My views of the Catholic Church in Australia - about the Confession

This is a letter I sent to the Archbishop below. It expresses my deeply felt feelings about this shocking practice. In addition I will add that it should be understood that the entire Canon was revised in 1917 by the then Cardinal Secretary of State in the Vatican, Eugenio Pacelli (the future Pope Pius XII). So these "sacred" laws are not "inviolable laws of the Church". They are nothing of the sort. They were written by a man; not received carved in stone in some Moses like event. 

  

His Grace Archbishop Peter A Comensoli

Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Melbourne

Your Grace,

Re: The Confession and "weasel words".

Few things get up my nose and arouse my ire like injustice and people, or organisations, using "weasel words" to try and escape scrutiny and to try and maintain their authority! It is almost as if their only "crime" was to be caught! Doesn’t seem to matter what they did. 

In relation to the recommendations of the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuses, you have stated that the church welcomed the extension of mandatory reporting to priests, but maintain that the seal of confessional could not be broken. 

"The keeping of the seal in fact might in real ways enhance the safety of children not put them at further risk," you are reported to have said. 

You explain that this was because of the anonymity the confessional offered to children.

"The breaking of the seal is not likely to lead to child safety, it's more symbolic than a practical solution," you are reported to have said.

Not likely to lead to child safety! And keeping the seal might in real ways enhance the safety of children!! These are children, abused children, vulnerable children! Words fail me – I’m staggered that anyone, anyone, would make such a claim. Your hypocrisy is breathtaking.

Weasel words indeed! It seems your need to protect the "Sacred" institution of the Catholic Church takes precedent over all other considerations.

In relation to your statement, mentioned above, you will be well aware of what follows – but it is worth repeating.

The Confessional:

This requirement was originally imposed in the Middle Ages, at least in part, by church leaders who expected priests to interrogate penitents and learn if they might be heretics. 

Confession and the authority to grant absolution also greatly enhanced the power of the priest. With sins absolved, the believer would gain heaven. Without absolution, death could bring the spiritual pain of purgatory or the eternal damnation of hell.

It would appear that from the very beginnings of the confessional, practices varied widely among both priests and laypeople. Some clergy emphasized compassion and forgiveness and faithfully kept secret what they heard. Others exploited their power and the information captured during the sacrament. The 11th-century monk Peter Damian (1007 – 1072) famously excoriated clerics for the sexual abuse of minors, which often began with the penitent-confessor relationship. In the later Middle-Ages apparently, criminality among confessors was widespread and entrenched. Much of the criminality involved sexual assaults and priestly transgressions against the church's sexual mores.

So, as you can see, nothing has changed! There is nothing "sacred" about the "seal of confession" – quite the reverse. At best a priest should be acting only as a counselor for a troubled parishioner, someone to talk openly with – not hide behind a screen. Hiding behind a screen while confessing, to God presumably, is hypocritical in the extreme. I ask, where is God in all this? Is God only "up there", or is God "everywhere" (as I strongly suspect)? If God is everywhere there is no place to hide – least of all behind a screen! 

Furthermore does a "paedophile sinner" require absolution from a priest – also possibly a "paedophile sinner" himself? Please!! 

More importantly, does an innocent child’s emotional and psychological future weigh less than a mature, if ethically challenged, adult who knew exactly what he (or she) was doing? The Catholic Church has no claim to any moral authority while it hides behind its so-called inviolable "laws of the Church". They are nothing of the sort.

Has nothing moved in the Catholic Church? It’s high time you realised that this is the 21 Century – 2000 years (and counting) after the birth of the man you profess to worship – the man of justice, the man of peace, the man of love and a man of God – and the man who loved children! 

It is a few centuries, I believe, since a Pope had the power to keep a kneeling King waiting in the snow for an audience! Today, Secular Law most certainly takes precedence over Canon Law.

Canon Law can be changed. It’s not as if it is written in stone by God! Men, men of the Church of God, devised and wrote the Canon Law. Men can change it.

If you do nothing I strongly believe that the decline in church attendance will continue at an accelerated rate as trust, that most fragile asset, is further eroded. And you will continue to suffer the censure of many in the public arena. 

The requirement for celibacy is another long story!

I will be very interested in any response you may offer.

Yours "faithfully"

Andrew Campbell-Watt

Catholics priests, Paedophilia and Cardinal Pell’s response.

