if I were founding a church, you know, I’d love to have women priests. But Christ founded it and what he has given us is something different.

If Cardinal O’Malley were founding a Church in the twenty first century, he would love to have women priests.  So I presume, given complete freedom before God, he would have women priests expressive of Christ’s full humanity and of Christ’s giving of self as spouse in the eucharist.  If Cardinal O’Malley had been founding a Church in the first century, I presume it would not have occurred to him to have women priests, and thus he would not have loved to have them.  His two positions are readily understandable and can be held together.  Like all of us, he is a person of his times.  When Christ founded the Church in the first century, let’s assume that he did give us a male priesthood (in that it developed not long after his death) and that he did not give us a church with women priests.  If Jesus was founding the Church in the twenty-first century would he love to have women priests?  Would he think it immoral not to have women priests?  I think you can answer “Yes” to these two questions, still be a Catholic in good standing, and still acknowledge that in the first century, Jesus, like Cardinal O’Malley would not have considered having women priests and neither would he have considered it immoral to exclude them from ordained ministry.  You can also answer “No” to these two questions, being counted a Catholic receptive to present papal teaching, but like Cardinal O’Malley being a little pressed to make sense of it all when asked why even discussion of change is inappropriate, and perhaps even forbidden.

Given that even one as senior and pastoral as Cardinal O’Malley gets tongue-tied on this issue, is it not time to invite the conversation rather than the men trying to keep it shut down?  Sunday night’s TV appearance shows that with the best will in the world, that tactic just ain’t working.  John Paul II’s enforced silence behind a tongue-tied episcopal wall is no longer an option.

The Vatican has now released the official English translation of the “relatio synodi”, the concluding document from the Synod of Bishops convened by Pope Francis to consider “pastoral challenges to the family in the context of evangelisation”. (http://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2014/10/18/0770/03044.html)

In my last post (https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/blog/?p=2565), I dealt with an earlier document, the “relation post disceptationem” which was the punchy and slightly provocative discussion paper put together by Pope Francis’s small hand-picked group charged with putting the issues for discussion on the table.

(http://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2014/10/06/0712/03003.html)

That document indicated a novel acceptance of some “constructive elements” of couples living together without marriage, of the need to welcome homosexuals into the life of the Church, and of the possibility of admitting divorced and remarried people to the Eucharist.  The Synod fathers agreed that they wanted to “offer a meaningful word of hope” to the Church.  I said previously that they needed to acknowledge “that the genie is out of the bottle and that there is a need for a comprehensive rethink by the Catholic Church on its teaching about marriage, sexuality, and reception of the Eucharist”.

The relatio synodi is much more than a discussion paper.  It is a lengthy committee job cobbling together the many different strands of discussion over the two weeks of the synod.  Each of the 62 paragraphs was separately voted on by the 180 bishops in attendance who voted.  It does not put the genie back in the bottle, but it does revert to much of the old style Vaticanese, trying to confine the genie to the episcopal kitchen.   What’s refreshing is that unlike synod documents published during the last two papacies, this one actually reflects the divisions and differing perspectives. We are even given the voting figures on each paragraph.

Also published today is the official translation of Pope Francis’s closing remarks at the Synod in which he speaks of “moments of desolation, of tensions and temptations”.  He lists the “temptation to hostile inflexibility” which is “the temptation of the zealous, of the scrupulous, of the solicitous and of the so-called traditionalists and also of the intellectuals”.  Then crossing to the other side of the street, he speaks of the temptation to practise “a deceptive mercy (which) binds the wounds without first curing them and treating them; that treats the symptoms and not the causes and the roots.”   This is “the temptation of the ‘do-gooders’, of the fearful, and also of the so-called ‘progressives’ and ‘liberals’”.   All types were inside the Vatican tent last week and acknowledged as such.  But this is still a synod only of bishops – celibate males talking about family life.  Even though they have been attentive to some married people invited into their midst, they alone get to vote; they alone shape the final document.

This is all a work in progress.   All sides of the hierarchy have put their views, and their views are reflected or at least hinted at in this latest document.  The Synod fathers are to reconvene in Rome in a year’s time.  Their relatio synodi is “intended to raise questions and indicate points of view which will later be developed and clarified through reflection in the local Churches in the intervening year”.  Those reflections must not be restricted just to bishops or clergy.

