Clare’s blog, aka rantspace

The Vatican has castigated Irish bishops for covering up abuse, in the wake of the Irish report on the investigation into the problem.  Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, a right-hand man of the Pope, described the abuse scandal as “humiliating” and “abominable”.  I think that’s the strongest terms the Vatican has used yet!

There’s just one small point: the Irish report made it clear that the Vatican was complicit in the cover-up.  Presumably they hope no-one will realise that, and they’ll be able to place all the blame on the local bishops.

I confess to enjoying cop shows, despite having been an imaginative enough child that even listening to the suspense music in the ones Mum and Dad watched after I went to bed could give me nightmares!  I was a teenager before I could watch such shows with comparative impunity, and back then my favourite was Cop Shop.  Blue Heelers and Police Rescue both helped fill the intervening years, and now it’s The Bill.

Which brings me to my point.  Currently, a major character (Sergeant Smith) in The Bill is facing investigation for beating up a criminal who was, in turn, beating up a fellow officer.  And the only person who knows the truth of what happened (apart from the crim) is Smith’s fellow sergeant Calum Stone, who himself has been shown to be somewhat inclined to administer what we might call rough justice.

Stone is prepared to back Smithy up, regardless of the truth, because “the crim deserved it”.  And this brought me to musing on the “protect one of our own” mentality that prompted Stone to lie for Smithy.  Police are encouraged to think this way, and there’s good reason for it.  Watching and defending your fellow officers’ backs might save their life one day.  Or they might save yours.

And this is where the tension between truth and mateship pulls me in both directions.  Because it’s that “watch your mates’ backs” attitude that sets up this kind of situation, where protecting your mate takes precedence over the truth, and it seems that while the basic attitude can be life-saving, it can also – in non-life-threatening situations -  destroy those to whom justice is denied as a result.

Is Smithy still a good police officer despite stepping over the line on this occasion?  Hell, yes.  Is the truth more important than his career?  I confess I’m not sure.

And perhaps you can see where this is leading, because the situation isn’t all that different in the church.  Clergy step over the line, their mates close ranks, cover up and lie for them, and justify it on the basis of his career (and possibly the reputation of the church).  And I’m quite clear that that is wrong, but not so clear on it in the police force.

But I think there are two fundamental differences.  Firstly, that in the police force, they can and do face life-threatening situations.  In the church, they don’t.  So in the church, there’s no real justification on that basis for a culture of closing ranks.  And secondly, that the church supposedly puts morals first.  In fact, many denominations or church spokespeople argue that morality outside the church is necessarily deficient.  To argue for morality, yet not place primary importance on truth seems to me to be duplicitous.

In some ways, maybe, it comes down to who do you protect first – your mates, the criminals or society/injured victims?  I don’t support vigilantism, but neither do I support excessive societal protection of those whose actions put them outside society.  And I certainly don’t agree that anything less than the truth is appropriate in the church.

No, no… I’m not getting married again (I like the model I’ve got, thanks), or moving (god forbid!) or changing my diet (current one’s working well, thanks), or pregnant (god forbid that one too!). This is about my website.

Firstly, that I was asked to write an article for the WA Uniting Church’s The Transit Lounge website, on the recent release of the Ferns Report (Irish Catholic) and the Australian Anglican research into abuse allegations in their dioceses. However, the end result raised “concerns that there could be some sections that might be defamatory and/or damaging to our ecumenical relationships”, and Assembly therefore declined to publish it. I’m proud to prove that despite maintaining useful connections with people in key places in various denominations, I can’t yet be accused of selling out my principles

And the second half of that news is that I chose to post the article on my website rather than see its punch severely lessened by the diplomatic editing that would have been necessary for it to be published in The Transit Lounge. The direct link is here, but I have also added (and will continue to add, supposing I’m disciplined enough) various other articles I’ve written along the way, which you can find by going to the main page of the website and clicking on the “my articles” link which has been added to the menu.

And the second major thing I’ve added to the website is something I’ve been meaning to add for a long time – perhaps the most momentous piece of church documentation I possess after my ten-year fight with them, and that is the Notice of Relinquishment which proves that Vic Cole relinquished his holy orders as a result of his sexual abuse of me. I have also added the letter of apology I received from Peter Jensen at the end of the negotiations with the Anglican Church, wherein he also refers (somewhat obliquely) to the refusal of Harry Goodhew, Donald Cameron, and Vic Cole, to make similar apologies to me. Both can be accessed via links contained within my story.

<sigh> It’d be nice to have time to scan every letter I sent to, and every letter I received from, the church, but that’s still a long-ahead dream.

There’s a very incisive article at New Matilda about the power imbalance in the NRL/Matthew Johns/”Clare” episode (Disclaimer: In that case, Clare is a pseudonym, and I am not 19 years old ) and how that power imbalance affects the issue of “Clare”‘s consent. However, I think there are a couple of points that the writers fail to make.

