And that's a record for this humble little blog but I am proud of the achievement. I am pretty confident a number of those reading my thoughts are concerned clerics or people working in the Catholic Church who are more than a little perturbed about what this little old bald head is plotting.
As I consistently insist, I have said all this before. I have told Bishops, Vicar Generals, Archbishops and Cardinals about the muck and mire in the Catholic Church.
I really am disappointed that my concerns were not listened to. I take little pleasure in seeing the Church that I am part of, humiliated in the way it has been each day in the media. But it was necessary to bring the leaders to their knees (and possibly dismiss some of them) to bring about change.
It is extremely sad that it will require a Royal Commission into child sex abuse for the Church to come clean and admit its past wrongs.
By denying the obvious collusion and cover ups the Church has effectively been daring the Government to call it to account.
As I say, I do take credit for the national conversation which is taking place around the topics of Confessional seal and the shifting around of pedophiles as well as the concealment of past crimes. These were all topics I raised with Lateline, Four Corners and ABC radio after repeated attempts to get George Pell, Kevin Manning & to a lesser extent Anthony Fisher to do something about the mess that the Australian Catholic Church was in.
Instead of focusing on the obvious problem: the priests and religious who were not intent on keeping their promises of celibacy, they chose to attack doctrinal orthodoxy and have each set on a path to clean up the curriculum in schools and appoint conservative minded individuals to positons of influence in seminaries, universities and schools. Not the approach I suggested when I spoke with each of them individually.
For instance when I spoke to George last year or it could even have been the year before and identified a significantly dangerous priest (who is yet to be charged or arrested) and explained my first hand knowledge of his elaborate scheme to manipulate the vulnerable and utilise his position to make himself very wealthy) he concluded our conversation with, "Well I hope you are wrong".
I am not wrong. I know what I saw and I remember what I heard.
I can't be wrong and there is no point hoping I am wrong George because I went away from that conversation convinced that you have no intention of weeding out the darnel from the wheat. You are only intent on maintaining the system.
George and this priest must have a particularly strong friendship for him to deny that there is any problem with the activities of this influential priest after hearing me enunciate my concerns.
At a later stage I spoke with Pell about another culprit in the clergy who was identified by police as misuing his position to acquire sex from gay men through a website (I can't say much more to elaborate as it may identify the person whose actions are not considered wrong in this country but would certainly offend the sensitivities of Mrs Smith in the front pew at Mass if she were aware of them).
Pell came back to me after a period of seven months to say, "While I found that that there was some smoke, I am convinced there was no fire". Again he denied my claims and refused to be drawn into any action to curtail this man's priestly activities.
The man's actions were offensive to the denominational leaders from other faiths who knew of his indiscreet rendezvous's and expressed surprise to me that Father was still worthy of putting in front of congregation each week preaching the message of Jesus Christ.
At one point I was challenged: "Don't you believe in forgiveness Kevin? If a man says he is sorry then he deserves to be forgiven". But the problem in these cases and in many like them, its easy to say you are sorry when you get caught.
I wonder how sorry they would be if they were never discovered to be doing wrong.
That's the reason we need a Royal Commission into the activities of the Church to ascertain how accurately the Cardinal has been in his denials of knowledge of past and current sexual indiscretions within the Catholic Church that he is at pains to point out he is not in fact in charge of.
