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Keywords: Sexual Abuse

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Our hands

    • Clare Locke and Colleen Keating
    • 18 March 2019
    3 Comments

    The church is an old man with heavy robes. Heavy lidded, head bowed. Stooped. We are twisting, clutching, writhing. Pointing fingers, fists stamping tables or shaking in fury. But the old man is deaf and blind and besides, his head is low, and he sits within a prison cell.

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  • RELIGION

    Australian Catholics take stock as Pell falls

    • John Warhurst
    • 06 March 2019
    61 Comments

    A conservative within a conservative church he was a divisive figure, not just because of his orthodox views but because of the unbending and assertive style with which he promulgated them. Something died in Australian Catholicism with this verdict and Australian Catholics will have to live with that whatever the future turns out to be.

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  • RELIGION

    Can the Church survive its terminal self harm?

    • Stephanie Dowrick
    • 06 March 2019
    85 Comments

    My relationship to Catholicism can be summed up as: I am on the outskirts, yet close and invested enough to care how the Church evolves. Because, it seems to me, how it evolves and the speed at which those urgent and essential changes take place will significantly determine whether it will survive — and whether it deserves to survive.

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  • RELIGION

    A survivor's take on the Pell verdict

    • Victim #6, abuse survivor
    • 05 March 2019
    23 Comments

    Apparently there are committees deep within Church institutions that secretly work on tightening up, amending and making standards for their schools and churches to follow. I can guarantee there wouldn't be one abuse survivor on any of these committees.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Truth and justice after the Pell verdict

    • Frank Brennan
    • 26 February 2019
    253 Comments

    Should the appeal fail, I hope and pray that Cardinal Pell, heading for prison, is not the unwitting victim of a wounded nation in search of a scapegoat. Should the appeal succeed, the Victoria Police should review the adequacy of the police investigation of these serious charges.

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  • RELIGION

    Sexual abuse summit: naive no more

    • Tracey Edstein
    • 18 February 2019
    28 Comments

    My hope is that the summit will recognise that the hierarchical nature of the institutional church, and its corollary, clericalism, is the biggest stumbling block to making the church not merely a safe place for all, but the welcoming, compassionate, open community it is intended to be.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Shaping the Pope's sexual abuse summit

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 18 February 2019
    33 Comments

    This week the presidents of bishops conferences and representatives of religious congregations around the world will meet in Rome to reflect on responses to the sexual abuse of children To understand and evaluate the meeting, we should keep in mind its background and the different groups that have a particular interest in it.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Cultural change beyond royal commissions

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 31 January 2019
    17 Comments

    Experience suggests that royal commissions disclose only a fraction of unacceptable behaviour committed, and that the cultural attitudes that entrench it outlast the proposed reforms. The reasons for their comparative ineffectiveness can be illuminated by reflection on reforms of the 19th century.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Confidentiality, Confession and the law

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 12 December 2018
    15 Comments

    Victoria's government has promised legislation to force religious ministers to report information about child sexual abuse received in Confession, and called a royal commission after revelations a lawyer breached the professional duty of confidentiality to clients. The implications of these breaches of confidentiality deserve reflection.

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  • RELIGION

    Church reform scorecard

    • John Warhurst
    • 11 December 2018
    53 Comments

    Scoring the performance of the Australian church is a complex task at any time. Dioceses and congregations vary enormously. The mission of church agencies continues unabated in education, health, social services and aged care. But by any measure 2018 has been a big year.

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  • RELIGION

    Philip Wilson's dead letter day

    • Frank Brennan
    • 07 December 2018
    41 Comments

    The show trial of Archbishop Philip Wilson has backfired badly causing hurt to many people, most especially victims of child sexual abuse who thought the law was being rightly applied to put an errant Catholic bishop in the frame. Section 316 of the New South Wales Crimes Act is a dead letter and it causes nothing but trouble to everyone involved.

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  • RELIGION

    A new story for child abuse survivors

    • Michael McVeigh
    • 23 October 2018
    17 Comments

    Survivors and their families have been at the centre of this story, and now it's theirs to carry. For years, the people who maintained they were victims of abuse were told that they were trapped in a story about something that had happened to them when they were children. But that wasn't the story they were in at all.

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