Trust in Catholic Church lost ‘for generations’: adviser

By Rick Morton
Australian
February 18, 2016

http://tinyurl.com/z9qk2ax

It will take the Catholic Church “two to three generations” to regain­ the moral authority it had before the revelations of widespread, global child-sex abuse and attempts to cover it up, according to a cultural adviser to the Vatican.

John Haldane — a Catholic philosopher in Australia for a semester professorship at Notre Dame University and a series of 13 lectures titled The Good Society, its Nature and Foundations — said the rebuilding of trust was “no small question” .

“Even within Catholicism itself it has been recognised that sexual exploitation by the clergy is a particularly heinous offence, so heinous that it cannot be ordinarily forgiven or absolved,” Professor Haldane told The Australian.

“The effect on the church ... is for it to lose respect and authority. On this rebuilding, it is not going to happen in the lifetimes of people alive today. I think we are looking at two or three generations.”

Part of Professor Haldane’s lament­ about modern society is its inability to prosecute arguments in a reasonable and civil manner.

He said he was moved after hearing a “compelling, human argument” of the father of two sexua­l-abuse victims yesterday in which the father made the case for victims travelling to Rome to hear Cardinal George Pell give evidence to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

“This would, he said, create the conditions for the existential real­ity of that suffering to be present in the room at the same time in which he (Pell) was giving evidence,” Professor Haldane said.