Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s: Why the royal commission is good news for the Church

Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and give to God what is God’s. For too long, the hierarchy has kept many things from Caesar. In transferring offending priests from parish to parish, failing to bring them to the attention of police, the Catholic Church has behaved as if it is exempt from the legal demands of living within the community.

Yet, nothing in the way that Jesus lived and died suggests that his followers must remove themselves from worldly laws. He challenged those laws which kept people from God, but acknowledged the distinction between what God expects and what the law demands. He submitted himself to both the rabbinical court of Sanhedrin and the judgment of a Roman prefect because under the conditions of his time, these were where his actions led.

The Catholic hierarchy has operated in the opposite way, even though the sexual abuse of children is both sinful and criminal. There are a number of explanations for this. The cultural and historical context for clergy abuse and church cover up has been comprehensively canvassed by Bishop Geoffrey Robinson and researchers at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Both dwell on the structures of power in the church, the dominant patriarchy and the culture of compliance, along with the broader social milieu of sexual liberation.

But context does not necessarily absolve. In order to argue that the Catholic Church does not have a monopoly on these elements, that such abuse occurs in similar organisations, one would have to assume that the role of the priest is similar to a teacher, social worker, counsellor or doctor. It is not. This is what the hierarchy seems to have failed to grasp. It is not simply that the parish priest is a figure of trust, for we come to trust many others who serve similar functions in the community. The priest has his place in the spiritual aspirations of the faithful – he is an agent of God.

The betrayal of a sexually abusive priest is thus deeply manifold. The victim is betrayed, as well his immediate and future family. The community surrounding the priest is betrayed, including teachers who cannot get past barriers put up by trauma. Other priests and religious who are good people and do good work are betrayed. The institution is betrayed, its significance and authority indelibly stained.

Yet church leaders have found it convenient to presume that attacks from outside the church on this matter are by anti-religious opportunists. They miss the fact that such people better understand the depth of betrayal because they more readily perceive the priest as ordinary, not someone invested with special invincibility – a person who committed a crime and is subject to reasonable laws. These transgressions are not sins of the past, to be compensated away. They are living memory for far too many people.

Moreover, the settlements, internal reviews and inquiries have so far been found grossly inadequate, belying the sincerity in which grievances have been received. Victims and their families still do not feel validated in their grief and outrage. Theirs is a pain that will continue to bleed as long as the contrast between the treatment of abusers and victims is not decisively corrected.

The pain extends to a lesser degree to Catholics who have not been directly affected. They have been twice unmoored – once by the revelation that predators had prowled among them, and second by the realisation that no one was at the gate. That even when it was found off its hinges, no alarm was raised and no one fixed it. The shepherds were in fact colluding with the wolves. It is an unnatural state and an abomination in the eyes of God.

In truth, we have been rendered mute by the stark pattern of abuse and cover-up. It should be marked that the silence of the laity has not been one of tacit support for the handling of allegations, nor of apathy toward victims. It has been the silence of dumb-founded horror. But it is time now to shed the siege mentality to which we have been complicit.

Whether we think enough protective measures are now in place is irrelevant. We must see the issue of clergy abuse as a bushfire that razed through our community and left many of our brothers and sisters homeless. We need a definitive and substantial account of how and why it happened and who were involved. It is important that the narrative includes those within the church who had tried to protect children. They must have a voice, too.

Indeed, we may still continue to support and endorse the priests and religious whom we know to be uncommonly decent human beings. But we can only properly defend them when we condemn the actions of those who betray us, and who continue to leave us bereft of moral guidance on this matter. So bring on the royal commission. We must finally render to Caesar what is his.

Fatima Measham is a Melbourne-based writer and former state school teacher. She blogs and tweets.

http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2012/11/12/3631095.htm