I’ve been a priest for thirty years and for perhaps the past two decades, I have known that when I walk into an unfamiliar setting or join a new group of people and tell them what I am, a goodly number are thinking to themselves: “What sort of a weird, psychologically deficient, sexually repressed and potential criminal do we have here?”

Part of me enjoys the dare that such subconscious assessments offer. I am none of those. I’ve made some choices in life and had to live with their blessings and burdens.

Right now such assessments are predictable enough if people making them haven’t met many priests. But I also know that I’m guilty as charged in many ways.

It’s very difficult being a priest in the Roman Catholic Church in Australia. There is such a long record of incompetent mismanagement of sexual abuse claims against priests; so much practical denial of the pain people go through and such distance from anything the founder of Christianity actually sought to foster.

I share a culture with people like Cardinal George Pell who has told two enquiries that the Church’s processes lacked both the vocabulary and systems for dealing with such psychopathological behavior. Where I part company with Cardinal Pell in his excusing his inaction in Melbourne before he became archbishop.

Fact is, we both knew what was being said around the clergy about a number of individuals.

Just days ago I found reference in the media to the death of a priest I’d known for a decade and a half. I went looking for details and then found – thanks to the Walkley Award winner and indefatigable Joanne McCarthy of the Newcastle Herald – that my deceased acquaintance was in fact the person whose abuse of children triggered the police investigation in the Hunter region which in turn gave rise to the ongoing Royal Commission into child abuse.

Joanne, who’s a champion (and I’ve never met her), detailed what this now dead priest did to victims over 40 years ago. How he wrecked their lives and then admitted it to and apologised in writing to his victims.

Journalist Joanne McCarthy

I’d known the priest – Peter Brock – on and off since the 1990s. He always seemed hale and hearty in that blokey Australian way. I understood he was something of a local hero in Newcastle and the Hunter Valley.

In 2009, allegations of crimes Brock had allegedly committed in the 1960s and ‘70s were withdrawn. I thought that was the end of the matter – that the charges had been heard and the evidence didn’t stack up to a conviction. Then last year, his religious superior told me it wasn’t the whole story. Brock, by now – after being awarded an OAM and being welcomed back to the ministry “with considerable joy” – was offering pastoral care to the elderly in a retirement village. He would never operate as a priest again, I was told. He would never be appointed to a parish. The Superior didn’t go into detail.

I had to rely on Joanne McCarthy for those details in her powerful story. I know it beggars belief, however, so many of us within the rank and file of the clergy were oblivious.

We were blindsided by the revelations.We’re still reeling.

The first thing I wanted to do on reading the victim’s story was reach for a bucket and throw up. Then I recalled how when Peter Brock was charged by police, he denied the charges.

I was a only small cog in the wheel of the Church, but had founded and was responsible for what was our main online news service and duly reported the allegations before they got to court. I was contacted by senior clerics, told Brock would be pleading “not guilty”, that they didn’t believe the accusations anyway. He deserved the benefit of the doubt.

I was also informed of a new rule.

Such allegations were not to be reported any more. The man was entitled to his good name until convicted – only then was it to be reported. We were not to record allegations, only convictions.

I obeyed.

Now I realise that I was inadvertently complicit in the legendary process of concealment of clerical sex abuse in the Catholic Church. Again I looked for the bucket as I considered my actions to be inadvertent cooperation with a denial of natural justice – to the victims. Small cogs in a big wheel Pell and I may have been. Devoid of a vocabulary and process for addressing them, we may have also been. But, unlike some brave clerical souls who did take on the system – those who named names and called on the archbishop to do something – we didn’t.

I’m guilty as charged in ways I’ve just admitted to. And that is my dilemma and challenge. What to do now and where to go?

When I joined the Jesuits over four decades ago, it was quite different. I was attracted to the life because I had the opportunity to be a witness to and care for those who had made a difference to others’ lives. It happened in my family where “irretrievable breakdown” in my parents’ marriage had only one solution – divorce.

In the 1960s, that was absolutely taboo for Catholics of the committed kind my parents were. It only happened with the advice and encouragement of good priests who knew the real world and cared for people. And, in my experience, they weren’t uncommon. My family and most of those I knew at school and elsewhere were knockabout, ambitious and very down to earth people for whom their faith was important.

The late Catholic priest, Peter Brock

I never understood what people meant when they referred to the “Catholic guilts” because my faith never had anything to do with guilt. It was about mystery, service and self-sacrifice. It wasn’t about authority and rulebooks.

My experience over the last 30 years has been a deeply privileged one of being given the most precious thing anyone has to offer – trust. I am invited to be present at the most vulnerable and important turning points in life – from birth to death and all the hooks ups and break ups in between. I have the opportunity to assist people in stringing together their own life’s narrative with word and symbol.

It’s a mind-bending and mysterious experience for me. And I’m told from time to time that my entry into their lives has made a positive difference. But today, people looking at people like me often see something very different. They don’t see the grace I’ve received and shared.

The sense and commonsense in my experience of Catholicism has been lost and I can’t see it returning in Australia for at least a couple of generations. I believe that’s a good thing.

Away with all the humbug and hypocrisy that passed for religion; the cover-ups and deceits; the tolerance of incompetent leaders doing a very bad job; the people suffering at the hands of frauds and of clergy and others in the Church’s administration being protected by the institution’s lack of transparency and accountability.

But will the taste for mystery, the commitment to service and the practice of self-sacrifice return when the stables have been cleaned?

I look back at my life and see myriad people I’ve shared the journey with, some of whom have helped me to grow and some of whom I’ve helped to grow. I also have to believe the taste for mystery, the dedication to service and self-sacrifice will return.

Otherwise the commitment I’ve made for 43 years will have been for nothing.

And I’m not prepared to say that. Not at all.

The author, Michael Kelly, wrote this for Wendy Harmer’s ‘The Hoopla’ which is at www.thehoopla.com.au. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

On 29 July 2011, Cardinal George Pell gave a speech in which he accused many Catholics of being “Cafeteria Catholics”, by picking and choosing from the doctrinal menu.

Having moved to Rome, he is now attending the Synod of Catholic Chefs de Cuisine to decide what is wrong with the menu at the Catholic Cafeteria, particularly when it comes to the Family Meal. There is an argument for taking some of the old recipes off the menu, like Haggis Humanae Vitae, because no one buys it anymore, and for relaxing the dress rules to allow divorced and same sex couples to dine there.

There are a number of items on the menu at the Catholic Cafeteria that are definitely worth preserving. The first is its Social Justice Stew: giving those who did not do so well in life’s lottery a bit of a leg up. One could argue endlessly as to where this came from. The Catholic Cafeteria waiters always say that their Supreme Chef de Cuisine, Leo XIII created it with his recipe, Rerum Novarum, but the Secular Cafeteria up the road says that the great Chefs de Cuisine of the Enlightenment, Diderot, Voltaire and Thomas Paine were responsible for the original recipe, and Leo pinched it. They point to the fact that Leo’s predecessor as Supreme Chef de Cuisine, Pio Nono in his famous Syllabus of Errors (a compendium of what not to cook) condemned the separation of Church cheese from State sauce, and said that the canons of the Catholic Cafeteria should be imposed at the Secular Cafeteria, because they had been handed down by the Almighty Chef de Cuisine in Heaven, and should apply everywhere.

The second things worth preserving are the musical recipes at the Catholic Cafeteria which has always employed the finest Chefs de Musique, like Palestrina, Allegri, Tallis, Vivaldi and Bach. Even today Bach is recognized by the Secular Cafeteria as without peer. The Catholic Cafeteria cheats a bit when they claim Bach as one of their chefs, because he really cooked for the Lutheran Cafeteria down the road, and the Catholic Cafeteria stole his recipes. Nevertheless the Mass in B Minor has to be one of the greatest recipes of all time. And it is, after all, a Mass, so it was something the Catholic Cafeteria could adopt without embarrassment. It is true that the Secular Cafeteria started to lift its game with Beethoven, especially with his Ninth Symphony and its Ode to Joy. But even Beethoven could not resist the temptation to throw a Missa Solemnis through the door of the Catholic Cafeteria.

The third good thing on the menu of the Catholic Cafeteria is that it gives free meals to the needy, and helps out not only its own sick customers, but even those who spend all their time in the Secular or other cafeterias. Sometimes, however, it has some funny rules about helping them out – like refusing to supply condoms to HIV positive customers. I can’t understand this rule because the recipe, Haggis Humanae Vitae, the creation of the Supreme Chef de Cuisine, Paul VI, specifically said that the contraceptive pill could be used for legitimate medical purposes, something that comes from Thomas Aquinas’s famous scrambled egg recipe, Principle of the Double Effect. However, granted that the Catholic Cafeteria is a bit eccentric with the application of its own recipes, it still does do a lot of good, and tries to make all customers feel comfortable.

