Clare’s blog, aka rantspace

This is a very important distinction, and one that’s too seldom made in general conversation about the church, as well as in my blog.  So I’m making it now, by way of clarifying what I suspect may be misunderstood by some that read here.

There are two basic divisions, theologically speaking, within the christian church.  One is liberal, the other is fundamental; that is, there are liberal beliefs and there are fundamentalist beliefs.

The best way to define fundamentalism is to give a bit of history.  Back in about 1905 in the US, a bunch of Presbyterians got together to agree on five “fundamentals” of faith.  Those fundamentals were, and are still – the inerrancy of Scripture; the divinity of Christ; the virgin birth; the substitutionary theory of atonement (in simpler words – Jesus took the punishment for our sins); and the bodily return of Christ.  However, the term fundamentalist wasn’t really used until the 1940s, when there was a split between those who believed in asserting the fundamentals from within their existing denomination, and those who believed in separating themselves from others who didn’t firmly believe the fundamentals.  Those who remained within denominations became known as evangelicals, and the separatists as fundamentalists.

Liberals, on the other hand, are much harder to define.  The reason for this is the basic characteristic of a liberal, which is that they do not assert rules about what must be believed in order to be defined as christian.  Instead, they would probably prefer to talk about beliefs that identify a faith as christian, the most basic of which is a belief in Christ.  But not simply a belief that Jesus existed (which is fairly universally accepted, these days), but that in encountering Jesus you are encountering God.*  And let me make it quite clear, at this point, that that is not the same as believing that Jesus IS God.  But beyond that identifying belief, liberals would argue that a wide range of interpretations of the bible are possible, and that no-one has a right to label someone else a non-christian because they interpret something differently.

(Note: The fact that the word fundamentalist is now used to describe anyone asserting their belief in a fanatical way bears out the common acceptance of the distinction I am making here.  Although in a christian context, fundamentalism still also refers to belief in the fundamentals, in a wider sense fundamentalism refers to an aggressive and uncompromising approach to communicating beliefs, rather than to the particular beliefs themselves.)

These days, most major denominations comprise both fundamentalists and liberals.  The Sydney diocese of the Anglican church, for example, is fundamentalist.  Much of the rest of the Anglican church in Australia is more liberal.  The Uniting Church allows for a wide range of beliefs, so many members have liberal beliefs, but some congregations are closer to fundamentalism.  Cardinal Pell could safely be labelled a fundamentalist, judging from his public pronouncements.  Many other Catholics are not.  And this internal difference in perspective and attitude to belief is, in many cases, at the heart of intra-denominational disputes about homosexuality, the ordination of women, abortion, etc.

However, where all this related to me blogging is that I often refer to “the church” – mostly in disparaging terms   And I think it’s important to put on record that in these cases I am specifically referring to the fundamentalist end of the church spectrum.  Because to me it is not christianity, per se, that is dangerous, but the fundamentalist component of it.  And the same goes for any other religion – a faith that allows others to hold a different faith is harmless; a faith that insists that everyone should believe the same as they do, and is prepared to exert pressure (eg. claiming that if you don’t believe you’ll go to hell) or force (terrorist attacks, the Inquisition) to convince people to convert is profoundly dangerous and abusive.

Footnote:
* I am grateful to this site for this way of expressing it.

Father Peter Kennedy has been sacked from his church in South Brisbane (see here and see here), despite having the support of over 1600 congregation members. He has refused to leave, and the Catholic Church is now forecasting legal action to have him removed. Further, he has argued that mediation is pointless, given the church’s strong-arm tactics so far, and refused to be involved. The archbishop of Brisbane, John Bathersby, has even gone to the extent of saying that some sacraments performed by Kennedy were not legitimate and that he would nominate a future date for “valid baptisms”.

Why has he been sacked? Because of “a dispute over the use of lay people and politically correct language in services”. Oh, and he’s questioned the virginity of Mary! Dear me!

How ironic is it that the church would deny the validity of a priest’s ordination (by saying that the sacraments he performed are not legitimate) for simple doctrinal dissension, while sexually abusive priests are retained in the priesthood, cosseted and reassured?

Children sometimes play at “opposites”, where black is white and white is black – the church makes a living out of it!

