and ain't i a woman: George Pell: a greater scandal than abortion
The revelation on August 21 that Sydney Catholic Archbishop George Pell had been accused of sexually abusing a boy shocked Prime Minister John Howard, who immediately declared his support for Pell.
The allegations concern a man who claims to have been abused by "Big George", and to have observed the abuse of others, as a 12-year-old alter boy at a youth camp on Phillip Island in 1961. "Big George" allegedly placed his hands down the trousers of those at the camp, and forced boys to put their hands down his trousers. Pell has stood down as a result of the revelation.
The allegations may have been less surprising to those who campaign against sexual assault: whether or not Pell is guilty of abusing children himself, he is certainly guilty of protecting abusers and trivialising the trauma that sexual abuse causes.
His position was outlined simply at a World Youth Day forum on July 28 in Toronto: if someone from your parish asks you about the child abuse scandal within the Catholic Church, just tell them that abortion is a worse moral scandal.
This trivialisation of child abuse is entirely in character. On June 2, the Australian program 60 Minutes aired allegations that Pell had promised money to Melbourne parishioners to keep their claims of sexual abuse by priests from becoming public knowledge.
It was alleged that Pell had asked David Ridsdale how much it would take for him not to talk of his abuse at the hands of his uncle, Father Gerald Ridsdale. Ridsdale was shuffled from parish to parish for more than a decade in "response" to his repeated abuse of young boys long after 1975, when Pell claims he first discovered Ridsdale's record of abuse. When Ridsdale, a former colleague of Pell's, was finally convicted for abuse in 1993, Pell supported him throughout the trial. He was sentenced to 18 years' jail for a string of crimes.
It is unclear how long the Catholic Church has known about the accusations against Pell. The church's first response to the August 7 posting of the allegations on an Indymedia web site was to threaten legal action. It was more than a fortnight afterwards, when newspapers were threatening to publish the details, that an inquiry was announced.
Pell mouths words to the effect that he cares about victims of abuse, but his actions say otherwise. He condemns abortion as destroying the lives of "unborn children" (foetuses to the rest of us), but he has given succour to child abusers, who destroy the lives of real children. He talks of the "culture of death" of euthanasia and abortion, but he has actively involved himself in a culture of the destruction of lives.
Pell is not alone. The Catholic Church in the USA is in crisis, caused by revelations of the widespread abuse of children by its priests and the subsequent cover-ups. The extent of the problem is such that the ordination of women and married priests are seriously being considered, which is a massive break with the current doctrine of the Catholic Church.
The vast majority of victims of sexual abuse within the church are girls and women. Such abuse is supported by a theology which condemns all sexual behaviour outside of a heterosexual marriage, and places emphasis on women's "natural" role as submissive wives and mothers: even denying women the basic right to control their fertility and their bodies.
The moral credibility of the Catholic Church worldwide has been eroded by its willingness to tolerate child abuse. This gives us even more reason to ignore the church when it tells women how to make our sexuality "acceptable". Catholic Church leaders are destined for "hell" by their very own doctrine: they have no right to tell women what to do with their lives.
BY ALISON MAXWELL
[The author is a member of the socialist youth group Resistance.]
From Green Left Weekly, August 28, 2002.
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