Sex abuse royal commission: Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart...

By Jean Edwards
7 News
August 26, 2014

https://au.news.yahoo.com/a/24818817/sex-abuse-royal-commission-melbourne-archbishop-denis-hart-defends-role-of-celibacy-in-catholic-church/

The Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, Denis Hart, has defended the place of celibacy in the church, even though he says it is a burden for some priests.

Archbishop Hart took the stand for a second day at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Melbourne on Tuesday, where he was questioned about the causes of abuse by the clergy.

He told the commission celibacy was fulfilling for many priests.

"I believe that celibacy, supported by prayer... is a wonderful vocation and a wonderful engagement with people," Archbishop Hart said.

"Once it becomes limited, or once it becomes turned in upon itself, then there is a danger, but celibacy rightly lived and prepared for with proper formation, I do believe has a valid function.

"I've had sufficient experience with people who've found celibacy a burden and have asked the Pope to dispense them from priesthood.

"But on the other hand, I have a much wider experience of people living a celibate life as priests and finding it fulfilling."

Archbishop Hart said people who trained in the church had high ideals.

"I'm a celibate, I'm not married, I need to have a link to God in prayer," he said.

"I need to have a balance in my life of proper friendships with other people."

He said a priest could develop "wrong attitudes" if any of those things fell aside.

"[If] keeping himself focused on who he is and what he does is being neglected, or relationships with people, there's not a balanced relationship with a group of people and a person becomes isolated," he said.

"So that they seek out situations which are plain wrong, and they minimise the consequences of that."

The royal commission heard letters of apology signed by the Archbishop and sent to survivors of child sexual abuse were almost identical.

Archbishop Hart said the reason for the identical letters was that the compensation panel for the Melbourne Response was independent and constrained by confidentiality.

"That has the undesirable effect upon me when I write a letter of apology, that I can only refer to the suffering that they've undertaken for the burden, that it may be in fairly general terms," he said.

"I do read all those letters and my apology is sincere.

"I always read them carefully, and for me it's an important way of my saying how I am shocked by what has happened, how I share in their pain, but there are limitations about what I can do."

Archbishop Hart said the church tried to change that in the past year.

"We've sought to try and get some minimal information, which wouldn't be a violation of confidence, that might try and take away the pain that a person who's suffered might feel if they feel they're just being fobbed off," he said.

"That was never my intention, and if that happened, I certainly would apologise for it.

"It was never indicated to me that this was unhelpful, had it been, I would certainly have acted sooner."

The royal commission heard the church believes mandatory reporting of abuse should exclude the confessional.

"If that were to be swept away, and I don't believe that it can be, the possibility of offenders confessing is completely gone. They just wouldn't go," Archbishop Hart said.

"In the present situation, it may be the last opportunity that an offender has to face the reality of his or her offences, to be led by the priest, either to give themselves up or to report and confront the enormity of their crimes."

He said he saw it as an opportunity for a priest to try to persuade an abuser to report themselves to the police.

"I would see that as a valuable opportunity, because if the person in going to confession has at least shown that amount of good to admit that they've done wrong, well then, if the priest can lead them to the consequences of that, well that would be of benefit," he said.

But Archbishop Hart told the royal commission he did not know if that was happening in reality, because of the secrecy of the confessional.

"I don't know that it's happened, I don't know that it hasn't happened either," he said.

He told the inquiry he did not subscribe to the view held by some in the past that the abuse of a child was considered a moral failing, not a crime.

"People sometimes had a greater deal of sympathy for a church person than they should have, and they didn't sufficiently identify the crime that that person had committed for what it was," he said.

"I would have to admit that, with what we've been doing now shows there was too much of a tendency to minimise the seriousness of the matter, and I repudiate that totally," he said.

"I would say that these crimes occurred to some degree, and that direct and serious enough action was not taken."