We have just emerged from what the media calls ‘the Catholic wrap up’ at the Royal Commission. This three-week hearing culminated in the joint appearance of the five most senior bishops in our Australian Church.
They apologised not just for the sins of those church personnel who violated children, the most vulnerable members of our church community.
They apologised and acknowledged also the gross failures of their predecessors and other church authorities who failed to act resolutely and compassionately in relation to the perpetrators and the victims, labelling their responses as ‘scandalously insufficient, hopelessly inadequate, scandalously inefficient’, as ‘a kind of criminal negligence’, ‘totally, totally inadequate. Just totally wrong’.
Some ‘were just like rabbits in the headlights. They just had no idea what to do, and their performance was appalling.’
Here were our most senior church leaders admitting that in the past there were church authorities seeking to serve two masters, and failing completely.
No doubt those past church authorities were professing their faith in, commitment to and discipleship with Jesus who said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them! For the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.’ (Mt 19:4)
But in the past, these spiritual leaders were also professing their commitment to an institution which commanded their hierarchical obedience and clerical acquiescence in protecting the institution’s public reputation and its coffers.
We are now left in no doubt: ‘No one can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot be the slave both of God and of money.’
It’s time to put past victims and present and future children first. And make no mistake, our church leaders are not yet out of the blaze of the headlights.
They don’t have all the answers, not even in relation to matters peculiarly within their jurisdiction. Despite being put on notice, our most senior bishops could not even agree on the limits of the seal of the confessional and on what a priest should do if abuse were reported in the confessional by a child.
It’s not just our past leaders who needed help.
Our present leaders also do, and that help must come from you the competent laity who as the parents of children know in the core of your being how dreadful and unacceptable is anything that might put children at risk. Continue reading
- These are extracts from a homily of Fr Frank Brennan SJ AO, Chief Executive Officer of Catholic Social Services Australia, at Holy Trinity Church, Curtin, on 26 February 2017.