Letter to Donald McLeish from Father Kevin Dillon

Dear Friends,

I’ll never forget it.

I was watching one of those TV “Celebrity Panel” game shows, and the panel was asked to do a “word association”. The given word was “priest”. Quick as a flash, one “celebrity” panel member came back with her answer: “Paedophile!” And the audience roared with laughter!

That was at least twenty years ago, and that word-association of “paedophile” and “priest” has been both widespread and incessant, yet again in our news this week with the death in prison of serial paedophile Gerald Ridsdale, who had, by his own admission, irreparably damaged the lives of countless young victims – quite a number of whom I know personally.

There is so much that has been and probably will continue to be written about the horrendous succession of children whose lives he changed and ruined forever. Perhaps even more tragic of course is that he has been by no means alone in these crimes. There have been so many more “paedophile priests”, in so many places throughout the world. And while this has certainly been an horrific burden for priests, even it has been a far greater horror for the families of victims – and indeed the families of perpetrators.

But most of all of course it has been a life sentence for the poor victims, the kids, themselves.

Most of you reading this know that both the crimes / offences themselves along with, over several decades, the appallingly inadequate and unchristian response by the Church has been an issue of grave concern for me, both as a priest and as a human being, for well over 30 years. I don’t apologise for mentioning it again this week, hurtful and shameful as it is.

Indeed, you might be interested in the attached document, which I wrote for the St. John’s Mitcham “Parish News” nearly thirty years ago. I was no expert then, but if I may say so, I reckon I’m close to an “expert” now, with thirty years of daily listening of up to 150 victims of church-related child sexual abuse.

But so few in the Church, most especially the “leaders”, want to listen now, as they didn’t want to listen back in 1996.

The reason this “issue” (it is so much more than that!) continues to receive public attention again and again is because the suffering of those poor kids has never been effectively recognised by the Church which was responsible for the recruitment, the seminary training and formation, and most of all the continuing appointments in parishes and other positions of trust of those priests – and even seminarians – who damaged so many children.

The death of Gerald Ridsdale has indeed and will continue to re-traumatise so many of his victims, and many others besides. The Catholic Church (and indeed other churches) has not even begun to recover let alone heal the lamentable failures over many decades – up to today.

The Church failed dismally to recognise its fundamental responsibility – spoken by Jesus in this week’s Gospel – to “treat people the way we would like to be treated ourselves”.

“Apologies” have been made – sure. But when any of us sin, the Church instructs that we must not simply apologise. We must have “contrition”, that deep-seated and humble sorrow and acknowledgement of the wrong we have done or allowed to happen.

And the Church’s teaching is not about “compensation”. The Church tells us when we do wrong we must make reparation for the harm we have done, or in which we have been complicit. And we need to have a “firm purpose of amendment.”

The Church’s moral teaching says nothing about safeguarding the Church’s material assets. If only the Church’s most precious and irreplaceable assets – its people and especially its children – were as fiercely protected as its material wealth.

So much more can and should be written and said. But this weekend in particular perhaps you might say a prayer for the many people, especially the abused kids and young people who have been and are victims of church-related child abuse, and their families.

Fr. Kevin Dillon