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Follow-up: Kennedy takes most of his congregation with him to a new location, and the diocesan chancellor foreshadows the diocesan response here.

Most churches now have in place protocols for clergy.  A good many also have in place protocols for lay workers such as youth group leaders and Sunday School teachers.  But I dare to suggest that few, if any, have protocols for door stewards (those volunteers who greet you at the door and sometimes make a point of talking to you after the service).  Yet these people are at the coalface of contact between church and public, and frequently expect – or are expected – to shake hands or some other similar social gesture of physical contact.  Door stewards typically greet people with a handshake.  Sometimes they also give a kiss if they know the person.  Sensitivity in when and how and to whom to offer those things is important.

And this thought came up some time back because one church I know of did decide their door stewards should have guidelines.  Hopefully more churches will see the benefit in this, and I hope that this blog entry may provide a starting point.

Part of the difficulty is that to be a welcomer necessarily means making the first move, whether that be holding out one’s hand for a handshake or whatever.  So how does one make the first move without risking overstepping the recipient’s boundary? One could begin with the presumption that any contact is on invitation only, but how does one invite without making the invitee feel like they have no option?  For hugs, etc, it’s fine – a simple “would you like a hug?” should suffice.  For the initial handshake it’s not so easy.

Naturally when I walk into a church I’m very guarded of my physical boundaries, but that’s exactly what protocols are designed to address – the fact that not everyone is comfortable with an assumed level of physical contact. While I wouldn’t complain at being offered a handshake because I know it’s a usual, almost automatic, thing, I do mostly refuse.  My standard response is “I’m sorry, but I don’t shake hands in church”.  That’s an inordinately difficult thing to say, because of the fact that many people infer rudeness from the refusal to do something that is generally considered a social nicety.  So I’d suspect there are some “silent objectors” – people who are uncomfortable, but feel less sense of justification for taking the stand.

Situations that might need guidelines, and suggested actions:

a) Taking a person’s arm and leading them to a pew.  Some older people see this as chivalry, or appropriate for the feeble.
– A simple “would you like some help to be seated?”

b)  Stewards greeting people with a hug.
– An absolute no-no unless there is sufficient personal relationship between hugger and huggee to justify it – and even then I’d be wary about door stewards doing it, because it emphasises the difference between “those who belong” and those who are just visiting.  Welcomers should not act in such a way as to make visitors feel excluded.

c)  Touchy-feely people.  Hands on the back and arm, etc.
– Again an absolute no-no unless specifically invited. Not only because touchy-feely people are being disrespectful of others’ boundaries, but because many abusers disguise their initial/public approaches as touchy-feely. There are countless instances of proven abusers where people in the social network involved said “I knew he was a touchy-feely sort of person, but I thought that’s as far as it went”.

If I had to turn all that into set rules for door stewards (when on the job, of course), it would go something like this:

1. You may offer a handshake, although if the other person refuses you must respect that.

2. If you think a hug or a kiss may be appropriate, you must ask first: “is it ok to give you a hug?” with each and every person, each and every time.

3. If a hug, a kiss or any other form of physical contact is offered and accepted, any member of the congregation who sees it has a right to (or maybe even is obliged to) mention it to a member of parish council, who may (should?) then follow it up with the huggee to check the contact was approved by them.

4. Any relationship between a door steward and another that is acknowledged by the parties to be close enough for regular hugs should be made known to the council and the names recorded.

5. A sign in the church foyer that says “In this church we respect your physical boundaries. If someone offers you a form of physical contact, you have the right to say no” would encourage people to hold others accountable. It may also add “if someone gives you physical contact without asking first, we welcome your complaint”.

6. If a parishioner would always like assistance to get to their seat, they can make that known to the door stewards, with the proviso that they have the right to specify any individual from whom they do not want such help.

A couple of extra things: as you can imagine, refusing handshakes gets much more difficult when passing the peace is routinely accompanied by a handshake. If that’s so in your parish, it should be considered along with all this. Also, this may all sound very “strict rules and regulations” kind of stuff, but I think it will take a time of strict rules to make people realise that traditional patterns a) didn’t respect others’ boundaries, and b) facilitate situations where abuse can be disguised as “social friendliness”.

