The Pell( Sydney cardinal) Perspective

[pim]

I'd like to take up geopol's reply because he raises a valid point. But first I can't let Zombie's #14 pass by without a comment by me. Zombie if you're saying that the default position is now that the priest on the other side of the confessional box is probably also a paedophile then I'm sorry there's no basis for any further discussion. You have to proceed on the basis that people are basically of good will and act in good faith until proved otherwise. Otherwise what's the point of trying to reform anything? You can't reform the criminal justice system if the default assumption is that all cops are bent and on the take. What's the point of even talking about law reform in respect of gays and lesbians if your default position is - as Skippy claims - that all gays are sexual perverts and potential paedophiles? What possibility is there of breaking glass ceilings and achieving genuine gender equality if the default assumption is that all men are rapists?

But turning to geopol, I agree it'sa difficult one. But it isn't the silver bullet. You can pass all the mandatory reporting laws that you like regarding what passes between penitent and confessor in the context of Catholic confession and I'm prepared to wager that it wouldn't change anything regarding the abuse of children. Not one iota. But it would at a stroke overturn an ancient religious tradition. You might respond "And a bloody good thing too!" but that's not a legal opinion but a theological one. One you're entitled to, of course. But it doesn't get us anywhere.

The civil law has lived with the tradition of the "seal of the confessional box" for centuries now, without compromising the civil law. I haven't been to confession for decades so I don't remember it all that clearly: "Bless me Father for I have sinned. It is X weeks/months/years/decades/centuries/millennia since my last confession and since I ..." and you recount your peccadillos. Strewth, I was a young kid! What peccadillos does a young male in the early throes of puberty have to confess? I remember the priest saying, with his Irish brogue: "Have you committed any sins against Holy Purity?" I realised when I was older that what the dirty bugger was asking me was if I'd been indulging in a bit of 5 against 1, or the solitary vice. How I wish that I'd been able to brag, as a 13 year old, that on the contrary I'd been shagging myself stupid with a bevy of 13 year old females! Alas ....

Geopol, I'm not disputing that the "seal of the confessional box" is a consideration. I wouldn't call it an issue. And certainly I wouldn't call it the central issue that the media - whose role these days appears to be to sensationalise and to distort, rather than to report and clarify - appears bent on making it into.

[zombie]

One has to excuse my short responses Pim, not only with shoulder this new note pad has a mind of its own with a zoom in and zoom out button that appears out of no where. one second the page is at the right size, next second its zoomed to small to read..technical in it....in short not all priest are child abusers but the confessional is flawed is what I was conveying.

Not ever being a religious type nor a religious upbringing, the confessional is not something I am familiar with other than what I have seen in comedy sketches, so asking the wife she states the confession should not be for repeat offenders. If a priest confesses to child abuse then he should not confess his sins then go out and repeat those crimes over and over again, the priest on the other side of the box has a duty to take action.

If not then they are equally as guilty as the offender, surely regardless of the sanctimony of the confessional.

[geopol]

There may be something quite revealing, intentional or not, about juxtaposing "sanctimony" with "confessiona"l! I rather like it anyway.....

[geopol]

ABC news at 6.00am reported incidents of child abuse covered up by the catholic church as late as 2005 .Certainly in the eyes of non catholics the church is very much on the nose and it seems, after having watched 7.30 last night, in the eyes of a lot of catholics themselves, including some religious, the leadership itsefl, if not the church , is under severe suspicion .....

[geopol]

ABC news report:
www.abc.net.au/news/2012-11-14/lawyer-claims-church-fails-to-comply-with-abuse-protocols/4372512

[geopol]

In Ireland, that most catholic of countries, there is "legislation that requires proests to report abuse admitted in confession or face up to five years' jail." ( front page of today's SMH) Why should the catholic church and its agents have such a priveged position bestowed upon them in this country? The examples of the abuse being made public this weeek alone are sickening!

[pim]

Geopol I can't deny that there's a head of steam building up over mandatory reporting of a penitent who confesses child abuse to a father confessor. Apparently that mincing poodle Christopher Pyne has decided to grandstand about it and to demand that priests be subjected to mandatory reporting laws. I suspect his motives.

