Hosted by the Canon Law Society of Australia and New Zealand, the four-day event aimed to equip attendees with tools to navigate evolving issues in Church law.

Key issues

The conference covered topics such as penal canon law, justice reform and juridical reflections on the Synod on Synodality.

Experts including New Zealand's Dr Brendan Daly (pictured) shared their insights with delegates and offered guidance on how to apply canon law in their local communities.

"The opportunity to share knowledge with such a dedicated group of professionals is always rewarding" Daly said.

"The discussions we had here in Brisbane will equip delegates with the necessary resources to apply canon law appropriately in their respective parishes, dioceses and wider Catholic communities."

Professional development and networking

The event also provided a rare chance for canon law professionals to network face-to-face. Oratory Fr Adrian Sharp, judicial vicar for the Brisbane archdiocese, emphasised the importance of connecting with colleagues from around the country and beyond.

"It's always a good chance to see our counterparts from around the country" Sharp said.

"The conference is usually the only face-to-face chance of catching up each year.

"It's good to meet those who are new to the canon law field and make connections for when it's necessary to contact them in the future."

Notable speakers and presentations

Daly is a leading expert in canon law. He delivered a session on "Spiritual abuse as a crime", shedding light on this emerging area of concern within the Church. Other international speakers included Dr Rocio Figueroa from New Zealand, Dr Edward Morgan from the UK and Dr Chad Glendinning from Canada.

Sharp highlighted a presentation on the juridical elements of synodality which he found particularly relevant. "A very topical theme, and I found it a helpful presentation" he said.

Looking forward

Fr Ken Cafe, president of the Canon Law Society of Australia and New Zealand, praised the event's turnout and engagement.

"This conference provided a welcome opportunity for our members to reconnect and delve into the critical issues facing the Church's legal framework today" he said.

Source

• Catholic Leader

It's been prevalent in the Catholic Church, in other churches and within wider society, he says.

Tomb's view is shared by Dr Rocio Figueroa, a theological researcher at the Te Kupenga Catholic Leadership Institute whose focus is pastoral response for survivors of Church abuse.

Figueroa says the Church, in the wake of damning findings about a lack of accountability for both State and Church care, is moving to take more accountability.

Figueroa's research focuses on pastoral responses for Church abuse survivors. She believes the Church is doing its best to respond to victims and deal with abusers.

While she said there was always more that could be done, she was "grateful and happy there is now more accountability. The Bishops are doing the work they need to" she says.

Tombs makes the point that "Policies and procedures have improved significantly in recent years, and Pope Francis and other Catholic leaders have often spoken out on the urgent need to address the abuse crisis and the damage it has caused".

"In the past, the focus of the Church has been to protect its institutional reputation. This has often come at great cost to survivors who have been disbelieved and even blamed when reporting abuses.

"The Catholic Church has sought to be more survivor-centred in its response to abuse disclosures, but a lot of trust has been eroded and will be hard to re-build" he says.

"The problem is not limited to the Catholic Church—abuses have been prevalent in other churches and within wider society—but serious failings in the Catholic Church have often been in the spotlight in media coverage" he said.

Tombs described the Church's response time to sexual abuse as being "painfully slow".

Priest defrocked

Tombs and Figueroa's comments come amidst the defrocking of a priest in New Zealand.

The priest was defrocked by Pope Francis following complaints of an alleged rape by a priest and after all the priest's Church appeals were exhausted.

The alleged rape occurred during a house blessing at the home of the complainant.

"When a priest commits grave crimes, for example abuse of a minor, a sexual solicitation under the sacrament, all these crimes are reasons that can make a priest be dismissed" says Figueroa.

This is just the third defrocking in New Zealand she notes.

The alleged rapist, his victim and the bishop

Defrocking the priest who allegedly raped a Hamilton woman was all very well but it took a long time, says a woman whom the Waikato Times calls Cathy to protect her identity.

But defrocking a priest is "basically our capital punishment" explains Bishop of Hamilton Richard Laurenson.

"As rare as a hanging would be on one level."

However Cathy told the Waikato Times she remained unhappy at the Church's delay in moving against the priest and said she feared "he will do it to someone else".

The Waikato Times understands the man still resides in New Zealand, and complaints about his behaviour date back at least 15 years.

Police job now

"It is now up to the police to take matters any further should they feel they can" Laurenson told Cathy.

Police say they cannot comment on the case.

Source

• Waikato Times

Dr Rocio Figueroa made the comment after Pope Francis urged religious and consecrated women "to fight when, in some cases, they are treated unfairly, even within the church; when they serve so much that they are reduced to servitude, at times, by men of the church".

Figueroa - who has academic positions at both Auckland and Otago universities - says the challenges women religious face are inflicted by male clerics and, as a result of glaring internal challenges inside religious communities, need to be addressed.

The Church's concept of the vow of obedience is one such challenge, she says.

"Because it is ill-defined, it has enabled the abuse and mistreatment of religious women for decades.

"At the beginning, the vow of obedience began with the monks," she explains. They were obedient to their abbot, who represented God. By obeying him they were obeying God.

