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1. It is well past time that the the hierarchy of the institutional Church realise that it isnt a matter of the People of God maintaining faith in Christ, rather it is that we have lost confidence in the hierarchy.Our faith in Christ is not at issue, nor is our faith in the Body of Christ.
   It is well past time that the hierarchy of the institutional Church in this country, and internationally, stop hiding behind all the People of God. The vast majority of us normally have such little say, but suddenly we are being moved into a postion that we all are under scrutiny. No, we actually aren't, but the hierarchy and its self-interested processes are.
   Normally the hierarchy speaks loudly and often without any regard to the views of the laity or of the Spirit that is no servant to the agendas of self-interest. A hierarchy always speaking on our silenced behalf.
   And now drawing us alongside as if equals. But shields are never equals. They will be discarded when the battle ends.

   Posted By: Mark Johnson

2. It is bad enough, although probably understandable, that the secular press can't get their facts right, but surely CathNews knows something about the Catholic Church.
   Cardinal George Pell is not the head of the Catholic Church in Australia.
   There is no official Head although, if you are looking for a spokesperson, it would be the President of the Australian Catholic Bishops' Conference, who is currently Archbishop Dennis Hart of Melbourne!

   Posted By: Margaret Naylon

3. It takes great Faith in Jesus Christ, to maintain any faith in our own institution when we see how many victims have been so traumatised by members of own Church.
   Sexual abuse never leaves the victim even if some manage to maintain their external life activities.
   It is obivious that our church has failed to adequately address these issues with humility compassion and real repentance.
   I realise our Bishops have tried and I support them in this but much more needs to be done.
   It is no time for us to be defending our behaviour, there are too many skeletons in our collective cupboard. We all need to pray for everyone involved in this upcoming Royal Commission.

   Posted By: Margaret M. Coffey

4. Mark: You say, '. . . we have lost confidence in the hierarchy.'
   Just how did you arrive at this all-inclusive 'we' who have lost confidence in the hierarchy
   And when and how has the laity been silenced?

   Posted By: John

5. Mark: I wish you peace and hope that grace will ease your anger towards the Church.
   Without a hierarchy and a visiable structure, the Christian message and the Word of God would not have been so faithfully preserved and enacted throughout history.
   We are a Church of sinners finding our way, led by the Holy Spirit and drawing our strength from Christ in the Eucharist.
   Our leaders operate in good faith with a genuine concern for all people, let us not judge them as they perform this important mission.
   Here is something to think about, most child abuse happen in families not organisations.
   Should we reject the institution of family because the people in them do not know how to deal with these horrors when they arrise. I would so no.
   The Church is also a family, operating in good faith and with trust. We are all hurt when people sin so badly but the solution to healling resides in the family of the Church, hierachy and all.

   Posted By: Ian Spencer

6. I don't know where Mark Johnson enjoys his life experience of all factors of society, including religion, but he certainly needs to find a way to learn to forgive if he wants to be a healthy person.
   Ask any psychiatrist or psychologist.
   Better to be healthy first, as I feel the people chosen to conduct the Royal Commission will be.
   Then, I suspect his participation to investigate and analyse the social problem that not only religious institutions but all Australian social institutions is suffering and with great hope will bring about change.

   Posted By: Mary

7. Every Bishop has to support the Enquiry; they are key to any investigation into the Rape and Assault of children. So to any other CEO's of any similar organisation/institution.
   It is not a choice!

   Posted By: D.Davies

8. The emphasis on child sexual abuse in the church, while a tragedy in itself, is not the only abomination for which the church should be answerable.
   What about a child, belted by a nun, whose posterior and upper legs were black - because he jumped over a puddle when warned to keep away from the water.
   And the young couple who were ordered out of church for speaking during the service.
   And the 10-year old refused communion because he had been talking during the consecration. No sympathy from clergy who were approached regarding these matters. And still I kept faith because these were times were God was testing my faith.
   I have loyalty to my beliefs, I am a practising Catholic, but I have little respect for many of the clergy, particularly at a high level. There is a ‘boys club’ which closes ranks when difficulties arise.
   The time has come for them to be answerable to the people. The people are the church - the leaders should be there to guide, protect and show compassion to those who seek their help.
   May God give them the strength to create a future when people will not have to be ashamed of their actions and we will have what Jesus brought us - a community where people love and care about one another at all levels.
   