In recent years, the Catholic Cafeteria has had a lot of competition from the Secular Cafeteria in the good works section of the menu. The Secular Cafeteria has introduced tapas dishes such as Amnesty International, Medecin sans Frontiers and Oxfam, all of which are proving to be very popular, particularly amongst the young.

The Catholic Cafeteria claims that its founder from Nazareth was the best chef ever, the Escoffier of Escoffiers, and that he will come back one day. His Sermon on the Mount Soufflé has to be one of the best. But the problem is that all his chefs at the Catholic Cafeteria, from the Supreme Chefs de Cuisine down, have never been able to cook his recipes properly. They always make excuses for watering down his pure ingredients, and customers have suffered as a result.

The Catholic Cafeteria claims that the Nazarene’s recipes, Do unto Others and Love One Another, are the best ever. The Secular Cafeteria has these two very high up on its menu, but it challenges the Catholic Cafeteria’s claim to the copyright on the grounds that they had been used for centuries by older cafeterias, and therefore are in the public domain. On the other hand, the Secular Cafeteria accuses the Catholic Cafeteria of neglecting the famous recipe found in the ancient Delphi Café: Know Thyself, sometimes known as Truth and Honesty Tart. This old recipe has gone right off the Catholic Cafeteria’s menu when they replaced it with the Pontifical Secret Pie that caused of lot of children to suffer severe indigestion. Despite the United Nations Cafeteria’s request to remove the Pontifical Secret Pie from the menu, and to restore the Truth and Honesty Tart, Francis, the current Supreme Chef de Cuisine, has declined the invitation.

Some Scandinavian Cafeterias have discarded many of the Catholic Cafeteria recipes, but have a very successful adaptation of the Social Justice Stew. This version has been far more successful than the one used in the thousands of Catholic Cafeterias in places like Latin America. All customers are treated equally, or at least have the possibility of earning their place at a more prominent table by judicious choices on the menu. On the other hand, in Latin America, dominated by the Catholic Cafeterias, there are always beggars on the floor tugging at the gowns of the filthy rich and famous for a few crumbs from the table. No cafeteria can survive that sort of difference in clientele for too long.

Any successful cafeteria needs to be underscored by some intellectual vision that is grounded in “truth”, a word that should be at the very top of every menu. The trouble is that one famous Roman customer in an old Jewish Cafeteria saw this at the top of the menu and asked: What is truth? And every customer in every cafeteria in the world has been arguing over it ever since. Sometimes, they even go to war over it.

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

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Fr Edmund Campion has just published a new book. A book review and information about the book can be found on the following link.  John Menadue.

 

http://tintean.org.au/2014/10/06/australian-catholics-lives-by-edmund-campion

                                                                                      

In January 2014 the United Nations Committee for the Rights of the Child criticized the Holy See for the secrecy imposed by canon law over allegations of sexual crimes against children by clergy. It demanded mandatory reporting to the civil authorities in all cases, and not just where there were civil laws requiring reporting. On 22 May 2014, the Committee against Torture repeated that demand.

The Holy See’s response of 26 September 2014 criticized the Committee for overlooking the distinctions between the Holy See, the Vatican City State and the universal Catholic Church, stating that in signing the Convention on the Rights of the Child, it only had responsibility for the children resident in the 44 hectares of the Vatican City.

On 27 May 2013, Cardinal Pell said that he had been assured by a “senior Vatican official” that all its documents would be made available to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. On 12 June 2014, Justice McLellan, the Commission’s Chair said that the Vatican refused to produce all its documents relating to canonical proceedings against Australian priests, because, as a sovereign State, internal deliberations relating to its “judicial and administrative proceedings” were confidential.

These Australian priests were not being disciplined because they were citizens of the Vatican City State, or because they had been abusing the children of the Swiss Guards. They were being tried because canon law applies to adherents to the Catholic faith everywhere.

On the issue of mandatory reporting, the Holy See’s response asserted that it had no capacity or obligation to impose principles under the Convention “upon the local Catholic churches and institutions present on the territory of other States and whose activities abide with national laws.” Attempting to implement them worldwide “could constitute a violation of the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of States.” When it suits, the Holy See relies on the immunity of the Vatican City State to avoid producing documents relating to canonical proceedings against priests for crimes that have nothing to do with the Vatican City as an independent State. To avoid mandatory reporting, it asserts that bishops are like medieval princelings, and the Vatican is powerless to instruct them to report – something that is permitted and encouraged everywhere even if it is not obligatory.

The Church’s new found sensitivity to State sovereignty is in contrast to its using canon law since 1922 to cover up clergy sexual abuse of children everywhere in the world through the imposition of the pontifical secret over all such allegations.

On 31 January 1997, the Congregation for the Clergy told the Irish bishops that it had “serious reservations of both a moral and a canonical nature” about their proposals for mandatory reporting to the police. At that time, Irish law made it a criminal offence to conceal sexual assaults on children. On 14 July 2011, after this letter became public, the Irish Foreign Minister called in the Papal Nuncio, and handed him a note stating that it was unacceptable that the Vatican had interfered in Irish affairs and to “have priests believe they could in conscience evade their responsibilities under Irish law.”

On 8 September 2001, Cardinal Castrillon, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy congratulated Bishop Pican for not reporting a serial paedophile priest to the police contrary to French law. Pican was given a three month suspended sentence. In his letter, Castrillon stated that bishops should be prepared to go to prison rather than report priests to the police. He also said he would be sending a copy of his letter to all the bishops of the world telling them how to behave: don’t report clergy sex crimes to the police, and go to jail if need be.

On 16 May 2002, Cardinal Rodriguez Maradiaga, appointed in 2013 by Pope Francis to reform the Roman Curia, stated that he would prefer to go to jail than to “harm” one of his priests by reporting him to the police for sexually abusing children. In other words, he would disobey any civil law on reporting, as canon law demanded.

In 2002, the American bishops asked the Vatican to change canon law because half the American States had mandatory reporting laws. Bishops would be going to jail. Cardinal Re told them that their proposals could not be reconciled with canon law. After a meeting at the Vatican, a compromise was reached: reporting was allowed only where the civil law required it. The instruction to obey civil laws on reporting was extended to the whole Church in 2010, but the pontifical secret still prevents reporting where there are no such civil laws. The Holy See is more concerned about bishops going to jail than the welfare of children.

Canon 22 of the Code of Canon Law requires Catholics to obey canon law where it conflicts with civil law. Bishops are required to swear an oath to obey canon law. They swear no oaths to obey civil law. The Italian Catholic Bishops Conference in 2012 and 2014 announced that its members will not be reporting any allegations of sexual abuse by clergy, because there is no such requirement under Italian law. Their attitude is consistent with canon law as it currently stands.

The Holy See’s newly found sensitivity to State sovereignty contrasts with the pontifical secret that is still imposed for clergy sexual abuse in countries where there is no requirement to report under the civil law. Mandatory reporting under canon law would only infringe State sovereignty if there were countries which forbade such reporting. None exist. The only inference that can be drawn from the Holy See’s response to the United Nations is that it fully intends to continue the cover up of child sexual abuse in those countries that have no or inadequate reporting laws.

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

You might be interested in this repost. John Menadue.

 

As social beings, we usually like to be part of the group, an insider. We are cautious about being outsiders, on the periphery. Yet being outsiders has some real advantages.

Growing up in country towns in South Australia, I felt what it was like to be an outsider. As the son of a Methodist manse, I often felt an outsider in the socially conservative country towns of South Australia where we lived. I was able to join the group however through sport. As a university scholarship holder I also felt different to those in the mainstream. I felt I had to work harder so that I wouldn’t lose my scholarship.

At the age of 41, working for Malcolm Fraser, I felt very much an outsider. But by that time I found I didn’t really care. I vividly recall a lengthy evening discussion at the Lodge in the early days of the new Liberal Government with Malcolm Fraser and senior members of his private office. The evening was informal and quite friendly, but I had a strong sense that I didn’t belong. But I didn’t feel perturbed as perhaps I would have earlier in my life. Belonging, being an insider, was no longer so important. It was transforming, that if push came to shove I knew that I could survive as an outsider, not comfortably but I could manage.

As a board member of Qantas and Telstra, I felt the strong pressure to be one of the ‘club’ with my eye fixed on re-appointment. That caused problems and disagreements with the boards of both organisations. But I felt content to be an outsider and as far as possible be my own self.

I remember many years later at a social gathering I was asked by James Strong ‘how many boards are you on’. It was not a subject which I had ever asked myself but it suggested to me the importance placed on being an insider, being in the directors’ ‘club’.

