This is a record that has already prompted other inquiries here and overseas.

It would indeed be wrong to ignore the failings of other churches and secular institutions as recent events in Britain have revealed, most notably, the lax performance of the BBC in the scandalous behaviour of their pin-up star, Jimmy Savile over decades of impunity in abusing children.

The tentacles of this scandal have reached to a variety of other secular institutions, including children's homes and hospitals. The terms of the Australian inquiry , as announced by the federal government, have reasonably addressed such concerns by including institutions other than the Catholic Church in the Commission's remit. Closed institutional power over the vulnerable, wherever it exists, is a key factor in the perpetuation of abusive conditions.

Even so, the Catholic Church has and continues to have major problems dealing with this issue of clerical sexual abuse, and virtually every day produces new evidence in a variety of countries, not only of abuse by clergy, but of negligence, cover-up, concealment, and deceit that have contributed to dreadful injustice to victims.

Significantly, these problems have combined with other tensions and stresses within the church to expose an even deeper crisis in the church's structures and doctrines, and have contributed to a broad disaffection of laity and significant sections of the clergy with the church's leadership and its exercise of authority. In Ireland, for example, the previous widespread attitudes of respect and deference towards church authorities and institutions have almost entirely disappeared, conspicuously amongst the young, but even dramatically amongst the older generations.

The sex abuse crisis has crystallised for many Catholics an alienation from church structures and authority that began with the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae of 1968 reasserting the standard ban on artificial contraception. Continue reading

Sources

• Tony Coady in The Conversation
• Image: The Australian

Tony Coady is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Melbourne. He is a Catholic.

Still current is the fallout of actions of 2DAY FM employees who appeared to have prompted the death of nurse Jacintha Saldanha, who was vulnerable to suicide. Also recent is the criticism that, while the media were empowering church sexual abuse victims by telling their stories, the victims and their stories were providing fodder for one of the year's biggest media events, so that media outlets were in effect capitalising on lives broken by the church. Earlier the BBC was exposed for suppressing coverage of the exploitative behaviour of one of its own, Jimmy Savile.

Back in January, we were reflecting on the film The Iron Lady, and Meryl Streep's determination not to make a plaything of Margaret Thatcher. Instead she would continue her own lifelong effort as an actor to 'defend the humanity of people that we've made into emblematic figures of one sort or another'. Continue reading

Sources

• Michael Mullins in Eureka Street
• Image: The Guardian

Michael Mullins is editor of Eureka Street

Last week, the Catholic Church of England wrote to the Holy See asking it to consider to posthumously remove the honour awarded to Savile because of the many recent child sex abuse allegations against him.

Savile, a BBC children's television host, died last year at age 84.

Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols made the request to the Vatican due to the "deep distress" of Savile's alleged victims and in light of public concerns about his name remaining on the papal honours lists.

Fr. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican's spokesman, however, told the Associated Press that the Vatican cannot rescind the knighthood.

The names of people who receive the knighthood don't appear in the Holy See's yearbook and that the honour dies with the individual, Lombardi said.

He said Savile never would have received the honour had allegations about his behaviour been known.

Savile was made a Knight Commander of St. Gregory the Great by Pope John Paul II in 1990 for his charity work. He was also knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to charity and entertainment.

British police, however, believe Savile to be one of the most prolific sex offenders in Britain in recent history, with a "staggering number" of people reporting abuses by him after his death.

Some 300 potential victims have come forward with abuse allegations, police said. Most of them say they were abused by Savile.

Sources

• AP/Yahoo
• AFP/Radio Australia
• Reuters
• BBC News
• Image: Yahoo