The drafters have done a reasonable job given that all paragraphs attracted majority support, with only three paragraphs attracting less than 2/3 support.  Those three paragraphs indicate the real neuralgic points of discussion.  They were: the paragraph about the community’s care for the divorced and remarried being an expression of the community’s charity and not a weakening of its faith and testimony to the indissolubility of marriage; the paragraph requesting further theological reflection on the options of “spiritual communion” or full sacramental communion for the divorced and remarried; and a very clunky paragraph packed with old CDF terminology on “pastoral attention towards persons with homosexual tendencies”, abandoning any talk of welcome for committed gays who give mutual aid and precious support to each other.

The relatio synodi follows the basic outline of the original relatio post disceptationem with three parts on listening, looking, and facing the situation.  Listening to the context and challenges of the family in the first part, the Synod fathers (with no sense of irony or embarrassment) when reviewing the socio-cultural context, highlight the positive aspect of “a greater freedom of expression and a better recognition of the rights of women and children, at least in some part of the world”.  Dare one add: “at least in some institutions and in some churches”?  They speak also of the importance of affectivity in life and relationships.

Looking at Christ and the Gospel of the Family, they move in the second part from Jesus in the history of salvation to the family as part of God’s salvific plan.  These deft scriptural surveys are followed by a treatment of the family in Church documents including the 1968 encyclical on birth control Humanae Vitae which is unquestioningly espoused twice in the course of this document.  The bulk of this second part is devoted to the indissolubility of marriage, the truth and beauty of the family, and mercy towards broken families.

The third part is where the rubber hits the road.  The fathers set out pastoral perspectives on “facing the situation”.  They display considerable pastoral sensitivity and deep learning on caring for couples preparing for marriage, couples in the initial years of marriage, couples civilly married or living together, and broken families.  But there is no consensus on what to do about the eucharist for the divorced and remarried.  And for the moment the welcome mat for gays has been put back in the closet.  Then comes what undoubtedly some Synod fathers will think to be a prophetic, counter-cultural discussion on “the transmission of life and the challenges of a declining birthrate”. Living in a world of 7.2 billion people, and constantly meeting young couples who will try anything including IVF to have a child, I would have liked to have seen some treatment of these sorts of issues under this curious heading.  Given the soundings that the Synod fathers took with their questionnaire before the Synod, I am staggered that they have said that “we should return to the message of the Encyclical Humanae Vitae of Blessed Pope Paul VI, which highlights the need to respect the dignity of the person in morally assessing methods in regulating births”.

We never saw the results of the Australian questionnaire before the Synod.  But I have no reason to think it would be all that much different from the German response:

In most cases where the Church’s teaching is known, it is only selectively accepted. The idea of the sacramental marriage covenant, which encompasses faithfulness and exclusivity on the part of the spouses and the transmission of life, is normally accepted by people who marry in Church. Most of the baptised enter into marriage in the expectation and hope of concluding a bond for life. The Church’s statements on premarital sexual relations, on homosexuality, on those divorced and remarried, and on birth control, by contrast, are virtually never accepted, or are expressly rejected in the vast majority of cases. 

We all have our work cut out for us in the next year if this Synod is be truly reflective of the life experience and faith-filled hope of those who commit themselves to making a go of bringing Christ to the world through their work, their commitments to each other, and their children.  For the moment, I would not see much pastoral point in sharing this document with the many young people I know who are living together, or with those who are gay or lesbian seeking a homecoming in the Church, or with those who have endured the pain of divorce and the moral angst of remarriage.  I think I will be telling them to keep the door open, wait a while, and check back in a year to see how we are going.  Francis still has a lot of work ahead of him, and so does the Holy Spirit.  It would be a good start if all bishops’ conferences were to follow the lead of the Germans and publish the results of the original questionnaire.  After all if we can have the voting results on each paragraph of an interim Synod document on the family, why not some indication of what family members are saying to their lordships in good faith and with open hearts?

Let there be no doubt.  There is change, and a great deal of uncertainty, in the air in Rome.  And it is not just coming from Pope Francis.  The Catholic Church retaining some of the attributes of a royal court in its mode of governance provides its senior prelates with every opportunity to emulate the tone and substance of the remarks and the ambiguity of approach of the one they call “the Holy Father”.  The Pope has the opportunity even when convening a synod of 190 bishops to handpick those who steer the synod process, write the minutes and manage the media statements to the world.  On Monday, Cardinal Peter Erdo, the chief reporter (general rapporteur) of the Synod on the Family released the ‘relatio post disceptionem’ after the first week of the Synod.  This is not a final text.  It is simply a working document “intended to raise questions and indicate perspectives that will have to be matured and made clearer by the reflection of the local Churches” in the year ahead.

