Tuesday, December 08, 2015
Mulkearns and
ecclesisatical responsibility; paedophilia and the National Civic Council
“Paedophilia is a continuation of
office and union politics by other means”
-
Apparent personal motto of Bishop James O’Collins, 1892-1983
As
Gerard Henderson likes to remind us (1), supporting George Pell’s case that he knew nothing about
clerical sex abuse in his patch until the early 1990s, the two bishops who Pell
worked under during the decades in question (2) were “liberal” in contrast to the conservative Pell. Ergo, implies Henderson, Pell, despite having
senior roles in both dioceses, was plausibly locked out of the information loop
by his immediate superiors over two decades (1971-c.1991), regarding paedophile
priests.
It
is a strange and far-fetched argument when you think about it. Pell, whose career plainly prospered under
both these men, was according to Henderson nonetheless a victim of office
politics when it came to them not sharing certain information. If so, this was a tickle-with-a-feather, if
not downright lucky, type of victimhood for Pell.
When
Mulkearns and Little both retired under a cloud at about the same time, Pell
could go from nought to a hundred on the issue; from being (under his own
account) almost certainly the last senior
cleric in the Ballarat and Melbourne dioceses to know about widespread clerical
sex abuse, to being the first senior
cleric (in the Melbourne diocese) to do something to address its effects.
From
zero to hero overnight – I am surprised that Henderson doesn’t also add to
Pell’s list of victimhood slights by pointing out that Hollywood should have,
but hasn’t, already made a movie about Pell’s long decades of unknowing innocence, probably
because Hollywood is also infested with “liberals”.
Such a movie would gloriously detail Pell’s resolute fighting fibre when
he belatedly learns the truth, and conveniently gets the top job soon after, in
a third act that would be wall-to-wall triumph for the underdog Pell, who
fought so long and so hard against all odds. But I digress.
Speaking
of the truth, I am surprised that Gerard Henderson’s recent article didn’t
bookend the (according to him) weaselly liberal reign of Mulkearns at Ballarat
by his conservative, and similarly long-serving predecessor, James
O’Collins. O’Collins was, as I presume
Henderson is aware, one of the three founding executives of The Movement in
September 1945 (3). This highly secret anti-communist organisation
later morphed into the National Civic Council, which in turn by 1971 had dwindled
into something of a shell of its former nuts-and-bolts heyday – keeping
communists out of positions of infleunce, particularly in trade unions. By the eve of Whitlam, the union communist bogeyman
was barely a threat; if you believed in these things, communism was by then
doing its dirty work more insidiously and nebulously still, via a
liberal/left-wing counter-culture, whose agenda included sexual permissiveness.
From
the mid-to-late 1960s, this new enemy was always going to be difficult to fight. Nonetheless, some of The Movement’s younger warriors
have risen to present-day positions of power and influence, and in so doing,
have rarely if ever given an inch to the liberals; Gerard Henderson and George
Pell, for example. And let’s not forget
Australian Prime Minister until recently, Tony Abbott, although he undoubtedly
had to make more compromises than his mentor Pell in his rise to the top.
Were
it not for The Movement’s efforts over the decades, I’m sure that we’d now have had communist-mandated
Sodom and Gomorrahs on every street corner. What a terrible thought – a world where the sexual
frontier would involve consenting adults with no sexual hang-ups, and not good
old-fashioned child abuse behind closed doors, with associated team-bonding and
career-enhancing blackmail, by looking through the keyhole. But again I digress.
Going
back to May 1971, James O’Collins was then in seeming good health (4) when he handed over the reins to
Mulkearns as Bishop of Ballarat. O’Collins
choosing to throw in the towel at this point would, I think, make a very good
opening scene for a quite different Hollywood movie, although one I doubt that
Gerard Henderson and George Pell would have the stomach to watch.
This
movie’s backstory starts like this: in
September 1945, the young and relatively junior O’Collins was not merely one of
three senior clergy co-founders of The Movement – he was also its points man within
the Church hierarchy (5) – effectively its founding CEO – although
officially he was just its chaplain. How
and why a provincial and relatively junior bishop got this role seems to speak
volumes about The Movement’s ethos and modus operandi; it was out of sight, out
of mind, as far as the main Church hierarchy was concerned. Like the 2000s US practice of extraordinary
rendition, the Australian and Vatican big-wigs didn’t want to know too much
about what O’Collins was getting up to, as long as he delivered the goods.
Funnily
enough, torture was a common element in, say, 2000s Egypt (as one country that
enthusiastically cooperated with US in delivering/accepting extraordinary
rendition) and the 1960s Ballarat diocese under O’Collins. To be fair, torture was an integral part of
the Egyptian-American pact, while perhaps it was only a sideshow for the
O’Collins-Vatican pact.
You
see, in 1960s Ballarat, O’Collins was a battle-hardened general, who should
have been at the peak of his career. The
annoying itch for him, if not sexual, was that infiltrating the unions, and associated
malarkey, was fast becoming redundant – and what was an ageing, once
high-flying and ambitious man, now forever marooned in the provinces, to do
with a day-job that had once been so adrenal?
The
bored O’Collins’creative solution to his career ennui was to foster, over the 1960s,
a paedophile network within his diocese.
As you do, apparently. While
O’Collins may or may not have had a personal proclivity for raping chidren en masse,
its requirement for the strictest secrecy was plainly a pleasing use for O’Collins
of his highly-trained, pre-existing skill set, from The Movement’s cloak-and-dagger
heyday. His skills that otherwise would
go rusty. (And wouldn’t that be a
crime, he may well have thought.)
