The Kingdom of God is Like...

The reign of God that Jesus preached was a radical departure from what people of the time expected: instead of a system of future reward for people with the “right” religious and social credentials, the reign of God was about contemporary practice of justice and mercy for all people.

In South Africa today we might equate the toll collectors/publicans with the MECs who think that driving a R1­million Mercedes-Benz is appropriate in a country where so many people are poor and destitute (regardless of whether the MEC accepted the car as a gift and later had to return it as a result of public outcry, or whether the MEC negotiated a special deal for a rare model that was paid for by the department and later reported hijacked from the MEC’s driveway on the day her husband drove the car home from the dealership). Jesus would do well to have dinner with these MECs and engage them in conversations that would help them to understand how their behaviour could be different. Perhaps then the next ‘gift’ or ‘deal’ those MECs would negotiate, would benefit the poor!

We might also see the opposition political parties as the Pharisees when they are too quick to point accusing fingers and talk the ruling party and its members down, even going as far as making scathing personal attacks on particular individuals. While the ruling party may be making many mistakes and committing many injustices, having the opposition crowing about how unlike the corrupt ruling party they are doesn’t help to bring about justice. Jesus could explain to the opposition that justice must be done for justice’s sake (purely because it is the right thing to do), and not for the glorification of those who identified the injustices.

A possible parallel parable for The Good Samaritan in today’s world might be The Just Politician:

A powerful cabinet minister and known atheist (let’s call him Mr X) defies belief by helping a dispossessed stranger (let’s call him Mr J) who made a public show of voting for another party (video footage of which has been watched by millions on YouTube who couldn’t resist spending their boss’s time and bandwidth laughing at the tattooed Manenberg man’s outraged diatribe against Mr X and his ilk). So Mr X rights some serious wrongs by ensuring that Mr J gets the liveable housing and appropriate grant that he’s been waiting on for a decade. In the process Mr X angers his party bosses, forgoes the benefits and bribes offered him by other people wanting the house he gives to Mr J, and tries his level best to avoid the media who want to make a front-page story of his “antics”. When a 3rd Degree reporter finally traps Mr X getting off his bicycle outside his two-roomed Philippi house and demands to know what Mr X is playing at and what his dark ulterior motives are for this unthinkable behaviour, Mr X is abashed and embarrassed that he has generated so much interest and attention for simply doing his job. Mr X’s unassuming comment is “I just wanted to do the right thing for Mr J. And there are so many other people I also want to help! Sometimes it’s a bit overwhelming when I think about the ‘big picture’, but I keep doing what I can do, one day at a time. It would be wonderful if more people would also help, but even if nobody does, I’ll keep on!” Then Mr X politely asks the reporter not to step on the cabbages in his little front-step food garden, because they’re earmarked for tonight’s soup pot: the children in the houses next door are depending on something warm in their bellies before they go to sleep; he tells the reporter that he often hears the little ones praying “Dankie Here vir kos en klere” and he doesn’t mind providing these for them and letting them believe their God is taking care of them: religion is the opium of the masses, and as long as it keeps the kids away from the Tik dens he’s just glad they’re under the influence of the lesser of two evils.

Just Because I'm Losing, Doesn't Mean I'm Lost

Write a page for your portfolio, addressing the following questions, and any other questions you may have:

• In your community / parish / town / country who are the “lost”?
• What can be done for the “lost”?
• What is your association with them?

In my community the “lost” are any sisters who have spent many long, hard years working incredibly hard to do good work for others without also taking the necessary appropriate care of their own personal needs, and now find themselves in a place of burnout where they are experiencing “compassion fatigue” that impels them to withdraw from relationships within and outside of the community. While this withdrawal might seem on the surface to save them energy that they don’t feel they are able to give away anymore, it also isolates them and keeps them from receiving energy and love from others: so they are trapped in a downward spiral. What can be done for these “lost” ones is that members of the community can be sensitive to their predicament and continue to reach out to them and draw them into community activities, even when these attempts seem to be unwelcome. As a novice, I am probably a real challenge to anyone in this predicament… but I can try to be as gentle and as kind as possible, and hold the conscious intention of being a conduit of God’s love and energy for such a person when I am with them. Especially when they are cranky.