The document shows the way things are going, and that way is very different from any dictated path approved by the late St John Paul II and simplistically reaffirmed by those prelates who say they too like mercy but prefer the indisputable teachings of Jesus.   The document, which starts with a section on “listening: the context and challenges to the family” before then describing “the gaze on Christ: the Gospel of the family”, lacks the judgmental certainty of the past and displays the moral ambiguity of any pastoral approach which is truly attentive to the complexity, and often the mess, of families and human relationships.  The starting point is a vision of the Church not as the pure bride of Christ armed with the magisterium but as the people of God hungry for food, seeking forgiveness with the words at the Eucharist: “Lord I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, say but the word and my soul shall be healed.”  We all come to the table of the banquet as sinners seeking mercy, forgiveness and the bread of life.  The document espouses “a missionary conversion: it is necessary not to stop at an announcement that is merely theoretical and has nothing to do with people’s real problems”.  A true first for any Vatican document is that it calls for a new sensitivity in grasping the positive reality of civil weddings and of cohabitation.  While continuing to espouse the ideal of sacramental marriage, the prelates say they need also to “indicate the constructive elements in those situations that do not yet or no longer correspond to that ideal”.

Another “first” is the heading in the Vatican document: “Welcoming homosexual persons”.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church composed during the pontificate of John Paul categorically states: The homosexual inclination is “objectively disordered”.  This claim has been constantly restated in Vatican documents for some time.  For example when Joseph Ratzinger was Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith during John Paul’s papacy, this claim was restated in the CDF’s 2003 document entitled “Considerations regarding proposals to give legal recognition to unions between homosexual persons”.  That document also stated that all “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered” and that this moral judgment is “unanimously accepted by Catholic Tradition”.   This week’s working document from the synod raises some rhetorical and not so rhetorical questions.  Regardless of how these questions are answered in the year ahead, the very posing of the questions shows that the genie is out of the bottle.  The Catholic Tradition as previously declared is no longer unanimously accepted.  Cardinal Erdo who read his text to the assembled prelates and those lay people invited to attend the Synod as non-voting members said: “Homosexuals have gifts and qualities to offer to the Christian community: are we capable of welcoming these people, guaranteeing to them a fraternal space in our communities? Often they wish to encounter a Church that offers them a welcoming home. Are our communities capable of providing that, accepting and valuing their sexual orientation, without compromising Catholic doctrine on the family and matrimony?”  Presumably there is no going back to the Church position that was implacably opposed to accepting and valuing the homosexual orientation on the grounds that the orientation is disordered.  It is high time for some development in the Catholic doctrine on the family and matrimony.  The synod document puts it nicely: “Without denying the moral problems connected to homosexual unions it has to be noted that there are cases in which mutual aid to the point of sacrifice constitutes a precious support in the life of the partners.”

Before the Synod, Johan Bonny, the bishop of Antwerp issued a pastoral letter in which he made the observation:

In these last months of preparation for the Synod, I have heard or read the following on numerous occasions: ‘Agreed that the Synod should support greater pastoral flexibility, but it will not be able to touch Church doctrine’.  Some create the impression that the Synod will only be free to speak about the applicability of the Church’s teaching and not about its content.  In my opinion, however, such an antithesis between ‘pastoral care’ and ‘doctrine’ is inappropriate in both theological and pastoral terms and it has no foundation in the tradition of the Church.  Pastoral care has everything to do with doctrine and doctrine has everything to do with pastoral care.  Both will have to be dealt with during the Synod if the Church wants to open new avenues towards the evangelisation of marriage and family life in today’s society.

There is plenty of work to be done over the next year as local churches reflect on the pastoral and doctrinal questions finally unleashed in Rome this last week.  Many of the 41 prelates who responded immediately to this document did express fears and concerns we are told.  But it is only by acknowledging that the genie is out of the bottle and that there is a need for a comprehensive rethink by the Catholic Church on its teaching about marriage, sexuality, and reception of the Eucharist that we as Church will be able to “offer a meaningful word of hope” – this being the task the Synod Fathers have allocated themselves in the year ahead.   As a Church we have clung to judgmental certainty for too long in the face of people’s every day searching for love, mercy, forgiveness and the food of life.  Now is the time for all Catholics to share “the courage of the faith and the humble and honest welcome of the truth in charity” for all persons approaching the table of the banquet.