There is plenty of information available confirming
O’Collins as a knowing paedophile protector, one who was at least as culpable
as Mulkearns and Little are/were, on Gerard Henderson’s loaded account. In leaving O’Collins out of the story, while
digging a grave, as it were, for Mulkearns, perhaps Henderson may care to
explain what it all means that John Day was promoted
by O’Collins after paedophile allegations were known, while conversely,
Mulkearns, in the same position, effectively demoted Day to the small parish of
Timboon; a surely unprecedented move, at the time if not also now, for a Monsignor. [NB: I am not defending Mulkearns’ action in
this specific respect, only pointing out that it was significantly less culpable,
in my opinion, than O’Collins’ craven act in promoting known horrific paedophile
John Day].
At
this point, the Hollywood movie really hits its straps. By early 1971, O’Collins had apparently had
enough of running a secret Salo Republic-style child-abuse sideshow (if not main arena) within his
diocese. The secrecy side of it was no
doubt fun for him, a stimulating game to oversee, if not also play, but perhaps
overall it was becoming all a bit tawdry, especially while outside, the
emergent permissive society daily reminded O’Collins that the war against
communism that he had signed on for in September 1945 was now essentially lost,
or at least hopelessly side-tracked
In
1971, O’Collins thus understandably wanted out – but he and the Vatican were in
a quandary: who could be trusted to take
over his job, and not to spill the beans on the sordid sexual empire that
O’Collins ran? A liberal, that’s who.
Mulkearns’
appointment after O’Collins may seem counter-intuitive; they were ideological
opponents, after all, and what was to stop Mulkearns spilling the beans,
cleaning up the debauched mess he inherited from O’Collins, and so making
O’Collins retirement very uncomfortable, at best? (And conversely, Mulkearns’
job perhaps a lot easier, depending on how he played his cards with the Vatican,
and vice versa).
This is the big
mystery in the movie – and sorry folks, I’m not going to spoil the ending now. But I will give you some hints about the
strange O’Collins-Mulkearns handover.
On
Easter Thursday, 11 April 1971, just before Mulkearns took over from O’Collins,
the ambitious, and highly-educated young priest George Pell left Europe, and
his cosmopolitan student life forever, for workaday Ballarat. He therefore missed the opportunity to settle in nicely to his first diocesan appointment, at least, under his mentor,
O’Collins, and instead had his career left to Mulkearns’ caprices, although in
this – and every – respect, the Vatican obviously was Mulkearns’ boss. In any event, you might think: “silly George Pell and silly O’Collins for not
timing more career overlap between them here?
Or not? I’ll leave the contents of
the rest of this narrative arc to you.
In
guessing your own narrative sweep and ending here, you may want to consider a
couple of other snippets. One is that
O’Collins got to live on in the imposing bluestone Bishop’s Palace in Ballarat
until he died on 25 November 1983; while Mulkearns had to camp out (as Paul
Keating may have put it) elsewhere. What
this means as to the power relativities between the retiree and the nominal
boss, I’ll up leave to you, as likewise also the fact that George Pell lived
with O’Collins in the same Bishop’s Palace in for some years in the early 1980s.
Finally,
to bring up the current Royal Commission, yesterday lawyer Sam Duggan, for
Cardinal Pell, said that some words George
Pell allegedly said in 1983 (“Haha I think Gerry’s [Gerald Ridsdale has] been
rooting boys again”):
Indeed,
Sam Duggan seemed to have a point – that is, unless you know about the obscure concept
of ecclesiastical responsibility, a canon law doctrine in which a Bishop is
effectively still responsible for a diocesan priest’s actions, even if that
priest is sent to another diocese, or even another state.
This
is quite undeservedly an obscure doctrine, in my opinion, as it seems to have
as many important legal ramifications as the notorious “Ellis defence”. I only learnt about it this morning when I
read this:
Sam
Duggan’s “it makes no sense whatsoever” thus in fact makes quite a lot of sense,
to me anyway – Ridsdale (among others) was the poisonous gift ("chalice", if you must) that Mulkearns
was handed in 1971, and then could never, try as he might, shake off. Wherever Ridsdale was sent to geographically,
he was still Mulkearns’s jurisdictional problem (unless the Vatican laicised Ridsdale,
which was notoriously hard to do). I’ll leave the implications of this doctrine,
especially in regard to the consequent motivations two other main players in the
Hollywood movie, to you.
Back
to 2015, in fact – although I’m not positively sure about this sequence – Sam
Duggan had just yesterday heard the above lines about ecclesiastical
responsibility in the Royal Commission shortly before he uttered his lame “it makes no sense whatsoever” line.
You
need to start paying more attention, Sam – you will now necessarily have your
own role in the great Hollywood movie I have referred to, when you will face
your own proverbial cross-examination.
And coming days in the Royal Commission will determine whether that role is
career-making or breaking for you.
Footnotes
(1) “Cardinal must receive a fair go at royal commission and in media” Australian 5 December 2015
(2) The now terminally-ill Ronald Mulkearns b. 1930, bishop of Ballarat 1971 to 1997, Pell worked under him from May 1971 to late 1983 or early 1984; and the late Frank Little, Archbishop of Melbourne 1 July 1974 to 16 July 1996, Pell worked under him in a loose sense from 1984, when Pell became rector of Corpus Christi college in Melbourne, and then more firmly from 1986, when the then-Pope, without reference to Little, appointed Pell an auxiliary bishop of Melbourne, until he took over Little’s job in mid-1996.
(3) All three were senior clergy; the other two were Archbishop Mannix of Melbourne and Cardinal Gilroy of Sydney; see Paul Ormonde, The Movement, p 134.
(4) Though O’Collins was then 79, he lived until late 1983.
(5) See FN 3.