In any warm congregation there is the danger that the warmth will be abused.  And sometimes what seems appropriate at one time can feel not right at another time.  I think probably the bottom line is that of openness and accountability. That is, all physical contact is open (publicly declared) and accountable (can be called into question by anyone).

I blogged at Christmas-time about the difficulty of church-festival times of year for clergy abuse victims, and back then I said that Christmas was the worst, because it’s so all-pervasive.  But Easter has its own reasons for being considered the worst – primarily the intensity of feeling associated with it, and also the fact that it is (at least on Good Friday) a festival of grief as well as joy.  And the combination of intensity, grief and church is exactly what makes it a trigger time for abuse victims, because that’s the combination they faced daily throughout their abuse.

But for me there’s an added element – my first marriage ended dramatically and painfully on Good Friday (2001).  And what compounds the pain of that memory is that Good Friday is, year by year, a movable feast.  Which means that some years the anniversary of date and festival closely coincide, but other years there can be two weeks or more between the two, making the painful memories a long-drawn-out process indeed.  But what got me musing (and blogging) is something I’ve often said to others: if you want the religious parallels of that experience, it’s that I was so exhausted by the event that I lay down on Good Friday, and didn’t rise from my bed till Easter Sunday.  On the other hand, if you want the superstitious parallels, it’s that it happened on Friday 13th in the 13th year of our marriage!

So I was musing on the irony of being able to offer such alternative interpretations (christian or superstitious) of that event, and the pain of swinging between the two – particularly of being drawn to think church thoughts at a time which is painfully inclined to that anyway – and realised that this is the struggle I carry with me all the time.  Having grown up in a very conservative christian-oriented world/life, my interpretation of nearly everything was cast within that framework, and it’s often a struggle to find an alternative.  Yet Easter itself (not to mention every other church festival) is simply a christian overlay forced onto a much older “pagan” festival.

[There's an interesting aside here, that pagan means "of the country", and first came into use as a derogatory term when christianity became the state religion under the Emperor Constantine.  As the newly authorised religion pervaded the educated cities, "pagan" rites and beliefs referred to those of the uneducated rural dwellers, and only over time did it come to mean specifically non (or anti)-christian.]

But back to the point: the Easter festival is overlaid on a very old (more than 1500 years before Christ) fertility festival dedicated to Ishtar (Assyrian) or Astarte (Babylonian), goddess of fertility.  And the eggs, Easter bunny, hot cross buns, and even the practice of Lent, are borrowed from this much earlier tradition.  And an echo of that earlier “pagan” festival can be found in the Easter date controversies of the 3rd and 4th centuries – some christians still followed the Jewish calendar, celebrating Easter according to the date set for Passover, and some celebrated it on the immediately following Sunday, to commemorate the day of Jesus’ resurrection.  But dissatisfaction arose because in some years the Jewish date for Passover fell before the spring equinox!!  Now if religious/cultural events are all that’s important in setting the date, then the equinox has no relevance at all.  It’s precisely because the old fertility festival still carried some echoes in their thinking that the equinox was important.

I have no quibble with that; religions seeking to convert whole communities have always adopted prior-practised festivals and overlaid them with a new meaning – as, indeed, christians did with the Passover. But when the religion then promotes their own interpretation of the festival as the only right one, and denigrates other parts of it, which they borrowed in the first place, as unacceptable, they really mess with our heads

The church I grew up in went through a phase of seeking to separate themselves from the pagan associations of Easter (which name is derived from Eostre, an Anglo-Saxon fertility goddess, unlike most European languages where the word for Easter is derived from the Latin pasch, in turn derived from Pesach, the Jewish word for Passover) by calling it “The Festival of the Resurrection” instead of Easter.  And, of course, rejecting the Easter bunny and Easter eggs (but not chocolate!).  But what I think would be better is to see these traditions blended rather than separated – and not only to blend them, but celebrate the blending.  In a larger sense, to blend religious practices rather than emphasise the separatenesses.