Everyone knows that we Jesuits have had a rocky history.  We were fabulously successful in educating the European elite for quite some time.  Things went off the rails badly in the eighteenth century.  We lost out to the Vatican Curia over the dispute about accommodating some Confucian and Hindu traditional rites in prayer and liturgy on the missions in China and India.  We fell out of favour with the imperial court in Portugal, then in France, and then in 1767 in Spain.  By then many Jesuits were on the run throughout Europe.  The Portuguese were particularly upset with our defence of the locals living on the Reductions in South America.  We had some sort of notion that the locals owned the place, not their colonisers.  Ultimately the courts of Europe prevailed on Pope Clement XIV who published the brief Dominus ac Redemptor on 21 July 1773.  Having listed the many shortcomings of the Society of Jesus, he decreed:

“From sure knowledge and fullness of apostolic power, we abolish and suppress the oft-mentioned Society. We take away and abrogate each and every one of its offices, ministries, administrations, houses, schools, colleges, retreats, farms, and any properties in whatsoever province, realm, and jurisdiction and in whatever way pertaining to the Society. We do away with the statutes, customs, usages, decrees, Constitutions, even those confirmed by oath, by apostolic approval, or by other means.”

In much the same way that recent popes have decreed that we can never again talk about women’s ordination and that it would never be possible anyway, Clement purported to wipe out the Jesuits not just for the present, but forever.  In his mind, there could never be a restoration of the Jesuits.  He decreed:

“The letter is not to be subjected to terms of the law nor are remedies to be sought in law, fact, favor, or justice. No one is to seek concessions or favors whether in court or outside the court. But we want the same present letter to be always and for ever valid, firm, and efficacious, and that it be allotted and maintain its full and entire effects and that it be inviolably observed by each and every person to whom it pertains or will in some way pertain in the future.”

Bishop Bill Morris had it good, compared with us back in those days.  No such thing as due process back then.  There was one huge loophole.  The brief needed to be promulgated by the ruler in every jurisdiction where the Jesuits were.  The good old Tsarina Catherine II, the Orthodox Empress of Russia (God bless her), had her own reasons for wanting to maintain the presence of the Jesuits in White Russia.  She refused to promulgate the brief and the Jesuits were happy to provide their services especially when the Russians took over part of East Poland with a lot of Catholics.  Clement died a year after he published his decree.  His successor was the long-reigning Pius VI who had been educated by the Jesuits and who was known to be sympathetic to the restoration of the Society.  But he was not able to stand up to Spain. In 1801 shortly after his election as Pope, Pius VII formally approved the ongoing existence of the Society of Jesus in Poland.  Then ultimately on 7 August 1814, he issued the papal bull Sollicitudo omnium ecclesiarum restoring the Society of Jesus throughout the world.

Pius VII decreed: “We concede and grant to our beloved son and priest Tadeusz Brzozowski, current superior general of the Society of Jesus, and to others legitimately deputed by him, all necessary and appropriate faculties at our pleasure and that of the Apostolic See, so that in all said states and jurisdictions, they may licitly and freely admit and accept all who seek to be admitted and incorporated into the regular order of the Society of Jesus”.  The show was back on the road everywhere.  Our present superior General, Fr Adolfo Nicolas, has said: “All the crises of history enclose a hidden wisdom that needs to be fathomed. For us, Jesuits, this is the commemoration of our greatest crisis. It is, therefore, important that we should learn from the events themselves, that we should discover the good and the bad in our behaviour in order to revive those great desires the Pope spoke of and continue the work of evangelisation, refining our brotherhood and deepening our love.”

This Thursday we mark the 200^th anniversary of this Restoration.  Last Thursday the Church’s first Jesuit pope Francis came to lunch at the Jesuit curia to celebrate the feast of St Ignatius Loyola, our founder.  He came on an hour’s notice.  He came in his Ford Focus.  He sat down to lunch with the Jesuit community and there was hardly a clerical collar in sight.  Also present were the seven siblings of Fr dall’Oglio SJ who was abducted in Syria a year ago.

We Jesuits still espouse the land rights of indigenous peoples.  We still think it important to take seriously local cultures and spiritualities when evangelizing.  We still educate all sorts of people, including some who are rich and powerful.  Many politicians still think we are meddling priests.  And we still get into trouble occasionally.  But for the moment both the white and black popes are one of us.  Now that is a turn-up for the books. And no one any longer talks about Clement’s ludicrous claim that his decree was “always and for ever valid”.  So please do raise a glass to the Jesuits on Thursday, and don’t hold us responsible for everything done by our alumni who occupy the modern equivalents of the imperial courts.

