Once again I find myself agreeing with Foxy, sorry Foxy I tend to put the "kiss of death" on what you often say by agreeing with you. You being able to put the point across in a reasoned and balanced manor, where as I tend at times to shoot from the hip and tip the bucket on em', which I shall do in the next paragraph.

Its about time we stopped treating the Holy Roman Mafia as some kind of untouchable sacred cow, and put the boot into them, which we have the power to do. There is no evidence that the Catholic Church has really done anything to deal with the root causes of the problem, clergy are still free to roam the precincts of institutions unchallenged. What the church has done is changed its tack, from a position of harm minimization to itself, bugger the victims,through suppression and denial to a new position of so called openness and remorsefulness. All awhile the Church is saying leave it to us, we will fix the problem ourselves. The same male hierarchy is still in charge, still calling the shots from here to the Vatican, and their objectives have not changed.
Our leadership now has the opportunity to do something about the situation, at least in Australia. They have been given the evidence and the recommendations, now its time to act.

The Australian Constitution does not allow for the making of laws for any religion, so can the naive recommendations of the RC ever be implemented? The vile practices of Islam can be regulated by common law, because we have laws relating to child abuse, age of consent etc., when perpetrators are caught. The same applies to Catholics, if they are caught. But confession and the sanctity of confession, are an internal matter for Catholics, and violating trust in the confessional is unthinkable. Priests have died in the past protecting it, and it is unlikely – even in our steady descent into barbarism now – that we are will start killing priests.

In the secular world, officials - teachers, doctors, and so on , are legally obliged to report cases of child abuse; and most of us not legally obliged would feel duty-bound to report such matters to police.

However, no prosecutor is going to waste time and money trying to prove that someone was lying if the claim that they 'didn't know'.

As for that other silly suggestion (RC's can only suggest) that the Catholic priesthood should be allowed to drop celibacy, how ignorant are the Commissioners that they don't know what the rest of us no: that freedom from celibacy is no protection from child abuse, as is demonstrated in the wider, community.

This Royal Commission, like all the others, is just a trailer load of very expensive manure.

"Our leadership now has the opportunity to do something about the situation, at least in Australia. They have been given the evidence and the recommendations, now its time to act'.

The evidence was always there, Paul. The "leadership" hasn't acted on the evidence in the past. What makes you think that they will act now? And, as you will see above, the recommendations are worthless.

Dear Paul,

One may not sympathise with the Catholic Church, certainly not with its abuses, but this campaign does not end there:

If the state is allowed to trample on everything that is sacred to that large group, then what could stop it from trampling on everything that is sacred to smaller groups and ultimately, to you!?

And everyone has something(s) that are sacred to them.

As I don't know you personally, I cannot tell what is specifically most sacred to you, so here for example is just one wild guess based on your Green leanings:

Suppose government issued a law whereby if you see a shark (whale? dolphin?), anywhere (including even if you only hear from another person who had a close encounter with a shark but wishes to remain unknown), then you must report your sighting so that they will come after it and cull it.

Be sure that I would stand firm for your freedom to not be involved in this chain of animal-murder, no less than I now stand for the freedom of Catholic observants.

Are you aware that such a law mandating the reporting of all adult-child sexual contacts (past, present and potential-future) to state-authorities will stop in its tracks not only the confession in Catholic/Christian churches, but also many New-Age-Green-style activities and therapeutic workshops where confidentiality is paramount and sacred? Are you aware that victims of child-sexual-abuse are already prevented from receiving counselling and other therapies if they want to keep what happened to them secret and not reported to the state? Some still have recourse to New-Age workshops where those who hear their secrets are ordinary people rather than professionals - but all this would have to stop with the proposed laws: not only the excellent technique of Christian confession would be halted but also all those wonderful workshops that help people, including the abused and including their abusers who sincerely seek healing without incarceration - there are many of them and tons of collateral damage would occur just because short-sighted people want to take revenge on the Catholic Church.

"freedom from celibacy is no protection"..

College principal : "It would be understandable if Marist people lost faith in the College and what it stands for..While 20 per cent of Marist Brothers in Australia are known to have been abusers, we must also remember 80 per cent, four out of five, did not."

Does this mean that 20% of Australian married men are boy fiddlers but 80% are not?

Yuyutsu,

Well said. However, I doubt that Paul will be able to see through his Christianophobia to appreciate your comment; he probably had a bad time when he was school kid (Catholic school if my memory is correct). The thing that really concerns me about the Left is that they criticise Christianity (fair enough), but they don't say boo against the horrors of Islam, which is not fair enough.