While I welcome anything authentic that promotes the capacity of women to be truly influential in the church, I am not really keen on the diaconate idea of female deacons. Essentially this is because I think it is unnecessary. That is to say, if the theology of the laity was allowed to mature, the diaconal ministry could be effectively offered by lay people – men and women. (more…)

Three feet of ice, the Chinese say, are not frozen in one day.
Nor does it thaw in one year.

Large institutions are famous for sometimes moving with all of the speed of an inert glacier. The ancient institution of the Vatican is no exception to this rule. (more…)

The Via di Santa Prassede is a back lane close to the imposing Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, Pope Francis’ favourite church in Rome. But there is a very significant historical building just nearby: the basilica of Santa Prassede in the laneway that takes its name from the church. It was built by a much hated pope, Paschal I (817-824). It would be good for Francis, in light of his decision to create a commission to study the possibility of women deacons, to pop into Santa Prassede next time he’s in the area. He’d find it very enlightening. (more…)

The Holy See’s abrupt suspension this week of anexternal audit of all its financial operations by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is being described by almost everyone as the Vatican old guard’s latest attempt to derail Pope Francis’ reforms.

This narrative pits “a powerful Italian bureaucracy resistant to greater transparency” (including the Cardinal Secretary of State, Pietro Parolin) against Australian Cardinal George Pell, the controversial figure the pope handpicked two years ago to lead the newly instituted Secretariat for the Economy.

The problem with this explanation is that it is far too simplistic and, in other important ways, more than a bit off the mark. Because if it were true it would mean Pope Francis himself is trying to thwart efforts at transparency or, at the very least, has been duped or co-opted by those who are.

In fact, the pope approved the letters that Cardinal Parolin and his deputy in charge of internal Church affairs, Archbishop Angelo Becciu, sent out this week to all Vatican departments to inform them that the PwC audit has been “suspended immediately.”

Andrea Tornielli of La Stampa points out that the concern was not with PwC, but with the manner in which Cardinal Pell and his deputy, Danny Casey, forged the three-year deal with the global accounting firm.

“The suspension resulted from three possible irregularities in the contract signing process and the missing consultations required by the statutes approved by the pope,” wrote the veteran Vatican analyst this week.

Cardinal Pell’s department – contrary to what he had boasted before its final statutes were published last year – does not report directly to the pope. It actually takes its marching orders from a 15-member Council for the Economy, composed of eight cardinals and seven laymen; chaired by German Cardinal Reinhard Marx.

Yes, this council approved the PwC audit last December. Technically, the council actually ordered the audit, because it is the only office (except the pope himself) with the authority to do so.

But according to Tornielli some of the council’s members complained that Cardinal Pell’s office then kept them in the dark over the terms of the contract with PwC when it should have first sought the council’s approval of those terms.

Some people also did not seem amused that the Australian signed the $3 million agreement on behalf of the Vatican as “manager of the Holy See.”

All this was seen by some officials in the Secretariat of State as just one more instance of Cardinal Pell going it alone, bypassing proper channels and – ironically, given the task he claims to be trying to achieve – acting in a less than transparent manner.

But concerns over the former Archbishop of Sydney’s activities at the Vatican go much deeper than merely his role in bringing forth financial reforms.

It is in the area of Church finance and management, and this small area alone, that it can be said that Cardinal Pell is fully on board with Pope Francis’ more important project of overall Church reform. In fact, he is part of a conservative group of cardinals that backed the losing candidate (believed to have been Angelo Scola, then Marc Ouellet) at the last conclave.

This group, now expanded to include other bishops, has been less than enthusiastic about the pope’s broader Church reforms, evidenced especially by the objections it has raised to the way he led the last two gatherings of the Synod of Bishops. The group has become a respectful but firm opposition that seems to be waiting out what its members hope will be a short pontificate.

Pope Francis surprised a lot of people two years ago when he chose George Pell to lead the Secretariat for the Economy. It appeared then to be a move to give his conclave opponents a share in Vatican governance, but in an area he has not made his top priority.

Francis wants a clean hands operation when it comes to money. No doubt about it. But efforts to achieve this pale in significance to the more urgent and difficult reforms that are required to pull the entire Church out of the deep hole into which his last two predecessors have driven it.

His decision to temporarily halt the PwC audit, via the two letters this week from the Secretariat of State, looks like another message to Cardinal Pell and anyone else who thinks they can set up a powerbase of opposition.

Cardinal Pell turns 75 in June. That’s the age when bishops, including Vatican officials, submit their resignations. Pope Francis will probably not accept it immediately, though he is likely to do so before the cardinal completes the initial five-year term that is the norm for a position like his. That would not be until 2019.

The 79-year-old pope has shown a lot of patience and restraint with prelates resistant to the ongoing change of mentality he is bringing to the Church. But he will not tolerate them playing him or his closest aides as fools.

Keep your eye on the calendar.

This article first appeared in Global Pulse on 22 April 2016.

Cardinal Philippe Barbarin of Lyon is currently being investigated by French police for failing to report sexual offences against children by some of his priests.

It is alleged that he knew about allegations against them in 2007 and 2009. Despite his denials of any wrongdoing, there have been calls for his resignation.

On Good Friday, retired auxiliary Bishop Geoffrey Robinson of Sydney, Australia, called on Pope Francis to request the resignation of every bishop who has failed to properly address cases of child sexual abuse.

It is unlikely that Pope Francis will agree, because it would undermine the integrity of the Church’s canon law as a coherent legal system.

The rule of law requires people to be punished for disobeying the law, not for obeying it – and this applies as much to canon law as to civil law.

Every bishop takes an oath on his consecration that he will obey all ecclesiastical laws. In 2002, when Cardinal Barbarin became Archbishop of Lyon, Pope John Paul II’s decree, Sacramentorum Sanctitatis Tutela of 2001 imposed the pontifical secret, a permanent silence, on all allegations of child sexual abuse by clerics. There was no exception for reporting such crimes to the civil authorities.

In 2002, Cardinal Desmond Connell of Dublin told the Murphy Commission in Ireland that earlier that year, he handed over to the Irish police some diocesan files relating to priests who had sexually abused children. He said that handing them over involved the greatest crisis of his time as archbishop, and he wondered if he had betrayed his consecration oath. The diocesan files were subject to the pontifical secret.

