By: Danielle Binks
This week, Prime Minister Julia Gillard
announced a Royal Commission to investigate decades of child abuse in churches, schools and foster homes. In
addressing the mounting allegations that led to this long overdue Royal Commission, Gillard said:
''these are insidious, evil acts to which no child should be subject.”
It’s an interesting idea – evil. It seems like a scapegoat, of sorts, and a rather holy one at that. Maybe John Steinbeck said it best, when he wrote: “There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There is just stuff people do.”
But it’s an idea that Diane Bell explored back in 2005, in her novel ‘
Evil’. In the book, newly appointed professor, Dee P. Scrutari turns her anthropological gaze on the tribe of “non-reproducing males” who dominate St Jude's, a prestigious Catholic liberal arts college. Evil is in the air. Something is awry,
“Sex, silence and sin”, Dee writes.
And at the centre of the novel is a question that many will be asking themselves in the coming months as this Royal Commission gets underway and victims are finally given a voice. The question is: ‘Do you think a system can be evil, or is it only people who are evil?’
Protagonist Dee P. Scrutari ponders this question throughout the novel, as her investigations take her deeper into the Lion’s Den. At one point, such musings again hit close to home and relate to a recent
press conference with Cardinal George Pell, in which he suggested that the Seal of Confession is inviolable and would be upheld during investigations (meaning that priests hearing incriminating confessions from their colleagues would not be called upon to testify).
But then, on the other hand, the secrecy maintained around the business of priests seems to be a cover for abuses of power and, further, a massive abuse of power upon which the church depends. It’s so institutionalized, so beyond scrutiny. There is no accountability. Its reach is enormous. The stories of its abuse need to be told if the abuses are to be curbed. I understand the need for confidentiality in some circumstances, but should it be absolute? Should the confessional be completely beyond the law? One obvious question is: Why are priests excluded from mandatory reporting of abuse of minors and allowed to keep such things secret? Teachers, counselors, social and health workers are all bound to report any signs of abuse. Why not priests? If it is so unthinkable that a priest might abuse a minor, then making information known should not be a problem and could be included with all the others who must report abuse.
Perhaps the most chilling moment in the novel comes while Dee is listening to a sermon by Father Humanitas, who seems to be heavily hinting at prior-knowledge of abuse in his church:
“Let us hold ourselves accountable for the distortion in relationships, for the skewing of power and the ‘naturalizing’ of it. Let us say ‘Sorry’ for that sin. But let us not stop there. Let us work to unmask these inequalities. The refusal to empathize with the oppressed and our willingness to erect systems of control and cultures of deceit to maintain and justify such power is a deadly sin. We can count the lives lost to such vanity.”
It will be a long, gruelling road ahead as this Royal Commission begins; proving once and for all that the Church is not above the law. As one victim
said in the wake of Julia Gillard’s announcement;
''the victims have always believed that eventually the gates of hell would open up and swallow abusers. At last, the truth can come out.''