In my parish the “lost” are those youth and divorced people who would like to be active members of the church but don’t feel welcome because they aren’t shown understanding and compassion. The youth are intrinsically good and have a lot of potential to grow into people who do wonderful things in the community, but because they are exploring their identity and trying to find their place in the world they are often dismissed as being rowdy, difficult and unreliable. What can be done for the youth is that adults in the parish can recognise that these young people are at a normal stage of human development, adjust their expectations accordingly, and do whatever they can (especially by involving the youth in activities and ministries) to support and encourage the youth as they struggle out of their adolescent cocoons and metamorphose into the responsible adults that God is calling them to be. The divorced have experienced a great deal of suffering as a result of their marriage failing (particularly those whose spouses struggled with addictions or were physically or emotionally abusive towards their partner or the children), and it would help enormously if ‘good Catholics’ could be less judgemental of their brothers and sisters and at least try to be understanding of the dire situation someone would be in before they acknowledged that their marriage was irretrievably broken and go through the trauma of getting a divorce (and an annulment where possible). My association with the youth and the divorced in our parish is fairly low-key, but I do try to encourage them by engaging in casual conversation and by being an affirming presence that says “God knows you’re great, we’re glad you’re here”.

In my town the “lost” are the homeless people who have nowhere to call their own, no way of earning a decent living, and no prospects for a better future. What can be done for them … is a really good question! In theory, the government is supposed to be doing something. In practice there are a lot of people getting help with filling in paperwork for disability grants (many of the homeless have some disability – physical or mental – that prevents them from working), but I’m not sure what the success rate is, or how able someone might be to put such a grant to good use to improve their lot. My personal association is in making coffee and sandwiches for those who come to our convent door, and I try to be cheerful and friendly and honour their dignity by being respectful towards them – even when I have to explain that it’s not appropriate for them to sleep on our doorstep! I wish there was more I could do!

In my country the “lost” are the refugees from other countries, the AIDS infected, the victims of gender violence and discrimination, the children whose schools are ill-equipped to provide a good education and are badly administered which makes matters even worse, and the desperately in-debt super-consumers who gate themselves into high-walled security complexes in a bid to keep the bad guys out… only to find that the bad guys are within: hayi shame! [I could write a thesis…]

The Lord and the Labourers

Does the parable The Lord and the Labourers reveal what the reign of God is like, or does it disclose what the reign of God is not? You can decide!

Reflect on this question and write about one page of your reflections on your understanding of the parable and how it relates to God’s reign.

Until now, I had understood the parable of The Lord and the Labourers to be an exhortation to accept whomever God called to be his disciples, regardless of whether they had always been religious (the first labourers) or whether they had come to faith later on (the late arrivals). I had equated the ‘wage’ with the ‘reward’ of salvation. I’m not sure where I got this interpretation, but it suited me because I had experienced some sense of inadequacy in the knowledge that I was baptised later than most, and had spent a number of years ‘standing idle all day’ – so if God wanted to be generous and include me in his work of salvation, anyone who wanted to point a finger or lodge an objection against me was being very mean spirited indeed. God is allowed to be generous. Especially to me!

However, my recent studies have challenged my thinking.

Some basic values of the Kingdom of God [clearly articulated by Fr Albert Nolan OP in his Biblical Spirituality booklet/lecture notes (April 1982)] are:

• sharing (as opposed to the pursuit of money and wealth creation for purely personal enrichment);
• human dignity (as opposed to the pursuit of status and prestige);
• human solidarity (as opposed to ‘clique’ selfishness) and
• service (as opposed to using power and authority to dominate and oppress others).

From this perspective, if the lord of the vineyard represents God, then I believe he would express these Kingdom values in his actions, and he would have:

• been equally generous with all of the labourers, not just a few;
• respected all of the labourer’s dignity by honouring the appropriate rate of pay for work done, instead of devaluing their hard work by paying everyone the same regardless of what they had accomplished;
• been sensitive to the fact that paying all of the labourers the same money for different volumes of work would rightly cause dissention and disunity by unfairly creating groups of ‘privileged’ workers within the workforce; and
• avoided at all costs making his authority felt by pulling rank on the labourers and reminding them that he was the one in authority and could do whatever he pleased, and he definitely would not have suggested that if the labourers were unhappy about his authoritarian actions it must be because there was some flaw in their character or some lack in their spirituality.

Since the lord of the vineyard’s behaviour did not model kingdom values, I don’t think he can reasonably be said to represent God. I think the more acceptable interpretation is that he represents the land-owning elite of agrarian Palestine! The labourers were right to protest unjust treatment!