In 2001, Bishop Pierre Pican of Caen in France was given a 3 month suspended prison sentence for failing to report a serial sex abusing priest to the police. At his trial, the president of the French Catholic Bishops Conference, Cardinal Louis-Marie Billé, condemned the demand that such crimes should be reported as “intellectual terrorism” and as an infringement of “professional secrecy.”

In September 2001, Cardinal Dario Castrillón Hoyos, the prefect of the Congregation for Clergy, and a canon lawyer, wrote a letter to Bishop Pican congratulating him for covering up the priest’s crimes, and stating that bishops should be prepared to go to jail rather than report them to the police. He said he was sending a copy of his congratulatory letter to all bishops of the world holding up Pican as an example to be followed. He later said that his letter had been sent with the approval of Pope John Paul II.

In February 2002, Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone, (now a cardinal), a canon lawyer and the secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, of which Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was then the prefect, rejected the demands that bishops report priests for child sexual abuse. On 29 April 2002, Archbishop Julian Herranz (now a cardinal), the president of the Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts, the pope’s delegate for making binding interpretations of canon law, said the same thing.

On 16 May 2002, Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, now in charge of Pope Francis’ group of cardinals to reform the Roman Curia, said that bishops should be prepared to go to jail rather than to report these crimes to the police.

“We are pastors, not agents of the FBI or CIA,” he said.

Cardinal Karl Lehmann, the chairman of the German Catholic Bishops Conference,Cardinal Jan Schotte, then secretary general of the Synod of Bishops and Professor Gianfranco Ghirlanda SJ, a judge of the Apostolic Signatura, and dean of the Faculty of Canon Law at the Gregorian University in Rome all made similar statements in 2002.

In 2010, Pope Benedict XVI extended to the rest of the world a dispensation from the pontifical secret that had been given to the United States in December 2002, and which was just enough to keep bishops out of jail: bishops should report but only where there are civil reporting laws. Previously, canon law required them to break such laws.

Very few countries in the world have reporting laws for historical abuse (where the victim is an adult), which forms the vast bulk of all complaints. Not all countries have welfare reporting laws for children at risk. Since 2010, the pontifical secret still prohibits bishops from reporting allegations of abuse where there are no or inadequate civil reporting laws.

The requirements of canon law are irrelevant to Cardinal Barbarin’s guilt or innocence under French law.

But if he is convicted of breaching French law for failing to report such allegations to the civil authorities, should anyone be surprised that he acted in the way he did? The alleged offences occurred in 2007 and 2009, before the dispensation to report where the civil law required it was extended to France.

Had Cardinal Barbarin reported those allegations to the civil authorities he would have breached his consecration oath to obey all ecclesiastical laws, as well as going against the overwhelming weight of opinion of the Church’s senior cardinals and canon lawyers as to his moral, ethical and canonical obligations – he should be prepared to go to jail rather than report crimes against children by his priests.

For Pope Francis to sack these bishops, or call upon them to resign would undermine the whole idea of the rule of law in canon law.

In September 2014, Pope Francis rejected calls from the United Nations Committees on the Rights of the Child and against Torture to abolish the pontifical secret for clergy sexual abuse of children and to impose mandatory reporting under canon law. Until he does that, no bishop can be held accountable for covering up child sexual abuse in those jurisdictions where there are inadequate civil reporting laws.

So even if Cardinal Barbarin is convicted, he cannot be held accountable under canon law, precisely because he obeyed it.

Kieran Tapsell is the author of Potiphar’s Wife: The Vatican’s Secret and Child Sexual Abuse (2014 ATF Press). 

Easter brings Easter eggs and hot cross buns. You see the egg and dart pattern on the frieze of some Victorian-period buildings. But it goes way back to classical times. The eternal question – life or death.

Two men looked out through the prison bars. One saw mud, the other saw stars.

Malcolm Turnbull assures us “It’s never been a better time to be an Australian”. But Tony Abbott effectively tells us to be alert AND alarmed. George Pell’s motto is “Don’t Be Afraid” making you wonder what is he afraid of? In our darker moments we fear he may be right. They’re out to get us.

It is not the best time to be a Syrian even though history tells us that Aleppo has seen golden days. Tamils in Sri Lanka and Rohingyas in Burma see mud rather than stars. But don’t come uninvited to Australia because you will end up in Nauru. The scene is hopeless.

The Middle East is a cauldron of aggression, hate and revenge. Israel is fear-driven despite being miles ahead of its hostile neighbours in the arms race. Solution: build even more settlements on Palestinian land. Compound past mistakes. Yemen has been ripped apart for years by a proxy war. Egypt’s dictators radicalised the Muslim Brotherhood. Remember the Iranian martyrs blessed by the ayatollah. Then came Hezbollah in Lebanon. Then Hamas in Palestine. Hostility notching ever higher. Offense breeds reprisal and the cauldron heats up a bit more. The scene is hopeless.

Second generation North African migrants in France and Belgium, boiling with fear and anger, bring death to European cities. Deep, burning resentment for past wrongs – felt now. There’s always a deep reason when lives are put on the line. The scene seems hopeless.

Australia has its own disaffected youth. Apex gangs run riot in Melbourne and grim faced civic leaders talk of the “full force of the law”. What next? “Three strikes and you’re out”? No problem falling back on a discredited tactic as long as it slakes a thirst for revenge and drums up a few votes from a confused crowd. Like France, we have welcomed these youngsters in, but have not been diligent enough educating them and getting them jobs. We seem to be institutionalising disadvantage.

The USA’s poor are destitute – and are not happy. Those on middle incomes have had stagnant wages for decades. They are not happy, blame Washington and take it out on them by voting for the Tea Party. Wealthy Republicans are the only ones getting richer. But they want more – and are not happy. America’s military is the greatest in the world, but not very good at winning wars. It’s a bit tired of fighting now. But Mike Moore still asks “Where to invade next?” Fear you can’t do anything about it breeds hopelessness.

Donald Trump wants to make America great again. A big man with a big stick and a big voice. We’ll use the stick and we will do what it takes. Bring back the water board. What next? Crank up the Enola Gay? Don’t laugh. That’s the direction that rhetoric takes you.

Hope seems lost. Read the Brussels bomber’s despairing “will”. You want to hit back at unfair manipulators. But, if you do, you make it worse.

