BishopAccountability.org
	Ronald Conway — the " Celibate" Psychologist Who Helped to Screen Catholic Trainee Priests in Melbourne Broken Rites April 14, 2009 http://brokenrites.alphalink.com.au/nletter/page196-conway.html Since 1995, Broken Rites Australia has been researching a prominent Catholic psychologist, Ronald Conway, who practised privately for many years as a counsellor in Melbourne. Ronald Victor Conway (born 4 May 1927) was educated at Catholic parish schools. He left school early but later returned to study and eventually worked as a secondary teacher. From 1955 to 1961 he taught English and history at De La Salle College in Malvern, Melbourne. He had a Bachelor of Arts degree which included studies in psychology. From about 1960, he developed a role for himself as an honorary consulting psychologist at St Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne. He also had contacts with the Melbourne Catholic archdiocesan welfare agency. Through such avenues, various clients were referred to Conway for private counselling. Conway died in March 2009. In an article in the Weekend Australian on 21 March 2009, federal politician Tony Abbott wrote of Conway: "He never contemplated joining the priesthood (as might have been expected of a bright young man of his temperament in that era) and never seems seriously to have considered marriage. He seems largely to have come to terms with any demons of his own and, in any event, chose not to make a spectacle of himself." Celibacy and abuse Conway wrote books and newspaper articles about Australian society. He also appeared in radio and television discussion programs as a psychologist and social commentator. In his newspaper articles, Conway had a detached, ultra-realistic view about church personnel who breached the rules about celibacy and chastity. He said that "clerical concubinage" and clerical homosexuality had been commonplace in church history. He pointed out that being "celibate" merely means not being married. Judging from articles he wrote in the 1990s, Conway evidently believed that the incidence of actual abuse — that is, church personnel committing a breach of professional ethics in their pastoral relationship with children or vulnerable adults — was not a serious as many other people thought. In July 1996 a Christian Brother was convicted of indecent assault (for repeatedly putting his hand inside the pants of an eleven-year-old boy in a classroom in a Catholic primary school in Ballarat, Victoria). In an article in Melbourne Age (25 August 2001), Conway claimed that this Brother (who was named in Conway's article) "was seen by some students as more a nuisance and embarrassment than a threat". (Conway evidently thought that this Brother's criminal offences and ethical breaches were no big deal.) Hands-on counselling Conway took a similar elastic view towards the professional ethics of a psychologist. Beginning in 1995, Broken Rites heard from males who received psychological counselling from Conway when they were young. Conway sexualised the pastoral relationship (with intimate sexual touching), they said. One of these males ("James", born in 1945) told Broken Rites in 1995 that when he was aged 15 he was having behavioural troubles, so his mother sent him to see a Catholic psychiatrist, Dr Eric Seal, who in turn referred him to psychologist Ronald Conway. James had counselling sessions with Conway for two years in the early 1960s at Conway's home, which was then situated in Torrington Street, Canterbury, in Melbourne's east. There, Conway touched him sexually, James said. James says that Conway took him to a clinic (James thinks the clinic was called the Newhaven) in Melbourne's eastern suburbs, where he was placed under the drug LSD as part of Conway's counselling. While James was under the LSD, Conway touched him sexually, James says. Conway also used LSD on clients at St Vincent's Hospital, East Melbourne. The use of LSD in "counselling" was common in the 1960s and '70s but its use was later discredited. In the early 1980s, Conway moved to a house in Swinburne Avenue, Hawthorn, in Melbourne's east, and he continued seeing clients there. Sometimes Conway would develop a close friendship with one or other of his psychotherapy clients — for example, a young man who had consulted Conway about a sexual problem. Sometimes one of these males would move into Conway's house as a full-time companion. This raises a question of professional ethics. Is a psychotherapist allowed to develop an intimate relationship with a vulnerable person who has come to them for professional help? Screening trainee priests Conway was not overly "religious" and he dropped out of attending church services. However, he was well known in Catholic circles and this connection helped him to develop his career as a psychotherapist. For many years, Conway was a consulting