ARCHBISHOP Mark Coleridge’s key Child Protection Week message was to take time to listen carefully.
Preaching the homily at a Child Protection Week ecumenical service at St John’s Cathedral, Brisbane, on September 9, Archbishop Coleridge drew on the week’s national theme: “Be someone who listens to children”.
He said the theme went to the heart of the issue.
“Sounds simple, sounds easy; but it’s not,” Archbishop Coleridge said.
“I can hear your voice but I don’t necessarily listen to what you’re saying because to listen to what you’re saying I have to hear with the heart … (to what) you’re saying in a deeper way with the voice of your heart.
“That’s the listening that we celebrate in this Child Protection Week, and we celebrate it as a call to each of us – to be someone who just doesn’t hear children but who actually listens to children, listens to the voice of their heart with the ears of our heart.”
Addressing a large crowd that included Church, political and civic leaders, and staff and students from Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran and Uniting churches, Archbishop Coleridge said listening was crucial “because if I listen to you I’m really hearing your story”.
“When I was younger, many years ago, we were told that children should be seen and not heard,” he said.
“This was thought to be the wisdom of the ages, but it was precisely that kind of culture and the culture that it generated that enabled the kind of violation of innocence, the abuse, that we have seen and also its gross mishandling by those whose responsibility it was to listen, to care and to heal wounds.
“The failure to listen only made the wound worse in a world where children were meant to be seen but not heard, and certainly not listened to – they had no story to tell.”
Archbishop Coleridge said every Child Protection Week had the overarching theme, “Protecting children is everyone’s business” – everyone’s.
Brisbane’s Anglican Archbishop Phillip Aspinall officiated at the service.
Photo: Adrian Taylor