Nelson Mandela seemed to have an answer. Let’s talk. Let truth and justice set the record straight rather than getting even. Burma’s National League for Democracy has old campaigners back in the ranks after years of unjust imprisonment. True Buddhists, they believe that anger makes you suffer more than the oppressor. We live to fight another day. That’s another answer.

Easter brings us Easter Eggs and Hot Cross Buns. The cross is always there – sometimes worse than others. When will it ever end? But when the egg hatches we have life anew. Some believe it. Some can’t.

Easter is a vote for hope.

If I had a say in who were made saints there are three people I’d immediately nominate, and two of them are not Catholics! My first choice would be Dorothy Day and, thank God, she has begun the slow process to sainthood. The other two are John Wesley (1707-88) and Charles Wesley (1703-91), the founders of Methodism.

A truly Christian man, John Wesley set out in 1738 to evangelize ordinary working people who were largely abandoned by the established church. For fifty years he travelled all over England on horseback, riding up to 5000 miles annually, preaching thousands of sermons, often three a day, to enormous crowds. When churches were closed to him, he preached, like Jesus, in the fields. His brother Charles was the greatest hymn writer in the English language. We still use many of his hymns today.

One of his finest is Christ the Lord is Risen Today. The hymn originally had eleven stanzas, but was without the ‘Alleluias’ we use. The verse I love most reads:

Lives again our glorious king,

Where, O death is now thy sting?

Dying once, he all doth save,

Where thy victory, O grave?

For me this expresses the core of Christianity, the total victory of life over death. ‘Where, O death is now thy sting?…Where thy victory, O grave?’ The Preface for the Requiem Mass expresses it succinctly, ‘Lord for your faithful people life is changed, not ended.’ As a priest I found it easy to preach on Good Friday for the events of Jesus’ death are so dramatic and within our range of experience: a good man killed because it suited the politico-religious establishment. We know about political prisoners, torture and murder.

But the Resurrection is different. Here we deal with something beyond our experience, and I never found it easy to preach on Easter Sunday. As I often do I turned to Gerard Manley Hopkins. He has a poem That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection.

This complex sonnet was written in July 1888, just eleven months before he died aged 45. Depressed by his surroundings in Dublin, he goes out on a blustery, midsummer day and recaptures his love of nature. He describes the cloudscapes calling them ‘heaven-roysters’. He feels ‘the bright wind boisterous’ which dries the mud from ‘yestertempest’.

Then he remembers Heraclitus with his vision of nature as a constant fire, a ceaseless conflict of opposites, flux and change; nothing is permanent and the only certainty is death. In this context humankind is ‘in an enormous dark / drowned’ as ‘million-fuelèd, / nature’s bonfire burns on.’ ‘Death blots back out,’ he says and ‘vastness blurs and time / beats level.’ His initial joy seems overcome by death.

But then he stops himself. ‘Enough! The Resurrection…Away grief’s gasping / joyless days, dejection.’ He realizes that it is the way of nature that everything must die, as Christ died on the cross in order to be transformed by resurrection. Death is the process through which all creation passes. ‘Flesh fade and mortal trash Fall to the residuary worm; world’s wildfire leave but ash.’

But in the resurrection all is transformed:

In a flash, at a trumpet crash,

I am all at once what Christ is, / since he was what I am, and

This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,

Is immortal diamond.

The image of a diamond suggests something that fire can’t destroy. The diamond’s structure is hard, permanent and lasting. And that, Hopkins says, is what we are. Since he (Christ) ‘was what I am’, so ‘this Jack, joke, poor potsherd’ can become what Christ is – truly alive. This is his hope.

I think that hope is more significant than faith and love. Hope is rooted in imagination, in the ability to grasp other possibilities, to conceive of other options. It helps us escape a monochrome, paranoid world. While we all have imagination, we need the artist to give it expression. As Shakespeare says in A Midsummer Night’s Dream:

And as imagination bodes forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen

Turns them into shapes, and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name.

That is what Charles Wesley does. In simple and evocative language he gives the resurrection ‘a local habitation and a name.’ ‘Where, O death is now thy sting? Life triumphs over death.

Perplexing and confronting. Whether believers or not, that is how many of us find the events of that first Easter week in Jerusalem. Here are the elements of high drama: betrayal, confrontation with Jewish and Roman authorities, a trial, torture and a cruel death by crucifixion.

Even so, Jesus would have disappeared completely from history had it not been for what happened next: Jesus’ Resurrection, and the appearances which convinced his incredulous followers that he was indeed alive. This did indeed changed everything.

The disciples themselves were deeply perplexed, for it was blasphemous for these pious Jews to acknowledge that Jesus was the embodiment of the God they worshiped. And it was complete madness to those from Greek culture, that such a shameful death could be accepted by God.

From being a bewildered and frightened crowd, the first believers were transfixed by joy at their sense of the intense presence of the spirit of Jesus. They had the experience, but understanding the meaning was altogether another thing.

Retelling the story of Jesus and interpreting it for wider groups of people eventually gave birth to the Gospels and other New Testament writings. And still we believers struggle to understand what Jesus’ Resurrection means for our lives now.

So shocking to Jewish ears, Christians believe that the mighty Creator God has taken on human flesh in the person of Jesus. Believers then see all the words and actions of Jesus as an unveiling (revelation) of what is deepest in the heart of his Father.

Why then does Jesus submit to such a degrading death? I would suggest it embodies the ultimate commitment of God to our human wellbeing, demonstrating in the most graphic way that God is not indifferent to pain, death and evil in the world. In Jesus, God gives his life for us. It is as if in Jesus God is sucking all the evil in the world into himself, not to be overcome by evil, but to transform it through his Resurrection.

Jesus talked incessantly about the Kingdom or Reign of God, yet as he said to Pilate, his Kingdom was not of this world. Such a belief relativises our life in this world. This life is a journey to our final home in heaven.

Such belief profoundly transforms our worldview, our sense of values, our priorities in how we live. If God loves us so intensely as to express his solidarity with us so graphically in Jesus’ life and death, then indeed we are all precious in God’s sight. And God expects us to recognise this in the way we treat one another.

No words of Jesus capture this more powerfully than the parable of the Last Judgment in Matthew 25. Jesus makes entry to heaven entirely depend on how we have fed the hungry, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked, cared for the sick, visited those in prison.

