AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
March 19, 2015
Chris McGillion
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”.
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.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.