psychologist for the Melbourne Catholic archdiocese. From about 1970 onwards, he developed a part-time role at Melbourne's Corpus Christi College seminary, where he "screened" men who had applied to train for the priesthood. (He referred to his "screening" role in an interview published in the Melbourne Age on 6 April 2002.) This seminary trained priests for all the dioceses in Victoria and Tasmania. Conway wrote, in an article in the Age on 1 August 1996: "Until about 1970 there was no effective psychological screening for candidates wanting to study for the priesthood or teaching brotherhood. Today that is not the case." It is unclear how this "screening" worked and to what extent Conway was involved in it. Broken Rites has investigated the case of one Melbourne trainee priest, Paul David Ryan — and Ronald Conway certainly became involved in this case. Ryan was originally a trainee priest at the Adelaide Catholic seminary but was expelled half-way through third year. Despite this, Bishop Ronald Mulkearns, of the Ballarat Diocese in Victoria, accepted Ryan as a candidate for the priesthood in that diocese. In 1972 Mulkearns sponsored Ryan for admission to the Melbourne seminary. Despite his poor references, Ryan was admitted and he stayed at the seminary for five years. It is unclear why a reject from the Adelaide seminary was accepted into the Melbourne seminary. It is not known whether Ryan was one of the applicants who were screened by Conway at entry but Conway certainly became involved in issues surrounding Ryan in 1976, as explained below. Broken Rites possesses copies of church documents, including correspondence between the rector of the Melbourne seminary (Fr Kevin Mogg) and a Father John Harvey in Maryland, U.S.A. (who specialized in "ministry to homosexuals"). During his Melbourne seminary training (according to the church documents), Ryan "had been regularly involved in overt homosexual behaviour with other students; altogether perhaps about six others were involved." The church authorities went ahead with Ryan's ordination, which took place in Ballarat in May 1976, and he was due to be given an on-going appointment to a parish in the Ballarat diocese for early 1977. But the news of his ordination alarmed a Ballarat mother, who complained to the diocesan authorities that Ryan sexually abused her teenage son (with disastrous consequences for the son) while Ryan was doing work-experience in a Ballarat parish during in the final year of his course. The church authorities still intended to keep Ryan as a priest but they realised that this mother would go public if she saw Ryan being appointed to any Ballarat parish — and this would damage the respectable image of the Catholic Church. The church authorities went into damage control. In late 1976 (according to the church documents) the seminary asked Ronald Conway to interview Ryan. Conway then wrote a report on Ryan and referred him to Catholic psychiatrist Eric Seal. On 18 November 1976, Dr Seal wrote to the rector of the Melbourne seminary (Fr Kevin Mogg), saying that he [Seal] had received a comprehensive report about Ryan from Ronald Conway. Following the reports by Conway and Seal and after further discussions, the Ballarat diocese "solved" the problem of the angry Ballarat mother — the diocese arranged for Ryan to be given a trip to the United States in 1977. Church documents (in the possession of Broken Rites) state that Ryan was allowed to work in parishes in the U.S., where he committed sexual crimes against a number of American schoolboys. And, after returning to Australia, Ryan was also allowed to work in parishes in western Victoria, where he again committed sexual crimes (consisting of repeated indecent touching) against more boys, one of whom later committed suicide. Paul David Ryan was jailed in Australia in 2006 for his sexual crimes. It is not known what Ronald Conway thought about the abusive behaviour of Father Paul David Ryan and similar church-offenders. Did he think (as he said in the case of the Christian Brother from Ballarat who was jailed in 1996) that Ryan's kind of criminal offences and ethical breaches "more a nuisance and embarrassment than a threat"? Perhaps we will never know. As stated by politician Tony Abbott (who was briefly a trainee Catholic priest at a seminary in New South Wales): "He [Conway] seems largely to have come to terms with any demons of his own and, in any event, chose not to make a spectacle of himself." FOOTNOTE Broken Rites is continuing its research about Ronald Conway and also about the "screening" of trainee priests in Australia. For the full story of Father Paul David Ryan, who was interviewed by Ronald Conway at the Melbourne seminary, see our article entitled "Church kept an abusive priest - and one victim committed suicide".
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.