Consider how confronting are these words, and not just for the pious people of Jesus’ day who fulfilled all their ritual religious duties. The words of the parable are quite extreme: entry to heaven is conditional on our care for the destitute and suffering. God is not fooled by mere piety if it is without compassion and ignores human wellbeing.

Moreover God takes care for the poor and distressed intensely personally. ‘I tell you solemnly, in so far as you did this to one of the least of these brethren of mine, you did it to me.’

The message of Easter relativises our life in this world but without trivialising it. Evil and suffering are not taken away, but our struggle against them is given new meaning in the light of Easter.

When Cardinal George Pell enters the witness box at the Royal Commission we see a legal counsel interviewing him to find to what extent he is to blame for a failure in his church’s duty of care. The adversarial setup puts him on the defensive. He admits past reticence to intervene, but says others are mainly to blame. But as he defends himself he is also displaying himself. He is, on his own admission wooden –emotionally distant. He is sure of himself but unconvincing to others. What we see is an ideologue in action. How did he get to here?

During the 1960s a liberal movement swept the Catholic Church. Pope John XXIII called the Second Vatican Council. It opened the gates of a fortress church to new ideas, new liturgy, new rules. It was a pastoral council, It reversed the tight church control that had become entrenched over the years following the 16^th century Council of Trent.

In true Hegelian style, an opposing movement developed, working hard to retain the pre-council policies and rules. So, the progressive/conservative culture wars began in the late 1960s. During the 70s this liberal movement grew strong. But during the 80s the conservatives regained lost ground. Karol Wojtyla, who was elected pope in 1978, was focussed on dismantling the liberal changes. He wanted a disciplined church with crystal clear policies in creed and action like the one that sustained him in the dark days of communist Poland.

George Pell was ordained for the diocese of Ballarat in 1966. His bishop, Jim O’Collins, was a committed conservative and strongly aligned with Bob Santamaria, the leading lay conservative voice. He recruited George to his team. He sent him off to Oxford to get a doctorate in order to be able to joust with the progressives on his return. Jim wanted someone who could take on the likes of Max Charlesworth – a leading academic progressive voice. George returned from Oxford as a Conservative Warrior and a protégée of Bob Santamaria.

George has remained true to that vocation ever since. He has always been a politician – an ecclesiastical politician. His career path took off when he was appointed principal of Aquinas Teachers College, Ballarat in 1974. This appointment introduced him to wheeling and dealing with governments and unions. Ballarat’s Aquinas College became a campus of the newly created Australian Catholic University with George as a key participant in the negotiations between church and government. From 1978 to 1986 the papal nuncio was Luigi Brambilla. He was close to Bob Santamaria and would have noticed this rising star so politically in tune with the new pope. By 1985 it was Ballarat’s turn to provide a rector for the seminary. George got the job – another good career step.

In 1987 Archbishop Frank Little asked Rome for two auxiliary bishops. He got Peter Connors and George. George was Rome’s choice. Rome now had its man in the Melbourne curia. In 1990 George was appointed a member of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) – the Church’s policy watchdog headed by Josef Ratzinger. His conservative ideology and warrior style had gained approval on high. This job involved regular participation in Roman meetings and wheeling and dealing in Vatican politics. Over the 10 years that he held that job George became a recognised figure in Vatican corridors.

In January 1996 Frank Little went to Rome to negotiate a congenial coadjutor with right of succession. He came home empty handed. Then, the following July he took early retirement and who was appointed to replace him but George.What had happened? Well, George told the Royal Commission that Frank had been asked to put in his retirement early. That response shone the spotlight on George’s political connections in Rome. George denied that Frank’s retirement had been negotiated with him. But whichever way it went, Rome now had their man in Australia’s biggest diocese – and George knew about the intrigue. Wandering the Vatican halls of power at regular intervals pays off. In 2001 George was appointed archbishop of Sydney. He became a cardinal in 2003 and got his job as Secretary of the Economy in Rome in 2014.

George’s conservative ideology was highlighted by another sequence in the Royal Commission. He claimed that he had been kept in the dark by Frank Little and the Catholic Education Office (CEO) about the background to the Fr. Peter Searson case. He and Frank had “quite different approaches to theology”. The CEO knew he was not “cut from the same cloth” as the archbishop. They knew he did not approve of their approach to religious education. He claimed to have cleaned the show up when he became archbishop. This claim is spelt out in an address he gave in Cork in 2011. It is worth looking up at: (http://www.ad2000.com.au/articles/2011/oct2011p3_3622.html).

Andrew Bolt interviewed George shortly after his Royal Commission appearance (http://www.skynews.com.au/video/news/top_stories/2016/03/05/the-cardinal-pell-interview.html). “I was a supporter of Bob Santamaria” he said as a reason for the wariness of bishops and priests in trusting him. What a story that claim entailed! Back in the 50s and 60s a large portion of Melbourne priests would also have supported Bob Santamaria. But after the Labour split in 1953 and the divisiveness of the DLP, most changed their mind and saw Bob’s National Civic Council (NCC) as damaging to the Church as well as the ALP.

“Radical liberalism in faith and morals around the world is destroying the Church” he told Andrew Bolt. He remains the proud, ideological warrior in the style of Santamaria, Wojtyła and Ratzinger. His realization that this set him apart from most priests shows he is aware of the larger liberal wing in the Australian Catholic Church. Conservatives like George still make a lot of noise in the Church. But the opposing wing is larger and more pastoral. They believe that ideology is the antithesis of genuine faith. If you are interested I have written on this topic elsewhere. It is on my blog at:

• http://catholicview.typepad.com/catholic_view/2015/09/ideology-is-not-faith.html and
• http://catholicview.typepad.com/catholic_view/2012/08/the-millennial-jubilee-from-ideology-to-faith-from-fear-to-freedom-1.html

The present pope abhors ideology – of right or of left. His model of priesthood is Shepherd-Pastor rather than Defender-Warrior. But George is unfazed as his Royal Commission testimony shows. And the culture wars are still alive – especially in the Vatican.

Eric Hodgens is a retired Catholic priest who ‘writes a bit’.