On Friday afternoon, I called into the Canberra Magistrates’ Court to watch an hour or two of proceedings at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. The court was packed with lawyers.  These are shameful times for us Australians as we realise how great has been the problem of child sexual abuse in our society, and presumably still is.  They have been especially shameful times for us Catholics as we realise what a problem this has been in our schools, welfare institutions and parishes.  Thank God, we have the help of the State to investigate matters thoroughly and transparently.  We know that no royal commission can solve all the problems.  No royal commission ever has. Think just of the royal commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody which promised so much.  The Aboriginal imprisonment rate is higher now than it was before the Commission was held.  But hopefully with this royal commission, there can be new laws, new rules, and new protocols which can help to reduce the incidence of child abuse in all our social institutions, especially those which work most closely with vulnerable children.  These new laws, new rules, and new protocols will apply just as much to our church organisations as to any other social organisations.

Much of the Commission spotlight has been on institutions in our own Church.  Let’s hope and pray that everyone from our Church who is involved in any way with the Commission comes with a commitment to honesty, transparency, justice, compassion and healing.
But we are not just citizens of the state.  Our organisations are not just like any other organisations.  We profess to be the Church, the people of God.  Seeking to follow the way of Jesus on the path of our Catholic tradition, we pride ourselves on caring for the poorest and most vulnerable; we hold ourselves out to each other and to the world as people who nurture trust and the finest values being applied and lived universally.

No matter what the findings of any royal commission, and no matter what the new rules, protocols and procedures, the spotlight of this commission brings us back to ask ourselves how we are responding and living as God’s people.  We know that the way of Jesus requires us to focus first and foremost on the victim, the vulnerable child.  We know that any abuse affects not only the victim, but also their loved ones and family members.  We know that the effects of the abuse can continue for life; it can completely wreck a life.  We understand how over time the victim might come to be and to feel alienated from us, the people of God. And yet he is or she is one of us, one of the flock.  The abuser is also one of us, one of the flock.  He, and it is usually he, is often in a position of authority and trust, providing the opportunity to abuse and fracturing the trust and professed values of whole community.

For too long, those in authority in our Church but also many people in our society were not aware of the reality or effects of abuse, or they were slack and incompetent in dealing with abusers.  The result has been that the abusers, like rotten apples in the box of fruit, have infected all around them.  It’s like throwing a stone into a pond.  The ripples go everywhere.  The abuse has wreaked havoc in our institutions as well as in the lives of those who are victims.  There’s damage everywhere.

No royal commission can put all these things right.  As well as pledging ourselves both to co-operate fully with the processes of the commission and to renew our institutions so that their rules and procedures reflect the values and moral norms we profess, we need to attend to the more radical call to redemption in today’s scripture readings – readings which reflect the life of God in relationship – the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit – in relationship with each other, and in relationship with us.  Jesus tells Nicodemus that “God sent his Son into the World not to condemn the world, but so that through him the world might be saved.”  As a Church we do stand condemned in the eyes of many of our fellow citizens.  Some of them are anti-Catholic, but most of them are not.

We can pick ourselves up from this, confident that the Lord is in relationship with us providing a way forward to salvation rather than condemnation.  We can understand how many victims might now feel alienated from us, but our door must always be open, not just providing what justice and the law require, but also offering a homecoming and grateful acknowledgement of the added burdens they carried so that we might come back to our true selves as the people of God.  Any victim, like the unknown solider, “is all of them and he is one of us”.

What is harder for all of us at this time is also to acknowledge that the perpetrator is one of us.  We harboured him, we provided unwittingly or foolishly the opportunity for his repeat offending.  Ours, as Exodus reminds us, is “a God of tenderness and compassion, slow to anger, rich in kindness and faithfulness”.   We cannot be whole again, our institutions cannot be trusted again, our leadership cannot inspire us again, until we face the enormity not just of abuse but of abject failure to counter it even when the signs, evidence and complaints were there.  Having faced the truth and having accorded justice, we might again embrace God and each other with tenderness and compassion, kindness and faithfulness.

After communion, you might like to offer your own reflections.  Meanwhile in this Eucharist, may the grace of our Lord Jesus, Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit” be with us all, especially with the little ones who have been wronged and who have had the courage to speak out.

After communion, a couple of parishioners spoke.  One reflected that she had just returned from overseas and was grateful to be an Australian, a citizen of a country where there could be a royal commission, putting a light on the darkness.  She recalled the song about setting the downtrodden free.  And this is what we must now do.  Another lamented that the horse has already bolted, and that with the effects of clericalism, control had been taken away from the local church and from the people of God these last 50 years.  It was time for the laity to be resolute so that the stable door might be fastened again.

