Two weeks ago one Melbourne church was burned down, and fires were started in two other churches.
The media response to the fires focused on Rachel Griffiths' remark that she was happy to see her former parish church, St James, Gardenvale, in Melbourne, go up in flames because of the predatory behaviour of one of its parish priests. It also speculated whether the fire may have been lit by a victim of abuse.
My own feelings about the destruction of St James were mixed. I was baptised and made my first confession and communion there. I was also an altar server, where I helped with the ritual and experimented in such pyrotechnics as putting gunpowder in the incense and making a blow torch out of the fly spray and candle, so mixing the boyhood dough of piety, responsibility and mischief that might later be baked into a living adult faith. Later I returned to the church to celebrate my first Mass and my mother's and father's funerals, as well as other family events. So the church is a place of remembered blessing.
But more recently at the beginning of celebrations at St James I have felt bound to acknowledge that for some of those present this church would be a holy place, but for others a demonic place. And indeed for me, as for most former parishioners of my own and the next generation, it has become associated irredeemably with a parish priest who preyed on many children and bullied many older women. He redecorated the church in his own style, and devastated many lives in his own way. So the church is a place of remembered blasphemy.
When Rachel Griffiths, my niece, spoke with her customary emotional intelligence, of her satisfaction at seeing the church burn, she echoed my own feelings and those of many of my generation and the next. To feel that way does not imply that we applaud people for burning down churches; nor do we believe it right generally to destroy places where evil things are done. And we sympathise with the present members of the congregation and the parish priest, who had nothing to do with the evil done in the church, in their loss and devastation. But to us St James came to speak most strongly, not of God's love, but of betrayal by one who claimed to represent God. It is a place to avoid.
Many will