The parable raises a number of important issues:

• the landowner tells the labourers “I will give you what is just” – so what constitutes a just wage?
• in defence of his actions the landowner says to the complainants “My friend, I am not cheating you. Did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage?” – how ethical is it for an employer to hold a worker to an agreement that was made without the worker having access to information about the employer’s intended remuneration policy?
• the way the landowner handles the remuneration issue shifts the focus away from the work and onto the wage, which implies that the primary purpose of work is for the worker to earn a wage – but where is the understanding of work as vocation or ministry? And where is the employer’s responsibility to use his authority as an employer to serve his workforce by creating opportunities that challenge and assist the workers to become more skilled and proficient in their work?
• the worker-as-wage-earner paradigm also contributes to the realisation of a worldly ‘commodity economy’ instead of a ‘gift economy’ that corresponds with the values of the Kingdom of God.

Through A Glass Darkly

So, what do I think about the parables of Jesus in the synoptic Gospels?

While I have always enjoyed stories, my approach to working with scriptural texts has been primarily one of fact finding and reporting. On reflection I think that this is because my personal experience of religion has been strongly weighted towards ‘finding, believing and speaking the Truth’, and shying away from ‘making up stories’ or ‘telling stories’ (which was likened by my mother to being the furthest thing from telling the Truth, and punishable by eternal damnation… and even if I had the chutzpah/idiocy to try to argue against that reasoning when I was nine years old, I definitely didn’t have the facility to explain the subtle nuances that distinguish stories from lies or tattle tales).

Undertaking a study of the Parables has:

• clarified for me the value of using story as a means of telling the Truth;
• revealed myth, parable and allegory as three distinctly different types of story, each with its own intention and dynamics;
• explained parables as subversive stories that aim to expose injustices against vulnerable people by presenting a vision of life in the kingdom of God which challenges the hearer to metanoia and a new way of engaging with the world;
• given me clear factual information that helps me to better understand:
• the variety of parables (similitude, extended comparison, narrative parable),
• the format or ways in which parables are constructed (question, refusal, discourse),
• the themes of many of Jesus’ parables (farmer & fisherman, master/servant, king, householder),
• helped me to identify some of the risks involved in the interpretation of parables:
• where the evangelists may have reframed an original parable in order to address a specific situation, and over time the story has been developed and transmitted to the point where the original meaning is no longer clear or relevant;
• where some parables have been treated as allegories, which has affected the original message of the parables;
• where some action parables might have been reconstructed by the evangelists and aimed at a situation or need within a particular faith community, rather than at conveying historical content.
• made me aware that some of the parables (particularly in Luke’s Gospel) were presented in a context of conflict in order to help the reader understand the situation that the parable is addressing indirectly.

My study has also created a link in my mind between the valid use of story and the growth of interpersonal relationships. Conflict exists to some degree in all relationships, and the way in which this conflict is confronted and handled can be constructive or destructive to the relationship. The way that the parables of Jesus have been presented in Luke’s gospel as a response to situations of conflict, offers insight into a model for using story as a means of indirect confrontation in order to illuminate a point of view and in so doing open a meaningful dialogue in which all concerned parties are able to participate. Dialogue aims at reaching a new understanding that acknowledges and encompasses each person’s point of view, and in order to do this it must sincerely and continuously seek a response. This corresponds with the way that the parables are left deliberately open-ended in order to call forth a response from the hearer.

While it can be said that storytellers existed prior to theologians in the Christian tradition, I think that the storytellers were themselves theologians in that they were attempting through their stories to reveal the truth about the nature and character of God – which is the aim of theology. In addition, the storytellers were modelling dialogue as a priority of a God who is all about relationship.

Song of Solomon

A friend has asked you “What is the best way to read Song of Songs?”. Write him or her a letter in which you offer some ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts’.

My dear Rhinoceros,

You asked me about the best way to read Song of Songs. The short answer: in private, the same way you read your Star Trek fan fiction! Because while you could attempt Song of Songs in a local Bible study group, you’re most likely to end up feeling the same kind of frustration you do at your Star Trek conventions or clubs when people start arguing over whether Kirk was the best captain or not, or where those awful ‘captain’s log’ jokes actually originated. And, as you have stated quite assertively in the past on the subject of Bible study groups: “These people always approach a thing from a certain perspective, and that doesn’t give a sceptic like me real insight into the text”, and given that the Song of Songs can be quite controversial depending on who you ask, I think it’s best that you read it yourself and make up your own mind about what it means before you engage in dialogue with anyone else on the subject (even me!). Knowing you, I’m sure you’ll have millions of questions and a very vocal opinion to express once you’ve done your reading, and I look forward to that!

