Lord Acton said that 'Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.' It was in correspondence about the then pope's proposed new doctrine of papal infallibility. It is often overlooked that he added, 'Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority.'
When I was a child, the greatest misuse of priestly power imputed to the 'RCs' was the sometimes brutal violence used in the 'care' of disobedient pupils, unmarried mothers, illegitimate and 'removed' children and orphans in institutions run by nuns, brothers and priests.
Thanks to brave individuals and independent journalists, the sexual abuse permitted and distributed by some of these hands has been revealed in Australian parliamentary inquiries and the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
It is unfair to profile the one, Catholic Church for the sins of so many more whose patriarchal culture and authoritarian practices are shared by those who professed to 'suffer the little children to come unto me ... for of such are the kingdom of heaven'.
Yet former bishops and archbishops have told the Commission that, yes, the Church failed its duty, protecting its reputation, wealth and ordained at the cost of children and complainants. Fairfax claimed the Melbourne Response saved the Church at least $62 million, by capping the amount payable to a fraction of what complainants would have been awarded had they not been dissuaded from suing.
It is increasingly apparent that the Church's moral failure to address the worm in its heart has poisoned the vine. By their fruits you shall know them.
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I am a laywoman, and in the Catholic Church could never be ordained.
Like many women, I am active, as a spiritual director and retreat leader. As well, over the last decade I was briefly responsible for receiving complaints about professional standards in the Anglican diocese of Melbourne, and am currently a member of a professional standards committee for one of the Catholic orders. The majority of its members are women. They are laity, busy, unpaid, and without power.
And thereby is some hope. Since Vatican II, successive popes have pledged a greater role for the laity to work with those who are ordained, and Pope Francis has emphasised respect for women religious, and some hope for long-squelched leadership roles for women.
The Vatican bureaucracy is not pleased with this, or with women's views