Fr Frank Brennan SJ
Professor of Law
Australian Catholic University

Last September I addressed the Canon Law Society of Australia and New Zealand on issues the Catholic Church would need to address with the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, and in the follow-up to the Victorian Parliament’s Inquiry into the Handling of Child Abuse by Religious and other Organisations.

I said: “Those who exercised high office in our Church before 1996 will need to apprise the royal commission of the clerical structures and culture which precluded them from taking further action to arrest child abuse in the Church prior to the institution of Towards Healing and the Melbourne Response.”  At the moment, the royal commission’s focus is on Cardinal Pell and the Archdiocese of Sydney through the prism of the Ellis case.  Now is the time for the structures and culture to be explained, not just to Catholics, but to all citizens.

In his written submission to the Victorian Inquiry Cardinal Pell who had been auxiliary bishop in Melbourne between 1987 and 1996 stated, “As an auxiliary bishop to Archbishop Little I did not have the authority to handle these matters and had only some general impressions about the response that was being made at that time, but this was sufficient to make it clear to me that this was an issue which needed urgent attention and that we needed to do much better in our response.”  Back in 1988, Pell’s predecessor as Archbishop of Melbourne, Sir Frank Little had set up “a confidential subcommittee” consisting of a lawyer, a psychiatrist and a priest.  Archbishop Denis Hart, Pell’s successor as Archbishop of Melbourne, told the Victorian inquiry that in 1992, he as a priest in the Archdiocesan administration, first began to hear that priests were engaging in sexual abuse. When speaking of his installation as Archbishop of Melbourne on 16 August 1996, Cardinal Pell wrote to the parliamentary committee saying:  “At this time, the media was full of accounts detailing sex abuse in the Catholic community.”  Understandably, this left many people inside and outside the Church wondering, “If Archbishop Little didn’t respond adequately between 1987 and 1996, why didn’t his auxiliary Bishop Pell do something?” and “If the Archbishop knew during those nine years, why didn’t his Auxiliary?”

Meanwhile in Sydney in the Ellis litigation to which Cardinal Pell was initially a defendant as the new Archbishop of Sydney, Justice Mason, President of the New South Wales Court of Appeal, had cause to refer to the affidavit of Fr John Usher referring to the Archbishop of Sydney at the time of the alleged abuse, Cardinal Freeman “and a number of Auxiliary Bishops as ‘the persons within the Archdiocese with canonical/spiritual authority in relation to (the wrongdoer, Fr Duggan) in respect of the period’”.  Justice Mason later referred to the evidence “showing that it was the former Archbishop, in consultation with the Archdiocesan Council, and not the Trustees, who appointed and supervised Fr Duggan.”  These issues of authority and knowledge are in desperate need of clarification for the good of all parties and for the good of the Church.  If there were different structures and practices in the major archdioceses with auxiliary bishops, for example between Melbourne and Sydney, then this needs to be clarified at the royal commission.

There is obviously also a need to admit error and rectify the way some lawyers have acted in the name of the Church in the past.  The Ellis case is a real blot on the Church’s record in light of the letter sent by Monsignor John Usher, Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Sydney, to Mr John Ellis on 6 August 2009 stating that he was distressed to learn that the Archdiocesan lawyers had never responded to an offer of compromise  and that the Cardinal “will do all in his power to ensure that this sort of legal abuse is never repeated again”.  Presumably we will hear from Corrs, the Melbourne lawyers brought in specially by Cardinal Pell to run this piece of protracted litigation.  Major firms briefing senior counsel in the appeal courts incurring six-figure expenses are careful to act on instructions from their clients.

Appearing before the royal commission, church members and the Truth Justice and Healing Council will need to enunciate a principled position on the maintenance of legal professional privilege.  Given the undoubted instances of legal obfuscation in the past, I would suggest that there be a general waiver of privilege in the interests of transparency but with an exception being made for documents between lawyer and client in relation to matters still pending in the courts.  The questions of legal privilege are complex in this royal commission because the law of privilege varies between States and between States and the Commonwealth, bearing in mind that this is in effect seven royal commissions all rolled into one.

