The final sessions of the Catholic 'wrap up' at the Royal Commission have been dedicated to summarising and testing what has been said in previous sessions. The numbers of complaints, abusers and cases presented have been horrifying.
Nothing should be allowed to minimise the evil represented in them. The panels of people interviewed offer some evidence, nonetheless, that children will now be safer when under Catholic care.
The most thought provoking testimony given was that by Vincent Long, Bishop of Parramatta. It was notable for its directness, honesty and the awareness it displayed of the importance of church culture. Bishop Long grew up in the Vietnamese Catholic Church and was afterwards chosen to lead the Australian Church. In his responses he focused particularly on clericalism and its role in giving license and cover to clerical abuse.
He worked out of a fairly simple distinction between two images of the church. One sees the church as a kingdom in which the subordination of the people to the king and to the hierarchical grades of officials is fixed and sacralised. The other is of the church as community with an ordered network of relationships that enable the nourishing of people by the spreading of the Gospel.
He associated clericalism with the first image, commended by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. The communal vision was identified with the Vatican II and Pope Francis.
This distinction is often made. Bishop Long's contribution to it lay in his sensitivity to the way in which particular cultures mould themselves to metaphor to affect practice. In the Vietnamese church he saw a culture with a high acceptance of hierarchy. When this was married to a church with its own hierarchical vision, the result was a church where bishops and priests could act tyrannically and with impunity.
Reflection on the Vietnamese church sharpened his observation of the Australian Catholic Church and his identification of the practices that are an index of clericalism.
"Bishop Long's account of clerical sexual abuse and its relationship to clericalism is persuasive. In the directness of his language and his refusal to allow disputed questions about the signs of clericalism to remain fudged, he presented a clear way forward."
He was forthright and unambiguous in calling out the effects of using formal titles in communication with — and between — priests and bishops, of distinctive robes as the ordinary dress of the clergy, and particularly seminarians, of the lack of