G-G’s real failing was to his vocation May 27 2003

Hollingworth has been judged by different standards because he was a priest, and so he should have been, writes Angela Shanahan.

When Peter Hollingworth was appointed Governor-General there was a bit of a flurry over giving a churchman the job. There were vague mutterings about the separation of church and state – although in truth no one really took it seriously since we all seem to accept that the church isn’t a powerful enough force for us to worry about the appointment of an Anglican bishop as head of state.

I remember being asked about this on ABC TV’s Lateline. My reply was that I was more worried about the effect on the church than on the state – since I couldn’t see how a priest, Christ’s representative on Earth, could put aside his lifelong vocation for the infinitely lesser one of governor-general. This was treated rather dismissively by my debating opponent who – obviously no expert on religion, and typical of the secular consensus – simply ignored that issue and pointed to the hallowed Sir William Deane as the exemplar that Hollingworth would have to imitate.

Just as well then that Sir William, a committed Catholic, was not still in office when the Embryo Research Bill was presented for royal assent. It would have been interesting to see if that presented him with a problem of conscience. It obviously didn’t worry Peter Hollingworth, so in that respect it seems the fact that Hollingworth was a former bishop didn’t affect his tenure as Governor-General at all.

No, the impact Hollingworth’s priestly vocation had on his secular status was quite different. He was not perfect enough. As Governor-General he was not allowed the same malleable conscience as he had displayed in his previous role of bishop. Although he didn’t do anything illegal by using his episcopal authority to effectively protect a pedophile – even if morally that was not his intention and he simply exercised poor judgement and underestimated the situation (portraying the girl as a Lolita) – it is interesting that in Hollingworth’s case the public wouldn’t buy the notion that a man can have one set of standards before he was given the office and another after.

In short, even if he had been an imperfect bishop, he was certainly supposed to be nothing less than a perfect governor-general.

It goes without saying that any candidate for the office of governor-general would have an imperfect record in his past career. Perhaps it was to be expected that a bishop who had been a vocal critic of government would have a record of candid brilliance. However, neither his keen supporters, who point to the fact that he didn’t do anything illegal and that he is a victim of hysteria, nor his most severe detractors, who judge him as complicit in child abuse because of his inaction, are quite right about what has forced Hollingworth from office. It was actually that we expected more of Hollingworth. That was the problem. Hollingworth in fact was being judged by different standards from any other governor-general. Why? Because he is a priest.

It was to be expected that any taint of child abuse would be seized upon by his and the Government’s opponents, and this of course is the reason his downfall was inevitable. This particular crime has been portrayed recently as a peculiar failing of priests. But it isn’t good enough to say the clergy are being picked on – although to some extent they are. A better understanding of why the public has reacted to Hollingworth’s negligence in the way they have is to be found more in the lack of clear sexual morality of the times rather than some kind of stringent moral backlash.

In other words, as Frank Devine so wisely set out in a recent edition of Quadrant magazine, it is not simply the evil of child sexual abuse in itself that we are reacting to, but the lack of any other taboos of a sexual nature. So we try – because we need to see some order in nature – to define taboos according to the age of the participants.

In this kind of climate it’s not hard to see why Hollingworth – who hasn’t acted illegally – didn’t want to bow to pressure to go. He went essentially for a sin of omission – a sin committed at a time when he was a very different sort of representative.

But for me, and in the eyes of many other people of faith, Hollingworth’s real failing was not that he behaved negligently as bishop and administrator, or had old-fashioned views about Lolitas, or even that the office of governor-general was brought into disrepute. No, the Australian state is vigorous enough to withstand that.

His real failing was in his priestly vocation. He was judged by different standards because of his priesthood – and he deserved to be.

Peter Hollingworth’s failing is two-fold. It is in the damage caused to the public’s perception of the priesthood; but more important it is in his living of a vocation that should have precluded him from accepting the office in the first place. That’s the real tragedy of the Hollingworth saga.

Angela Shanahan is a Canberra writer.