In November the Victorian parliamentary committee reported.  Welcoming the report, Cardinal Pell admitted past mistakes by the Melbourne Archdiocese during his time as auxiliary bishop there.  He wrote: “The report details some of the serious failures in the way the church dealt with these crimes and responded to victims, especially before the procedural reforms of the mid 1990s. Irreparable damage has been caused. By the standards of common decency and by today’s standards, church authorities were not only slow to deal with the abuse, but sometimes did not deal with it in any appropriate way at all. This is indefensible.”

This refreshing change of tone and collective acceptance of responsibility makes it possible to get some clearer air in the public domain about noble, principled and professional efforts post-1996 as well as unfortunate continued shortcomings. Many of those efforts included highly cooperative, though flawed, initiatives involving both Church and police.

If the Church maintains the approach that only deceased individual bishops and superiors were to blame prior to 1996, it will be doing a disservice not only to the victims but also to other members of the Church community hoping and praying that the Church might be the exemplar of faith, hope and love — faith in a just and forgiving God, hope for all, including those whose lives have been wrecked by criminal abuse, and love for all, including the primary and secondary victims, erring clerics, our enemies and biased critics.

This week in preparation for his appearance before the royal commission, Cardinal Pell made a second and more specific admission of the need for a change of approach.  He wrote:  “Whatever position was taken by the lawyers during the litigation, or by lawyers or individuals within the Archdiocese following the litigation, my own view is that the Church in Australia should be able to be sued in cases of this kind.”

As I said on ABC World Today: “It’s heartening to see that at the top leadership of the Catholic Church in Australia, in relation to a case where Cardinal Pell himself was involved as the Archbishop of Sydney while this litigation was playing itself out, it would seem that in hindsight he’s saying, ‘We’ve got to be able to do better than that.’ And I think that’s good news for everyone.”  No doubt, it will be excruciating for the members of the Sydney Archdiocesan administration (clerical and lay) when each of them appears in the witness box in coming days.  But let’s hope the spotlight on the Ellis case provides clarity and new learnings for better administration for the good of all Christ’s faithful, especially those who have been abused or wronged by those in authority. We all need to know which diocesan personnel appoint and supervise church workers, including priests, and which diocesan personnel actually run the show, issuing instructions to lawyers who in the past have pursued individuals like Mr Ellis.  We need to learn from our mistakes putting in place better structures and a better culture for ensuring that those who appoint, supervise and instruct act in the best interests of the little ones, the anawim to whom Jesus gave a privileged place at table.

Pope Francis has published his first and very prolix papal teaching document entitled Evangelii Gaudium (the joy of evangelisation).  With a tone of delightful self-mocking he observes,  “I am aware that nowadays documents do not arouse the same interest as in the past and that they are quickly forgotten.” On the scale of papal authority, the document is called an Apostolic Exhortation which comes in below an Encyclical.  This gives the pope licence to be more free ranging, adding anecdotes and pastoral tips.  Since the Second Vatican Council, there have been synods of bishops convened to discuss particular topics.  In the past, the Pope has then written the synod document, ensuring Vatican control of  the outcomes.  Towards the end of Benedict’s papacy a Synod was convened on “the new evangelisation” which was often code for getting away from social justice and rediscovering pieties which might appeal to young people joining some of the new church movements which were replacing regular parish involvement.  Francis says, “I was happy to take up the request of the Fathers of the Synod to write this Exhortation”.  It has provided him an opportunity to roll out all the things he has been saying which have put a spring in the step of many Catholics who think this pope is good news, having a deep pastoral sense, a strong commitment to the poor, and a resolute conviction that Rome does not have all the answers.  Trying to sum up the 50,000 words in a few phrases, I would say his message is: “The gospel really is good news especially for the poor and anyone who takes seriously the sufferings of the world.  The church doors are open to everyone.  We are not a ghetto.  We engage with the world and he have something to say.  Get out there.  Do something to help your neighbour.  Do it joyfully. Do it with passion.  The Church is here to help, not to hinder.  Church teachings won’t be changing any time soon.  But don’t expect Rome to have all the answers.  Don’t be afraid to make mistakes.  And do something to change the unjust economic structures of the world.”  It’s refreshing that he liberally quotes statements by bishops’ gatherings from various parts of the world including Oceania.  He takes decentralisation and subsidiarity seriously.  He is doing it.  How refreshing to have a Pope write: “Nor do I believe that the papal magisterium should be expected to offer a definitive or complete word on every question which affects the Church and the world. It is not advisable for the Pope to take the place of local Bishops in the discernment of every issue which arises in their territory. In this sense, I am conscious of the need to promote a sound ‘decentralization’.”  Vatican monsignori in long flowing robes will be troubled to hear him say, “Mere administration can no longer be enough.  Throughout the world, let us be permanently in a state of mission”.