To get you going, here are some of my personal DOs and DON’Ts for reading the book:

DO

1. familiarise yourself with the book’s historical background, and the cultural context for married sexuality in ancient Israel so that you can understand what the text meant to its original readers;
2. appreciate that the book is a unified collection of songs or poems, and look for the many poetic devices that are employed throughout the text;
3. note that the book is one of the five Jewish Megilloth and is read publicly at Passover;
4. understand that the book can be read in the literal sense as a celebration of romantic love between a man and a woman, and it can also be read in an allegorical sense as a message about the nature of the relationship between God and his people, or Christ and the Church;
5. ask yourself what the text means to you today, and try to become aware of your own thoughts and feelings on the subject matter when you read the text: notice how you respond to it, whether it evokes any feelings in you, or whether reading it makes you cringe or blush; and
6. remember that sexuality is a good and wholesome thing that was created by God for the procreation of human beings, as well as to nurture an intimate bond of mutual love between two people in a permanent and faithfully loving marriage.

DON’T

1. succumb to the temptation to completely disregard any allegorical interpretations of Song of Songs based on the mere existence of some fanciful and arbitrary interpretations that have been made by both Jewish and Christian exegetes in the past;
2. fall for any heresies that suggest that the human body or sexuality is something dark or dirty that is to be denied, avoided or ‘conquered’ at all costs;
3. think that the author/s borrowed heavily from Kate Bush’s Song of Solomon lyrics – it was very definitely the other way around!
4. at any cost visualise Captain James T. Kirk as the bridegroom, Lieutenant Uhura as the bride, or Scotty and the rest of the crew as the daughters of Jerusalem: doing that might make you laugh so hard you drop the book!

Well, in all seriousness, you have eight chapters to get through, so I will leave my advice here for the moment and we can exchange ideas again once you’re done.

Be swift in your reading, my friend, like a gazelle or a young stag on the mountains of spices!

Mad Dogs and Englishmen

Antiochus IV Epiphanes was known as the ‘madman’ because of the terrible crimes he committed against the Jews. Down the ages there have been other leaders of nations whom people have also called madmen. Read Daniel 7:9-28 and 12:1-4 once again and express your opinion on why Christians should be hopeful even when such leaders terrorise and oppress people today.

The madman who holds top-of-mind awareness for me today is Robert ‘Zimbabwe-is-Mine!’ Mugabe. He’s not only committing terrible crimes against ‘outsiders’ in his country – like the white farmers who he equates with colonialist imperialism, or the opposition politicians he accuses of being Western puppets – but against his own suffering people who as a result of his terrible leadership are dying in Zimbabwe of starvation, AIDS and cholera; or who are fleeing their homeland for any country they can get into, even xenophobic struggle-boys-club SADC member South Africa, because anything is better than the extreme suffering they are experiencing at home.

The situation in Zimbabwe is heartbreaking, and it certainly appears as if God must be absent while this evil prevails! Even some religious congregations seem to have given up hope and have closed houses there, or handed the cathedral parish in Harare over to the local archbishop after 115 years of service.

However, Christians should remain hopeful even when the likes of Bob terrorise and oppress people today, because – as the book of Daniel shows us – while earthly powers will come and go in time, God’s authority is supreme, unchanging and will last eternally. God will rule over all nations, and over all of creation.

While it’s important to remain hopeful by looking forward to the day when the coming of God’s kingdom will liberate all people from oppression, I think it’s also necessary that Christians recognise and accept that they should not merely sit and wait while they count the anticipated number of days until God’s kingdom comes (as though it were a Soccer World Cup or the last big Mathematics Olympiad!), but to step up and actively play their part in ushering in the coming of God’s kingdom: by living God’s law of love and being present to the needs of the world, and in so doing being a sign of God’s love for all people.

I believe that in time God will give back to Zimbabwe the years that the locusts have eaten! In the meantime it’s up to us to fast and pray for the freedom of Zimbabwe, and to do whatever we can to raise awareness about the injustices, and to pressure our country’s leaders to act more responsibly towards our neighbours instead of shaking hands with a ‘smiling damned villain’ (to borrow a phrase from Hamlet).

