Former Priest Judges His Church's Sins
By Graham Downie
It was hard to imagine a wandering preacher in Palestine, with a few mates and no home, planning to establish an international enterprise with offices in every town and city in the known and the unknown world, and with its headquarters in Rome. So says former Catholic priest, theology lecturer, lawyer and NSW district court judge Chris Geraghty in his new book, Dancing with the Devil, which traces his life from a child of 12 entering the seminary, through his great enthusiasm and hope from Vatican II, personal stress while a theology lecturer and to his finally leaving the priesthood for marriage and family, and a career in the law. Now retired, Geraghty remains a Catholic but sharply critical of that Church. In the book he writes, ''I had been unhappy teaching in the seminary at Springwood, before leaving to study overseas. An alien in the ranks of the clergy; attacked by silly, pompous bishops; trapped and broken in a top-heavy, sluggish institution. The old brigade was clinging onto their power and privileges like falling angels grabbing on to thin clouds as they tumbled into oblivion.'' Recently he told me, though he had the opportunity to read and learn much at the Springwood seminary, ''I felt imprisoned. I felt I was never going to be able to escape from the celibate priesthood that I at the age of 23 agreed to. … I am not talking about sex. I am talking about companionship.'' This sense of isolation began when he had entered the seminary in 1951 where the dean had told him he was too close to his family and that friendships were bad. ''I didn't realise what they were talking about at that stage,'' he says. As preparation for life in the Church, and a celibate life at that, he says his training was terribly flawed, with the authorities not warning the students that priests fall - that some do not live by their promise of celibacy. ''It was just assumed we were all going to deal with it,'' he says. He now knows there are priests in homosexual relationships. ''I never knew that then. And there are priests with their regular girlfriends and there are other priests who have very regular many girlfriends.'' And he knew of only two cases of sexual abuse while he was a priest and considered them isolated incidents. Since the time of Constantine the Church has considered itself able to police its own borders and not having to answer to the dictates of secular law. Geraghty says that in recent centuries, the Church has tended to trivialise sin and forgiveness, with minor matters such as missing Mass declared mortal sins, on the same level as paedophilia. Yet private confession made it easy to receive forgiveness. He says that to a very large extent the training of priests contributed to their becoming predators, with their sexuality being completely stunted. He believes the Church will have to fall further before it changes. ''I think the paedophilia scandal and the way the Church has dealt with it is going to trouble it maybe even more profoundly than the Reformation did. I think it will be many, many decades before the Church can find its way out of this mess.'' Yet at age 23, he and others were enthusiastic. ''We all thought the second Vatican Council was going to make all these differences and we were going to be involved in it all.'' Intimacy, sex and loneliness did not impinge on that enthusiasm. But with maturity and the realisation the enthusiasm was being crushed, ''You begin to think, shit, I'm trapped.'' He realised his life was important to him, even if not to others in the organisation. ''I am looking at this huge organisation centralised in Rome,'' he says. ''As far as I was concerned it didn't reflect the values of the Gospel.'' Ordained on July 21, 1962, Geraghty served for a short time as an assistant priest at Cronulla and then for two and a half years he completed a doctorate in theology. For about two years he was an assistant priest at Avalon before returning to the seminary at Springwood to teach theology. ''I think they saw in me the hope of the future,'' he says. ''It was the time of the Second Vatican Council and the Church was in the process of trying to reform itself.'' But during the four years teaching at Springwood he was very unhappy - at times taking valium to deal with his depression. He clashed with the then head of the seminary, the late Monsignor Tom Veech. ''He found me difficult and I found him impossible,'' Geraghty says. Monsignor Veech forbade him from discussing celibacy with the students. ''I wasn't doing that but he must have imagined I was,'' he says. ''He was an old man who was completely incompetent for the job he was doing. Though he was a great historian and scholar.'' Geraghty wanted to study sociology but the Church insisted on liturgy. So he went to the centre of liturgical study, Paris, where he learned how illiberal, conservative and threatened the Church was in Australia. In Paris he learned there were scholars who were able to ask any question, who were not confined to Roman theology but looked to sciences, psychology, sociology and history. ''They could do it all in great faithfulness and without threat,'' he says. The Church in Australia was basically anti-intellectual with priests in effect educated as apprentices. ''People were given questions and provided with answers,'' Geraghty says. It was during a brief time in Germany before returning to Australia that he met Adele, who later became his wife. Though she knew he was a priest and she was not a Christian, she came to Australia. He assumes that was to visit him. Back in Australia Geraghty taught at St Patrick's Seminary at Manly where his tensions as a priest continued. ''The bishops took great exception to the fact that I was wearing a polo-neck jumper in the seminary,'' he says. More importantly, some bishops were concerned about what Geraghty was teaching and banned him from their dioceses. He was running a post-graduate seminar on the ordination of women - a subject being discussed openly by theologians in France in 1972. As too was the possibility of enabling the Pope to retire and of the ordination of married men in the Roman Church. In 1976, a major public controversy followed a series of articles written by Geraghty for the Catholic Weekly on the new Rite of Penance. He strongly objected to changes made by the chairman of the weekly's board, the late Father Frank Mecham. Geraghty demanded an apology and was told by his lawyer the Church did not feel it needed to give one because he (Geraghty) would not cause trouble. ''They had me pegged,'' he says. ''I was docile.'' He got into his car and drove away and never went back. ''I had been disillusioned for a long time. I had been under stress and I had been bullied.'' But this was the end. ''They had me completely under control and I was not going to put up with it.'' A year later in October 1977, Geraghty married Adele in Toulouse, after he had taken a job earlier in the year with the then Health Commission of NSW while studying law part-time. The only profession he could find for which he could study at night was the law. ''There was no love of the law that drove me into that,'' he says. ''As it turned out it was a wonderful profession. I enjoyed it immensely.'' He chuckles now about the struggle to pay off a mortgage while studying for the law from 5am, working during the day and attending evening law lectures. This was greatly helped by the support from his wife. Despite his fractious relationship with his Church, he retains his Catholic faith. ''I regard myself as a deeply spiritual person,'' he says. ''Others might disagree but that is how I see myself.'' On the future of the Church, he says, ''I would like them to read the Gospel and return to the simplicity and the directness of Jesus. He was not doctrinaire, dogmatic, judgmental, excluding or someone who saw His role as regulating and controlling.'' Geraghty would like to see the Church more decentralised, the Pope less important and the ministry of women encouraged. Yet he speaks passionately about the Church and the many wonderful people who have given their lives for it. And despite his criticism of it, he says he has been enriched by it.
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