Despite the unpersuasive Vatican spin on Cardinal Pell’s appearance last week before the Royal Commission into child sex abuse in institutions – that his performance was “dignified” and “edifying”, his performance, in the assessment of most observers including this one, was inept, cowardly and unconvincing.

Cardinal Pell is only one Australian Catholic and he has a small following, even among the country’s bishops. But he has single handedly brought the Catholic Church in Australia to its knees. If what occurred last week happened to any other entity in Australia – a political party, a trade union or a university, for example – a death notice in the newspaper would be expected.

In fact, of course, the type of Catholicism Pell embodies has been in its death throes for some decades. The authoritarian and clericalist style and substance that Pell is the exemplar of is not only unappealing in post-modern, pluralist and multicultural Australia. It lost its theoretical underpinning in Catholic theology at Vatican II in the 1960s.

But now it is derelict. The only question to ask is what if anything will succeed it? And if there is something that could succeed it, what resources are there to draw on to see some fresh expression of Catholicism realized?

The clericalist, authoritarian Church that Pell exemplifies has been in terminal decline for decades. Why? Because there aren’t any troops to keep fighting its fights. The declining rate of seminary recruiting and ordinations to the male celibate priesthood has been obvious to any but the wishful since the 1970s.

Pell has been one of the wishful, claiming seminaries are full year after. It’s true seminaries accepted just about anyone who wanted to get into them. But the crushing fact is that few candidates who entered the seminaries in the last 20 years ever got ordained. And among those who did, at least a third left the priesthood within a decade of ordination.

The average age of the clergy in Australia now is in the low 70s. It was a statistical given in the 1970s that if the average age of any group of religious brothers or nuns moved much beyond 60, that congregation had moved beyond its capacity to regenerate itself.

As far as priests are concerned, it is a matter of supreme puzzlement to me how a Church that declares the Eucharist to be “the sources and summit of the Church’s life” (as declared at Vatican II) has been incapable of addressing this simple fact: according to current rules, there will be a decreasing capacity to provide a service that is dependent on male celibates to deliver.

So, in reality how can the Catholic Church survive in Australia given the crippling effect of the mishandling of sex abuse, the incompetence of its leadership and the beleaguered condition of its executive force – the clergy?

The Catholic Church is rightly perceived as a domain dominated by old men. That’s what appears every time there is a major Catholic ceremony. It’s what happens every time there is a significant gathering – nationally or internationally – to consider issues and challenges the Church is facing. Little wonder that the Church is seen and often described as an old boys’ club.

In reality in Australia, the interface with the Church that most Catholics experience is not the male dominated and stiff ceremonies that establish the image of the boys club. For most Catholics participating in something Catholic in Australia, the encounters occur in Catholic schools.

Increasingly the reality of the Catholic community is a school system with a church attached which most visit occasionally. And the significant leadership is not the old priests or the occasionally appearing bishop but the leaders of the school community who are almost all lay people – like over 98% – and mostly women.

There are now literally thousands of theologically well-qualified leaders of Catholic communities who are not sacramental celebrants but educators. Women have always been the most significant and effective carriers and communicators of faith in the Australian Church – in families and local parishes, within and between generations.

Now they are the formally qualified and administratively authorized leaders of over 2,000 communities across the country – over 1200 primary schools and more than 800 secondary schools.

Cultural cycles are the slowest by far. Political cycles (of ideas and policies) might be about 20 years in the making and unmaking. Economic cycles can take twice as long to work their way through national communities that end up being vastly different to what they were. Just look at Australia in 1976 and 2016.

Cultural cycles take even longer as beliefs change from being novel suggestions to their being embedded and taken for granted in a community’s self-understanding, from having statuses and roles being unquestioned to their being discarded and replaced.

What is to become of Catholicism in Australia will not emerge from seminaries and religious congregations but from mission focused and theologically informed lay people who are mostly female.

What George Pell Might Have Said

Meanwhile, in a parallel universe …

“Your Honour

Please could I start by making a statement that I hope will help the Commission and that I pray will give some solace to so many people I now know to have been traumatised by abuse suffered on an horrendous scale.

I have no wish to put people who say they told me about sexual abuse that was occurring in a position where their recollections need to be tested in minute detail against mine. They have gone long enough with their voices not being heard by powerful figures in the Church and in society generally. I can accept that, despite differences of recollection between me and some of them, there is already enough evidence before the Commission that many tried to tell me from the time I was a junior priest in Ballarat and that I seemed to them to be dismissive or lacked compassion or took no action. For that, I apologise to them profusely: I did not do enough and more people were abused by the same priests and brothers complained about.

I must, also, accept my share of the responsibility for the systematic cover-up that occurred when I was a consultor in the diocese of Ballarat. Bishop Mulkearns acted shamefully, and we were complicit in it. I am not sure why exactly, perhaps it was a misguided wish to protect the Church as an institution, or a desire for advancement and the clerical culture that made us loyal to the bishop and to our fellow priests in such a dysfunctional way.

My colleagues and I may have been deceived or kept in the dark, but nonetheless, we lacked the compassion or the courage to ask more questions about things that should have focussed our attention acutely. When we knew of crimes committed against children, as loyal advisors we should have demanded that he act. When he did not listen to us, we should have resigned and gone to the police ourselves. I am so sorry for the hurt and damage that not doing so has caused.

By the time I came to Melbourne as an auxiliary bishop, I had no excuses for any continuing ignorance or lack of understanding. In that context, accompanying Gerald Ridsdale to court was one of the most harmful errors of judgment I have ever made.

And, there is now copious evidence available to the Commission to make it transparent that Archbishop Little and his leadership group, of which I was a senior part, failed abjectly to deal properly with abusing priests. My own previous attempts to shift responsibility for inaction in matters in which I was directly involved were just that, attempts to protect myself from recrimination by blaming others. I will do that no longer. I hope that that goes some way towards making retribution to good people who acted to end abuse but whom I have blamed.

I do hope that the Commission will be gracious enough to consider that in my time as Archbishop of Melbourne I did at least act promptly to set up a fair and survivor focussed system to deal with allegations of abuse. The suggestion that I set up this Melbourne Response to shield the archdiocese financially is correct. It was also one, but only one, of my objectives, and I thought at the time that this was a prudent thing to do as a leader. I can see now that this aspect of the scheme vitiated much of its benefit for survivors. I strongly endorse the Commission’s call for a national contributory compensation and survivor support scheme. I further believe that all allegations of abuse should be reviewed by independent external authorities.