Journeying with Jude: from Springfield to Springfield

I was baptised when I was 9 years old, about two or three years before my dad converted to Catholicism. Our family lived a fairly average Catholic existence – pious at church and fighting like cats and dogs back home – and I regularly attended catechism and Sunday Mass. I was confirmed by Archbishop Lawrence Henry on 24 November 1990. I chose Jude as my saint’s name, because I considered myself and my life to be a pretty hopeless case and I thought that if any saint could make themselves useful in my cause, Jude was the most likely candidate. I was so sure of this that I was even prepared to fight with the Holy Cross sister who was preparing us for our Confirmation when she suggested that it would be more ladylike to choose Mary or Therese: I wouldn’t budge, I wanted Jude and I got him, along with a free extra moniker thrown in for my trouble: “Little Miss Cheeky”.

Once I had my church leaving certificate in hand, I still attended Mass fairly regularly for a few years before deciding that everyone in the church was a big hypocrite – including myself – and that my time would be more honestly spent elsewhere. So during the day I worked in online publishing, where I spent far too many of my boss’s hours talking in chat rooms with a wide range of geeky boys who had no in-person social skills but a strong urge to find themselves an intelligent techie girlfriend: and purely because there were so few females who knew how to log on to the internet in those days, I had my pick of potential mates. In the evenings I dressed all in black and spent my time dancing as freakily as I could with whomever was the love interest of the month to angry Goth music at a dingy alternative nightclub called Springfield, which was housed in a converted old train carriage parked between Newlands station and the South African Breweries: wonderfully symbolic of the haze of transient and inebriated comings-and-goings that marked that period of my life.

It was a lonely and quite empty existence, because I had no faith in myself or anyone else. I didn’t see many people in my world being genuinely caring, kind or compassionate, and if I felt disrespected or betrayed, I could be vicious. Even so, I yearned for ‘safe’ relationships with people, where I would be accepted and loved just for being myself and not for what I could do for them, where other people would see something good in me, and give me a chance to grow into a better person than I knew I was. And I still had so many unanswered questions about God and the meaning of life! So I was ready to accept the invitation when it came, to attend an Alpha Course at the Church of the Resurrection.

The ten weeks of that Alpha Course in early 2000 were a time of amazing grace and incredible transformation for me. I suddenly understood that God loved me personally and wanted to restore my spiritual home to me, and give me a place in His family – even though I couldn’t imagine why he would do that for me! Loving kindness is a hard pill to swallow when you’ve been living on a diet of death and destruction – but slowly it begins to work its miracle cure.

The nine years since then have been full of opportunities for learning about God and growing in a personal relationship with Him. I’ve been learning to walk alongside Him, and to trust Him, and to be faithful to whatever He asks me to do. I’ve been surprised at how patient and gentle He is!

God also has a sense of humour: when I entered the Cabra Dominican pre-novitiate in April 2008 in order to begin to discern more clearly whether or not He is calling me to religious life, I was sent to live at Springfield Convent, surrounded by a good school and set in the most beautiful garden: wonderfully symbolic of how much I am learning about life and love, and how good it is to walk with God in the cool of the day, and to appreciate the world as his wonderful creation.

And it’s good to know I’ve still got Jude in my corner, pulling for me whenever I need it!

Lamentations and Tragic Reversals

Reflecting on Lamentations 4, for me, the most obvious tragic reversal in today’s world is the seeming fall of faith, and the rise of secularism and humanism – along with the vociferous anti-religion lobby that buoys up these increasingly popular ideologies. And while it’s tempting to point accusing fingers at people who demand tolerance from people all faiths and none while they themselves are less and less tolerant of other people’s beliefs, it’s also a source of deep sadness that some of the anti-religion arguments are based on fair enough observations of atrocities that have been committed by people who profess faith in a loving and just God, but at the same time hide behind the sometimes unjust protocols of their religious hierarchy instead of owning up to their mistakes and accepting the consequences of inappropriate behaviour.

A prime example of this is the clergy sex abuse scandals that have rocked the Catholic Church in Ireland and America in the past decade. Devout Catholics everywhere have been shocked and horrified: not only that the abuse happened, but that certain bishops and cardinals embarked on a cover-up that not only protected offenders from the consequences of their actions and robbed them of the chance of getting appropriate help, but contributed to many further instances of abuse that could – and should! – have been avoided. As a result of these scandals becoming public knowledge, many righteous clergy are now understandably but unfairly treated with suspicion and mistrust by the people to whom they have a vocation to minister – which in turn prevents them from being able to freely express the wholesome affection, care and concern that so many people need from a good spiritual leader.