Firstly, that when consent is apparently given in an environment of coercion and/or power imbalance, it is, by definition, only after the event that the victim can really say whether she consented or not. And understanding that is crucial to appreciating why “Clare” did not object at the time, but only afterwards. In other words, only complaining afterwards is not necessarily an indication of a changed mind, but of a victim freed from the power imbalance or coercion and understanding properly just how that power imbalance prevented an informed consent at the time.

The other point that I feel the writers do not adequately explore is the label “group sex”. They rightly point out that “group sex” is a bad term for what happened, but fail to say why, or what would have been a more accurate description. Extrapolating from the rest of the article, I think that their perspective would be that “group sex” implies a degree of mutuality that is contradicted by the circumstances being the presence of several high-profile men and one young woman. A more accurately descriptive term might be “pack sex”.

According to Matthew Johns’ account, after it was over, he went to “Clare” and apologised about the others coming into the room. (According to quotes from Johns, initially “Clare” went to the room after an agreement to have sex with him and one other player, and he was unaware when others entered the room, and stepped away from the bed when he became aware of them.) However, that fact alone makes it very clear that “Clare” had NOT consented to their presence beforehand. But since “Clare” says there were six male participants and another half-dozen or so spectators, (and this number has not been denied by the police, who investigated the allegation at the time, or the club, who must also know the names of those involved), and given the public behaviour of footy players in the context of their sport (an emphasis on group activity, spurring each other on, on-field brawling, and egos fed by cheering), it seems very likely that whatever “Clare” consented to initially became something completely different when an extra 10 or so men entered the room. In such a situation (and particularly if the young woman had previously suffered some abuse), it is extremely unlikely that she would have been able to call a halt at the point where she felt that things had gone further than she wanted.

I think it highly likely that it was the cheering (each other) of the first few men that drew the others’ attention to what was happening in the room and caused them to enter and so “join in the fun”. And I also think it likely that if “Clare” had objected at some point, the guys would simply have ignored her, or possibly even have prevented her from leaving.

Personal qualities:
1. Pre-eminent in courage, strength and skill
2. Loyal to an ideal.
3. Gentle and kind.
4. Much greater courage, resolution, strength of character and generosity than ordinary humans.
5. Comparatively short adult life.
6. Does battle against evil.
7. Dies as a sacrifice in order to win the battle.
8. Ventures into a different world, at great personal peril.
9. Performs some great feat and/or acquires immortality as a result of being in that world.
10. Returns triumphant to his own world, and brings back something that enhances human life.
11. Demonstrates that human life can be richer, more intense and fuller than we think.
12. Ends up being considered divine.

How many of you said Jesus? You’re wrong! Or at least, only partly right. That’s the summary of qualities of the quintessential hero of myth and legend I found in a book about the symbolism of the Arthurian legends. Jesus isn’t really so unique after all, is he?

A discussion with a family member brought me to musing on the “I am the good shepherd” analogy. And you can bet that, having grown up in a conservative evangelical church, I’ve heard it all before – what a shepherd did (and does) to protect the sheep and lead them in safety and good supply. But what I realised I’ve never heard is the other side of the analogy. If Jesus is the shepherd, then christians are the sheep, right? Now start thinking about the characteristics of sheep:
1) They do everything as a group
2) They’re pretty defenceless
3) They don’t think for themselves, they just do what the sheep in front does.

So the extension of a shepherd analogy is neither complimentary nor a portrayal of intelligence. Perhaps that’s why conservative christians hate people questioning their beliefs… because it’s a signal of a sheep who doesn’t obey the unspoken rules.

Of course, encouraging sheep-like behaviour suits the church down to the ground – and when I say the church, I mean the organisation. Obedient, unquestioning followers make for order and safety of those higher up the hierarchy. But – as with many of the church’s policies – it also makes for a member-mass that’s ripe for abuse.

I’ve been musing on PSTD and its symptoms, and this may turn out to be a multiple-entry thread, hence the no.1 in the title. But this first entry I want to explain a rather obscure symptom described in the DSM as “a sense of foreshortened future”. Now that doesn’t mean that I can’t visualise a tomorrow. But someone once put it this way: suppose you thought that your life would end tomorrow, or the next day, or even in a week’s time, what would you do differently? Ironically, that question is often used by christians to spur them to greater obedience and witnessing activity (though it’s not usually asked as one’s own life ending, but Jesus returning). And the point is not dissimilar. It is this – that your priorities would change. You would do things differently, and you would place emphasis on different things. And that is the reality that PTSD sufferers live with. One might almost say their priorities are skewed, and in a way they are. Some things seem pointless, while others take on a disproportionate urgency.

From this skewed perspective, and looking at one side of its coin – why push yourself to do the vacuuming if you’re not going to be here to enjoy the result (or suffer the consequences)? Why make an effort to keep yourself healthy, or looking good, if in a week’s time it isn’t going to matter? But the second side of the coin is an urgency to getting things done. When a PTSD sufferer thinks that something needs doing (in other words, something moves to the top of their priority list), that sense of foreshortened future compels them to do it NOW.

