AUSTRALIA
The Conversation
Kathleen McPhillips
Lecturer, sociologist of religion and gender at University of Newcastle
It is the long-held view of Cardinal George Pell and other senior Catholic officials that the sexual abuse crisis is an issue primarily about the moral failure of individual priests and not related to church culture itself.
In other words, the church institution cannot be held responsible for the evil of individual priests.
Observing the Royal Commission
On Friday, I sat in on day four of Case Study 16 at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse being held at the County Court in Melbourne. I’d been there all week – and morality itself appeared to be on trial.
Case Study 16 is investigating the Melbourne Response, the redress scheme that the then Archbishop Pell established in Melbourne in 1996 to deal with the growing number of people reporting child sexual abuse by Catholic priests. After a harrowing first day on Monday listening to three victims read distressing statements detailing their abuse and then their attempts to seek redress, the lawyers managing the Melbourne Response gave evidence and George Pell joined in on a video link from Rome.
Pell caused general outrage when he compared the offending priest to a truck driver who molests a woman he picks up by the side of the road. His analogy: the behaviour of the truck driver is not the responsibility of the trucking company and similarly the behaviour of the offending priest is not the responsibility of the church.
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