Never again will the Catholic Church be part of my life

By Elise Elliott
Herald Sun
February 23, 2016

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/never-again-will-the-catholic-church-be-part-of-my-life/news-story/672510dba74f0961ce069fcdad366e97

The ripple effect of abuse is astounding.

Cardinal George Pell will give evidence via video link.

Reports of abuse and cover-up have made the church hollow to me.

I WAS brought up a strict Catholic. I attended a Catholic convent school for 13 years and was taught by nuns.

My family went to mass every Sunday. As a little girl I cherished it: those massive doors, the cool serenity of church, the shafts of sunlight piercing through the stained-glass windows, the sombre magnificence of it all.

By the age of five I knew all the prayers by heart. Most memorable was the Penitential Rite: “I have sinned through my own fault, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do.”

In my 20s I no longer attended mass regularly, but I would sometimes stop in to a church after going for a run, just to rekindle that sense of reverence and reflection.

But now, as a woman, I can no longer go inside a Catholic Church. The reports of abuse and cover-up have made the religion hollow to me.

I know at least six people who have been abused by priests. Some are friends, some family friends, others are relatives. Their harrowing stories are depressingly similar: they were singled out and preyed upon by someone they trusted and revered. They were too scared to confess for fear of going to hell.

Too often families did not want to believe — and could not conceive — this could happen. Relatives looked on bewildered as victims turned to self-harm and substance abuse. For many, suicide was the only path to peace.

Matty was 15 when he was abused. At the time he was a great athlete and a Christian Brother at his school took a keen interest in him.

“I thought he was a great role model,” Matty says. “Then he turned up at my house one day when Mum and Dad were at work and raped me every conceivable way for an hour and a half.

“Afterwards, he literally put the fear of God into me. He said, ‘Don’t bother saying anything, no one will believe you. I did it because I love you’.

“He took my soul. He took my self-worth.”

Matt never ran again and for the next 25 years he says he sabotaged every good relationship he had because he hated himself.

“If I could come out the other side without killing myself or wanting to kill someone, that would be a miracle,” he told me. The pain culminated in a suicide attempt when he was 40.

Another abuse victim crippled by shame was the son of family friends. I remember he “went off the rails” and it was a considered a shock as “he was from such a good family”.

After repeated abuse at a boy’s boarding school, he fell into crime, suffered from poor mental and physical health, drug addictions and relationship breakdowns.

In a recorded submission to the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into the Handling of Sexual Abuse in Religious and Other Organisations, his parents admitted they had no knowledge of the abuse until more than 20 years after it happened.

Their son had never disclosed the abuse to anyone, despite needing surgery after one violent attack.

That is what makes me so furious about these cases: the ripple effect of such abuse is astounding. The splintered soul’s parents, friends, siblings, partners and, in some cases, children all feel the devastating impact.

I’m not only angry at the paedophile priests but also at the efforts of the Catholic Church to hide these abhorrent crimes. That is an affront to the morality it pretends to preach.

Irish statesman Edmund Burke said: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Think again of the Penitential Rite: “I have sinned through my own fault, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done … and in what I have failed to do.”

It’s the aching frustration felt by so many abuse survivors and their families — the fact Catholic Church members knew of the abuse but ignored it or dealt with it internally.

Cardinal George Pell has been excused from fronting the commission in person for medical reasons. Instead, he will give evidence via video from the Hotel Quirinale in Rome.

That’s a shame.

While some victims will fly over to see him give evidence, I’d like him to look into the broken and bewildered souls of all the abuse survivors back home.

“It’s an example of the cowardice and hypocrisy of the church in full swing,” says Matty, now 48.

With the aid of professional help he has given evidence at the commission. It was an empowering experience for him.

“Before then, at night the dark memories of abuse would pick my lock and enter my room. Now, I can still hear them scratching at my door, but I’ve changed the locks,” says Matty. “They’re not coming in my door.”

And I won’t open the heavy doors of church ever again.