Changing mentality to create safe spaces
News
One of the world’s leading authorities on safeguarding and the prevention of sexual abuse, Fr Hans Zollner SJ, has warned that abuse will never be eradicated and that a “change of mentality” is as important as guidelines and regulations.
Fr Zollner at the forum
The German theologian and director of the Institute of Anthropology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome praised the Australian Church for its efforts in developing and implementing safeguarding measures, including the establishment of the Australian Catholic Safeguarding Limited (ACSL) – the only body of its kind with such a wide scope.
But he stressed that it would “never be enough”.
“It will never stop, I think it’s important to realise we won’t eradicate abuse, it’s impossible,” he told a forum hosted by the Adelaide Archdiocese, in conjunction with ACSL, on February 13.
“We are human beings and there is evil in us. We can do whatever is possible so abuse doesn’t happen but this is only a limited effort, so we need to take a long breath and engage in an ongoing evolution of safeguarding measures.
“This is not going to happen in an instant, in five years or in 50, it’s going to stay.”
Fr Zollner said while the Church as a whole had made “reasonable” progress in safeguarding measures, it was not good at “acknowledging the past”.
“Everything we are doing in terms of safeguarding awareness building and implementation is taken away by one case of allegation that has been mishandled, whether it was 50 0r 60 years ago or today…one scandal washes away everything that has been done by many people and hundreds of hours of work,” he said.
“For the Church it is a very difficult exercise to own its past, when it has failed to do what the Church is meant to do, to protect the most vulnerable ones.”
Fr Zollner said this failing was “irrational” because “normally we say okay we have done wrong, we repent, we confess and repair…but the Church too often has not been able to repent sincerely, confess clearly and repair appropriately”.
He was also critical of the Church with its “many connections and established relationships” for not passing on its experience and expertise from one local church to another.
He said the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs was interested to hear about the Church’s Safeguarding outreach to the Pacific islands. He questioned what had been done to assist Australia’s closest neighbours, Papua New Guinea and East Timor, in the dissemination of information, taking into account the different contexts and cultures to ensure they “owned” the issue.
Similarly, he said there was a need to address the multicultural reality of the Australian Church and accept that “no one size fits all”.
The capacity audience of 150 parish, school and Diocesan personnel, clergy and Religious was told that each one of them had a role to play in safeguarding against abuse.
But he stressed that it wasn’t only “what you do, but how you do it”, referring to his own experience of feeling “empty” despite all the efforts that he had put into guidelines, policies and regulations.
“I felt like I was banging my head against the wall over and over again,” he said.
“Then I learned something important, it’s not only about what we do but how we do it. This means a change in mentality, a way to a different attitude, but that doesn’t come fast and doesn’t come without a cost.
“It is something very precious and very challenging. In the first place it involves listening to victims and survivors in their respective experiences and expectations.”
“Each one of you here can do something, in his or her capacity, his or her competence. If all of us here now do what is within our reach, our institutions, our parishes, schools, our families will be safer spaces. If all of us do that, it will change the whole of the community.”
“Nobody can do it all, nobody is responsible for something beyond his or her capacity, we don’t need to save the Church, we don’t have to save the diocese, the institution. The world has been saved, it has been redeemed by Jesus Christ, this happened 2000 years ago.
“What we can do is give our contribution, big or small, here or there, for that particular contribution that only we can give. At least in opening ears, opening eyes and, if necessary, opening mouths and speaking out.”
He cautioned against simplistic answers to clergy sex abuse.
“Do away with celibacy and you won’t have abuse, throw out all the gay priests and you won’t have abuse, it’s all a media campaign…these are all enemies of the Church, and so many false allegations,” he said.
“These are all simplistic answers to much more complex realities. All the scientific reports…say it’s not celibacy that leads to abuse of minors, yet in every single interview I’m asked: what do you think of celibacy?”
However, Fr Zollner said celibacy could become a risk factor over time depending on how it was “lived out”.
“What are the conditions, the support systems for priests, the ongoing formation,” he queried.
Importantly, he said safeguarding had to be seen as an integral part of the mission of all aspects of the Church.
“Safeguarding has to be an Inbuilt reality of everything we do, of any type of relationship, of any type of offering in the Church and in society,” he said.
“We need experts, officers, training sessions, but a change of mentality happens only if we understand that this is in our DNA.
“It cannot be done by one person only…either we do this together or we don’t do it. We need to address it as a community, as families, as institutions.”
In this regard, Fr Zollner believes the Catholic Church has “huge and unique potential” to demonstrate that we are “really making the most out of our possibilities” and are committed to “safe spaces, safe processes and the living out of safe relationships”.
“This is much more energising, much more hopeful, much more directed towards concrete actions for the creation of safe environments in our parishes, schools, families and sporting associations,” he said.
Referring to the cover up of historical abuse and moving perpetrators to other dioceses and countries, Fr Zollner said a long and entrenched history of secrecy and lack of accountability resulted in bishops and clergy “not applying Church law to their own deeds”.
It also contributed to “too many people in the pews” not doing what they were supposed to do or “purposefully looking away when abuse was going on”.
“I think it’s an expression of an attitude that thinks that protecting the Church means hiding the truth,” he said.
“Doing formation sessions for bishops is one thing but we also surely need change in law, we need to train all people involved and we need to streamline our processes when it comes to hiring people, to screening candidates for priesthood, to become more transparent in our internal and external communications.”
“Most importantly, we need to ask ourselves as Catholics engaged in this community, who are we and what are we meant to do and to be.
“As St Pope John Paul II said, this is a time of purification.”
“The effort of creating safe spaces needs to be embedded in the bigger picture: how do we get from guidelines and policies to the practices that will form different attitudes and change mentality? This is the journey from theory to lived practice.”