   Posted By: pat

9. To John, wondering how Mark arrives at the inclusive 'we': Let me tell you he speaks on behalf of the many disillusioned Catholics, many of whom have left the formal church because they have no voice in their own parish.
   Where I come from, the Bishop is unapproachable and ignores correspondence from parishners. And I suspect it's far more widespead than just my parish.

   Posted By: Ingrid

10. The progressives have come close to destroying our wonderful church.
    The hierachy needs to become stricter and follow the traditions set down by the Vatican.
    Pat: the church is not a boys club as shown by our devotion to our Mother Mary.
    By the way - why dont't we say the Hail Mary anymore.
    I would assume the progressives got rid of that to please non-catholics.
    I have certainly not lost faith in the hierachy as Pope Benedict XVI is reinstating tradition back into our church.
    We will overcome this as Jesus himself gave the keys to Peter the first Pope.(By the way Peter was part of the hierachy!)

    Posted By: David Rabe

11. Ian: Everyone thinks abuse happens in families but it's reckless to imply that because it does it mitigates clerical or religious abuse, or that failures to deal properly with it there mitigate the failures by leaders to deal with it in the church.
    If there is a key issue that is most exercising the criticism of and animus towards the higher Church officials it is the perception of their collective lacklustre or ambivalent response and reluctance to admit the gravity of their institution's failure and apparent readiness to pass the buck. Mark's point is apparently that ArchBishop Hart's rallying call to the faithful to keep faithful to Christ comes across as a mistimed attempt to rope in the persons still in the pews as moral support at a time when it's hot in the kitchen, when the usual modus operandi is that bishops speak and expect pewsitters to simply do as they're told. In other words, it's a bit rich!
    Think of this: 85% or thereabouts of baptised Catholics don't go to church and many would not follow Church teaching in everything and if they do in anything who's to say it's not by sheer coincidence?
    There'll be lots of reasons for this statistic, but it's a reasonable assumption that whether any of them come back or some of the remaining 15% decide to leave will depend in part on whether the hierarchy can convince they are responsible and humble, as opposed to merely feeling misunderstood and humiliated.

    Posted By: smk

12. Many Catholics have not lost confidence in the hierarchy. Just the ones that are brainwashed by media.
    I hope that her administration is also subject to this commission and every politician will agree to having their lives scrutinized.

    Posted By: Laurie

13. Ingrid: The Catholic Church is larger than your diocese and it takes more than suspicion to establish fact.
    All Catholics have a responsibility in addressing this issue, not only members of the hierarchy, as Mark contends with judgments such as 'the hierarchy and its self-interested processes.'
    You and others of the same opinion are entitled to your thoughts, but please do not presume to speak for me or other Catholics who disagree.

    Posted By: John

14. David Rabe: saying the church is 'wonderful' at this time is like praising the Titanic an hour after it hit the iceberg.
    It also represents a confusion of elements.
    The church is not separate from its people.
    The church is wonderful when its people bring light to others; it's horrible and oppressive when its people are nasty or mean-spirited or, as in this case, abusive.
    The church does people a service by fostering a culture and space for lighting candles and saying Hail Marys provided it doesn't foster at the same time a culture and space for ignoring love of neighbour, even those who don't believe.
    The Catholic art, music and scholarship inspired by faith and love over the centuries are truly wonderful, full of wonder, but the political history of leaders over those same centuries has often been less than edifying.
    The traditions of piety you welcome being reinstated are one thing; the traditions of power and privilege are quite another and they are not in any sense wonderful.
    Indeed they appear to be at the root of the abuse crisis.
    The church is not some hermetically-sealed concept transplanted from heaven, quarantined from fault, sin and occasional ugliness.
    Indeed, if it wasn't sometimes ugly, we'd never recognise its beauty as it sometimes shows.

