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The media said the US Catholic Bishops' John Jay report blamed the 1960s sexual revolution for church sex abuse. More significantly, it implied that the roots of the sexual abuse crisis instead lie in the shallow Catholic culture of earlier decades.
The treatment of Bishop Bill Morris risks further blurring the image of the Church. The story told of a good man who encouraged his church, who was resolute in dealing with sexual abuse, but was removed in an untransparent process, will confirm many in their distrust of the Church.
I received a letter from a former student. Ten years ago, he had suddenly vanished without warning or further communication. Now he was about to reveal the reasons for his disappearance. It was the sort of story I had heard often before.
The troubles facing Australian Catholicism have been documented in a new report. When people focus on this most think of sexual abuse. In fact this is more a symptom than the actual core of the problem.
In earlier generations, Australian priests were treated as tribal heroes. But the sexual abuse scandals and their inept management by Church authorities have dealt lethal blows. The paradigm is broken and needs a full review.
Lay Catholic theologian Neil Ormerod's approach was strongly coloured in the early 1990s when he and his wife Thea became activists on behalf of survivors of clergy sexual abuse.
Some 5000 women have been killed in Juarez since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed in 1994. Most are workers who have been tortured and sexually abused. Because of the boost to the economy associated with NAFTA, Mexican media outlets and academics often turn a blind eye.
The suffering of children opens a door into the hardness of society. Think about the experience of the Stolen Generations, the detention of asylum seeker children, the sexual abuse of children. Societies try to close doors that open on to vulnerability.
MacKillop can be properly seen be as someone drawn into the sexual abuse scandal a century before the rest of the Catholic Church was. As a result, she might be someone that victims and their families feel drawn to in prayer.
Sexual abuse was part of the mix of challenges facing Mary MacKillop and her sisters, but it was only one of many elements of disfunction within the Church and society of the time. Historian Father Ed Campion has described MacKillop as 'a heroine to modern Australian feminists'.
Robertson may be a celebrity QC, but historian he is certainly not. He touts the notion that the Vatican is not a real state and that as a consequence Benedict XVI should not be granted immunity from prosecution for his alleged responsibility in covering up clerical sexual abuse.
The annual Blake Prize for Religious Art has never been far from controversy. Works honoured this year include Sydney artist Rodney Pople’s Cardinal with Altar Boy, which is a provocative painting dealing with clergy sexual abuse. Its setting is the interior of a beautiful baroque church, and it portrays a headless prelate dressed in ecclesiastical finery, with an altar boy in his lap.
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