You fight battles you know you can win. There's more than an element of "the catholic church is vulnerable on this one so here's our chance to kick it in the guts". It's put in its most extreme form by Matt on Jody's NTB1 board when he breathlessly and hysterically proclaims the imminent destruction of the Catholic Church.

Yeah, right .. I thought this was supposed to be about potecting kids and healing the walking wounded, not about using their suffering as a vehicle for his (Matt's) own agenda to strike out at a religion he has a "thing" about.

In a superficial way to require mandatory reporting laws to apply to priests who hear confessions in the same way as they apply to schoolteachers and health workers appears a no-brainer. If you believe (and I'm not saying you do) that Catholic confession in which a priest confesses to another priest is nothing more than one paedophile passing on grubby secrets to another paedophile, then we may as well go the whole hog and demand that the Catholic Church be declared a criminal organisation. That might be popular on boards like NTB but out there in the real world I doubt it would get very far.

What we are really talking about with Catholic confession is a ritual whose religious significance and importance is deeply felt and held by Catholics. You have to consider the law of unintended consequences which in this case, instead of ensnaring the gulty, would make martyrs of a lot of priests who would defy the law - not to protect paedophiles but on deeply felt and sincerely held religious grounds. The Catholic Church is no stranger to being martyred. Especially in its Irish manifestations! Ever sing that verse from the hymn Faith of our Fathers?

Our fathers chained in prisons dark
Were still in heart and conscience free
How sweet would be their children's fate
If they, like them, could die for Thee.
Faith of our fathers, Holy Faith!
We will be true to Thee till death!

That's what the civil authorities could find themselves up against if they passed a law imposing mandatory reporting of what is said in confession. Do they want that fight? I doubt it! It would would be a distraction that would divert attention away from the suffering, past and present, of kids and into a more sensationalist and unproductive direction. In short, it would be a stupid move.

[zombie]

The confessional is not there to absolve sins over and over again, the sanctity of the confessional is meant to repent your sins and seek redemption.

To move offending priest on to another place to re offend over and over is a sin, and this is what the church has done.

The question is why..??

A directive from the Vatican's Lawyers..??

Indeed as Geo states Priest are not a higher moral authority, thye should pay for their crimes and those that protected them.

[geopol]

Well pim, why have the Irish passed a law concerning catholic clergy, the confession and child abuse? The catholic church has many special priveges, in law even, and to cry out that it is being martyred or could face martyrdomj is self srving crap! Pell knows that as well as I do!

[pim]

Geopol I don't have all the answers. I can only speculate. Why did the Irish legislate for mandatory reporting? I dunno but what I guess is that the debate in Ireland has followed a pretty similar trajectory to the one being followed here and their responses have been pretty similar. We're all only people for goodness sake and we love our kids. Nothing, but nothing, upsets people more than kids being raped. Do you think I don't understand that too, and do you think I don't also have an emotional response? I have kids who are now adults and and in the past year or so they've made me a grandfather. If anyone did anything like that "to these the least of my brethren" my own reaction would be to want to tear that scumbag limb from limb.

I'm not defending the Catholic Church and I'm no fan of George Pell. I want to see justice done and I want it to be seen to be done. If that means that the Catholic Church is thrust in deep crisis as hundreds of its clergy are convicted and chucked into the slammer for raping kids then so be it. This is not just a legal crisis for the Catholic Church, this is probably a bigger moral crisis than when the Vatican helped Nazi war criminals escape justice by helping them get to South America. It's probably the deepest spiritual crisis for the Catholic Church since Pope Pius IX lost the Papal States due to the Italian Risorgimento and whinged that he was a "prisoner of the Vatican" - which meant that the Catholic Church had to come to terms with the triumph of the secular state and the loss of its status as a power among other powers. This one is important because once it lost its status as a power with territory, and an economy, and taxes, and subjects and armies it had to find another role for itself and so the Papacy went for "faith & morals" - an empire of souls.

