Shameful conduct

Last Monday night I watched an episode of Four Corners. I had intended on going to bed early but once it started I couldn't look away. I watched mortified and afterwards felt sickened. And incensed. The program revealed the most horrifying sequence of events; too many instances of sexual abuse of young boys at the hands of Catholic priests, a series of suicides, lives irrevocably damaged and, most damningly, perpetrators being protected by the Catholic Church.


The unimaginable torment of sexual abuse is not limited to the physical and psychological damage it wreaks on the victims; it extends to their families, their children and the communities they too often leave behind because the lingering demons prove inescapable. The brother of one victim who took his life at 28, leaving two children and a devastated family in his wake, says he wished the man who abused his brother had just shot him afterwards. The priest effectively killed him anyway; but it would have saved him 17 years of hell.


The painful irony is that if the perpetrator had taken that openly violent route, the victim's family might have had a better chance of seeing the offender brought to justice. Instead he chose a private and more insidious path to destruction for each of his victims. He preyed on the vulnerability of young boys, abused the trust of their families and betrayed all of them brutally but invisibly. Many decades later, despite an admission in a court of law and substantiating documents stating multiple episodes of sexual abuse took place, he remains a free man. Free. He has never seen the inside of a prison cell. He lives in New South Wales, writes for a local newspaper and whilst he no longer oversees mass, he remains active in the local Church community.


This is mostly because of the dogged legal protection the Catholic Church afforded him. But it was also partly driven by what one magistrate described as the gross power imbalance between a teenage victim in the witness box and an adult priest. Apparently the trust and respect inspired by the latter proved too persuasive against a troubled teen. Can you imagine the fury of the victim and his family hearing that? Being told the very same power imbalance the perpetrator exploited to abuse him in the first place now affords him additional protection in a court room??


So the perpetrator walked free while dozens live with the anguish of his crimes. Parents have lost their sons, sons and daughters have lost their fathers, siblings have lost their siblings. Yet the man responsible is free. For a variety of inexplicable legal reasons, he also enjoys the luxury of having his identity suppressed. The program was shocking. The evidence against this one perpetrator in particular was astounding. The only greater horror exposed were the lengths the Catholic Church went to protect him and itself from reputational damage. As allegations of his criminal conduct emerged, rather than investigate or strip him of his priesthood, he was simply moved to different parishes around the state. Where he continued to wreak irreparable damage.


Archbishop Cardinal Pell was interviewed during the program and what alarmed me even more than the Church administration's protection of itself above all others, was not that he dismissed the perpetrator's own testimony that he had committed various criminal offences. Nor that he ignored the written word of another senior priest documenting these admissions. Nor was I most shocked that not a single person in the Church administration notified the police of these findings. To me, what was most shocking was the fact that Cardinal Pell did not utter or demonstrate one iota of compassion for any of the victims or their families. His stance was cold and distant, mirroring the abominable stance the Church has adopted, at an organisational level at least, toward these victims and their families for decades. And it is that I cannot forgive. Not from an organisation that purports to promote compassion and decency. The hypocrisy is eye wateringly shameful.


I am not religious myself and despite the temptation that overwhelmed me whilst watching to tar every member of the Catholic Church with the same brush that taints its administration, I won't. I have no doubt great swathes of the Catholic Church are kind and caring individuals whom contribute an enormous amount to their communities. I know lots exactly like that. But the revelations about the Church covering up and effectively perpetuating abuse – not for the first time - reveal yet again that there is a deep chasm between those for whom religion is a force for good and those whom feel entitled to use and abuse it as an evil force. Unless and until that chasm closes I personally won't forgive the Church administration these atrocities.


I understand it's not particularly virtuous to withhold forgiveness but in this instance I am more than happy to distance myself from anything deemed virtuous. Did you watch this episode?