This definition of obedience has continued until today, Figueroa says.

It has resulted in complaints of psychological and spiritual abuse, about abuse of authority and toxic and militant cultures from many religious orders.

Religious are told to see this treatment as the will of God, the plan of God, and not to question it, she says.

"It's not just the problem of an abusive leader, it's a problem of how the system really enables abuse, in a way."

Figueroa would like to see religious obedience adopting a more open, cooperative connotation where people could speak freely.

"It will perhaps be messier, there will be more discussions, but it's human society, it's a family. You talk things through," she says.

Obedience "cannot be the submission of your will and thought".

Figueroa says the vow of obedience ought to be modelled on Jesus, who in the Gospels consistently says he is obeying his Father's will. He wasn't obeying other people.

"The obedience in the Gospel is an act of trust, an act of following God's commandments and following his love, so it's an obedience full of love and trust in a relationship between Jesus and God the Father".

However, this isn't the experience of many religious today. Most are women but the ones who write the documents determining what the religious vows mean in practice are always men.

Obedience and the Church's fundamental understanding of it "won't change until women have a voice in the definitions, in the teachings of the Church," Figueroa says.

This requires more than just a change in policy, it needs a systemic change away from the male-only world view.

"It would be important to have more women, to exercise authority in a woman's way, because the problem now is that we have a lot of women who are exercising authority in a patriarchal way," and that has caused problems, she says.

"Until we have another way of exercising authority, it will be very difficult.

"We have to create a new model for exercising authority".

Source

• CruxNow
• Image: iadc@unigre

Figueroa is a lecturer in Systematic Theology at the Catholic Institute of Aotearoa New Zealand in Auckland.

To understand the underlying causes of abuse the Church needs to rethink its ts power structure and concept of leadership, she said.

If the Church were to rethink its ts power structure and concept of leadership, it would be a start, she says.

"Whenever there has been sexual abuse in the Church, you could see that there was first a spiritual abuse."

Figueroa is also a former member of the Marian Community of Reconciliation (the women's branch of the Peru-based Soldalitium Christianae Vitae - SCV).

She was among the speakers addressing an online course on abuse prevention in priestly formation settings

In 2017, the Vatican sanctioned the SCV founder after accusations of sexually abusing several minors and physical and psychological abuse of community members.

All the victims talk about spiritual abuse, Figueroa said.

"They are always together, spiritual abuse and sexual abuse."

Spiritual abuse "has never been addressed [in the Catholic Church]," she said.

"You see lots of courses about sexual abuse prevention, but nothing about this systemic problem. You also have to ask yourself why the system has allowed sexual abuse to happen?"

Figueroa said spiritual abuse happens when anyone who holds some sort of spiritual authority over another and uses that power to control them rather than helping them grow.

A superior telling a subordinate to do something because ‘this is the will of God,' is an example of this, she said.

People can commit spiritual abuse without realizing it, largely due to the lack of preparation and maturity in those tasked with formation, she said.

Part of the problem is a misguided understanding of obedience, she said.

In the Catholic Church, obedience is understood "in a vertical way, where the one who has the authority is the word of God; it's a very vertical dimension and you have to just obey."

This, opens the door to other forms of abuse, including sexual abuse. It is one of the underlying causes of abuse.

Many who enter religious communities make vows of obedience, "but they don't promise to be authentic and to follow myself and my conscience.

"This is as important as the vow of obedience."

Clericalism is another major issue, Figueroa raised.

"Every person in the Church has to be accountable, because sometimes authorities in the Church are not accountable. They do anything they want to do."

This is especially true for women, Figueroa said.

Women religious are especially dependent on their male superiors.

"We have structural problems. For me, they are all together. If you put clericalism, sexism, and the situation of women together, it's like a bomb."

In her view, "the servant leader" is the best choice to counter spiritual abuse.

The servant-leader "first wants to serve, and then wants to lead generates another type of leadership in which the person who leads does not look for power, but really looks out for the good of the people."

Source

• CruxNow
• Image: YouTube

Dr Rocio Figueroa Alvear is a Peruvian theologian currently lecturing in systematic theology at Good Shepherd College in Auckland and an external researcher at the Centre for Theology and Public Issues at Otago University.

Professor David Tombs is the Professor of Theology and Public Issues, and Director, Centre for Theology and Public Issues at the University of Otago.

In the recently published study, Recognizing Jesus as a Victim of Sexual Abuse: Responses from Sodalicio Survivors in Peru, Figueroa and Tombs highlight the reactions of eight victims of sexual abuse within the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae in Peru to the idea of Jesus as a victim.

Figueroa's and Tombs' research, part of which explored the Gospels, revealed Jesus did, in fact, endure some sort of sexual humiliation during his arrest, trial and ultimate crucifixion.

Figueroa stressed that there is a difference between sexual humiliation and sexual assault.

While both are considered abuse, "there are different forms of abuse" including both sexual humiliation, which includes forced nudity, mockery, stripping or touching, and sexual assault, when the physical act takes place.

Figueroa, a sexual abuse survivor herself, has reached the conclusion that the concept that Jesus himself was a victim of sexual abuse was something survivors who participated in her study said could be helpful for the Church.