I have never felt an insider within the Catholic Church of which I have been a member for over 30 years. In all that time only one Catholic has ever asked me what it was like growing up in the Methodist Church. I am not one of the Irish tribe. But I am content. I often rationalise to myself that being an outsider gives one a perspective that insiders do not have. Popes and the Catholic hierarchy have lived almost their entire lives within institutions of the Catholic Church. This cultural grip is a particular problem for Catholic clergy. Invariably they are brought up in a Catholic home, attend a Catholic school, join a Catholic seminary and then are ordained as celibate priests to serve for the next 50 years. It is hard to break free of the cultural grip of that upbringing. Some do but many don’t.

The Polish have a proverb that the visitor sees in ten minutes what the host does not see in ten years. The Chinese have a proverb that the mountain is seen best from the plain.

There are advantages in being an outsider, even if uncomfortable from time to time.

John Menadue

As I was saying last time, before I was interrupted, Pope Francis is facing resistance to the fresh air and change of ethos he’s trying to bring about inside the Church. And those with eyes to see can detect this opposition especially among the current crop of seminarians and younger priests, as well as a number of bishops.

“The resistance is coming from those that don’t want to change,” says Professor Andrea Riccardi, founder of the Sant’Egidio Community here in Rome. In an interview some months ago, he pointed out that many regular folks all over the world were still enjoying a “honeymoon” with Papa Francesco. And he predicted that it would not wane quickly because it’s “much more substantial” than a mere “media phenomenon”.

Precisely because there is substance to changes the 77-year-old Jesuit Pope is trying to inculcate in the Church, especially his effort to wipe out clericalism, resistance to him has grown. However, it is not fashionable or favourable (especially to one’s career) for clerics to go around bashing the Bishop of Rome. So they have to find another target.

This is exactly what happened during Benedict XVI’s pontificate when the former pope’s enemies chose his Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone SDB, as their surrogate punching bag.

Those hostile to Pope Francis and how he’s governing the Vatican and the Universal Church have affixed the bull’s eye on the backs of any number of people close to him. For example, in the first weeks of his papal ministry they tried to dig up dirt on some of Papa Bergoglio’s closest aides, only to see their poisonous arrows deflected by a shrewd and self-composed man who will not cave in to blackmail.

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Cardinal Walter Kasper is the latest and most prominent among those taking a hit for Pope Francis.

His sin, in the eyes of certain defenders of Church orthodoxy, was that he dared to offer possible ways of allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Holy Communion. He did this last February in a major address to all the cardinals. The Pope asked him to.

But negative reaction to Kasper’s proposals (later published as a book) was swift and it continues. Up to 10 cardinals with conservative leanings have publically denounced his views; five of them piled together criticisms in their own book. More bishops will probably start openly espousing one of the two sides over the next two years as the Synod of Bishops deals with issues regarding the family.

Bishop Johan Bonny of Antwerp, a former official at the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, has so far offered the most significant support of the Kasper position. In a 22-page paper he argued for carefully drafting a new approach to marriage and family life that would be marked by mercy, respect for individual conscience and even doctrinal developments. Like the cardinal, he has infuriated the self-styled guardians of Truth who loudly proclaim that Pope Francis does not support the Kasper-Bonny proposals, but who, privately, are not quite sure.

Among them is group of 48 intellectuals, mostly Catholics known to be aligned with conservative causes, who recently wrote an open letter to the Pope and the Synod. Included was an appeal to step up opposition to divorce and to reject any proposal that might threaten the indissolubility of marriage.

Can we assume that all the signatories are paradigms of the marriage model they want the Church to insist upon for others and not like the unmerciful servant in the Gospel (Mt 18, 21-35)? ?

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It is extremely unusual to have a lengthy vacancy at the top rung of a major Vatican office, especially when it’s a Roman Congregation. Normally when the pope accepts the resignation of a prefect or assigns him to another post, he appoints a successor within a matter of days. Even more often he does it immediately. So what is going on with the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments (CDWDS)?

Spanish Cardinal Antonio Cañizares Llovera, soon to be 69, headed the office since late 2008. But on August 28 Pope Francis named him Archbishop of Valencia. That was almost five weeks ago. And still there is no word on who will take over at Divine Worship.

During nearly six years in that office Cardinal Cañizares helped to forward Benedict XVI’s liturgical preferences and style. Those sympathetic to his efforts claimed his appointment to Valencia was part of Francis’ purge of the former pope’s curia. But that’s not quite correct. The cardinal had actually asked Benedict to send him back to Spain. He had hoped to be named Archbishop of Madrid, head of the Church in the nation’s capital. Instead, Papa Francesco sent him to Valencia, Cañizares’ fourth diocese and the one for which he was ordained a priest in 1970.

What is puzzling is why it has taken so long for Pope Francis to fill the vacancy he left at Divine Worship. It seems a strange logic, but perhaps the Pope is waiting until Saturday after the cardinal is officially installed in his new diocese. Or it may be that there is a tug of war in the Curia over the appointment. In any case, the delay has people from varying liturgical leanings holding their breath.

This article is a taste of what Robert Mickens will be writing from ‘Global Pulse’.  He has been a regular commentator on the Vatican. 

I fronted up for Mass last Sunday – or so I thought. The web had described the cathedral as small case ‘c’ catholic rather than upper case ‘C’ Catholic. It was the Protestant/Lutheran cathedral in Copenhagen. I missed the Eucharist but it was a moving encounter with my ‘separated brothers and sisters’.

In 1536 when the absolutist Danish monarchy decided to follow Luther rather than Pope Paul III, they arrested the Roman Catholic hierarchy and almost swept the state clean of Roman Catholics. In a population of only five or six million in Denmark, there are now only about 40,000 Roman Catholics, mainly foreigners. The historic old Roman Catholics churches, such as the 12^th Century UNESCO listed cathedral in Roskilde, became Lutheran or Protestant churches.

But I found the Sunday morning service instructive. The organ music and choir were superb. The congregation sat for hymns and stood for prayers. In the pew behind us sat Queen Margrethe II of Denmark. She was dressed informally in jumper and skirt, with no obvious security.

The sermon or homily was preached from a side pulpit – those at the front had double seats, so we could switch our view to the back. With the sermon in Danish, I obviously couldn’t understand much of it but it gave me time to think how offensive it has been that the Christian churches have been divided for so long.

The first major break was in 1053 as the Roman Church, on quite trivial issues, waved farewell to the Eastern Church based in Constantinople. This split was confirmed in blood in 1204 when the Fourth Crusaders under the Pope sacked Constantinople.

The early Christian communities had been established in what is now Greece and Turkey, but we have been divided ever since.

Then came the great divide in Northern Europe with the Luther Reformation in the 16^th Century. Luther was right on two basic issues. The first was the corruption and selling of indulgences in the Catholic Church particularly under Pope Sixtus IV and Alexander VI. The second was the doctrinal insistence by Luther that believers were sanctified by faith and not by good works, although there was common agreement that good deeds should follow faith. The Augsburg Declaration of 1999 acknowledged that Luther and the Lutheran churches had been correct on this doctrinal issue. The Declaration was signed by both the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran Churches of Germany. But everyone was polite enough not to emphasise that Luther had been right.

And so Christendom was split again in Western Europe in the 16^th Century, a disruption that triggered wars, persecution and the counter-reformation.

Every person and every institution is in need of reform, but we all cling to the power and security which familiar institutions bring. The Luther reforms were necessary, but it is regrettable that the reforms could not have been contained within the Catholic Church. What a difference it would have made if the necessary reform of the Catholic Church had occurred without the enormous and damaging Christian schism of separation.

The Catholic Church faces similar problems today – how to reform? But the barriers will be, as they have always been – leaders, hierarchies and institutions that are more concerned about maintaining their power. They have a lot to lose personally from reform. So they resist.

I am glad I went to the Lutheran Church in Copenhagen. But I missed the Eucharist and the sense that I get, particularly when I am travelling outside Australia, how universal the Catholic Church is.

The barque of Peter has taken a lot of water particularly as a result of the division of Christendom in the 11^th and 16^th Centuries. But the barque sails on as the keeper of the Faith.

As a Catholic, I still feel a very good Methodist! ‘Reform’ is in my genes.

