Catholic Child Abuse Saga

[Sieveboy]

Gerard Henderson is a columnist I like, because I know exactly when he is wrong:

Whenever he puts pen to paper (or finger to keyboard).

However, even by his low standards, that article was horrible. Normally he scrapes together a few supporters in the comments section.

[slim]

Wow - Gerard didn't manage to blame the left for this one. He's slipping...

[DanDare]

This was a top response

It is not a matter of being 'unfashionable' at all, rather eroneous.
Hart and Pell followed mere scripts,casting all blame upon a dead predecessor, both were defensive, at times condescending, and Pell too often spoke as if having to condescend. Hart's comment of 'better late than never' as reply to the inaction of process revealed a great deal. Hart seeemd to find his quip funny. Beter late than never? Too late for too many victims.
You do the Catholic Church no favour Gerard Henderson by providing yet more justifications and excuses. By hiding the Church behind the cover of strict jurisdictional boundaries all you do is make the Church look not only robotic but utterly callous in its (in fact) knowing of perpetrators but not acting because such actions lie in another jurisdiction.
It is people like you Gerard who have helped build the bimage of the Church as nothing more than a bureaucratic structure, devoid of heart, devoid of human ability to respond, devoid of any prophetic core which can see through the artifices of demarcation and jurisdiction.
You say others have no understanding of the Church? Good god man, it is you have no understanding of the basis of the Church, instead finding comfort in its structure for structure;s sake. Your faith is a mere convenience so to bolster your own contempt for society.
CommenterLumenierLocationSydneyDate and timeJune 04, 2013, 6:32AM

[Sieveboy]

Originally Posted by DanDare

This was a top response

For a supposed writer and person of authoprity and merit, it is incisive to see his wall of text destroyed in about 200 words.

[Neil Richardson]

The point that Henderson makes about the Catholic Church in Oz being a grouping of unrelated fiefdoms accountable only to the Pope, not parts of a branch of a monolithic, transnational heirarchy with a national head, raises other questions. Would the movement of offending clergy between dioceses to keep that offending secret, constitute an act to pervert the course of justice? Why would the gaining bishop not ask his losing colleague about the reason for transfer? Where did the money to pay the compensation to victims of abuse come from? Those administering this large pool of funds must have known it was hush money and also be guilty of conspiracy to avoid a just outcome. If somebody tried to take legal action to close down a diocese as being a threat to the local community, who would provide the funds to defend the matter? Some of these matters seem to have been addressed in only general terms or avoided by the NSW and Vic enquiries. I hope the RC delves much deeper into who knew what and when.

[Sieveboy]

And there are more victims:

The number of Victorian children abused in the care of the Catholic Church is almost 40 per cent higher than originally estimated and the real figure could be even higher still.
The church now says it has upheld the complaints of 849 abuse victims, not 618 as stated in its original submission to Victoria's child abuse parliamentary inquiry.
Church spokesman Father Shane Mackinlay said there were victims who were still unaccounted for, even after taking into account new information from other sections of the church .
"It's still not comprehensive because apart from those five entities there are other religious orders who didn't appear at the inquiry and haven't done this sort of collation of information," Fr Mackinlay told AAP.

Fr Mackinlay said the church had acknowledged throughout the inquiry's hearing that the numbers presented were not comprehensive.
The latest figure takes in information uncovered by five church entities - including the Christian Brothers, the Salesian order and the St John of God Brothers - as they prepared for the inquiry's public hearings, and these were presented to the committee, Fr Mackinlay said.
There are about 90 entities within the Catholic Church that were not called before the inquiry.
Fr Mackinlay said the number of unaccounted-for victims would not be "enormous" as those summoned to appear were called because they had the most complaints.
"The ones who have been most significant in terms of this are the ones who have appeared," Fr Mackinlay said.
The new figures were submitted on June 6, one day before the deadline for written submissions.
Asked if the church could have prepared the numbers in time for the public hearings - at which the number of 618 victims was frequently quoted - Fr Mackinlay said the church had done it as early as possible.
"This is the earliest opportunity we've had in working with the detail of the figures and reconciling them," he said.
The church's priority was to help and not count victims, Fr Mackinlay said.
In its submission the church said its two complaints bodies, the national Towards Healing and the Melbourne Response for the Melbourne archdiocese, were the only processes that held centralised records and and so were the only ones readily available for inclusion.

Extracted

The church's priority was to help and not count victims, Fr Mackinlay said.

Now Father Mackinlay, you forgot to end that comment with now and I would add it is only because you have been made to put the victims by immense pressure from many people.

[Blue Lightning]

ALA says Church must reveal true figures

The Australian Lawyers Alliance is calling on the Catholic Church to reveal the accurate number of victims known to it in the Victorian child sexual abuse inquiry.

The Catholic Church in Victoria confirmed on Friday (June 7) that it accepted the authenticity of 849 child abuse complaints, made since the 1950s, against 269 male and female clergy and lay persons.

Those the Church said have been found guilty include 114 brothers, 98 priests, nine nuns, two seminarians, 42 lay people and two listed as 'unknown'.

ALA spokesman Dr Andrew Morrison SC ... said these figures are far from the complete story because two-thirds of the Victorian diocese was not included in those figures and the Church is aware of at least another 90 cases.

“It is not acceptable to wait for the Royal Commission to call for this material and then start the process of producing it. If the Catholic Church is genuine in saying that things have changed, it will produce relevant files as soon as possible,” said Morrison.

The current numbers were revised up by the Church, which, in its original submission to the Victorian inquiry, said it had paid compensation to 620 victims.

Earlier this year, Cardinal Pell said that he had reviewed the Towards Healing files in the Sydney archdiocese and was unaware whether any of the complaints upheld by the Church’s own internal inquiries had been reported to police.

“We know from the Victorian inquiry that none of the abuse involving the Catholic Church there, including the period when Cardinal Pell was Archbishop of Melbourne, has been reported to Victorian Police. It is a reasonable assumption that a similar failure to report serious criminal conduct, accepted by the Church as having occurred, has also been the case in NSW,” said Morrison.

“The ALA would like to see frank disclosure of all of the abuse and of the abusers in each of the dioceses of the Church throughout Australia.

“The abusers should forthwith be reported to police in NSW whether under Section 316 of The Crimes Act or under its precursor common law provision. Only then will the church be able to credibly claim to have changed its ways.”