Archbishop George Pell Needs to Man up and Deal with Festering Sickness in Catholic Church
By Tory Shepherd
THE country's most powerful Catholic must address the festering sickness in his church, says Tory Shepherd. PRIME Minister Julia Gillard announced last night a royal commission would aim to expunge the "vile and evil thing" that is child sexual abuse. Meanwhile, Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney and the country's most powerful Catholic, is acting like a child just when he most needs to man up. In the face of the latest horrific allegations of systemic child abuse and cover-ups in the Catholic Church he has cried, by turns, "It wasn't me", and "They did it, too". Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox, a senior investigative cop, has revealed new depths in the scandal that has haunted the church for decades. "The church covers up, silences victims, hinders police investigations, alerts offenders, destroys evidence and moves priests to protect the good name of the church," he said. Meanwhile, the Victorian inquiry keeps uncovering new and more graphic details of abuse. But Cardinal Pell is holding his hands up and deflecting. It wasn't him, he said in the Sunday Telegraph. "It is ludicrous to suggest I was involved in some cover-up in the Hunter region. "I am not bishop of the area and have only visited there a few times. "I have never approached any politician or police official to speak of problems there, much less have I intervened to thwart justice." They did it, too, he said in a sermon: "We have to answer up for what we've done but any suggestion that we are the only culprit or only community producing culprits is entirely misleading." In both cases he's fighting straw men. People just want him to take responsibility for his institution. No one is saying he was involved in the Hunter cover-up, nor are they saying the Catholic Church is the only place where child abuse is happening. What the evidence has shown is that there is a sickness festering in the Catholic Church, a sickness that has destroyed the lives of children and their families, and that the culture in the church has protected the diseased at the expense of the victims. It is hard for the Australian public to hear the tale of a white-knuckled boy screaming in agony as he is raped, trying to focus on a St Christopher cross to take his mind off his pain, then to hear Cardinal Pell say: "It is hard to name any other Australian organisation that has done more to produce a safe environment for young people." It's clear the culture of the Catholic Church is threaded with evil. That doesn't mean everyone within it is evil. But it means anyone in a position of power has a responsibility to actively tear out that thread. Stories keep emerging of priests moved from parish to parish. The abuse does not stop at diocesan borders, or state borders, or even country borders. A federal royal commission is the only way to untangle this mess, to work out why it has happened and to stop it happening again. Where did it go wrong? Is it the insularity, the very cloistered nature of the church where men are in charge of their own little fiefdoms? Does the church's history of protecting its own make it a haven and a magnet for the depraved, who can act without fear of retribution? What role does enforced celibacy play? And this: What sort of person does not welcome a process that could find out the answers, to fix forever what is so terribly broken, to start the healing process? They're easy to spot. They're the ones, in the face of a royal commission, who are saying "It wasn't me", or "They did it, too".
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