NCR Reports on Bishop Robinson’s Philadelphia Talk
From the National Catholic Reporter, 5.30.2008.
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Robinson speaks out: Bishop defies cardinals to speak on sex and power
By KEVIN McLAUGHLIN, Philadelphia
Publication date:
May 30, 2008
Amy Elliott: On his U.S. tour, Australian Bishop Geoffrey Robinson speaks in Morristown, N.J., May 21.
Calling for conversation, not confrontation, over the issue of clergy sexual abuse in the church, retired Auxiliary Bishop Geoffrey Robinson of Sydney, Australia, began a 15-city U.S. speaking tour May 16 in Philadelphia. The bishop’s visit coincides with the U.S. release of his controversial book Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church: Reclaiming the Spirit of Jesus.
The bishop’s arrival was met with rare bishop-on-bishop controversy. Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles and Bishop Tod D. Brown of Orange, Calif., sent letters to the Australian prelate asking him to cancel his appearances, and Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, prefect for the Vatican’s Congregation of Bishops, requested that he call off his entire U.S. visit.
The Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference released a statement May 8 citing “doctrinal difficulties” in Robinson’s book, which was published in Australia last year.
Nonetheless, the soft-spoken but forceful prelate addressed some 200 participants attending a two-day symposium on “Rebuilding the Catholic Church” at Temple University in Philadelphia.
The book’s genesis, according to Robinson, came from his work as a member and then chairman of the Australian bishops’ committee charged with addressing the abuse crisis.
“For nine years it completely dominated my life,” he said of his committee work from 1994 to 2003. “It was an experience that changed me in so many ways that even if I wanted to, I could not now go back to being the person I was before.”
Meeting and speaking with abuse survivors and their families convinced him that the roots of clergy abuse lay in fundamental church attitudes toward power and sex, and that the only solution was first to examine and then to change those attitudes.
“Sexual abuse is all about power and sex, so to counter abuse, we must be free to ask serious questions about power and sex in the institution of the church,” he said. “Without this freedom, we would be attempting to respond to abuse while handcuffed and blindfolded.”
The bishop said his call for confrontation is a “confrontation of issues, not of people,” adding that “confronting bishops will not achieve change.”
“The major changes we seek cannot at present come from any source other than the pope, and we must be aware of the relative powerlessness of the bishops before the power of the papacy and the Vatican systems that support it,” he said.
“I suggest that we must, therefore, learn to work with the bishops rather than against them,” he said. “It will be a lengthy process in which we engage them in conversation, gradually show them that there are problems in the culture they have been living in and that the new culture we would like to introduce to them has a real beauty and freedom in it.”
The best way to engage church leaders in discussions about power and sex is through the hot-button issue of sexual abuse, Robinson said.
“The scandal of abuse has been so great that it is arguably the one issue that has the energy to do something as powerful as change a culture,” he said. “All church leaders have at the very least been through a profound humiliation and embarrassment over this issue, and deep within them they know that on this issue the popes have not given the courageous leadership the church needed.
“However much they might pretend to the opposite, all leaders also know that we still have much to do before we can face the future with a clear conscience,” he said. “There is much room here for fruitful dialogue.”
On a personal note, Robinson said his work with abuse survivors created an inner conflict between his loyalty to the pope and his “loyalty to that portion of God’s people that the Australian bishops had assigned to me, the victims of abuse.”
“It was the conflict between being a pope’s man and a victims’ man,” he said with emotion. “At all times, I would have loved to be both.
“The conflict eventually became a genuine crisis for me when the pope of those years [Pope John Paul II] gave no real leadership in relation to abuse,” he said.
In their May 8 statement, the Australian bishops said Robinson’s book questions “Catholic teaching on, among other things, the nature of tradition, the inspiration of the holy scripture, the infallibility of the councils and the pope, the authority of the creeds, the nature of the ministerial priesthood and central elements of the church’s moral teaching.”
In a brief statement dated May 15, Robinson responded, “In their statement, the bishops appear to be saying that in seeking to respond to abuse, we may investigate all other factors contributing to abuse, but we may not ask questions concerning ways in which teachings, laws, and attitudes concerning power and sex within the church may have contributed.
“This imposes impossible restrictions on any serious and objective study, and it is where I have broken from the bishops’ conference,” he said.
In a question-and-answer session after his address, Robinson was asked what Catholics should do when they are rebuffed by church authorities as they seek dialogue on issues of power, sex and clergy sexual abuse.
