When faced with the terminal suffering of someone you love, almost nothing else matters. I understand the pain. The renewed debate about voluntary assisted dying in NSW is personal for me - my mother died earlier this year following a battle with a terrible disease over a number of years.

There were days when I cried just wishing she would walk, talk or laugh again. It is also easy in these circumstances to understand how people wish it would just end, believing quality of life is over. I don't agree.

In the last 12 months of Mum's life, my eldest daughter was going through a marriage breakdown. It was heart-wrenching for everyone. In the middle of this, my daughter went to visit my mum.

She greeted my daughter with tears and eyes that shared the pain. When my daughter came home, she said, "I have never felt so loved." It was as if my mum's eyes had given her the hug she needed, the tears, the comfort.

Life to life. Soul to soul.

It was a reminder of the beauty and power of life. Surprising, connecting and caring when no one thought this was possible. This is not meant to say I wasn't in anguish at times seeing Mum as she was.

In this debate, we find ourselves on the edge of what it means to be human and looking for an answer. Voluntary assisted dying is introduced to us; it looks neat and easy compared with the messiness and struggle of the natural journey to what we fear might be a difficult death.

But there is nothing neat and easy about agreeing to end a life, however, well-motivated the choice seems. Even writing these words reminds me why we would never consider these options normally.

I think if we understood what can be achieved by modern palliative care, delivered where and when it is needed, and if we stood back as a society and became less afraid of dying and the challenges it brings, we might realise that these moments can be a gift: as I discovered in the dying days of my mother.

Despite good intentions, I just don't think laws can replace human love, compassion and ingenuity. When we lose sight of the intrinsic and immeasurable worth of every moment, for every human life, the laws put in place never protect in the way we hope they might. The unintended consequences can bruise, numb and lessen the spirit of who we are as a people.

Father Brian Lucas, the general secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops conference, said he would never betray the trust of a victim if they didn't want to go to police about abuse allegations.

The inquiry is investigating claims the Catholic Church covered up abuse by two Maitland-Newcastle priests, Father James Fletcher and Father Denis McAlinden.

Father Lucas, a former lawyer, told the inquiry he had a special role in the 1990s around New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory to persuade paedophile priests to resign.

Father Lucas said he dealt with about 35 priests, "seducing" more than 10 of them with "strong armed" tactics into agreeing to resign the priesthood.

He said the best way of keeping children safe from priestly abuse was to take the offending priest out of the ministry, and that was his priority.

He said "it staggers me and shocks me" that McAlinden practised as a priest and worked at a school of 7000 children in the Philippines after his priestly faculties were removed in Australia in 1993.

Father Lucas said he took no notes during his interviews with the priests. Questioned by counsel, he agreed that this was because he did not want notes disclosed in any subsequent legal process, but also said if he took notes the priests would not have said anything.

He said it was a "serious and well understood dilemma" within church legal circles that clergy risked being charged with the crime of misprision of a felony, or concealing a serious offence, if they did not go to police with victims' complaints when victims did not want them to.

He said the Church's reputation or the risk of scandal was "irrelevant" to him in a situation where he had to choose between risking criminal liability for misprision of a felony and betraying a victim's wishes. He would choose to respect the victim's wishes, he said.

Sources:

7 News

ABC

South Coast Register

Image: Sydney Morning Herald

The priest, Father Denis McAlinden, also moved from Maitland-Newcastle diocese to New Zealand for several months in 1984, relieving in country parishes in Hamilton diocese.

A woman from Hamilton diocese who said she was sexually abused as a child by McAlinden was paid compensation by Maitland-Newcastle diocese after she travelled to Australia with the support of Bishop Denis Browne of Hamilton.

The New South Wales commission of inquiry heard that Church authorities first received a report that McAlinden was abusing children in 1954.

He continued to abuse children aged as young as four or five over four decades.

The inquiry was told that one boy who was abused by McAlinden was required to do penance after he told his parish priest, "apparently for his sin in being abused".

In 1959, McAlinden wrote to his then bishop, asking to be sent on missionary work, despite the bishop having received at least one report of such abuse.

"It seems a shame that hundreds of thousands of people are just clamouring for the Faith in Africa and are deprived through a shortage of priests. In this way, I feel I could still serve the diocese," McAlinden wrote.

During the 1990s, the late Bishop Leo Clarke of Maitland-Newcastle asked McAlinden to petition the Holy See in Rome to request his laicisation.

"Your good name will be protected by the confidential nature of this process," Bishop Clarke wrote. "A speedy resolution of this matter would be in your interest as I have it on good authority that some people are threatening to take it to the police."

Bishop Clarke also wrote to the apostolic pro-nuncio in Canberra, asking him to "use his network communications to help expedite ... a very delicate matter".

Eventually the diocese paid McAlinden a pension after he agreed to retire to England and "retire from priestly ministry". In fact he travelled to the Philippines and resumed ministry.

McAlinden died in Western Australia in 2005 while NSW police were seeking to extradite him.

Sources:

The Australian

The Australian

Sydney Morning Herald

Newcastle Herald

Broken Rites

Image: Newcastle Herald