The John Ellis Case Study (No 8) at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse concerned the experience of John Ellis with the Towards Healing protocol in dealing with his complaint about being sexually abused by Fr Aidan Duggan. The case was unusual for its revelations about the relationship between Cardinal Pell as head of the Archdiocese of Sydney and his lawyers, Corrs, Chambers Westgarth, its senior partner Paul McCann and his assistant, John Dalzell. Such communications rarely come to light even in Royal Commissions because the Royal Commissions Act 1902 respects legal professional privilege where it exists. However, there is a long line of authority for the proposition that where clients make allegations of misconduct, professional negligence or breach of retainer against their lawyers, such privilege is waived. Cardinal Pell alleged that he was not properly informed about offers of settlement by his legal team in the Ellis case.

The ethical issue for the lawyers arose because in his Supreme Court proceedings to extend the limitation period, John Ellis was cross examined for days about whether the abuse really took place in circumstances where the Church’s independent investigator, Michael Eccleston, had found in a report described by Justice McLellan as “legally perfect” that the abuse had occurred. The partner from Corrs in charge of the case, Paul McCann, told the Commission that “counsel were instructed almost from the start of the matter”. He also agreed that the decision to challenge Ellis was a “tactical one”, decided by the “legal team.” He then said,

“The trial was being run on behalf of the defendants by two well-known and respected now senior counsel, and how that trial ran was very much in their domain.”

McCann admitted that his firm was giving the instructions, and that he was intimately involved in these decisions. When the junior solicitor, John Dalzell went into the witness box to give evidence, his ethics in allowing this cross examination was also challenged. Justice McLellan asked:

1. Then how could you sit there and let that happen, knowing what you knew?

There is a certain unreality about this for those with only a modicum of knowledge of how the Australian legal system works. Pell and the Trustees of the Archdiocese were represented by a senior counsel, and a well-respected junior. Then in the pecking order came the Corrs partner, Paul McCann and the most junior of all, John Dalzell. Any lawyer who has briefed senior and junior counsel knows that Paul McCann was correct about the practice: counsel call the shots on who is cross examined and to what extent. That does not relieve solicitors of their own ethical responsibility, and McCann quite properly accepted that.

There is one possible explanation as to why the two barristers were not called by the Commission to provide their own “please explain”: they were not told about the Eccleston report. But even that seems unlikely because if the file revealed this to be the case, there were much stronger reasons to criticise McCann and Dalzell for failing to provide critical information to counsel. One would have expected them to be grilled about it. They were not. Without some explanation from the Commission, we do not know why the barristers were not called when the issue of cross examination was principally within their domain.

The Commission seemed to have gone to the other extreme in Case No. 15 dealing with Swimming Australia by examining the conduct of counsel in that case. The main point of contention was the failure of the Director of Public Prosecutions in Queensland to proceed with charges of sexual assault against the State and National coach, Scott Volkers. In September 2002, the charges were dropped by the Director of Public Prosecutions who was satisfied that there was no reasonable prospect of a conviction because of credibility issues about the allegations. After criticism of this decision, the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions was asked to provide a second opinion. Margaret Cunneen SC, a Deputy Crown Prosecutor, was given the job of providing the advice.

Cunneen’s advice that there was no reasonable prospect of a conviction became the subject of scrutiny during the Royal Commission. She and Judge Clare, the former Queensland Director of Public Prosecutions were extensively questioned about the basis for their opinions. The former NSW Director of Public Prosecutions, Nick Cowdery agreed with Cunneen’s advice, but did not agree with some of the language she used.

Lawyers are like bookmakers: they are asked to predict how the horses will run in court. They are guided by the leather bound form guides that pave the walls of their offices. But when it comes to the credibility of witnesses, the form guide says very little, and lawyers have to operate on the basis of educated guesswork and practical experience. A witness can give a positive impression in the confines of a conference room but fall to pieces in the witness box – and vice versa. The Commission might very well come to a different conclusion to Cunneen, Clare and Cowdery, but it is very difficult to see any systemic problem which the Commission under its terms of reference is required to identify and make recommendations to correct. One cannot help but infer that the main reason for subjecting them to such an examination was to try and demonstrate that they had got it wrong over Volkers. Appeal courts regularly find that trial judges get it wrong. Differences of opinion about the credibility of evidence and even inferences that can be drawn from undisputed facts will keep happening so long as human beings run the legal system. If that is a systemic problem it is incurable, and it equally affects the Commission itself.

Kieran Tapsell is a retired lawyer and the author of Potiphar’s Wife: The Vatican Secret and Child Sexual Abuse.

Dear Cardinal Pell,

In the lead-up to next month’s Extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family you and a number of your confreres are re-asserting the church’s longstanding exclusion of divorced and remarried people from communion.

Your foreword to The Gospel of the Family appears to leave us with little doubt: outsiders are not welcome.

As you have said, “The sooner the wounded, the lukewarm, and the outsiders realise that substantial doctrinal and pastoral changes are impossible, the more the hostile disappointment (which must follow the reassertion of doctrine) will be anticipated and dissipated.”

Respectfully, I have a number of questions I’d like to consider with you; conscious, of course, that neither of us in our grappling can claim to really know the mind of Christ.

So, what was it that our Lord had in mind when he instituted the Eucharist with these self-emptying words, “This is my body, this is my blood?” Whose hunger was he responding to? Who was welcome? And what are the implications for our Sunday worship and beyond? 

Well, we do know this: The tax collectors and sinners were all crowding round to listen to him, and the Pharisees and scribes complained saying, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them …’ (Lk 15:2-3) 

And this: It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. Go and learn the meaning of the words: ‘Mercy is what pleases me, not sacrifice.’ And indeed I came to call not the upright, but sinners. (Mt 9:12-13)

And this: Let anyone who is thirsty come to me!

Let anyone who believes in me come to drink! (Jn 7:38)

And this: When he arrived at the Pharisee’s house and took his place at table, suddenly a woman came in, who had a bad name in the town … She covered his feet with kisses and anointed him … the Pharisee said to himself, ‘If this man were a prophet, he would know … what sort of person [was] touching him and what a bad name she has …’ (Lk 7:36-39)

And this: They were at supper … and he got up from table, removed his outer garments … and began to wash his disciples’ feet … (Jn 13:2, 4, 5) 

And this: Peter said …‘You know it is forbidden for Jews to mix with people of another race or visit them; but God has made it clear to me that I must not call anyone profane or unclean … God has no favourites … and who am I to stand in God’s way?’ (Acts 10:28, 34 & 11:17)

Could it be, given the exclusivity of our Communion, that when we proclaim these words we are potentially condemning ourselves as well?

Just think: Jesus, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of sinners (Lk 7:34), real and present in our Breaking of Bread. Wow. Extraordinary. Out of this world. We actually believe this … don’t we?

If we answer in the affirmative, there are profound consequences: are we not also compelled to look beyond the in-crowd and welcome outsiders; are we not also compelled to take risks: like the risk of being labelled and pilloried for sharing our table with those we are not supposed to; for doing something that is forbidden by law. I am not thinking here of people who do not care. I am concerned for those who are hungry for love and long to share even the crumbs from the table.

Can any of us truly look at our Lord and Master and say without a profound sense of foreboding: ‘Yes, I am a follower; but you must understand there are rules …’

His disciples were hungry and began to pick ears of corn and eat them. The Pharisees noticed it and said to him, ‘Look, your disciples are doing something that is forbidden on the Sabbath’. (Mt 12:1-2)

If the Eucharist is essentially an encounter with the real presence, rather than essentially an institutional-cum-cultic event, then surely the Master’s social interactions make it abundantly clear: hunger, not worthiness underpins Table Fellowship. To allow the law, cultic statutes, and theology to take precedence over mercy and love and encounter, is tantamount to perpetuating the hard line rigour of those Pharisees who complained bitterly and moralised pompously about so many things.

Their approach fostered a cold, superficial temple-based religion. But Jesus invited his followers to a change of heart, a heart oriented to the one called, Abba – Father : a relational, God-based faith.

Indeed, if Jesus himself was bound by the strictures of his religious tribe and the social mores of his day, he would never have encountered the woman at the well because ‘Jews, of course, do not associate with Samaritans’ (Jn 4:10). Thankfully, he was not. Thus, a women consigned to the margins, and thirsting for love, was afforded one-on-one time with the One who risked everything to offer her living water.

Yet, despite the extraordinary inclusiveness and openness of our foot washing Master; not to mention the accusations his behaviour attracted – blasphemy, law-breaking, ‘prince of devils’ – there are still those who insist that the meal instituted by him who emptied himself, taking the form of a slave (Phil 2:7) be an exclusive, High Church event with all the accoutrements, pomp and ceremony, do’s and don’ts, and rules about who’s in and who’s out, as if the Holy One needs protection and distancing from an encounter with the great unwashed.

