By Peter Bugden
THE biggest challenge for the Church in dealing with child sexual abuse is to address its culture and tendency to be self-protective of its image, Truth, Justice and Healing Council chief executive officer Francis Sullivan said in Brisbane recently.
Mr Sullivan was guest speaker at Brisbane archdiocese’s Assembly of Catholic Professionals lunch at the Hilton Hotel on September 11, during Child Protection Week.
The TJHC co-ordinates the Church’s engagement with the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
Mr Sullivan outlined the key messages arising for the Church out of the Royal Commission.
“The key message is that, one, the Church needs to fess up to its history, which is very confronting,” he said.
“Two, it needs to demonstrate that, as the Pope (Francis) is saying, that it is adopting a zero-tolerance culture, regardless of the impact on individuals and regardless of the impact on loyalties.
“The Church needs to demonstrate that the victims are the number-one priority and that the instinctive sort of self-protection of image that the Church has operated out of is a thing of the past.
“And finally the Church needs to do everything possible to always facilitate people being able to tell their story.”
Mr Sullivan said the biggest challenge for the Church was “addressing its culture – the tendency it’s always had to be protective, to be, in a sense, overly cautious, to be running a very conservative, risk-management approach to sex abuse which makes its structures legalistic and rigid and harsh”.
He said that approach was “not reflective of what a Church is meant to be about”.
“It’s not reflective, if you like, of the heart of the Gospel,” he said.
“It certainly doesn’t in any way reverberate the language of the current pope when he’s talking about a Church like a field hospital, a Church with a disposition of moving into a marketplace and getting involved, dealing with misery and risking the compromise that that brings.”
Commenting on whether he was optimistic about the Church meeting the challenge, Mr Sullivan said “in my experience, the Church leadership has accepted 100 per cent of our advice and recommendations to date”.
“They have totally accepted the fact that we now need to embark on a reform process for the Church in the areas of handling of sex abuse, in the areas of the training, in the protocols, the transparency, the auditing,” he said.
Regarding unknown victims who may be suffering without having disclosed child sexual abuse within the Church, Mr Sullivan said: “Like every other institution we should be making it clear that we are not a bulwark trying to resist the stories coming forward”.
“The Church needs to be a place with a ‘Welcome’ mat,” he said.
“We’ve got to give people the signal that their stories are important.
“It’s hard for people to tell their story.”
About bearing responsibility and moving on from the Royal Commission, Mr Sullivan said “sure, the Church leadership bears the responsibility of the past”.
“We as a Church people carry the shame of the past and it’s time for the adults in the Church to come out,” he said.
“And it’s simply not enough to just sit back and wait and watch. It’s time to stand up and do.”