I must also concede that my actions in seeking to prevent reputational and financial damage to the Church where confronted with legal action were wrong. The Ellis Defence is a sham I should never have allowed to run, and I sincerely hope that the Commission will recommend changes to Australian law that will no longer allow churches to evade communal responsibility for their obviously corporate actions.

On the basis of how I now genuinely view my own actions, I will tender my resignation to the Pope. I do not mind being “scapegoated” as some have said because I know that, until I accept responsibility, apologise for and bear the personal consequences of such a huge failure of trust, the process of healing for survivors and even for the Church itself will never have a sound basis.”

Terry Laidler is a former Catholic priest and radio broadcaster whose main work now is in the field of forensic psychology.

The sexual abuse of children creates many victims – and many levels of victimhood.

Cultures, including ours, have rules about sexual activity. Cultural deviations from what is considered normal meet a range of cultural responses from approval to acceptance, to disapproval, to condemnation as immoral or, finally, criminalisation. Our culture has a minimum age of consent for sexual activity. It criminalises sexual activity with children. Many states have laws of mandatory reporting.

The western world learned an extraordinary amount about paedophilia during the last quarter of the 20^th century. At the start of that quarter most knew that it happened – but little else. It was an area of bewildered gossip. The grapevine of certain professional groups such as school officials, scout leaders, caring professionals, including priests, carried distasteful stories of confreres but with little hard evidence and detail. There was very little professional psychology research on the subject

By 1985 the penny was dropping for those professionally involved. By the turn of the century the professional research was vast and the man in the street was both aware of paedophilia and shocked at its extent.

The psychology profession distinguishes between paedophilia (the attraction to pre-pubescent children) and ephebophilia (the attraction to young adolescents).

Paedophilia:

• is a sexual attraction to pre-pubescent children;
• is widespread;
• is a psychological disorder;
• is irreversible – resembling an addiction;
• has a devastating, life-long effect on its victims often including depression, chemical dependency, inability to trust and difficulty in forming adult relationships, suicide;
• is not merely a moral offence but a crime.

The allied offence of sexual abuse of adolescents, though distinct from paedophilia, is abuse if the subject has not consented or is under legal age or is overwhelmed by the status rank of the abuser. This, too, occurs; often in a social context which has a duty of care such as a school, youth organization or church.

Molested children are the primary victims often carrying the scars for the rest of their lives. That victimhood is compounded when they are not believed or, worse, are accused of lying. The image of a little kid being accused – even beaten – for reporting abuse is horrifying.

Those responsible for the child become secondary victims when they keep the matter quiet out of a sense of shame or because the perpetrator has community status or for fear of community backlash.

As community awareness of the extent of the offense became clearer, social anger against the perpetrators grew. This was compounded when offenders gained access to children because they were officials of institutions with a duty of care for children entrusted to them – churches, schools, youth organizations. But, in a sense even the perpetrators are victims – victims of the compulsiveness of their desires compounded by institutional circumstances which will be outlined later.

Officials of institutions where abuse happened often covered up the offences in order to protect the institution’s reputation and assets. They pleaded “not guilty”, putting the onus of proof on the victims.

Caring institutions thus played false to their primary purpose – the care for the child. As awareness of the extent of institutional offending and the extreme nature of the devastation caused to the victims grew, so did public anger. The Churches came off worst in this. Of all institutions they were committed to the care and protection of the weak and here they were inflicting a second trauma on their victims by mounting a legal defence. This legal approach brought even more opprobrium on the Churches.

In the face of a corporate scandal today’s accepted wisdom is to admit the fault, open the whole matter to public view, apologise sincerely, take effective steps to remedy the causes and offer some form of compensation. The alternative of secrecy in the hope that it will go away fails in today’s open society.

The Church still carries the baggage of a time when, as the established Church, it could enforce secrecy and control the means of communication. The transparency and accountability expected of contemporary government, businesses and NGOs is not the policy of the Catholic Church. Its system of governance is still monarchical and its processes mostly officially secret. Internal Church scandals, especially sexual ones, are to be processed secretly. This was reinforced by a specific papal decree in 1922. Bishops dealing with delinquent clergy were over a barrel when faced with state laws of misprision or mandatory reporting. And, as with most institutions, old habits die hard.

Cardinal Law’s “We have our own way of dealing with these things” led to disaster in Boston. The European Church and its Latin derivatives such as South America still have not learned that lesson. See how Pope John Paul II lionised Marcial Maciel Degollado, founder of the Legionaries of Christ, fundraiser extraordinaire, but a notorious sexual abuser. Look at the Karadima case in Chile. Look at the Vatican’s most recent school for new bishops where Mgr. Tony Anatrella, an expert in psychology, told them that they need not necessarily report priests who offend. Look at the many bishops who project the image of a hard-nosed company man rather than that of a caring pastor – God’s disciplinarian rather than Jesus’s disciple.

Clerical privilege is another hangover from the days of the established Church. The revolutions of the 17^th and 18^th century limited the power of king and church. Clerical privilege, by which clergy could be prosecuted only in Church courts, not secular ones, has gone. But a mentality of clerical exceptionalism still remains, particularly in Europe and Latin America. Seminaries still institutionalise clerical exceptionalism with their segregated and live-in training.

Mandatory celibacy of the priesthood is another example of clerical exceptionalism. It underscores the otherness of the priest. But the price is endemic hypocrisy. It is very difficult for any person to spend a whole lifetime without some sexual activity. Richard Sipe estimates that about 50% of celibate clergy go through some period of forbidden sexual activity. If and when such action happens, guilt is compounded by the need to live a lie.

Celibacy is not so strong a deterrant for those with sexual attractions which are socially not acceptable. Their desires are socially unacceptable in any case. This skews the population of applicants for priesthood but sets up an even more disastrous scenario if there is later failure.

The mid 80s were a watershed in our general understanding of the abuse of minors – both the phenomenon and its extent. Then, as the 21^st century dawned public awareness and anger at official, systemic cover-up came to boiling point. The film “Spotlight” has documented the watershed moment when the Boston Globe exposed systemic Church cover up. Now we had another type of victim – the officials seen as embodying this corporate failure. They were victims of the hubris of themselves or their institution. Cardinal Law was run out of Boston in the wake of the Spotlight expose. The hubris of Pope John Paul II in rewarding Law with a plum appointment in Rome threw petrol on the flames of public anger. Now Cardinal Pell is experiencing the same with Australia’s Royal Commission.