If this non-relational Temple-centred worship takes hold, then we too leave ourselves open to the criticism:

Now here, I tell you, is something greater than the Temple. And if you had understood the meaning of the words: ‘Mercy is what pleases me, not sacrifice’, you would have not condemned the blameless. For the Son of Man is master of the Sabbath. (Mt 12:5-8)

And if, in the depth of our being, we believe Jesus is real and present at the breaking of bread, then how do we justify the exclusion of so many? Can we in good conscience continue to turn away those longing to drink from the well-of-life because Catholics, of course, do not break bread with …? 

There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither slave nor freeman, there can neither be male nor female – for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Gal 3:28-29)

I do not presume to know the mind of Pope Francis either, but his musings on spiritual worldliness seem especially apt:

[There] are those who ultimately trust only in their own powers and feel superior to others because they observe certain rules or remain intransigently faithful to a particular Catholic style from the past. A supposed soundness of doctrine or discipline leads to a narcissistic and authoritarian elitism, whereby instead of evangelising, one analyses and classifies others, and instead of opening the door of grace, one exhausts his or her energies in inspecting and verifying. (Evangelii Gaudium #94) 

In some people we see an ostentatious preoccupation for the liturgy, for doctrine and for the Church’s prestige, but without any concern that the Gospel have a real impact on God’s faithful people and the concrete needs of the present time. In this way, the life of the Church turns into a museum piece or something which is the property of a select few … The mark of Christ, incarnate, crucified and risen, is not present; closed and elite groups are formed, and no effort is made to go forth and seek out those who are distant or the immense multitudes who thirst for Christ. (Evangelii Gaudium #95)

It prompts the question: has a simple, inclusive and profound ‘family’ meal been overwhelmed by an impersonal and, often times, sterile institutional sacrifice; one that tends towards mass exclusion?

Peace and regards,

Fr Peter Day, Parish Priest, Corpus Christi

Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn, Australia

Pope Francis has changed the focus of the Catholic Church from doctrine and rules to care and compassion. If people are at odds with the rules they should be supported and encouraged rather than condemned.

Since many of the rules causing complications in today’s society are associated with marriage he has called a special Synod of Bishops to address “The Pastoral Challenges of the Family in the Context of Evangelization”. This meeting will take place in October 2014. The associated problems are many:

• Prohibition of remarriage after divorce;
• Prohibition of masturbation;
• Prohibition of contraception;
• Prohibition of sexual activity outside marriage;
• Prohibition of marriage outside the Church;
• Prohibition of IVF;
• Condemnation of homosexuality as intrinsically disordered (a Ratzinger phrase);
• Condemnation of de facto marriage;
• Veneration of virginity;
• Veneration of celibacy.

All of these entail a negative view of sexuality. Today’s western society – including many Catholics – rejects them all.

During the 20^th century all of these have been presented by popes and bishops as the Church’s teachings. The bases of the argument are:

• they are contrary to the Natural Law;
• they are contrary to papal teaching and, therefore, contrary to the Church’s magisterium.

This is problematical because long tradition of the Church has been that the Church can define doctrine but not moral rules – precisely because they are inextricably intertwined with prevailing cultural values and, so, are constantly changing. Furthermore, while the Natural Law argument may hold in a world of unchangeable ideas it does not work in a world presumed to be evolving. Finally, the concept of “magisterium” – the accepted teaching of the Masters of Theology (magistri) – has shifted under recent popes from the Masters to the opinion of the pope. Historically this is a bridge too far.

The rejection of these opinions by so many Catholics means they are not “received” – a necessary component of true Catholic teaching. The rules need to be re-visited or forgotten.

Some of the above irregularities are of the Church’s own making.

• In 1907 Pius X decreed that all Catholics had to marry in the presence of an authorised priest and two witnesses. Otherwise the marriage was invalid.
• In 1930 Pius XI declared contraception to be mortally sinful.
• In 1968 Paul VI rejected the advice of his own commission and reiterated Pius XI’s prohibition of contraception. This was immediately rejected by a large number of Catholics and has never been universally accepted since.

Western culture largely came to terms with the fact of divorce and re-marriage during the 20^th century. So did Western Catholics. This led to heartburn in the Catholic Church because according to Church law re-married divorcees were living in sin. This meant they could not receive Holy Communion at Mass and, so, were effectively excommunicated. Those wanting a second marriage to be celebrated in the Church were rejected.

Some fell back on the Church’s claim to be able to annul marriages, but this was a messy, lengthy and painful process with doubtful outcomes. Some priests advised parishioners to get married civilly and come to Communion anyway. Other priests ignored the rules and married the couple in the Church.

Pope Francis has stressed the need for understanding pastoral care in these cases. This has led to a revival of the debate about the possibility of accepting second marriages. He has brought Cardinal Kasper in to foster the debate. This is one point worth watching during the coming Synod.

Pope Francis’s “who am I to judge” comment on homosexuals has firstly questioned how “disordered” homosexual orientation is. This in turn raises the issues of homosexual sexual activity and marriage. The debate goes on with new initiatives being raised – and with a vocal, hard-core opposition.

The pope knows he has raised all these issues. He continues to say he does not intend to change the Church’s teaching. What he means by that is unknown. Perhaps he expects that if you change the practice the teachings or formulation will follow.

When John XXIII opened the Vatican Council a strong, intelligent and historically aware group of bishops moved in at the start and stole the initiative from the Roman Curia who had biased the rules and documentary preparations for the council in favour of the status quo. It is hard to see that happening with this synod. The preparatory documents do not make for fully open discussion. Even more importantly Bishops who freely speak their mind are hard to find. For thirty five years John-Paul II and Benedict XVI have deliberately appointed Rome-compliant bishops. In any case none of the synod participants have had any personal experience of marriage or family.

Keep an eye on proceedings – but do not expect too much.

Eric Hodgens is a retired Catholic Priest in Melbourne who ‘writes a bit’.

                                                                                                                                    

In his video appearance before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on 21 August 2014, the former Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, insisted that the Catholic Church should be treated like every other organisation in society. It should not be held responsible for the crimes of its priests in the same way as the “ownership or leadership” of a trucking company is not responsible if one of its drivers picks up a hitchhiker and molests her.

Pell conceded that “if in fact the authority figure has been remiss through bad preparation, bad procedures or been warned and done nothing or insufficient, then certainly the church official would be responsible.”

Pell’s analogy revealed the fatal flaw in his own argument the moment he used the word “company”.  If a trucking company had been remiss as he described, and people were injured as a result, the trucking company would be liable. Those injured would have access to the company’s assets to meet any judgment, even if its directors or officials were dead or had no assets.

Pell spent over $750,000 on lawyers in the Ellis case to prove that the Catholic Church was not like his trucking company, but is an unincorporated association that could not be sued.  All of its billions are tucked away in a corporate trust that does nothing else than hold property. The only person who could be sued in that case was Cardinal Freeman who had been warned about Ellis’s abuser, and yet let him continue as a priest.  Cardinal Freeman was incapable of being sued because he was resting in peace in the crypt of St. Mary’s Cathedral.

Earlier, Justice McLellan suggested to the Church’s solicitor, Richard Leder, that the structure of the Catholic Church put it in a “privileged position”. Leder agreed that the Church’s position was different to that of a company, and that it was “anachronistic.”  On the other hand, the cover up of child sex abuse by the Church is not at all anachronistic, but very modern.

For 1500 years, the Church accepted that priests who sexually assault children should be punished by more than restrictions on ministry; they should be dismissed from the priesthood and then punished in accordance with the civil law. That was written into canon law by Church decrees, particularly from the 12^th to the 16^th centuries.

In 1917, when the Church codified its canon law, it threw out those decrees. Five years later Pope Pius XI, in effort to keep a lid on scandal, issued a decree imposing “the secret of the Holy Office” on all information that the Church obtained in its internal investigations of such crimes. Bishops were also required to try to “cure” the priest before dismissing him. The end result was that since 1922 until very recently, clergy child sex abusers were not reported to the police, and, as Cardinal Pell conceded, it was “almost impossible” to dismiss a priest under canon law. Canon law even gives the priest a Catch 22 defence: a priest cannot be dismissed for paedophilia, because he is a paedophile.  The end result was that all over the world, these priests were shifted around where they continued to abuse children.

The Murphy Commission in Ireland found that the “structure and rules of the Catholic Church facilitated” the cover up of sexual abuse by clergy in the Archdiocese of Dublin, and the evidence before the Royal Commission so far is that the situation was no different here. Yet Pell insists that his Church should be able continue with its privileged position in society, unlike the trucking company whose assets would be available to meet any judgment because of its “bad procedures” and “warnings”.

Cardinal Pell told the Commission that the Church accepted a “moral responsibility” for the abuse because it had been committed by “officials of the Church”, but that did not mean that it had to abandon its “common law rights”.  The average payout under Pell’s Melbourne Response was $33,187.  Bishop Bill Morris of Toowoomba refused to rely on the Church’s common law rights. The average payout was $382,433.

