Restoring trust in the Church means promises must be kept

Monday, September 10th, 2018

Restoring trust in the Church will come over time only if “we do the things we say we’re going to do,” Brisbane’s Catholic archbishop says.

Mark Coleridge, who is also the head of the Australian Bishops’ Conference, says a “willingness to act no matter the cost” is the only way to restore trust in the Church after recent clergy abuse revelations.

“Until there is a genuine restoration of trust, no apology is going to land,” he says.

“We have to accept now [that] restoring trust will come over time only if in fact we do the things we say we’re going to do.

“The dominant mood probably is a sense of bewilderment, really, because this is a crisis the like of which we haven’t faced in our history.”

In preventing a “fragmented and at times contradictory response” to “an area as vital as child protection” it is important to have a national approach, Coleridge says.

The national response in Australia faces “enormous challenges,” he says.

This is because with seven distinct jurisdictions “Australia in the singular doesn’t exist.”

Coleridge says the Royal Commission with “its secular eye upon the life of the church was extraordinarily important and helpful,” but that it “didn’t do God and couldn’t do God” the way the Church could.

“My own sense is that it is law being proposed or passed by people who don’t understand the way the sacrament happens on the ground.

“If I as a priest confessor have someone come to me and confess anonymously to having abused a child…I don’t know the identity of the perpetrator. I don’t know the identity of the victim, and yet I am supposed to go to the police.”

Emphasising the importance of listening to victims of abuse, Coleridge says: “Here, I’m echoing Pope Francis, because he talks about a synodal church as a listening church.”

“We need that combination of passion and commitment to act. But patience, given that it will take time.”

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