My struggle, though – returning to my starting point – is to find a way to blend interpretations as well as practices.  And part of the struggle is that it’s hard to blend interpretations without being swept back into a conservative christian mindset (which is, perhaps, the reason why religions tend to insist on single-minded adherence). It’s hard to embrace parts of the beliefs/words/practices without taking along with them all the baggage that one grew up with as an intrinsic part of them.  And therein lies the basic trigger dilemma of a clergy abuse victim – that one can’t just dabble one’s toes in the edge of church waters, without also having to fight an internal battle against the parts of doctrine one no longer assents to.  So one gets forced into being “in” or “out” by one’s own limitations, as much as by the expectations or definitions of others.

But where I’d like to sit is somewhere where superstition and religion are equally valid.  Where miracles and magic are seen as the same.  And where love and truth and justice are recognised as just as good (ie. life-giving, or what christians would call godly) whether one finds them in Jesus or in any other person, and that selfishness and lies and injustice are just as evil (ie. life-destroying, or what christians would call sinful) whether one finds them in the worst criminal or in the church.

Or is it laughter amid the groans?

Last night my father, myself, my sister and a friend went to hear Geoffrey Robertson expound on why Australia needs a Bill of Rights.  Not surprisingly, he was impressively convincing (though I did wish for a Hypothetical on the topic), but it was the supper conversation that prompted groans and laughter, both at the time and in the reminder that popped into my head for something I’d meant to follow up on.

As usual, when my sister, father and I get together, the conversation leaps from one varied topic to another, broken by interspersed explanations to Dad, who’s missed hearing some significant punchline due to his obstinate refusal to wear his hearing aids, or emphatic point-making to Dad, whose general socio-political stance is far to the right of ours. Again not unusually, clergy abuse and church hierarchy stupidity in general formed a part of the conversation. Roberston’s reference to George Pell’s inane argument against a bill of rights (“it hasn’t worked in Zimbabwe”) perhaps put church inanities in our minds, but I also mentioned the pope’s recent effort on washing machines and the liberation of women. Jaqi, in the midst of her frenetic life and recent forced dietary headshift, had missed that spicy piece of news, and nearly choked on her supper at the ludicrousness of the pope knowing anything about the liberation of women. And I don’t want to simply repeat Jac’s own blog comment, but we did agree on a conclusion that is worth putting up on the Net in more than one place: that the pope had a point – but only with regard to women who aren’t allowed to use the Pill.  First groan.

The second arose from the memory – an irrelevancy to the topics over supper, but something I’d meant to do – that I had on my agenda to read through the transcript of Marcus Einfeld’s recent Four Corners interview, to find out just how he thought he could explain those lies he told. I couldn’t bear to sit through the actual broadcast, but thanks to Aunty’s obliging habit of posting transcripts, I could read the show later. And I found roughly what I had expected to find: a Hollingworth-esque (though somewhat more intelligently offered) self-justification full of holes. Einfeld’s “frank admission” that he simply did the wrong thing, and he’s sorry, doesn’t quite mesh with these statements from the transcript:

1) “Look I don’t want to commit myself, to commit another crime by admitting to something here, but I’m trying to be as honest as I can be so, Let’s put it this way, I, I, um, I must’ve had doubts about it [that he had lent his car to a dead friend].” Oh, so there’s another crime you haven’t been charged/convicted with here, Mr Einfeld? And your remorse doesn’t quite extend to putting your hands up to that as well?

2) “It was [a straight out lie]. And it’s, probably more shameful in a way than the driving.” Only probably, Mr Einfeld? As a judge, one would have thought that there would be no question that lying under oath is more shameful than driving 10kmh over the speed limit. As you’ve found out (but should have known anyway), the first garners you a 2-year jail term, the second merely a $77 fine.

3) On being asked wasn’t it rather tawdry to use the name of someone he admired in a perjurous statement: “I didn’t do a tawdry act. I ah, did something that I can’t explain.” Well, no. If you don’t admit that it was just cheap and nasty, then it’s hard to come up with any reason for a judge to do what he did.

4) “Ha. The joke about that is that I did know another person by the same name and I did meet her in Bangladesh, but she wasn’t the person driving the car.” Do tell me, Mr Einfeld, in what way it’s a joke that you tried to wriggle out of your lies when caught out – by telling another lie?

