Render unto Caesar: Israel and the Catholic Church must have their day in court
Joseph Wakim ABC Religion and Ethics 17 Dec 2012
The public faces of Israel and the Catholic Church in Australia, Pell and Netanyahu, need not to fear the criminal courts. It may earn them greater respect, to replace the suspicion and resentment.
What do abuses of power by church clergy and the Israeli government have in common? Both flirt within civil spheres while they skirt the criminal courts.
Both church and Israeli leadership have portrayed violations against children and Palestinians respectively as anything but criminal. The defence mechanisms deployed by both theocratic institutions bear striking similarities. As their sanctity is subjected to unprecedented scrutiny, they may face unprecedented accountability to the law of the land.
With the Gillard government’s launch of the Royal Commission into “institutional responses to child abuse,” Catholic Cardinal George Pell has had to reconstruct paedophilia more as a crime than a sin. By biblical definitions, sins disobey divine laws and make a “separation between you and your God.”
Under Catholic Canon Law, sins are forgivable through the sacrament of confession and the fulfilment of the prescribed penance. Contrary to popular misconceptions, absolution is neither an absolute guarantee nor a revolving door. If the sin is a crime, the confessor may be told “no absolution without first confessing to the victim, handing yourself in to the police, and treating your addiction.”
The confession can remain confidential, and the sin can remain forgivable, but “conditions apply.” Sacred laws and secular laws are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Sins should be surrendered to God, but crimes should be surrendered to the courts – and the two can be both compatible and concurrent. Enough experienced clergy have declared that child abuse is rarely confessed, as paedophiles tend to be more pathological and do not see themselves as sinners.
In past practice, such perverts were (mis)managed and transferred internally as serial sinners who are forgiven and “will try not to sin again.” Instead, they could have been treated as serial criminals who infiltrated and polluted their holy order and need to be stripped of their collars and cloth then surrendered for punishment as well as penance.
Cardinal Pell should have focused less on the “seal of confession is inviolable” and more on “nobody is above the law of the land.” Even Jesus Christ was subjected to trials in both courts, albeit unjustly. His charge of blasphemy was heard before the Sanhedrin Court under Jewish law, and had this charge upgraded to treason before Governor Pilate under Roman law. Contrary to the false witnesses, Jesus never shunned secular obedience nor the law of the land, but instructed his followers to “render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar.”
Hence, this does not challenge the theology of forgivable sins, but couches them into dual accountability, which is integral to this message of Jesus.
Criminal courts have never been perfect, but they cannot be skirted. If these institutions and leaders have nothing to hide, then they should have nothing to fear.
Just as the confessional has been exempted from the mandatory reporting of child abuse as a criminal offence, Israel expects to be exempted from the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. It expects those harmed by its “apartheid policies” to remain silent and relinquish their right to access the ICC, or face further financial bribery from its American accomplice.
Ironically, Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu’s vindictive “talking point” after the recent UN decision was that, “The Palestinians will quickly realize that they made a mistake when they took a unilateral step that violated agreements with Israel.” And yet the only unilateral step is the latest roll out of 3000 Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory. Netanyahu seeks a bilateral solution by pretending that “our conflict with the Palestinians will be resolved only through direct negotiations,” as if they were two equal sides. But the real solution is multilateral by taking the territorial violations, war crimes and crimes against humanity to the ICC.
With some Israeli leaders believing that they have a divine right to all of the Promised Land that was given to Abraham and his “seed,” this would resonate with the defence of some Catholic leaders that Canon Law is above the law of the land. The parallels extend to paradoxes about those skirting the criminal justice system: How can “men of the cloth” who ostensibly represent holiness stoop to such evil acts? How can descendants of Holocaust survivors on the holy land preach “never again” yet practice or condone such inhuman acts? How can authorities charged with the custody of weaker parties, holy lands and minors betray that trust with crimes?
Both authorities may need to literally surrender land for peace. While the church may need to sell estates to pay for civil damages and criminal trials, the Israeli government may need to roll back the settlements so that Palestinians have a viable sovereign state.
There is growing disquiet among both church laity and Israeli citizenry over the skirting of criminal culpability. These voices prefer their leadership to “come clean” so that those corrupting their core values are exorcised: voices like veteran Israeli soldiers who testified against abuses in Breaking the Silence; voices like the Catholic laity who reconcile Canon Law with secular law.
The public faces of these powerful institutions – Cardinal George Pell and Benjamin Netanyahu – do not need to fear the criminal courts. But when they were silent about the unholy atrocities committed by their lower ranks, there were screams by those violated. By facing the law of the land, they are reconciling with the rest of the human family. This may earn them greater respect and openness, to replace the suspicion and resentment.
Joseph Wakim established the Streetwork Project for exploited children in Adelaide in 1986, was appointed Victorian Multicultural Affairs Commissioner in 1991, and founded the Australian Arabic Council in 1992. In 1996, he received the Commonwealth Violence Prevention Award for his anti-racism work. In 2001, he was awarded the Order of Australia Medal (OAM) for his anti-racism campaigns.