The Good Samaritan came to the aid of a man left in a ditch by robbers after a priest and a Levite had passed him by.  The priest and the Levite were acting within their common law rights to leave him there. In this modern re-run of the parable, the man was left in the ditch not by robbers, but after being sexually assaulted as a child by colleagues of priests, bishops and popes most of whom acted in accordance with their common law rights, and passed him by, or threw him a few shekels.

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

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/george-pells-logic-on-child-sex-abuse-is-flawed-20140824-107rgq.html#ixzz3BLdfaNsd

 

At the hearings of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Melbourne last week, Cardinal George Pell is reported as saying that if the driver of a (trucking company) sexually assaulted a passenger they picked up along the way ‘I don’t think that it is appropriate for the .. leadership of that company be held responsible’.

As a citizen I was angered as most people were by these comments. As a Catholic I was ashamed.

If any trucking company, or indeed any organisation, had a record of sexual abuse like the Catholic Church I would expect that the leadership would either resign or be sacked. Responsibility cannot be avoided as Cardinal Pell suggests

The Catholic Church faces a systemic problem that Cardinal Pell seems unable to come to grips with. In a submission with colleagues to the Royal Commission, we focused on that systemic problem, including the way bishops are chosen, church structures and an unaccountable male clerical culture. The problems go far beyond the individual truck driver or priest. This submission can be found by clicking on the website at the top left hand of this page, then clicking on religion, and then clicking on the submission of November 2013.

It is hard going in the Catholic Church these days. For months the ugliness of the Church has been on display. But there is also great beauty, the saints, the art and particularly, the selfless service of the nuns day in and day out all around the world. The Catholic Church has kept the Christian faith alive despite its many blemishes. In my mind it is still the greatest influence for good in the world.

Whilst the Catholic Church celebrates the Eucharist, I will be there.

 

I was taken with an article by Nicholas Kristof. It was first published in the New York Times and yesterday in the SMH. The link to the article is below.

In this article there is a quote from an American nun “Let me get this straight. Some priests committed sex abuse. Bishops covered it up. And so they are investigating nuns!’.

If only the nuns were running the show, the Catholic Church would be in much better shape.

 

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/superheroes-none-compare-to-our-heroic-nuns-the-first-frontline-feminists-20140819-105rfs.html

Next Monday, 18 August, 2014, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse will commence Case Study No. 16 on the Melbourne Response that operated within the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne.

In 1994, Bishop Geoffrey Robinson had been appointed by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference to draw up a protocol for dealing with sex abuse of children by priests. The outcome was Towards Healing that was approved in November 1996 by all the Australian bishops except Archbishop Pell. Just one month before, in October 1996, Archbishop Pell set up his Melbourne Response.

In an extended interview on the Four Corners website, Francis Sullivan, the CEO of the Truth, Justice and Healing Council that represents the Church at the Royal Commission, was asked why Archbishop Pell did not sign Towards Healing. Sullivan said that Pell’s explanation was “that when he became Archbishop of Melbourne, he felt an urgency to move very quickly in his first hundred days, and he also had a fairly strong direction, he said, from the then Premier, that if the Church did not get its act together, then others would, so it seems to me that that sense of urgency compelled him to move quickly, even though there was a national process evolving, but not yet settled.”

George Pell was consecrated Archbishop of Melbourne on 16 July 1996. His very presidential “first hundred days” expired at the end of October, and Towards Healing was approved by the other Australian bishops the next month. The Royal Commission will no doubt have documents showing how much Towards Healing had “evolved” between October and November 1996, and the extent to which the Premier of Victoria, Geoff Kennett, was not prepared to give Pell another thirty days.

A more plausible explanation for Pell going it alone can be found in comparing the two protocols. Towards Healing had a requirement that the Church would comply with all laws regarding reporting sex abuse of children to the police. Pell’s Melbourne Response had no such requirement, but said that the victim would be encouraged to report.

On 31 January 1997, the Irish bishops received a letter from the Vatican stating that it had “serious canonical and moral reservations” about the Irish proposals for mandatory reporting to the police. The Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, Cardinal Castrillon told the Irish bishops two more times, later in 1997 and in 1998, that bishops should be “fathers to your priests, not policemen”, and that it was up to the victim to report – even if they were still children. Similar statements were made in 2002 by Archbishop Bertone of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Re of the Congregation for Bishops, Archbishop Herranz, the Vatican’s senior canon lawyer and President of the Pontifical Council for Interpretation of Legislative Texts, Professor Ghirlanda, Dean of Canon Law at the Gregorian University, and Cardinals Maradiaga, Billé, Schotte  and Lehmann. Cardinals Castrillon and Maradiaga both stated publicly that they would prefer to go to jail than to report a paedophile priest to the police.

George Pell was a member of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from 1990 to 2000, and he met with that Congregation in Rome every twelve to eighteen months. Pell told the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry that the people in Rome from 1996 onwards were aware of the Melbourne Response and were “pleased with it.” Of course they were: the Melbourne Response had no provision for bishops to report these crimes to the police, and was in accord with the views of the Vatican. Towards Healing conflicted with canon law, and was not in accordance with those views, and in particular with those of Cardinals Castrillon and Maradiaga who advised bishops to break any reporting laws. Fortunately for the Victorian bishops, the mandatory reporting laws there did not apply to clergy.

It is not surprising that none of the 304 complaints of sexual abuse dealt with by the Melbourne Response were ever reported directly by the Church to the police. We are likely to hear evidence of how many victims actually went to the police after discussing the matter with the Church’s Independent Commissioner.  The Church had an extraordinary conflict of interest in advising anyone about going to the police.

The second difference between the two protocols was that Pell imposed a cap of $50,000 on compensation, whereas Towards Healing had no such cap. In his 2002 interview with Richard Carleton, Pell said that if the victims were not happy with the limited compensation and the oath of secrecy required under the Melbourne Response, they could always “go to the courts.” Then, in the Ellis case, Pell spent $750,000 in legal costs to demonstrate what would happen to them if they did. The average payment under the Melbourne Response was $32,500. In Toowoomba, where Bishop Bill Morris refused to apply the Ellis defence, the average payment was $382,433. Pell told the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry: “I have always been on the side of victims.”

Pell will give evidence by video link from Rome.  David Curtain QC, the Chair of the Melbourne Response Compensation Panel, is also on the witness list. The Four Corners program played a secret tape of a conversation he had with a victim in which he said he failed to see the point about her getting independent legal advice for a release that she was being asked to sign. Curtain denied to Four Corners that he had ever given such advice.

The live broadcast from the Royal Commission looks like being the week’s best show in town.

Kieran Tapsell is a retired lawyer with degrees in theology and law. He is the author of Potiphar’s Wife: The Vatican’s Secret and Child Sexual Abuse (2014), ATF Press.

 

The 2014-15 Synod on ThePastoral Challenges of the Family in the Context of Evangelization

 Around Christmas 2013 there was much ado in the Australian Catholic community about the upcoming Synod of Bishops on the Family called by Pope Francis for October 2014 and 2015. In preparation for this synod, for the first time ever, the laity as well as bishops were consulted and asked to respond to a document that covered a range of doctrinal and practical issues concerning family, personal relationships and gender. Many people put a lot of energy into responding to what was a badly formulated questionnaire within the context of a tight timeframe.

I will return to these responses and their impact in a moment. First, some historical context is essential to understand what will probably happen at the synod.

The idea of the synod of bishops arose out of the Vatican II teaching on collegiality. This is the notion that the bishops, under the headship of the bishop of Rome, govern, lead and guide the church. To make that a reality Pope Paul VI unexpectedly introduced the idea of a synod of bishops at the beginning of the last session of Vatican II (September, 1965). He did it in a motu proprio, that is in a document issued ‘by his own authority’. In other words it was a papal, not a conciliar decision.

Herein lies the rub: created by the pope, the synod has always been under papal and Roman curial control and its role is, at best, purely advisory.

Desultory attempts were made by Paul VI to make the synod work, but John Paul II turned it into an increasingly ineffective body. He set the synod agenda and issued the document that summarises its conclusions. These documents increasingly represented what Pope Wojtyla thought the bishops should have said, rather than their actual arguments. Theologian Rene Laurentin says that synods labor under ‘an unbelievable accumulation of restrictions’. The cause is ‘the ancient fear … of any organs of a democratic type which might limit papal power.’ As an instrument of collegiality the synod has become a complete dud.

