At the recent royal commission hearings Cardinal Pell was pressed on how much he knew of cases of abuse in the Melbourne Catholic Church. His response was that he knew very little, and that the responsibility for his ignorance lay with his predecessors who did not inform him, and with the Diocesan officers who worked under him but failed to report matters to him.
Religious leaders have repeatedly avowed a similar ignorance. Their claim has been received with incredulity by commissioners, victims and commentators. To most Catholics it has all been pretty dispiriting.
The royal commission will draw its own conclusions from Cardinal Pell's evidence. But if our priority is to prevent further abuse, our concern is not simply to decide whether the Cardinal and other religious knew of abuse, but to consider the reasons why he and other religious leaders might not have known. A culture in which responsible officers are not told of abuse would pose a continuing threat to children.
It is easy to understand why Catholic bishops might not have been told of offending priests. Where an offending parish priest had responsibility for the local primary school, teachers who wished to complain about his behaviour had no local church authority to register a complaint. If they reported it to higher educational or church authorities, they could reasonably fear for their position in the school.
School children who complained of abuse were treated as unreliable witnesses and in many cases were beaten for their impudence. And complaints were almost always followed by an inadequate response. In this climate people learn that it does not pay to notice or report misbehaviour.
This deplorable situation is not confined to the Catholic Church. When such institutions as the army, workplaces with apprentices, big law firms and hospitals have been investigated for bullying, harassment or abuse, the same patterns have been evident.
Whistleblowers are ostracised, dismissed as unreliable and petulant, and isolated. In detention centres people who make public abusive behaviour face a jail sentence of up to ten years. Where complaints are settled out of court the complainant is often bound to keep silence about the case.
In such an environment it requires exceptional moral courage to allow oneself to notice abusive behaviour, to report it and to follow it up.
In the Catholic Church, however, specific qualities of the pattern of relationships between bishops, officers of church institutions and the people whom church and its institutions should serve have also contributed to the problem. This pattern is commonly described as clericalism.
Its features include a formality of address, distinctiveness of dress, a sharp and religiously sanctioned distinction between grades, and an emphasis on authority and obedience in relations between higher and lower grades. This was reflected in an aura of awe surrounding the bishop, the assumption that bishops and priests knew best, and in a reluctance to acknowledge or report misconduct by clerics.
In such an atmosphere a complainant is less likely to follow up a complaint, and complaints more likely to be dealt with or shelved at local level. More forceful bishops might be less likely to be kept informed of clerical misbehaviour.
By definition clericalism is confined to churches: only they have clerics. But something analogous can be recognised in institutions that employ celebrities. The failure of BBC management to know about the violently abusive behaviour of their celebrity entertainers now seems extraordinary. But celebrities are commonly seen as a distinctive caste, different from ordinary human beings and entitled to act badly.
Those working alongside them and managing them would cut them slack, turn their eyes away from abusive behaviour, and would not think of reporting it to remote senior management.
If we are to make institutions safe for children, we need not only hold to account people who have presided over unsafe places, but also to address a culture that protects silence at each level of organisations, preventing complaints being made and being reported. Clergy and celebrities must not be treated as different from others, entitled to have their bad behaviour ignored. They must be held accountable to the officers and regulations of the organisation in which they work.
In the Catholic Church the culture of accountability is made more difficult by the fact that from the beginning of their formation members of the clergy are mostly accountable only to other clergy. They rarely work under lay people, and still less frequently under lay women.
Such restricted experience can easily reinforce their sense of belonging to a different and higher caste, and so lead to a lack of accountability.
Here, as elsewhere, consideration for the safety of children in future makes clear how urgent is the need for changes in governance and the formation of clergy. Such changes in culture do not come easily. But what the Royal Commission has revealed should provide steel for the Catholic soul.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street.