The injection of additional financial assets into the support of victims of clergy sexual abuse from the legacy of former Bishop Ronald Mulkearns is welcome news for Ballarat. Guessing at the motives of the legator is simply speculative and retrograde.
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A bigger issue exists here and the glib derision of a dead man is the easy option. Rebuilding a community is the much harder and protracted job. The historical damage is well documented. What is of greater concern to Ballarat is all the repercussive damage done to victims and their family’s decades on. Ballarat has an elevated suicide rate and we can only imagine the resonating trauma of abuse from all the untold stories.
It is a huge testament to the courage of the victims who stood up to tell their stories that they not only have spontaneous community support but their plight has so visible a profile it cannot be ignored.
But it is also a testament to the courage of the Catholic Church in Ballarat that it appears to be honestly attempting to address the evils of the past. Courage because facing up to the atrocious abuse and indifference is not easy when it appears to shake an institution to its core. Courage because it takes more moral fortitude to unflinchingly face the sins of the past and embrace the compassion and hope of the future, those virtues embedded in Christianity’s gospels, than to simply hope history will roll over their misery.
Ballarat represents a milestone moment in the sordid history of clergy sexual abuse where the cause of the tragedy is making significant steps to being part of the solution. For many this may be an uneasy alliance but it is a partnership and it is a way toward healing.
Victims have spoken about the small but valuable steps the Catholic diocese has made toward them, the cooperation and financial support. This should be the model for more to come not an end.
Ballarat’s precedent in galvanizing a community behind true sufferers including the Loud Fence movement and this sense of partnership between former adversaries should be a model for other shattered dioceses around Australia.
This sense of community and cooperation should send an even stronger and louder example right up through the inscrutable hierarchies of the Vatican.
Cardinal George Pell expressed a genuine sense of contrition and concern at the closing of the Royal Commission. His ideas of a substantial investment into Ballarat as a healing centre are still ideas. This should be a positive call of how much more needs to be done.