For the past 140 odd years, give or take, the Catholic Church has seen itself as the West's "conscience". Every Easter and Christmas the Pope duly comments on the state of the world from a moral point of view and the media dutifully reports it. No matter what you or I might think personally, when the Pope speaks, the world takes notice. Such is the moral authority of the catholic church. Agree with it or disagree with it, the moral authority of the catholic church is an estalished fact. So when Pell fronts up to the Australian media he honestly believes he has the full weight and gravitas of that moral authority behind him. And in an important sense, he's right. He does have that moral authority. What he doesn't get is that the issue of child abuse by priests is the most serious threat to the catholic church's moral authority since the catholic church started asserting its moral authority back in the 1870s. He should be begging for forgiveness, not complaining that the catholic church is being singled out. A bit of humility by this prelate would go a long way.

As for Ireland, I'm not surprised that they've gone down the mandatory reporting path. I'm still sceptical. What if Irish priests start refusing to break the seal of confession even if it means they go to jail for contempt of court? I guess we'll see, won't we! I still think it's a distraction and there's a danger that it will divert the important work of the Commission from more productive pathways. If people start saying "I cannot comply with this court order to divulge what has been disclosed to me as a priest hearing the confession of a penitent. I am bound by my vows as a priest of God and the Church." It would be Thomas Becket all over again. Last time "Caesar" tried to help himself to that which is God's was when Henry II had Becket murdered. It ended badly for Henry. I think he had to strip down in the snow and submit to a flogging by priests.

[geopol]

I do not see the Becket business as having any relevance at all in modern Australia or the rest of the world either. Excomunication these days does not carry the same force as it did then.....Church participation is falling apart, certainly here....There is a shortage of priests and most of the leadership is old and worn out....Even Pell himself seems to be tired and hardly capable of reflection and empathy, preferring shibboleths and condescension.

[pim]

I was making a rhetorical point, Geopol. You're an educated man, I was being a teensy bit flippant. I still think that it's a bad idea that won't work. I disagree with the assumption behind it that some people hold which is that confession is about paedophiles confessing to paedophiles. I think the proposal is a secular response to a religious issue which I don't believe will make kids any safer, and I think those who push the idea may be well-motivated (while others are opportunistically using it as vehicle to push a "bash Catholics" agenda - such as Matt) but they disregard the law of unintended consequences which states that the measures you implement to address problem X might unexpectedly create another problem Y.

Waleed Aly examines the issue in today's Fairfax media www.smh.com.au/opinion/its-essential-we-think-outside-the-confessional-box-20121115-29equ.html

[geopol]

More on the nature of the church and its dealings concerning child abuse and the legal system:
www.smh.com.au/national/church-funding-paedophiles-legal-defence-20121115-29evv.html

[pim]

I'd already read it, Geopol, but thanks for putting it up there. Valid points - hells bells, that's about as limp-wristed as Pell rabbiting on about "first cab on the rank". I repeat, I carry no brief for the Catholic Church and I want the royal commission to mae kids safer. If that means a lot of criminals in priestly garb end up in the slammer then thank God! But I fail to see how targeting the seal of confession as the main game - or silver bullet - is going to make kids safer by catching the bad guys. It's a bit like the argument that identifies the rule of priestly celibacy as the silver bullet. No it isn't. A paedophile is a paedophile is a paedophile - whether married or single. And there's no shortage of married paedophiles. If we're going to exchange links to op ede pieces - and I admit I started it - Annabel Crabb writes good sense: www.abc.net.au/news/2012-11-16/crabb-stopping-abuse-goes-way-beyond-the-confessional/4374522

[geopol]

What you have said about paedophiles is I supose, axiomatic as it were. What is getting up the noses of so many is nort just the abuse, as sickening as that is, but the handling of it, the denials and deception, the scheming, the lying and the calculated difference of the catholic church for so many victims over such a long period of time. The catholic dhiurch has a most privileged postion in Australia; it is supposed to preach the gospel and in so doing it has taken superior moral stances over so many issues and has demaded subission from its adherents in matters moral and spiritual, so much so that many people are disgusted and want he church to undergo the rectutude that modern society demands.... The broader community is calling for changes and that is what is behind the outcry for the royal commission.