Remember also that 34 years of episcopal appointments passed between the election of John Paul II (1978) and Pope Francis (2013), a whole generation of bishops. The problem is that many of these appointments were of mediocre men who lacked leadership skills or genuine pastoral sensitivity. The selection process excluded priests of independent mind, and increasingly the gene pool of talented priests from which bishops could be selected has contracted. So even if the coming synod was given its head it would be largely populated by bishops afraid of taking the initiative and lacking the intellectual and emotional ability to assume leadership.

It’s in this historical context that Pope Francis has called the synod on the family. He began by seemingly cleaning out the timeserving prelates who populated the synod secretariat and appointing the able papal diplomat, Lorenzo Baldisseri, to head the office. Even allowing for the badly designed questionnaire, at first everything seemed to go swimmingly.

But then last month came the Instrumentum Laboris (IL), the working document that forms the basis of the synod’s discussions. This document reflects nothing of the published and known responses of the laity to the 2013 questionnaire. It reflects an idealised, almost pre-Vatican II vision of family. Certainly IL recognizes that there are problems, pressures, ‘difficult pastoral situations’ (e.g. de facto unions, divorce and remarriage and even ‘unions of persons of the same sex’). But it roots all these problems in a ‘crisis of faith’ and blames ‘external pressures’ and ‘various modern ideologies’ for the difficulties that families face. Or, IL claims, the ‘catechesis’ (method of teaching) has been ‘defective’ as, for instance, in the teaching on contraception. No consideration is given to the fact that rather than defective catechesis, the teaching on contraception has not been theologically ‘received’ by the married laity and therefore lacks doctrinal validity.

IL even makes a distinction between lay feedback, which it calls ‘observations’ and official ‘detailed responses’ from episcopal conferences and the Roman Curia. I would have thought that the laity knew a little more about families and gender relations than members of an all-male and supposedly celibate ecclesiastical cadre. As an editorial in The National Catholic Reporter (30 July 2014) dryly commented ‘the disparity between those who will be doing the talking and deciding and those who will be talked about is … particularly glaring.’

The most interesting section of IL is the chapter on natural law. Nowadays most people have never heard of ‘natural law’ and those who have find it confusing and problematic. While admitting that natural law rhetoric is largely rejected today, IL still proceeds as if we lived in a non-evolutionary, static world and natural law was eternally normative. It is precisely this assumption that contemporary Catholics reject.

They know that we live in an evolving, changing, inventive universe, not a static one. People have shifted away from generalised notions like natural law when making moral decisions, especially about gender and sexuality and are guided by their consciences when deciding on ethical action. Today we are more concerned about love: do people love each other? It doesn’t matter if they are of the same gender. Instead of looking to generalised principles, the church needs to refer to the experience of the faithful. For Catholics today the experiential is much more important than the theoretical.

So the only proper thing for the bishops to do at the synod in October is to reject IL outright, as did the bishops at Vatican II with the documents prepared by the Roman Curia. But I’m not optimistic that this will happen given the bishops we have today. Australia, for example, will be represented by Melbourne’s Archbishop Denis Hart. I can’t see him doing anything too ‘radical’. But I may be wrong and time will tell.

Paul Collins is a Canberra-based historian, author and broadcaster. See his webpage at www.paulcollinscatholicwriter.co.au

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.

 

A blog in the Economist accused Pope Francis of following the founder of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin, in adopting an “ultra-radical line” on capitalism. The blog, “Francis, capitalism and war: the Pope’s divisions”, was reacting to the Pope’s interview on 9 June in the Spanish journal, La Vanguardia, in which he linked an earlier form of capitalism with imperialism as the main causes of the First World War.

In response the Pope said “the Communists have stolen the flag. The flag of the poor is Christian… The poor are at the centre of the gospel.” He pointed to the Beatitudes, and Matthew’s Last Judgment scene when God will judge us on how we treated the hungry, naked, the prisoners (in interview with the Italian daily paper, Il Messaggero, 30 June). “The communists say that all this is communist”. Yet Christians said this 20 centuries earlier. Francis said one could reply to the communists: “you are Christians” in your concern for the poor.

Pope Francis’s views are arousing controversy, since many people seem unaware how strongly Catholic social thinking is opposed to the neoliberal policies of the free-marketeers. In the La Vanguardia interview, Francis was distressed that in some countries unemployment levels exceed 50 percent of workers. He had been told that 75 million young Europeans under 25 years of age were unemployed. “That is an atrocity, discarding an entire generation to maintain an economic system” that was collapsing, and that depends on the armament industry to survive. He supported the possibilities of globalisation, but deplored the discarding of the young and the elderly. It was “incomprehensible” that so many people in the world are still hungry. He said “the world economic system is not good”, and “we have put money at the centre, the god of money”.

Others disputed the Pope’s critique of inequality. In the UK Telegraph (17 June), Allison Heath contested the views of Francis for his attack on economic inequalities and the “new tyranny” of the “absolute autonomy of markets”. “Francis’s wholesale condemnation of inequality is thus tantamount to a complete rejection of contemporary economic systems. It is not a call for reform… but a radical denunciation.” She rejected Francis’s criticism of “trickle-down economics” as a caricature of free-market arguments. Instead, she regarded capitalism as “the greatest alleviator of poverty and liberator of people ever discovered.”

Farrell’s suggestion is for Francis to support Bill Gates’s “Giving Pledge” for the super rich to give away half their fortunes in their lifetimes. So far 122 of the super rich have agreed to do so. But, alas, this would do nothing to challenge the causes of the perverse distribution of wealth in most capitalist economies.

As Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Bergoglio experienced the trauma of Argentina going into the biggest financial default in history in 2002, owing nearly $100 billion, much of it lost by mismanagement and war under earlier military regimes. The percentage of the population plunged into poverty rose to 50 percent, compared with seven percent in the 1970s. Millions lost their savings, a quarter of workers lost their jobs, and a quarter of the entire population was left destitute and hungry. While most of the debt was restructured, so-called “vulture funds” bought up some of the debt for a pittance and demanded that Argentina pay $1.33 billion, making a return of 1000 percent to these 1.6% of original bondholders. Despite a German court striking out similar “vulture fund” claims in 2013, astonishingly the US Supreme Court in June 2014 ordered the full debt be paid. Francis is speaking against the background of such predatory forms of capitalism.

Francis and economic inequality

On 28 April the Pope tweeted that “Inequality is the root of social evil”, quoting from his exhortation, The Joy of the Gospel, #202. The message quickly drew 10,000 retweets, some critical. The director of the Acton Institute, Joe Carter, tweeted: “Seriously, though, what was up with that tweet by @pontifex? Has he traded the writings of Peter and Paul for Piketty?” Thomas Piketty’s massive tome, Capital in the Twenty-first Century, had recently appeared arguing that the capitalist economy was inherently geared to greatly increasing inequality.

Francis considers extreme “unbridled consumerism combined with inequality” outrageous, and he fears that resentment by impoverished populations will fuel revolutions, as it has in the past.

Francis is not arguing for absolute equality, as some of his critics have claimed. The Catholic Church has never called for absolute equality, but it has argued for a just distribution of goods and services that ensure everyone the possibility of a reasonable life and standard of living. Perhaps “social equity” is a better translation for what the Pope has in mind, but this implies more than the notion of equality of opportunity, since outcomes matter as well.

While sharply critical of the neoliberal views that exacerbated the global financial crisis, Francis strongly supports economic policies that promote material and social uplift more equitably. Speaking in Rome on 16 June, Francis said:

“It is increasingly intolerable that financial markets are shaping the destiny of peoples rather than serving their needs, or that the few derive immense wealth from financial speculation while the many are deeply burdened by the consequences.”

These issues are likely to figure prominently in the forthcoming document on the environment that Francis’s team of advisers have been preparing.

Bruce Duncan is Director of the Yarra Institute for Religion and Social Policy. This article was first published in The Conversation

Rolf Harris, aged 84, was found guilty of sexual assaults on children in the long distant past, and was sentenced to 5 years jail. The judge took into account his age in determining the sentence. Many people still thought it was inadequate, and there is talk of an appeal by the Attorney General to increase the term.

The policy widely accepted in society and reflected by the courts is that the sexual abuse of children should be punished severely, even if it occurred a long time ago, and the convicted man is in his eighties. That view seems to have little traction in the Vatican. The harshest punishment that the Vatican can impose on a priest under canon law is his dismissal from the priesthood, whose secular equivalent would be striking off the rolls or register for a lawyer or doctor.

Fr Lawrence Murphy had sexually assaulted as many as 200 deaf mute boys between 1950 and 1974 when he was in charge of St. John’s School for the Deaf in Milwaukee. After complaints from victims that Murphy was still a priest, Archbishop Weakland in 1998 commenced canonical proceedings to have him dismissed. Archbishop Bertone from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith effectively told Weakland to discontinue the proceedings, because Murphy was “old” at 73, and had suffered a stroke, although he was not seriously incapacitated.