5) “Obviously the lie on oath is the, is the critical one as far as the law is concerned. But I treat it [all the lies told] all in the same category because I told a lie, I had opportunities to get out of it and I didn’t take them.” But you don’t put them all in the same category, Mr Einfeld, because only 30 seconds earlier, you said “That, that was a lie, but you know that was a lie to a journalist, I, I didn’t quite feel the same obligation [to tell the truth as I should under oath], if you don’t mind my saying so.”

6) “If you mean that I told more lies, um I don’t think so. Nothing of any significance anyway. I mean it would have only been follow up, the necessary follow up from what I’d said. … I possibly embellished the story with more detail but I, I don’t really think I made any significant change, no.” No, no significant change, Mr Einfeld, apart from managing to get two women to make supporting claims that they were in the car, with a dead woman, when it was caught on camera.

7) On being quizzed about the police implication that Einfeld had done the same thing (submitted stat decs saying he wasn’t driving) on several occasions before to avoid speeding fines, he said “I never lie in statutory declarations if I can conceivably have any hope of it being true. I never tell untruths.” So…what exactly was it, Mr Einfeld, if it wasn’t a lie (and given that you’ve already said it was a lie)? And did you notice the qualification – I never lie in stat decs if.  Ok, we get it. You never lie unless there’s a chance of getting away with it.

8] Answering the challenge that he’d done it before, on at least three occasions, and that it was a pattern, he said “Yes but that’s nonsense. Why would you name people who you, who actually existed? You can name people who don’t exist.” Well, Mr Einfeld, not only have you clearly done it this time, so why not those other times, but it’s nice of you to show us the way your mind works. Not “it’s unthinkable to do it”, but “here’s a much more plausible way of getting away with it”.

9) “No it’s not a lot of mistakes, I’m sorry. There were three events plus this one. I’ve admitted to this one. If I’d been called upon to meet the others I might have admitted to one of those when I’d got the facts and I’d checked up on them. …I don’t think you can accuse me of not being frank because I can’t remember the details.” But the details have been put in front of you, Mr Einfeld, you don’t have to remember them. You signed stat decs saying these people were driving your car when it was caught speeding, and in each case they were overseas (or dead) at the time. No ifs or buts. It’s not down to your memory now, and it wasn’t when you signed those stat decs. (Einfeld pleaded guilty in order to avoid those other incidents being raised in court.)

And it all came out by a mere fluke (though at least a predictable one) – the idle curiosity of a journalist. There are distinct similarities here with the unfolding of the Boston clergy sexual abuse scandal in 2002, which grew from one small journalistic question to 11,000 pages of internal church documents and several awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for public service,* for the journalistic team that uncovered the church’s lies. In Einfeld’s case, a journalist on a slow news day wondered who is Teresa Brennan, did a web search, and found she died three years before Einfeld claimed she did.

And as I read the transcript, it all had a wearying sameness to me.  Einfeld, Hollingworth, Pell, the pope… the pattern of lies, cover-up, being forced to confront their lies publicly, and a simultaneous attempt to avoid responsibility while seeking to claim honesty and remorse.  None of which is to say they haven’t each done some good things.  But life isn’t as simple as saying “he’s done X good things, and Y bad things, and the number of good ones outweigh the bad, so he’s really a good person and shouldn’t suffer the normal penalty for this crime”. The truer view is that people are a mix of good and bad, and the more they promote the good and conceal the bad, the greater compartmentalism there is in their lives and the greater unreality they come to live in. Einfeld’s actions here demonstrate a wilful intent to go against all his judicial career stands for, and he still won’t just say “yes, I told a tissue of lies, I convinced other people to tell lies for me, I sustained it over quite a long period of time, including after it was first uncovered, I only admitted it when I had no choice, and I deserve all I get”.  So, second groan.

But wait, there’s more… (do I hear you groaning?)