So many victims. Lives ruined. Institutions fractured. Hope shattered. Faith lost. And real closure a distant dream.

Eric Hodgens is a Catholic Priest who writes a bit.

So, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse will take Cardinal Pell’s final evidence next week by video link from Rome. Tim Minchin’s song and the associated crowd funding effort will allow some victims of abuse to attend, but both are symptoms of fairly widespread community disappointment.

Commissioner McClellan was also clearly disappointed at this outcome. Given the complexity and probable seriousness of material still to be canvassed with Pell and the varied reliability of technology, the cardinal’s prior commitment to attend had had the obvious advantages that observation of the totality of the free exchanges under cross-examination brings. McClellan’s remark that perhaps the cardinal could come by boat was a little ungracious, but understandable on a calculus of the relatively small risk involved in contrast to the trauma and damage suffered by the victims of abuse with which the Commission is dealing daily.

But, on one level, all this hardly matters anymore. I sat through most days of the Commission’s Melbourne hearings and the actual manoeuvres of Cardinal Pell’s legal team told the Commission more about the dynamics that underpin the Catholic Church’s shameful response to clerical sexual abuse of children than any evidence the cardinal is likely to give. The confidential email to Commissioner McClellan asking for a private meeting to consider Cardinal Pell’s health (which the Commissioner rightly referred to counsel assisting him and raised in open hearings) was simply more evidence of the mistaken belief still abroad that office within the church merits special access and privileged consideration. It should not, and at last, it did not – it is clear that the Commission understands the suffering this has caused to people who were abused in the past.

More cogently, however, I was dumbfounded at the mistake the cardinal’s legal team made when they decided to introduce the evidence of Father John Walshe before the Commission. By his own account to the Commission, Walshe is Pell’s friend and protégé, a priest who with others he named at the Commission was part of a younger inner circle of Pell’s when he was an auxiliary bishop and later archbishop of Melbourne. I know that they were unkindly referred to by other priests of the archdiocese as the “Spice Girls”, and Walshe had had his own problems with allegations of inappropriate sexual conduct. When Walshe’s evidence has been forensically dissected by Counsel assisting the Commission and by McClellan himself, there was only one implication that Pell’s legal team had led the Commission to draw: Catholic clergy intervene to protect their own and to discredit victims.

Still, it is right for Cardinal Pell to give an account of what seem to me to be 7 distinct phases to his possible knowledge of and involvement with priests abusing children:

1. As a seminarian and junior clergyman – I have an open mind on this, although past (and now very current) allegations certainly accord with my recollection of and concerns about another clerical coterie to which he belonged. Someone should ask him about any association he had through or with them with the known abuser, Ronald Pickering at that time;

2. As a junior priest who boarded with serial pedophile, Gerard Ridsdale – I am confident that he would have had little knowledge of the activities of someone who was merely a fellow resident, and he would have been busy with his own role at a Catholic Teachers’ College. Evidence I heard at the Royal Commission suggests that he did, on occasion, try to keep himself distant from and uninformed about a growing body of evidence that at least raised suspicions about Ridsdale’s activities. This needs to be tested at the Commission. However, his later decision to accompany Ridsdale to Court was at a minimum a foolhardy error of judgement for which he should be invited to express profound regret.
3. As a consultor in Ballarat and
4. As auxiliary bishop in Melbourne – George Pell was one of many priests who were supposed to advise archbishops and diocesan bishops who, in turn, had ultimate responsibility for the placement and discipline of priests. The Royal Commission has now heard overwhelming evidence that these advisors, variously:

• allowed themselves to be kept in the dark about the abuse of children,
• downplayed the significance of the abuse to protect the institution from scandal,
• ignored the criminality of the abuse,
• failed to offer strong advice on the need to act decisively to protect children against perpetrators of abuse, and/or
• failed to take a principled stand and resign if and when their advice was ignored.

Wittingly or unwittingly, they participated in what one of them had the conscience to acknowledge was a “cover up” of massive scale and in this way, allowed abuse to continue. I cannot see how George Pell, too, would not share some responsibility for this. Archbishop Denis Hart and Bishops Peter Connors and Hilton Deakin acknowledged their roles honestly and contritely, while so many other clergy were deceitful, forgetful or obfuscating. It will be interesting to see where Cardinal Pell’s responses fall on this spectrum.

5. As Archbishop of Melbourne – there is little doubt that George Pell moved very quickly after his appointment to stem what was becoming an uncontrolled flood of allegations of abuse. Senior Counsel assisting the Commission, Gail Furness, has clearly documented the scope of the atrocity – 335 people made either a claim or substantiated complaint of child sexual abuse against a priest in relation to the archdiocese of Melbourne over 35 years. 7 accused priests were the subject of more than 10 claims or substantiated complaints of child sexual abuse – accounting for 54% of all claims.

Pell moved more quickly than most other Australian bishops against some of these perpetrators. The main criticisms I would have of him and his “Melbourne Response” with its independent commissioner and compensation panel, and about which I would like to hear his observations, are that:

• he and it were less focused on the needs of victims than on protecting the Church from financial loss and opprobrium,
• there was an element of selectivity in when and to which clergy its endeavours were directed, and
• the “Melbourne Response” would probably have been better as a collegiate enterprise resulting in a national scheme that was fair across church administrative boundaries. Pell should give an account of why this did not happen.

6. As Cardinal Archbishop of Sydney – I cannot consider that the cardinal’s involvement (or, for his claims, lack of involvement) in the archdiocese of Sydney’s treatment of the Ellis case was other than shameful. How he could support or accede to the proposition that the Church as such, legally and ethically, should not bear responsibility for grievous harm done by its ordained ministers is a question that deserves the cardinal’s frank answer.