One of the most serious sexual abusers in the history of the Church was Fr Marcial Maciel, the founder of the Legion of Christ and a brilliant if dubious fund raiser.  Maciel made generous donations to the Vatican from the Legion’s annual budget of $650m. In 1998 eight former members of the Legion lodged complaints against him to Cardinal Ratzinger’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Maciel had the support of Cardinal Sodano who pressured Ratzinger not to prosecute him. Ratzinger told Mexican Bishop Carlos Talavera the matter was “very delicate” and that a case could not be mounted against Maciel because of his contributions to the Church, and he was well loved by Pope John Paul II. Yet, even when Ratzinger, as Benedict XVI, did take action in 2006, Maciel, then 85, was not handed over to the police, nor was he dismissed from the priesthood. He was merely suspended, and asked to go to a monastery to lead “a reserved life of prayer and penance”.  His “monastery” was a house with a pool in a gated community in Jacksonville, Florida, bought for him by the Legion of Christ which he founded. He died there in 2008, aged 87.

In 2006, when Bishop Jarrett of Lismore reported a serial sex abuser, Fr Paul Brown, to the Vatican as required under the 2001 canonical procedures, he received a reply from the Vatican two years later imposing a punishment of saying Mass for the victims every Friday and living a life of “prayer and penance” in a comfortable presbytery. He too, like Murphy, was “old”, at 73.

Fr Desmond Gannon had been sentenced five times in Victoria (in 1995, 1997, 2000, 2003 and 2009) for sexual crimes against children.  Archbishop Hart applied to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to have him dismissed, The Vatican declined to dismiss him because of his ‘extreme age’ – he was then 82, two years younger than Rolf Harris. In 2012 Hart wrote to the Vatican, saying that the failure to dismiss Gannon would be seen as ‘inadequate and a cause of scandal for the faithful’.  The Vatican was unmoved.

In 2010, the Vatican published its “Guide to Understanding Basic Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith Procedures”, for the benefit of “lay persons and non-canonists.” It provides that if the priest “has admitted to his crimes and accepted to live a life of prayer and penance”, the bishop can issue a decree prohibiting or restricting the priest’s public ministry. If he violates those conditions he may be dismissed. It is not known whether the Vatican monitors the prayer and penance.

On 19 March 2014, Pope Francis noted that Pope Benedict had supported “zero tolerance” for clergy who sexually abused children, and on 27 May 2014, he promised that he would apply the same “zero tolerance” standard.

On 6 May 2014, the Vatican envoy to the United Nations, Archbishop Tomasi, told the Committee against Torture that more than 3,400 credible allegations of sexual abuse of minors had been referred to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith since 2004. As a result, 848 clerics had been dismissed and other disciplinary measures had been applied in more than 2,500 other cases. Presumably, the latter were dealt with by the “prayer and penance” punishment outlined in the Guide.

Whatever may be said about Pope Francis’s future intentions, his statement that Pope Benedict supported “zero tolerance” is pure spin. The Church’s own figures establish that there was a 70% tolerance during Benedict’s pontificate, not zero.  Other professions, such as the law, have for many decades adopted zero tolerance for certain kinds of professional misconduct.  Solicitors who steal from trust accounts are struck off the rolls, and at least in my experience, are never allowed back on. That’s zero tolerance. So is the sentence handed down to Rolf Harris. Is Pope Francis going to issue a new “Guide” for “lay persons and non-canonists”, reflecting real zero tolerance for sexual abuse by clergy, or is his latest promise just more spin?

Kieran Tapsell is a retired lawyer with degrees in theology and law and is the author of Potiphar’s Wife: The Vatican’s Secret and Child Sexual Abuse (2014 ATF Press).

 

                                                                                                                                       

One of the significant and pressing pastoral theological issues currently dividing opinion among the hierarchy and among the laity of the Church, is the issue of divorced and remarried Catholics, and their access to eucharist, writes Garry Everett.

Pastoral theology is a tricky undertaking. It is easier, and certainly safer, to discuss theological matters in abstract or academic terms, or as principles to guide action. However, once theology is applied to people, their lives and actions, the task becomes infinitely more difficult.

One of the significant and pressing pastoral theological issues currently dividing opinion among the hierarchy and among the laity of the Church, is the issue of divorced and remarried Catholics, and their access to eucharist.

At the heart of this debate are our understandings (theologies) of marriage and eucharist. Pope Francis has called for serious discussion of the matter and it will be an item on the agenda of the Synod on the Family later this year.

Cardinal Walter Kasper, former head of the Council for Promoting Christian Unity, has called for pastoral solutions to be developed for the issue, while Cardinal Gerhard Muller, head of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has indicated that the rules can’t be changed. There may be other starting points as well, with perhaps the laity offering different perspectives, depending on their life circumstances. Let me share a story to illustrate.

A few years ago while studying in London, I noticed that the neighbouring parish was offering a two-day course the following weekend on “Contemporary Issues in the Church”. I enrolled and met the other 18 participants early on the Saturday morning. These 18 people shared something in common: they were all Catholic; all were women; and all had been divorced and remarried.

The course was delivered by Father Graham, recently retired provincial of a major religious order of priests. When Graham asked participants what issues they would like to explore, he was mightily surprised. There was only one issue: divorce, remarriage and access to eucharist.

Graham tried hard for two days to explain material from the Catechesim, the Code of Canon Law and some Vatican documents. But the women were not buying his arguments. Graham’s emphasis was on the “contract” and its legally-binding force; the women only talked about their experience of love – its presence, its absence, its new discovery, and their sense of alienation from the “sacrament of love” (eucharist). We departed on Sunday still divided from Graham.

This story, I hope, illustrates the difficulty of applying theology to people’s lives and actions. It also illustrates an emphasis that is shared by contemporary sociology and the approach to marriage developed by Vatican II. In his book, Catholicism, US theologian, Father Richard McBrien, describes it in this way: “…this is the first age in which people marry and remain in marriage because they love each other. There is a stress on the mutual exchange of love as constituting the sacrament of marriage”.

Perhaps the Synod on the Family will have more to say about marriage. Hopefully it will do this in the context of love. It is worth noting in the above extract from Catholicism, that the sacrament of marriage is embedded in the mystery of love: human and divine. Applying theologies in definitive ways, to any mystery, is fraught with great difficulty. When one confronts the universal mystery of love, then one is cautioned to proceed with great sensitivity and a little less dogmatism.

The other half of the debate centres on the fact that divorced and remarried Catholics are not permitted to receive eucharist. This prohibition is based on the Church’s judgement that the couple (or at least the Catholic partner) is in a state of sin, and/or is a source of scandal to others. Such disciplinary action stems from a particular Eucharistic theology developed in the Western Church.

An exploration of this matter of denying access to eucharist to some people, is provided in a scholarly and nuanced way by Father Frank Moloney in his small book, A Body Broken for a Broken People. On the final page of his book, Moloney answers a question raised in an earlier section. The question was: “Does our present practice of Eucharist indicate a Church ‘clasping sinners to her bosom’?” (Lumen Gentium, 8). His answer reads: “We are touching here an injustice of which we are all guilty. We have a tendency to preach one message and to live another. To frequent the Eucharist full of my own self-righteousness and worthiness, is to leave no space for the presence of a eucharistic Lord who seeks me out in my broken-ness”. A more condensed version of this answer is the title of Moloney’s book.

The pastoral problem that is dividing the Church cannot be solved by any form of popular vote, nor appeal to common experiences. Pastoral theology in this context requires that we re-visit our fundamental understandings of love, marriage and eucharist.

Along with these mysteries, we will also need to re-examine notions of Church and community; of being the People of God; of being, as Pope Francis expressed it, “a poor Church for the poor”. The poor have much to teach us about the experience and value of being broken; of the God who gives solace to the broken; of the Church whose broken-ness needs redemption.

As the Synod on the Family begins its preparations to answer the difficult questions it must, let us recall the words of Pope Francis as he expressed them with all the hope in his heart: “In order to dialogue, it is necessary to know how to lower your defences, open the doors of the house, and offer human warmth”.

* Garry Everett has spent all his professional life, as well as much of retirement, as an educator, and mostly of adults. Garry’s enduring interests lie in family, Scripture, theology and Church renewal. At a local level he is involved in social justice, ecumenism and Mercy Partners. He is also a member of his parish St Vincent de Paul Conference.

This article was first published in The Good Oil,the e-magazine of the Good Samaritan Sisters www.goodsams.org.au