Church Millions Should Have Been Spent on Other Worthwhile Projects
By Terry Sweetman
IT IS a sad state of affairs when even the faithful send me jokes and cartoons reinforcing coarse images of priests as pedophiles and adulterers. But that's one measure of the harm done to the institution of the Catholic Church by its lax oversight of its servants, its infamous attempts to cover up their sins and its need to put its own reputation above the care of children and the delivery of justice. Like many, I was pretty unimpressed with evidence and the demeanor of Archbishop George Pell before the Victorian parliamentary inquiry into the handling of child sexual abuse. Suffice to say, it will be interesting to see if he can demonstrate more conviction when he appears before the Federal Royal Commission with its powers of coercion. Time (and cross-examination) will tell if the representatives of other institutions (including other churches) are any better at explaining the betrayal of children and others and their failure to properly atone or make amends. There is much murky water through which we have to trawl but we are at least getting a handle on the extent and the financial cost of sexual abuse to institutions both spiritual and secular. In its submission to the parliamentary inquiry, the Catholic Church came to the conclusion that at least 620 Victorian children had been abused by its clergy in the past 80 years. Pell, who believed the response he initiated while archbishop of Melbourne had made the church a safe environment, gave evidence that after 242 cases of abuse were uncovered in the 1970s, there were 82 in the 1980s, up to 24 in the 1990s and a "handful" in the 2000s. How many of those victims received payment from the church, said to be capped at $75,000, was not stated. However risible as that payment might sound when stacked up against the damage done, it potentially adds up to serious dough for a church that presumably could find much better things to do with its money. In a more secular environment there were some interesting figures tucked away in last month's Federal Budget papers. Under the heading Defence Abuse Reparation Payment Scheme, it was revealed that the government had put aside $83.9 million over two years for "reparation payments and related expenses as part of its response to the DLA Piper report of the review of allegations of sexual and other abuse in Defence". That reparation was capped at an even more miserable $50,000 for victims. The next item noted the government would provide $37.1 million over the same period to fund a taskforce as part of its response to the Piper report. The taskforce isn't expected to finish its work until this time next year, but divide $83.9 million by $50,000 and you get a rough idea of how calamitous the finding is expected to be. And that total of $115 million is to be met within the existing resources of the Department of Defence. Anyone who thought that money might have paid for, say, the sharp end of a ship is entitled to be pretty peeved that it will go towards paying for sexual predation and serial abuses of power and authority. Churchgoers are similarly entitled to be angry that money they might have given for pastoral support, missions abroad or other good deeds will be used to pay the price for the perversions of an indeterminate number of priests who were ill-recruited, badly supervised and cynically protected. And taxpayers are entitled to wonder whether such compensation for criminal behaviour really is the sort of charitable endeavour that allows our churches to claim exemption from paying taxes. * * * Sting from casual racism just as nasty I HAVE no more than a passing interest in Aussie rules, but still I can't escape Eddie McGuire. His latest brush with infamy came in the form of a stupid King Kong remark that was offensive to Adam Goodes. McGuire has made an apology of sorts and eaten some humble pie but still the beat goes on. The most sensible comment I saw was from Harry O'Brien who stood up for McGuire but got stuck into Australia's propensity for casual racism. The most stupid comments came from heaps of people who bleated about political correctness and basically said footballers should toughen up and learn to take a joke, just like the wogs, dagoes, reffos, balts, chinks and poms of decades past. When are some people going to wake up to the fact that it is not up to us to decide what is hurtful? It is up to the people who are the targets of casual idiocy. We might have survived the era of ritualised insult to strangers, but that doesn't mean it wasn't hurtful to those we branded with silly names. There can't be a married man alive who hasn't learnt to his cost that his idea of a joke can be a mortal insult to his wife. Yet we can't get it through our collective heads that casual racism does hurt those to whom it is directed. We all like to think we have a great sense of humour - until the joke is on us. Contact: sweetwords@ozemail.com.au
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