In the past, more conservative bishops have tried to downplay the significance of national bishops’ conferences, preferring their individual teaching role augmented by ready access to Roman dicasteries which could receive complaints from disaffected parishioners upset at the pastoral leanings of more liberal bishops like Pat Power and Bill Morris here in Australia.  Francis says, “Episcopal conferences are in a position to contribute in many and fruitful ways to the concrete realization of the collegial spirit”. He says that  “this desire has not been fully realized” and notes that “excessive centralization, rather than proving helpful, complicates the Church’s life and her missionary outreach.”  As a non-European pope he is particularly sensitive to cultural diversity and much of the European baggage in the Church.  For him,  the Church was never Europe and Europe is not the Church.   He happily quotes our Bishops of Oceania asking that the Church “develop an understanding and a presentation of the truth of Christ working from the traditions and cultures of the region” and inviting “all missionaries to work in harmony with indigenous Christians so as to ensure that the faith and the life of the Church be expressed in legitimate forms appropriate for each culture”. With South American gusto, he adds: “We cannot demand that peoples of every continent, in expressing their Christian faith, imitate modes of expression which European nations developed at a particular moment of their history, because the faith cannot be constricted to the limits of understanding and expression of any one culture.  It is an indisputable fact that no single culture can exhaust the mystery of our redemption in Christ.”

While not promising any changes to church teaching on contraception, divorce and remarriage, etc, he offers real hope of sacramental hospitality being offered in local churches.  Having noted that “the Church has rules or precepts which may have been quite effective in their time, but no longer have the same usefulness for directing and shaping people’s lives”, he throws open the doors with this declaration: “The Church is called to be the house of the Father, with doors always wide open. One concrete sign of such openness is that our church doors should always be open, so that if someone, moved by the Spirit, comes there looking for God, he or she will not find a closed door. There are other doors that should not be closed either. Everyone can share in some way in the life of the Church; everyone can be part of the community, nor should the doors of the sacraments be closed for simply any reason. This is especially true of the sacrament which is itself “the door”: baptism. The Eucharist, although it is the fullness of sacramental life, is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak. These convictions have pastoral consequences that we are called to consider with prudence and boldness. Frequently, we act as arbiters of grace rather than its facilitators. But the Church is not a tollhouse; it is the house of the Father, where there is a place for everyone, with all their problems.”

But there are some nettles he is not prepared to grasp, and the Church will continue to suffer for it.  He writes, “The reservation of the priesthood to males, as a sign of Christ the Spouse who gives himself in the Eucharist, is not a question open to discussion, but it can prove especially divisive if sacramental power is too closely identified with power in general.” Surely it must be even more divisive if those who reserve to themselves sacramental power determine that they alone can determine who has access to that power and legislate that the matter is not open for discussion.  Given that the power to determine the teaching of the magisterium and the provisions of canon law is not a sacramental power, is there not a need to include women in the decision that the question is not open to discussion and in the contemporary quest for an answer to the question? Francis’s position on this may be politic for the moment within the Vatican which has had a longtime preoccupation with shutting down the discussion, but the position is  incoherent.  The claim that the matter “is not a question open to discussion” can not be maintained unless sacramental power also includes the power to determine theology and the power to determine canon law.  Ultimately the Pope’s claim must be that only those possessed of sacramental power can determine the magisterium and canon law.  Conceding for the moment the historic exclusion of women from the sacramental power of presidency at Eucharist, we need to determine if “the possible role of women in decision-making in different areas of the Church’s life” could include the power to contribute to theological discussion and the shaping of the magisterium and to canonical discussion about sanctions for participating in theological discussion on set topics such as the ordination of women.  As Francis says, “Demands that the legitimate rights of women be respected, based on the firm conviction that men and women are equal in dignity, present the Church with profound and challenging questions which cannot be lightly evaded.”   This paragraph of the Exhortation on women’s ordination adds nothing to a resolution of the question nor the way forward.  This Exhortation contains some wonderful material but on this issue, Francis has attempted to lightly evade the question riding the jetstream of opposition entrenched in the magisterium and in canon law by his two predecessors.

Francis makes no pretence to having all the answers.  He won’t be moving any time soon to change church teachings.  But he has done a lot with this Exhortation to move the Church back into the world and to open the Church to all sinners without discrimination.  He makes appealing his vision of a Church which is “bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security.”