“Even confrontation needs to lead back to conversation,” he said. “No matter how confrontational it needs to get, the end is always conversation.”
In the audience for Robinson’s address was retired Auxiliary Bishop Thomas J. Gumbleton of Detroit, who himself has run afoul of other church authorities during his long ministry. He said he was in Philadelphia to show support for the Australian prelate.
“I’ve talked to hundreds of survivors, and over and over I’ve found the bishop will not talk to them [and] there’s no possibility for conversation,” he said. “We’ve got into an adversary situation by getting advice from lawyers right away instead of dealing with it pastorally.”
Gumbleton said he believes Pope Benedict XVI’s session with abuse survivors during his recent U.S. visit offers a model for American bishops.
“If the bishops of this country would follow that model, I think the whole situation would change dramatically,” he said. “As long as we think of the victims as adversaries and refuse to talk with them, we’ll get nowhere.”
At the conclusion of the program, Robinson was awarded the 2008 Hans Küng Rights of Catholics in the Church Award, presented by the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church. The association and Voice of the Faithful of Greater Philadelphia cosponsored the symposium.
Charles J. McMahon Jr., professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the organizers of the speaking tour, said May 21 that Robinson intended to speak at all of the scheduled locations, including in Los Angeles June 12, and had no plans to respond to Mahony or any other U.S. bishops.
Kevin McLaughlin is a freelance writer in New Jersey.
National Catholic Reporter May 30, 2008
The following comments were also published on the NCR website.
Submitted by Sister Maureen Paul Turlish (not verified) on Tue, 05/27/2008 – 17:48.
It was a pleasure to meet Bishop Geoffrey Robinson at Temple University in Philadelphia where he began his United States tour.
He fearlessly addressed topics that we in the United States should be hearing from our own diocesan bishops but alas it comes from our Australian brother Geoffrey from the land down under, God bless him.
It was embarrassing to me that some of our U.S. bishops thought it appropriate to send condescending letters to Bishop Geoffrey strongly suggesting he cancel his tour as well as telling him in no uncertain terms that he did not have permission to speak in a particular diocese.
“Both Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony and San Diego Bishop Robert Brom have asked Robinson not to speak in their jurisdictions.”
I read Bishop Robinson’s letter simply as a courtesy letter to the bishops concerned not as a letter asking their permission either to come to their jurisdictions or to speak.
Bishop Geoffrey, gentleman that he is, does not need Mahony’s, Brom’s or any other bishop’s permission because he already has it, protected by Canon Law certainly, but belonging to us as human beings.
Of course, we all have those freedoms – freedom of speech, freedom to assemble – those American Constitutional values protected by the First Amendment as well. Some people perhaps do not know they have the right and the obligation to question, to reflect, to disagree, to challenge and to hold accountable.
I just hope all this publicity points to the importance of reading and talking about what is in his book, “Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church – Reclaiming the Spirit of Jesus.”
Sister Maureen Paul Turlish
maureenpaulturlish@yahoo.com
Submitted by Fr. Jerry (not verified) on Fri, 05/30/2008 – 14:08.
Bishop Robinson is a voice in the wilderness. You have to be a Nero or Hadrian or Trajan to understand how some are divinely ordained to abuse power and sex in the catholic church. I wonder if history has ever been a teacher? Joseph Campbell remarked, “the world thrives on lies”. What could one say the catholic church thrives on? Fear? Heaven? Hell? Criminals in angels clothing?
Ultimately, as in the movie “Scarlet and the Red” dialogue “the world is only divided between the powerful and the powerless”. Sounds fatalistic – but true, isn’t it?
Submitted by Denis O’Leary (not verified) on Sat, 05/31/2008 – 12:03.
Bishop Robinson’s book and the publicity generated by the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Statement can only bring good in the long run. Good for victims of sexual abuse by trusted religious persons and for the Catholic Church and all who seek to follow Christ. Whether we can see it or not there is evidence that the Catholic Church is in transition from the monarchical and seriously patriarchal institution of old towards a more participative and authentic Christian community. All of us have a part to play and sometimes, like Geoffrey Robinson, a duty to speak out and challenge those who think that only they understand and speak for Jesus Christ.
Meanwhile, we pray, meditate and think and act charitably towards all and especially those who see things differently
Shalom
Denis O’Leary