Einfeld, of course, as a judge, should have known better. But at least his career doesn’t rest on claiming the moral high ground. His job is to administer the law (which is codified morality), not to define it. Church hierarchy, on the other hand…  which musing brings me to my third groan: I’ve been looking at just how many convicted clergy abusers may well still be in active or semi-active ministry.  Certainly very few are defrocked (see the perpetrator list section of my website for explanation on the difference between licence [aka faculties] being revoked – which is temporary, or defrocking – which is permanent).  And I’d like to see a church which actually believed that a conviction for child sex offences resulted in automatic defrocking, but not even the Uniting Church (perhaps the best of the lot in terms of policies) does.  But if one were to place articles 3 and 30 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (“Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.”[emphasis mine] and “Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein” side by side, one might interpret that as saying that the church is acting contrary to human rights principles when it reinstates convicted child sex offenders into the priesthood, thereby implying their good ability to uphold the “security of person” to which their congregants are entitled.

Which takes us back to Robertson. Robertson’s premise is that a Charter of Rights would provide an informed platform from which to argue for rights-based treatment of any application of law. So if a judge, for instance, made a decision that was contrary to the principles of the Charter, it could be pointed out to him, and change requested. And that, over time, people would come to expect that decisions informed by rights principles would be the norm. And as he detailed rights achievements over the centuries, he quoted the Magna Carta: “We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right”. A basic human right, understood for 800 years, which is regularly ignored by the churches in dealing with clergy abuse victims. But if history can repeat itself, with systematic abuses of power causing the common people to force the authority figure to bow to their insistence on their rights, perhaps there is still hope that clergy abuse victims could receive better treatment from the churches.

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Footnote:
* The other awards were: the Associated Press Managing Editors’ Freedom of Information Award, the Goldsmith Prize for investigative reporting, the George Polk Award for national reporting, a medal from Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Selden Ring Award for investigative reporting, the Sigma Delta Chi award for excellence in investigative journalism from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Taylor Family Award for fairness in newspapers, the Worth Bingham Award for investigative reporting, the New York Times Company’s Punch Sulzberger Award, a media award from the Massachusetts Association for the Treatment of Sex Abusers, and the Spirit Award for Media Responsibility from Jane Doe Inc., a Massachusetts coalition against sexual assault and domestic violence.

Barack Obama, as a left-of-centre president, was always going to get panned by the Vatican, but it’s happened in a far more laughable way than I could have imagined possible!  AAP reports that Obama has been criticised by the Vatican for overturning a ban on state funding for overseas abortion clinics (see here).  But it was the form of the criticism that had me astounded – though I should be used to the breathtaking superciliousness of the church by now.  The Vatican official ascribed to Obama “the arrogance of someone who believes they are right”, and further added that “What is important is to know how to listen… without locking oneself into ideological visions”.

If there’s one group of people who are arrogant enough to believe they’re right (and threaten those who think differently with eternal damnation!), and who are locked into an ideological vision to the extent of being unable to listen, it’s the conservative church!

Having grown up in a Christian family (one side of it, anyway) and having developed as a child a fondness for some series of books that have a quite strong Christian basis (in both the series I’m thinking of, the characters’ faith is a significant part of their lives, though in a mostly very practical way), when I re-read any of the books as an adult, I find myself approaching the depiction of the characters’ faith in a quite different way.

For instance, I no longer accept the argument from one character to another that the outcome of questioning the existence or the goodness of God is too awful to contemplate.  In one book, a character says “Don’t even begin to think that [ie. that God doesn't exist], because if it were true it would make everything we do worthless and the world pointless.”  My perspective now is that such reasoning is badly awry.  If God doesn’t exist, it may indeed make some things that we do worthless (though not all), and it may make the world pointless (but I don’t believe it must), but surely it would be better to believe the truth than to bolster ourselves into some artificial sense of purpose by holding to a false belief?

But back to my point: the book I was reading today had a character explaining to another that it’s unreasonable to question God, and say he’s cruel, when something bad happens unexpectedly.  And she gave the analogy that when a child doesn’t understand something its parent does, it doesn’t immediately turn round and say its parent is cruel – rather it remembers all the good times and trusts its parent, and says “I’ll wait, and one day I’ll understand.”  And it occurred to me that such an attitude is one of the most dangerous ways to approach our “why” questions.  Dangerous because it encourages an avoidance of the hard questions, and a consequent vulnerability to evil.