Referring to the small number of victims included in the study, Figueroa said it was "not a quantitative study, but a qualitative one".

"We didn't want to make general conclusions," she said. "We wanted to go in-depth into the answers of the survivors."

Source

• cruxnow.com
• faithwire.com
• Image: ourarchive.otago.ac.nz

After trying unsuccessfully to raise the alarm both in her order and in the Vatican, she left, and is now a researcher and activist pushing for a change in Church structures that allow abuse and cover-up to happen.

A former member of the Marian Community of Reconciliation (MCR), a pontifically-recognized Society of Apostolic Life, Figueroa said that while much discussion in the Church has so far focused on the abuse and cover-up by priests and bishops, lay movements are next on the list.

Asked whether lay movements are the "next frontier," Figueroa said "absolutely," and pinned part of the problem on the Church granting "too much power to lay movements."

"They have lots of rights and no responsibilities, no accountability, so it's very complicated," she said, explaining that in her view, there need to be changes in canon law that better address the specific needs of lay movements which would also protect their members.

Speaking at a Nov. 27 Voices of Faith event in Rome, Figueroa recounted her story of entering the MCR after being abused by one of the high-ranking members of the male branch of the community, the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae (SCV), when she was 15.

At the time, the women's branch of the SCV - established by Peruvian layman Luis Fernando Figari in 1971 - had not been established yet, and Figueroa met the group through her brother in 1983.

Feeling a call to give herself to God, she began receiving spiritual direction from the order's vicar general, German Doig, who would later be found guilty of sexually abusing multiple people, including minors.

Figueroa said she was "naïve" and didn't understand what was happening when Doig began touching her during "exercises" to help her "manage her sexuality."

Convinced he had her best interests in mind but feeling uncomfortable, she asked him to stop and earnestly believed he had changed his behavior.

Still feeling a call to give her life to God, Figueroa became one of five women to start the women's branch, the MCR, in 1986.

Although she was happy, she said Figari never visited the community, calling him a "misogynist" who would always tell the women they were "less intelligent" than the men and needed to be "more masculine."

Liberation

Once the community began to grow, Figari stepped in and began managing the MCR on a daily basis, assigning the women to work in projects run by men, but essentially treating them like slaves, as they would work unpaid while the men's community received financial benefits, she said.

Figueroa, who was superior general at the time, objected and said she believed she could change Figari's behavior, but instead found herself demoted and assigned to the community house in Rome.

"It was the beginning of my liberation," she said, recounting how she was assigned to work as head of the women's office in the former Vatican department for laity.

It was while she was there that Doig died suddenly in 2001.

Overly defensive of men

Around this time, Figueroa said she had been confronted by a priest who said she was overly defensive of men and asked whether something had happened.

When she told him what Doig had done to her at the age of 15, he told her she had been sexually abused.

"For the first time I realized I was a victim," she said, explaining that although she was in her 40s, she began a long process of healing.

However, after Doig's death, Figari asked her to help promote his cause for canonization inside the Vatican.

Feeling conflicted, since many people at the time believed Doig to be a saint, Figueroa said she confided the situation in confession, and the priest's advice was to investigate since Doig could have reformed his behavior.

However, in 2006 she discovered there was another victim who had been abused after she was, and soon after that, another.

"He was not a saint, but a serial perpetrator." Continue reading

• Dr Rocio Figueroa is originally from Peru. Her doctorate in theology is from the Gregorian University in Rome. During her time in Rome she was also Responsible for the Section on Women's Issues in the Vatican. She currently lectures in Theology at Good Shepherd Theological College, Auckland.
• Image: Altavoz

Dr Rocio Figueroa (pictured) of Good Shepherd College, Te Hepara Pai, says the Church's response needs to be "centred on the victims, not covering up the perpetrators or trying to protect the institution."

If Murray were convicted of his alleged crimes now, there would be no possibility of his continuing as a priest, she says.

She believes that even now, at 91, he should be defrocked.

"I think that if the victims ask, because they want this guy to be laicized (defrocked), I think it's the right thing to do.

"We have to listen to the victims.

"The victims have never been listened to, and we have to make justice.

"The only way we will heal the victims is with justice."

Figueroa said, even as a practising Catholic, the church's handling of Fr Murray had been "wrong."

"We have had a culture of secrecy and silence.

"This silence has benefited the abusers and not the victims."

In 2003, Murray admitted 10 charges against four boys in Otago between 1958 - 1962.

He was jailed for five years but served less than three.

A victim, then a 10-year-old boy, has spent 35 years on a benefit, coping only with part-time work while battling his own psychiatric problems.

While he has retained his Catholic faith he is a long way from forgiving.

"I'm still angry because he ruined my life. I'm still very angry," he told the ODT.

Originally from the Otago diocese, Murray remains a priest living in an Auckland retirement facility receiving dementia care.

Even though Murray lives in Auckland, he remains the responsibility of Hamilton Bishop Steve Lowe.

Sources

• Otago Daily Times
• Otago Daily Times
• Good Shepherd College
• Image: Altavoz