My anger with George Pell has been replaced by immense sadness - Christos Tsiolkas
Shame and fear of sex and the body – and the hypocrisy and perversion that arises from this – have compromised Catholicism for centuries. When I observe this tragic mess, when I truly look at the face of George Pell, I don’t see a monster and I don’t see an ogre and I don’t see Satan and I don’t see the Devil. I see the children and the women and the men and the nuns and the priests who have been destroyed by this shame, and this fear, and this living of lies...
It is long past the time for the church to
grow up.
Yet in acknowledging
the horror I don’t want to forget the many Catholics I have met who have
remained true to what I believe is the most profound of Jesus’s teachings. I am
thinking of the Catholic nurses I met during the worst years of the Aids
epidemic, who cared for sick and dying friends even when their church had
seemingly turned its back on the ill. During the height of the economic
rationalist slashing of social services by Premier Jeff Kennett in Victoria, I
witnessed the same care extended to the homeless and to those most affected by
recession and poverty. And most recently, I have been humbled by the Catholics
I have seen fight for the rights and dignity of the asylum seekers. I’ve been to the
Vatican and there is nothing of the wisdom of Jesus there. I’ve witnessed it on
the streets, the detention centres and hospital wards of my city....
For years Pell has
publicly and vehemently pronounced against the evil of homosexual behaviour. He
has been one of the key figures in the institutional church fighting against
any leniency or change to Catholic teachings on sexuality. Has he, then, in
part, been fighting against himself? I count myself lucky.
I only had a few years where I lived inside the lie of hiding my sexuality. I
can write that now, with almost a cavalier objectivity, but in my adolescent
years living that lie nearly destroyed me. I did believe myself shameful and I
did believe myself monstrous, and I thought that if God did not cure me of my
affliction, then the only course left open to me was to take my own life. I
loved my family, I loved my friends, I loved my God, but I feared that if I
revealed this one truth about myself then I would be cut off from their love
for eternity.
Vatican
treasurer found guilty of child sexual assault
Where I was fortunate
was that my family and friends did not turn away from me, and that in high
school I had two teachers who clearly understood the nature of my struggle
against the lie, and who steered me towards books and films that offered me
glimpses of how to live an honourable and truthful life. I was also fortunate
in coming of age in a time when Gay Liberation had already challenged the laws
that made my sexuality illegal, and had started dismantling the social stigmas
that made that sexuality shameful.
Maybe I was lucky too
that I was raised Orthodox Christian and not Catholic. Unlike many of my peers
who were raised in the Catholic church the promise of the priesthood was never
an option for extending the lie. The Orthodox priests can marry. Beyond that,
the almost idolatrous revering of the priest that has always puzzled me about
Irish-Catholicism was never a part of my Orthodox heritage. Both my parents had
faith but they also had a strong suspicion of the clergy. “They are men, a few
are good, the rest are a pack of wankers!”
At 18, after coming
out to Mum, she pleaded with me to go to confession. I didn’t believe I needed
to confess anything but to please her I went along. I told the priest that I
was there because my mother was distressed that I was homosexual. He pulled up
a chair next to me, and placed his hand alarmingly near my crotch. He told me
that God loved all the creatures he had created. I firmly smacked his hand away
and left. When I told my mother she groaned and said, “You should have bashed
the Bible across his head!” But I wasn’t angry at that priest. In truth, I
pitied him. He was just a man, just a closeted gay man. I was thankful I didn’t
have to lead that life anymore.
Many years later I had
a night getting drunk with a group of Catholic priests. They were good men,
people I had met who worked in social justice and on the streets. I helped one
of the priests, now very drunk, up to his room in the seminary, and put him to
bed. He fell asleep immediately, and I looked around the tiny room, at his
single bed, the icons and the crucifix on the walls. He was in his late fifties
but it reminded me of a schoolboy’s room. It was a cruel thought but I had it:
these men have never grown up.
I wonder sometimes
what would have happened if I had been born a generation earlier, before Gay
Liberation? Would I have married and had children? And in doing so, would my
own self-loathing at living a lie have turned into a bitter hate that would
have betrayed family, friends and community; would I have never known what it
is to love and be loved? I too might have never grown up.
So, when I saw the
media images of Pell’s haggard face as he was led out of the courthouse, when I
heard the abuse hurled at him, I felt that great sadness. And that spark of
empathy. I wondered whether this was a man who had led a lie for decades, and
in leading that lie, did he even forget what it was to be human outside it? I
know that none of this excuses his hypocrisy, his vainglory, and the perversion
of the Gospel teaching that the “last shall be first and the first last”; and
it certainly doesn’t excuse his own abusing, and the shameful covering-up of
abuse within the church he led. But it may be that even though I no longer
profess to be a Christian, some of the foundational tenets of the faith remain
vital for me.
I have returned to the
Christian Bible many times throughout my life and I am always struck by how
there is only a scattering of references or teachings to do with sexual
morality. It is compassion, charity, love and humility that are at the centre
of the New Testament Gospels... read more:
