Archbishop in the Hot Seat but Will Conviction Be Sledge Hammer Approach

By Chris McGillion
Sydney Morning Herald
March 19, 2015

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/archbishop-in-the-hot-seat-but-will-conviction-be-sledge-hammer-approach-20150319-1m2qcl.html

Archbishop Philip Wilson. Photo: David Mariuz

Archbishop Philip Wilson of Adelaide is not the Pope and he is not Cardinal George Pell. People need to remember this when digesting the news that he has been charged by NSW Police with concealing child sexual abuse while a priest in the Hunter region in the 1970s.

This is big news but not quite as big as many seem to be assuming and not for the same reasons.

Media coverage of the action against Archbishop Wilson has emphasised that he is the most senior Catholic prelate to have been charged by civil authorities in connection with child abuse anywhere in the world. That may be so but he is not the only senior Catholic prelate to have been hauled before the civil courts. In September 2012, for instance, Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph in the US state of Missouri was convicted of shielding an abusive priest in his diocese and given a two-year suspended sentence.

Ask any Australian Catholic who Bishop Robert Finn is and you will probably get a blank stare. Ask any American Catholic how much of an impact Finn's conviction has had on his or her faith and the answer is probably "None at all".

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In many people's minds the Catholic Church is defined by the bulk of its churches, schools, hospitals and assorted office blocks or by its rigid and highly public chain of organisational command. But the fact of the matter is that religious identity is deeply ingrained in culture and tradition and religious faith and practice is primarily a matter of intimate personal commitment.

If Wilson were the Pope, the foundations of the Catholic Church might be shaken by the charges laid against him – but, even then, only so far and only for so long.

Outside of Adelaide, and perhaps Wollongong where he served as bishop between 1996 and 2000, Wilson would be hard to pick out of a line-up. Hence the second point to remember – that he is not Cardinal George Pell.

Until he left Australia to take up a position as the Vatican's financial tsar, Pell was the most identifiable face of any religious leader in the country. And he had a personality to match: big, bullying and boisterous.

Pell's take-no-prisoners approach in defence of his conservative understanding of Catholicism earned him many enemies. His belligerent appearance before the Victorian Parliamentary inquiry into child sex abuse in May 2013 – whatever the substance of his comments, and there was much which tended simply not to be believed - won him no friends.

By the time he testified before the Royal Commission in March last year, it was clear that in the eyes of many victims, many frustrated Catholics and many media commentators, nothing short of Pell's head on a plate would satisfy demands that the Church finally be brought to terms for years of mismanagement, neglect and too often appalling handling of child abusers and their victims.

But none of that applies to Wilson: he is a popular and responsive churchman. Himself a canon lawyer, he has been a member of the canon law societies of six countries. During his time in Wollongong he embraced the spirit of attempts to deal decisively with allegations of abuse against clergy, suspending one priest on the grounds of "balance of probabilities" and "unacceptable risk" – rather than waiting until the tougher civil law criteria of "beyond reasonable doubt" had been met. For his efforts, Wilson was taken on by the Vatican and his decision was overturned.

Archbishop Wilson is also highly respected among his fellow bishops. The fact that he has been elected to two terms as President of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference (2006-07 and 2008-09), holds the position of vice-president and is a member of important bishops' commissions is a clear sign of that.

And herein lies the real significance of the charges against him.

If Archbishop Wilson is found guilty, the Church in Australia will have lost a rare clerical talent at precisely the time when it faces the daunting task of reforming its internal culture, rebuilding its image and restoring its standing with the public in the wake of the child sexual abuse crisis.

If Wilson is found innocent – which, it should be mentioned, he insists he is – the case will only have revealed the extreme complexity of pursuing prosecutions in these cases and raise the real possibility that "the system" that seeks to do so will be weakened as a result.