    Posted By: smk

15. Laurie: it's a big call to say that people who are disillusioned by their leaders are simply brainwashed by the media.
    Are you saying you think there's nothing to be disillusioned about? That the media is making all this up?
    And what are we to understand by your comment about politicians and her 'administration' in particular? That it's all just a Labor ploy? Would you have preferred there be no Commission at all?
    Irrespective of the difficulties and challenges in drawing positive societal and ecclesiastical results from the process, I do not think anyone reasonably thinks business-as-usual is an option.

    Posted By: smk

16. David: You say 'The progressives have come close to destroying our wonderful church'
    These so-called progressives are the same people over time that have forced laws and attitudes to do away with barbaric acts like burning people at the stake for heresy.

    Posted By: Chris P

17. John: Of course, it's all Catholics who have the responsibility. There is no power relationship which in fact silenced the majority - especialy those who were abused; and it is not the case that those who benefited from the structural inequality - perpetrated so much abuse and benefited from processes which thwarted scrutiny and accountability - should be singled out.
    It's a failure of all of us.
    Do tell this to those Catholic parents who have been locked out of justice by those who for too long manufactured the rules by which accountability.
    Do tell them that it's 'all of us'.
    And still the wilful and failed obfuscations of the past several decades continue - however exposed they have been internationally.

    Posted By: Mark Johnson

18. The question the hierarchy should answer is: How is it that offending clergy were reappointed?
    I understand that they wanted to protect the name of the church from public scandal, although we now know how profoundly that has failed. But I can not understand that a bishop and their committees could send an offender, known or just suspected, from one parish to another again and again.
    Keep all the secrets you like but you must take responsibility for the clear danger of simply putting an offender in a another parish.
    At the very least, with all the forgiveness and hope of conversion in the universe, warn the parish priest, to keep a watch on him and avoid unsupervised child ministry.
    Those who reappointed offending clergy, need to explain their actions and thinking, for it is these distorted values that have created this crisis in and for the Church.
    If we are to have faith in this organisation, this evil must be exorcised.

    Posted By: Martin Nicol

19. smk: You are clearly only listening to the liberal secular media if you doubt that we have a wonderful church.
    Start investigating what great work our wonderful church does for the poorest of the poor,the sickest of the sick.
    Bono from U2 has just thanked the RCC for their contribution to debt relief. I don't expect the main stream media to report on that. smk the liberal mainstream media is run by the devil,stop believing their message.

    Posted By: David Rabe

20. Thank goodness for the liberal secular media without whom we would not have heard of the extent of the abuse that was concealed!
    With all due respect, David, the efforts to bring relief to the poor and sick are hardly to be used as counters to the problem of sexual abuse by religious and priests.
    This is because works of mercy and love are the official mission of the church. In a sense we shouldn't expect to hear about them because we ought to be able to assume that they happen routinely and everywhere.
    Works of mercy and love are good works, yes, but in a paradoxical sense; it is not good that they are done, because there is nothing especially good about the church doing good: like the contract cleaner sweeping the floor, it's supposed to be doing that by definition!
    If the church is ever thought wonderful for doing these things, then there's something fundamentally wrong.
    Heaven forbid that we should ever think the church is wonderful for doing what it's supposed to do in the first place.
    Unfortunately, one could be forgiven that that's where we may be heading.

    Posted By: smk

21. Mark: You fail to answer what I initially asked.
    By all means speak for yourself - you have not been silenced - but do not assume you represent all Catholics in your claims and accusations.

    Posted By: John

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