Something is dramatically wrong when a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, the titular head of the Catholic Church in Australia, Cardinal Pell can say (in apparent justification) that, and I quote from the Weekend Australian newspaper dated 11-12 November 2012, despite the Catholic Church having received hundreds of complaints of child abuse and notifications of paedophilia in New South Wales and Victoria he believed “it was no worse than any other organisation, and had been unfairly vilified”.

I find this statement astounding, utterly beneath contempt and unworthy of any “organisation” – particularly a church like the Roman Catholic Church. Cardinal Pell is obviously looking after his position and is protecting his back. The statement was obviously made to protect the “image” of the Church and to diminish anyone who dares to criticise the activities of the Church and its ministers.

It would be well for Cardinal Pell to recall the words of Jesus (King James - Matthew 18.6):

 “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believes in me, it were better that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depths of the sea.”

As I understand it the whole point of a “Church” is that it espouses spiritual values and is supposed to guide, to nourish, to uplift its members. The whole point of priesthood is the (supposedly) spiritual training priests receive which is (supposedly) designed to make them “better” that the average parishioner so that they (the priests) may better minister to the needs of their “flock”. 

It would be well for Cardinal Pell to also recall the words of Jesus (King James – Matthew 22. v37 - 40):

 “37. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

38. This is the first and great commandment.

39. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

40. On these two commandments hang all the laws and the prophets.”

How can anyone trust an “organisation” such as the Catholic Church that breaks its own Laws, with children, innocent children; breaks the COMMANDMENTS, no less, of Jesus and then have its leader (Cardinal Pell) say, “We have been unfairly vilified?”

This statement beggars belief. Not only should a Royal Commission be set up to investigate the many hundreds of accusations of paedophilia and abuse but Cardinal Pell should stand aside from his position until this whole messy business is sorted out and the Church “cleansed” of its defilement.

I paraphrase Oliver Cromwell and say to Cardinal Pell and the Church hierarchy, “You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately ... Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”

(For the record - I am a non-practicing Anglican).

The Catholic Church and women priests

What do they think they are doing? Isn’t it extraordinary that the Catholic Church, in the 21st century, is apparently treating the ‘elevation’ – if that is the term – of women to the priesthood by ordaining them as a “grave delict” that can lead to the immediate excommunication of the people involved. In other words, in the eyes of the Catholic Church this is a ‘wrong’ that ranks with paedophilia and sexual abuse! Really? As far as I know, all priests and Popes, past and present, were all born of a woman in the normal manner. Even Jesus was born of a woman. Most men have a very soft spot and a great affection for their mother and most people had their first life experiences and basic education from their mother. In fact there is an old Roman saying “educate a woman and you educate a family, educate a man and you educate an individual.” All the men in the Catholic Church, including the Pope, as with all men everywhere learned from their mother. So why the antagonism against women as priests? They would just be carrying on where they left off, as it were, and instructing and helping people generally.

The Catholics say that because Jesus had only male apostles, only men can become priests. But then no one knows what was in the mind of Jesus when he chose his apostles or what criteria he used for the choices he made. The present church authorities have no idea what the actual, day by day, social situation was, in Palestine, when Jesus is supposed to have started his ministry in, about, the year 30 of the current era. It was after all a very turbulent time in that part of the world. Possibly the situation was too dangerous for women to travel on missions, as the apostles had to do. I know that men (and male children) traditionally tended the flocks of sheep and goats because, I suppose, they were better equipped – physically stronger – to protect the animals from predators. Maybe women had not the time – looking after children and keeping the home for their menfolk as they did.

Women (and the female of the species everywhere) are the traditional nurturers and carers of the young and are better equipped physically and emotionally for the role, than men. After all God created men and women didn’t He? The Catholic Church cannot ignore 50% of the population because of something that is supposed to have happened two thousand years ago. Men and women together would give a far better balance to the priesthood and, I suggest, make it a better organisation. It would also alleviate the current shortage of priests if women were ordained. I also suggest that it is because of this very bias towards males in the Church that the present problems – sexual abuses – are so prevalent. And who knows what happened in the cloisters and monasteries in past centuries before the age of mass media and the internet – men are men and have sexual urges regardless of wherever they are and in what age they lived. Celibacy is unnatural and the effects of trying to enforce it are now very evident.

And what about Mary Magdalene? What was her position in the early Church? She was, after all, very close to Jesus. The Catholic Church needs to rethink its position on women very carefully. Their recently affirmed attitude has certainly upset many women, including my wife.