And that’s what a “sense of foreshortened future” means. On the one hand, it brings a lethargy, an apathy, over doing things that would otherwise be merely part of life’s routine, or part of self-care, because the ongoing sense of purpose in them that would see them done is simply not there. But on the other hand, it brings an urgency to dealing with things – often very small matters – that can push the imbalance even further off-centre, as normal priorities make way for a compulsion that often makes little sense, even to the sufferer themselves.

I don’t know how many times some well-meaning christian has said something to me along the lines of “but God has used your experience of abuse to bring good out of evil”.  And the “good” has usually been identified as one of the following: 1) it made you stronger, 2) your website is a great good, 3) your action has changed the way the church deals with abuse allegations… or something like that.

But what those things really mean, albeit often unconsciously for those who say them, is an attempt to make some kind of sense of what happened to me.  And many christians feel the need to make sense of abuse because there’s no other way of accounting for such evil being done while god is in control of the world.  But the cold harsh reality is that abuse doesn’t make sense.  And attempts to rationalise it as somehow part of god’s unfathomable plan simply don’t make sense either.  If god was really so great, and so much out for our good, then s/he could bring good without such evil being necessary first. Far better to see and acknowledge abuse as it is – an act of wanton aggression (once or many times) perpetrated on a defenceless victim.

In my opinion, seeking to make sense of it actually violates the enormity of the abomination it is.

Ooh, look! – Adelaide Catholic bishop Philip Wilson has apologised for the excommunication of Mary Mackillop. He even said that the excommunication was invalid. Of course, given that it happened nearly 140 years ago in 1871, I’m not sure that Mackillop herself cares much now… Though perhaps she should count herself lucky – Galileo didn’t get an apology till FOUR hundred years later!

But it seems to me that the significant issues here are that a) the church does occasionally admit to being wrong, even over such important matters as excommunication, but b) it takes an inordinately long time for them to do so. Ok, so the Sisters of St Joseph – the order Mackillop founded – are appreciative of the apology, but it really doesn’t matter a whole lot to most people now. The time when the apology should have been made was back in the 1870s, when everyone who had accepted the excommunication’s validity had the chance to revise their opinion of Mackillop, and Mackillop herself could feel the injustice restored (not to mention her faith in the church).

Of course, given that she was beatified 14 years ago, it’s clear that the church no longer sees her independent thinking as evil, but perhaps it’s time they acknowledged that faith in – and obedience to – the church is not the same thing as faith in – and obedience to – God, and stopped setting themselves up as such an immutable authority.

Given my previous blog entry on Fr Kennedy, one can’t help wondering if – in a hundred years time – they might actually have to admit they were wrong to sack him, too!

There are many military/war metaphors in christianity, and I want to take issue with them on a number of counts.  Firstly, though, let me list some:

In the bible-
1) the “armour of god” passage in Ephesians 6:10-17.
2) the “fight the good fight” reference in 1 Tim 6:12.
3) “put on the armour of light”, Rom 13:12.
4) “with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left” 2 Cor 6:7  (Note: Normally, one would have an offensive weapon in the right hand and a defensive protection in the left, but not in this metaphor!)
5) “like a good soldier of Jesus Christ” 2 Tim 2:3-4  (Note: v.3 includes the quoted text, v.4 defines the good soldier as obedient to his commanding officer)
6) “the weapons we fight with…have divine power… We demolish…we take captive…and we will be ready to punish” 2 Cor 10:4-6

In songs and hymns-
1) I’m in the Lord’s Army (Sunday School chorus for children)
2) Onward Christian Soldiers
3) We are Marching in the Light of God (originally an African anti-apartheid protest song, but adapted as a militant expression of christian witness)
4) Fight the Good Fight

And why is this army/soldier metaphor so disturbing?  Because it encourages the kind of thinking that facilitates abuse and abusive structures.  Successful soldiers possess the following qualities:
1) obedience to their superior officers (and that’s not primarily to the general commanding the army, it’s to their immediately superior rankings)
2) unquestioning allegiance to the cause being fought for
3) a willingness – one might even say an agreed contract – to sacrifice themselves without question on the orders of their commander
4) a vision of themselves as the solution to the dissension and salvation of those on the right side
5) the ability to dehumanise (one might even say demonise, but certainly to depersonalise) the enemy in order to justify one’s own aggressive behaviour and one’s side’s policies
6) the mass-thinking and loss of individualism that comes from army discipline and structures

(Here’s something worth noting – christians define disciples as “followers”, a legitimate definition according to modern usage, but the etymology makes it clear that the word really means “those who accept being disciplined”)

And all the “good soldier qualities” listed above are also the qualities that comprise the setting for spiritual abuse, and foster the possibility of other forms of abuse, including sexual abuse.  That’s why militant christianity is really an oxymoron, and metaphors of battle and war have no place in a religion supposedly based on love.