Other tragic reversals are the significant drop in the number of practising Catholics, the near disappearance of altar boys in Ireland, the significant secularist changes that are being expected in schools whose ethos was previously unashamedly Catholic.

Lament for Bernie, Olan, Gary and too many others

How tarnished are the chalices,
how changed the noble patens;
How the sacred altar servers have scattered
like street walkers on a corner when the vice squad drives by!

God-Save-America’s precious sons,
treasures of Rome their counterpart,
Now worth no more than a packet of pork rinds
fried in a black kettle by a Boston Irish publican!

Even the wild dogs lie down
to protect their young;
Mother Church has become as cruel
as the praying mantis on the vine.

The tongue of the innocent cleaves
to the roof of its mouth in fear;
The unwilling soft touches cry for justice,
but there is no one to give it to them.

Those accustomed to seeing armies of altar boys in the sanctuary
now look in vain for young men attending Mass;
Those whose schools were once the envy of the civilised world
now face angry demands to have God obliterated from the curriculum.

The punishment of the Bride of Christ
is greater than the penalty of Sodom,
Which was overthrown in an instant
without the turning of a hand.

Brighter than snow were her priests and bishops,
whiter than a wedding garment,
More ruddy than cherubim cheeks,
more precious than an isle of emerald.

Now their appearance is blacker than soot,
they are avoided on the streets;
Their dog collars cling to their necks,
like stocks on awaiting-trial prisoners.

Better for those who perish as heathen
than for ordained clergy who corrupt the innocents,
Whose souls waste away, as though shot through,
lacking the fruits of the Spirit!

The hands of mantilla’d women
sent their sons to church,
To serve our offerings to a compassionate God
in the downfall of the Holy Roman empire!

Hidden Weaknesses, Friends and Enemies

In my view some of the hidden weaknesses in the clergy sex abuse scandals have been:

1. the inattention to extensive formation in personal development and appropriate self-care for clergy who are expected to shoulder incredibly heavy emotional and spiritual burdens for their parishioners, while they themselves have not always had a functional support system amongst their clergy brethren to help them cope with the demands of the job. Like everyone else, they are wounded healers and also need human care and concern if they are going to be able to live their vows and fulfil their many responsibilities;
2. the failure of some clergy to nurture their own spirituality or to recognise that they need help and to ask for it timeously, or to trust that God will forgive their trespasses and provide them with the help and restoration they so desperately need;
3. the inability or reluctance of the upper hierarchy to trust that God would help them deal compassionately but justly with the instances of abuse that were made known to them: their failure to seek justice, restoration and reconciliation for the victims as well as the abusers; and
4. the hierarchy’s refusal to listen to prophetic voices that brought them an unpopular message urging them to repent and take appropriate action.

Friends in the situation are:

1. the victims of abuse who were brave enough to speak out and tell somebody what had happened to them, in the hope of finding healing for themselves and saving others from being similarly abused, and to restore integrity and dignity to the Church;
2. any adult who believed a victim and took appropriate action, braving unpopularity to go and confront the perpetrators, or speak to the local bishop;
3. the press for telling the stories and bringing to light some very unpleasant truths about a church desperately in need of reform;
4. anyone who stood up and said “This is WRONG!” when they heard about what was happening;
5. the clergy and bishops who acted to pressure the hierarchy into promulgating non-negotiable protocols pertaining to the investigation of sexual abuse claims, and establishing protocol committees that would ensure that the protocols are adhered to in any case of reported or suspected abuse by clergy, religious or lay church workers; and
6. the psychologists and counsellors who offer appropriate support where it is needed.

Enemies in the situation are:

1. anyone who made an abuse victim feel shame, or who blamed the victim instead of the abuser for what happened;
2. anyone who thinks the perpetrators are any less the victims of the crimes they have committed, or who thinks the abusers don’t also deserve to get urgent help;
3. anyone who knew about what was happening but kept quiet about it themselves, or pressured others into keeping quiet – especially anyone who used emotional manipulation like “if you were a loyal Catholic you wouldn’t tell people about this because you wouldn’t want to make the church look bad”;
4. anyone in Church leadership who didn’t insist on getting appropriate help for a priest with a problem but instead knowingly moved the priest from one parish to another without giving serious consideration to the far-reaching consequences of that action; and
5. anyone in Church leadership today who tries to hide the protocol documents from laity who ask for access to them, or who doesn’t actively promote awareness of the existence of (and freely provide contact details for) their local diocesan protocol committee.