News

Thursday August 19, 2010


More Than Hitler and Stalin Could Ever Do …

By Thaddeus M. Baklinski

COOMERA, Australia, August 19, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Speaking at the National Synod held 27th – 30th July 2010, Archbishop John Hepworth, Primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) of the Anglican Catholic Church in Australia addressed the subject of clergy sexual abuse, saying that abusing priests have done more to hurt the Church and destroy the priesthood than Hitler and Stalin were able to do.

The Anglican Catholic Church in Australia is a daughter church of the Anglican Catholic Church in Canada, both of which have accepted the offer of Pope Benedict to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church. That arrangement is made possible following the issuance of Anglicanorum Coetibus, the apostolic constitution published in November last year that provides a way for groups of Anglicans to enter the Catholic Church through the establishment of personal ordinariates.

In his address Archbishop Hepworth reflected on the global problems facing the Church, touching on the fact that “every generation faces challenges to the gospel.”

“But the tide of change is now intense. We live as no humans before us have lived,” the archbishop said, and zeroed in on the self-destruction of the priesthood, an “internal destructiveness of their own making,” caused by the destruction of the theology on which Christianity is founded, and evidenced by clergy sexual abuse.

“The roots of theological destructiveness” – the denial of fundamental precepts of Christianity such as the divinity of Christ, the Resurrection, personal sin and redemption – “all this has been but a prelude to a cataclysmic failure of personal morality that manifests itself as a crisis of abuse and especially in the sexual abuse of the young and the vulnerable,” Archbishop Hepworth pointed out.

“The church is seen to be a church of violence in that most cruel area of violence in which the sanctity of sexuality within a stable and loving family is perverted into what Pope Benedict constantly calls the filth and perversion of a lust that has been quenched without regard to the lives that are destroyed in the quenching.”

While noting that “in most parts of the world a majority of abuse takes place within the family,” and that sexual abuse is not limited to religious organizations but is widespread “in a society whose corruption is rapidly expanding and destroying that heart of human love and stability,” Archbishop Hepworth warned that “the abuse within the Church by those in positions of sacred trust, whether they be religious or clergy or laity in positions of trust and influence – is generally and rightly regarded as more corrosive of victims’ lives than that which occurs elsewhere.”

“The innate contradiction between a priest who can sodomize teenagers and go from that to handling the Son of God himself at the altar is as vast as any contradiction we can encounter.”

“Both Hitler and Stalin attempted to destroy the church by destroying its priesthood. Neither succeeded. Martyrs are the lifeblood of the church,” Archbishop Hepworth noted.

“But in the past 50 years the priesthood has begun to destroy itself. And let us be quite clear. The verbal abuse that destroys a person’s confidence in their own personality, the physical abuse of unreasonable punishments and sadism, and the sexual abuse that ranges from inappropriate touching to sodomy and rape protected by blackmail are simply different points on a pathway that has destroyed not thousands but tens of thousands of lives that the Church has touched – but not for the better – in our generation. Ireland admits that one in five of its population have been abused by someone within the church. Parts of Australia have a percentage almost as high.”

The archbishop explained that the consequences of abuse are as destructive to the abuser as to the victim of the abuser’s lust.

“The aftermath of abuse is destructive for the abusers. To hold the heights of depravity and the heights of sanctity within a single personality is utterly destructive.”

“And the aftermath of abuse is destructive for the victims. Many victims experience the most powerful sense of shame and guilt, passionately believing that they provoked and invited the things that happened.”

“They believe that their relationship with God is beyond redemption and their attitude to God turns often to anger and rejection. They struggle with minds that are dominated by images of their sexual experiences and often turn to drugs and drink to escape their own minds with which they cannot live.”

From his own personal experience, the archbishop related that, “In over 40 years of priesthood, I have done too many funerals of young men whom I think now must have been victims because of the way in which they killed themselves.”

“Because of their image of being un-clean, victims will have problems with things that are sacred. Because their social development in key areas is often frozen they will fail consistently in relationships. And especially if they are men they will find it almost impossible to speak of what has happened. Often they may come to speak later in life and only because of some cataclysmic stimulus in which speaking suddenly becomes possible. And then there is the trauma of remembering and the trauma of trying to learn what parts of their life might have been a product of abuse and what parts might genuinely have been products of a sinful mind.”

“There is in fact no known escape for these victims.”

“I know of these things now because a bishop is bound in today’s Church to learn what there is to know,” Archbishop Hepworth concluded.

“He must ensure in every way possible that the past is not repeated. And since only the church can heal what the church has done, it is the responsibility of the Bishop to ensure that his clergy and people will respond with healing when they encounter the one in five or 10 that our statistics still tell us are waiting, perhaps longing, for the chance to tell someone in the church the story of their own lives.”

“A victim will often only try once to turn to the church for help, and everything hangs on the spiritual and professional skill of the one to whom they turn to, be it lay or be it clergy. Each of us has the responsibility to be prepared. Only the church can heal what the church has broken. And until the church learns to heal its victims, the church will itself remain broken and unhealed.”

The full text of Archbishop Hepworth’s address to the Synod of the Anglican Catholic Church in Australia is available here.


See related LSN articles:

Clergy Sexual Abuse Study: It’s Time for Common Sense

https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/apr/10040104.html

Media Frenzy over Women’s Ordination Distracts from New Vatican Sex Abuse Norms

https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jul/10071603.html

Sex Abuse in Catholic Church was Homosexual Problem, not Pedophilia: Vatican

https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/sep/09092910.html

Forgotten Study: Abuse in School 100 Times Worse than by Priests

https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/apr/10040101.html

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