7. As ‘Australia’s most senior Catholic’ – or ‘the Australian Catholic Church’s most powerful figure’ or ‘the leading Catholic in the nation and spiritual adviser to Tony Abbott’. These are all misleading media characterisations, of course. For some reason, Pell’s peers, the bishops of Australia, never elected him to the role that could be properly described in this way, the chair the Australian Bishops’ Conference. But nor are they characterisations Cardinal George Pell has ever sought to eschew or correct with any vigour. One could surmise that it suited him and his ecclesiastical and political ends to be seen in this light. This is why attempts to portray him now as some sort of tall poppy ring so hollow. The cardinal allowed his voice to be taken as that of the whole Australian Catholic Church on issues as broad as AIDS education, climate change and marriage equality. It is from that voice that many now want to hear a truthful explanation of how this could all have been allowed to happen and a remorseful apology.

It is mainly for this latter reason that, even at this late stage and on balance, I think George Pell should reconsider, take the risk and make the powerfully symbolic effort to “come home”. I noted the letter to the editor of the Western Australian medical transport specialist who offered to accompany him on a comfortable, staged, low risk trip back. After all, the culture and history of the Catholic Church are rich in metaphor and symbol, and the foundation gospels tell the story of someone whose “greater love” led him to risk all.

Terry Laidler is a former priest and broadcaster whose work is now in the field of forensic psychology.

Tim Minchin’s ‘Come home Cardinal Pell’ nails it for many in Oz. Minchin voices the rage, the frustration and the suffering of unrequited victims, their relatives, and Church goers and observers.

Rage boils when people feel unheard. It becomes incandescent over unfairness. It sizzles when one class triumphs over another.

The song flashes the spotlight on the dark places were abuse happened initially or where cover up merchants operated.

The song is composed. Also composed is the Statement from the Catholic Communications Office February 17^th. ‘The past few days has (sic) seen a great deal of incorrect information relating to Cardinal George Pell and his upcoming Royal Commission appearance.’

Both compositions seek to persuade. Let’s look at how they do it and the fallout. Minchin uses the long as literature tradition of satire. Satire works with wit, imagination, exaggeration and offence. Satire and protest songs have been the rallying and inspiring forces for much social reform.

The P.R. document purports to tell the truth. However the genre is so steeped in spin that it invites critical reading from most judicious readers. Both genres can, and often do, create a backlash, which is the opposite of their intended purposes.

Satire, seeking the high moral ground can cause serious collateral damage. There is no absolute freedom of speech. There are responsibilities as in the exercise of any right or power.

As it is three factors stand between Pell and his appearing in Australia before the Commission. One is the professional opinion of a doctor. Then there is the acceptance of that opinion by the Commission. Thirdly there is the will of Pell himself. I have not seen any criticism of the first two factors.

Pell is not currently before the court charged with an offence. Even if he were he would deserve the presumption of innocence. That may change. But no matter the amount of pain felt or hatred generated towards him the man, he enters a process of inquiry.

Neither he nor any citizen deserves lynch law or trial by media or art. The problem is that if he is seen as the victim of unfairness he and his advocates can evoke undeserved compassion or complaints of unfairness.

For satire or P.R. the end is frequently seen to justify the means. This is no more so than in social media. But I would argue that if the damage done to an innocent person, the target or bystander of a satirist attack, the attacker needs to review their motivation, means and methods.

If a satirist like Charley Hebdo knows violence would ensue from a particular piece of work are they justified in going ahead? Is it surprising that the media focuses so much on the fate of victims and on free speech? What are the ends, which involve such destructive means?

Zealots thrive on opposition. Second century Tertullian is quoted as saying, ‘The blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians.’ At times Tony Abbott seemed to regress to a zealous Democratic Labour Party mindset where he believed that he was doing God’s work and that opposition to his cause just proved he was on the righteous track.

It would be too easy and convenient for sexual predators or concealers to claim their accusers were just anti-Catholic bigots.

There is a line between ‘playing the man’ and following due process or solving the problem at hand. Whether in sport, or that other sport, politics currently there is too much tolerance for assault on the person. And the media love it.

Advocates for victims or Pell are challenged to have respect for their clients. Can we all also maintain sufficient respect for the processes of the land to see that supra jungle standards are maintained all round? Or at least have the patience to see what they yield?

Michael D. Breen is a Zen Buddhist ex Jesuit. He is a retired, organizational and humanistic psychologist. He fends off relevance deprivation with forays into woodwork,, metalwork, writing and Zen.

This is an extract from Robert Mickens’ ‘Letter from Rome’ of 10 February 2016, published in Global Pulse.  In the full article, Mickens refers to the extraordinary success and acceptance of Pope Francis in so many areas. There is however a downside. Mickens coments:

But there is a dense cloud hanging over all the good this prophetic priest and bishop has done for the Church. It is a pall that is casting an ever darkening shadow on his otherwise energizing pontificate.

The black spot is – how can one put it? – the pope’s seemingly ambivalent attitude and approach towards dealing with clergy sexual abuse of youngsters.

Just to be clear. Francis ticks the boxes favorably in over 80% of the categories where a pope can make a difference. But there are some areas – and the sex abuse issue is probably the most painful – where he doesn’t seem to get it.

And that is a real tragedy.

Thankfully, Vatican apologists are no longer making the ridiculous claim that the sexual abuse crisis (let’s call it what it is, a worldwide pandemic) is a priority for the pope.

Even the apologists need to look themselves in the mirror and admit that it is not.

If it were, the pope would have at least made time to meet with the 17-member Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors that gathered last weekend in the Vatican. This is a body Francis instituted in 2014, but only after he was shamed into doing so by Cardinal Sean O’Malley, a member of his privy council (C9) and the US Church’s sex abuse trouble-shooter.

But the Jesuit Pope seemingly had more important things on his agenda, like addressing devotees of the mysterious and still-controversial St Padre Pio, one of two Capuchin saints whose fully clothed corpses were brought to Rome last week and paraded through St Peter’s Square in glass boxes.

Francis was also unavailable to see “Spotlight”, the recent film on the Boston Globe’s investigative reporting that helped bring clergy sexual abuse to light.

The filmmakers offered a private screening for members of the Vatican’s child protection commission (the flick is not out yet in Italy) but only five of the seventeen bothered to show up.

Five!

One of them was Peter Saunders, a Brit who was sexually abused by a priest when he was a boy. The other members then voted Mr Saunders off the commission because, in their view, he’d rather be an advocate for the victims than an advisor to the pope.

Obviously, Francis is not the only one who doesn’t get it.