How?  Because evil first has to be recognised as evil.  Then it has to be fought.  And if our response to bad or frightening events is to ascribe them unquestioningly to a good God, with some good (though not understood) purpose, then we risk failing to discern between bad things caused by (or not prevented by) God, and evil happenings which should be fought with all our ability and strength.

Take, for instance, child sexual abuse – particularly by some intimate or trusted figure.  It is all too easy for Christians to say (as many do after the event is known) that God must have allowed it for a purpose.  But such an attitude comes perilously close to accepting evil without question, and encourages a response of inactivity, albeit under the guise of “allowing God to deal with it”.  This, in turn, makes allowing God to deal with it simply a cop-out so that we don’t have to.  Those same people who say that would be quite likely to say – in other, less confronting circumstances – a) we are God’s instruments, b) God helps those who help themselves, or c) we are on this earth to fight against evil.

So it seems to me, the biggest question is not “why did X happen?”, but rather “what are we going to do about it?”  Because it is our response to bad happenings that will determine whether we protect ourselves (and others, such as children) in future, by not just accepting what comes as inevitable (“sent by God”), or whether we allow bad people who do bad things to get away with it.

One of the longterm results of sexual abuse is the ever-present possibility of “triggers” (circumstances, events, objects, words, songs, etc. which serve as unbidden reminders of the abuse and triggers of abuse-related emotions, body memories or post-traumatic reactions).  And when the abuse is church-related – and particularly if the victim was devout and actively involved in a religion and its practices – the circumstances around the abuse frequently encompassed the majority of the victim’s time, social circle, faith, beliefs and activities.  This all-pervadingness presents a special kind of dilemma, where the victim – in standing up against the wrongness of their abuse - loses nearly every aspect of their life, and the potential triggers are correspondingly all pervading.  Phrases that people use that happen to be in hymns, symbols that may have been part of the victim’s religious life, events that may somehow be linked with events during the abuse – all (along with many other things) can serve as painful and difficult reminders.

Christmas and Easter are typical examples which are almost impossible to avoid (Christmas is worse, because more people celebrate the religious meaning of Christmas than Easter), so this time of year is a difficult one for clergy abuse victims.  For many victims who have taken action against their perpetrator, these “festivals” are made even more painful by the thoughtlessness (or deliberate intent) of the church.  For example, this year, a few weeks before Christmas, the Catholic Church announced a review of their “Towards Healing” abuse complaint process, and asked for victims’ comments on their experiences.  There was, of course, a deadline.  So if any victims wanted to be involved in the review process by offering comments, they had to revisit their complaint process, analyse and document the toughest parts of it and how the church made it more painful, and do it all within a few weeks, at a time of year which is already extraordinarily difficult for them.

Other victims tell of frequent examples where they have been required to document something, decide something, or deal with something to do with their complaint immediately before Christmas or Easter.  It is such a frequent occurrence, it makes it hard to believe it’s all purely accidental.  One could try to dismiss it as the church wanting to deal with business before the holiday, but given how busy a time of year it is for them, it seems unlikely that they would suddenly place a priority on dealing with abuse complaints rather than church activities, given the long waits for action that victims suffer at other times of year.

By sheer weight of the frequency with which this kind of thing happens, victims are forced to the conclusion that churches do it on purpose – force them into making decisions at a time when they are least fit to do so, thereby giving the advantage in the complaint process to the church, for whom it is purely a business arrangement.

Just occasionally, religion actually appears to do something good.  Jews, Muslims and Christians have got together to draft a charter they can all sign, based on the golden rule (treat others as you would have them treat you).  This is an online global campaign, and not limited to these three religions – even atheists and agnostics are invited to participate too.  The Age has covered the story here and the charter website is here.

Cynical question: How long do you reckon it will be before fundamentalists come out against it, saying that it doesn’t cover the basics of their faith?

Ok, this is really simple.  I came to blog on a new topic, re-read the most recent one, and thought: I just have to make this point.  In the previous blog entry to this one, Haines is “defended” with the argument that he didn’t really know what he was doing because he was sexually inexperienced. And, let it be said, this is not an unusual defence for Catholic priests to offer, or, indeed, for the Catholic Church to use in their own defence. But if inexperience is such a danger, then why doesn’t the Catholic Church simply lift the restriction on celibacy?