He is now a Doctor of the University; this is the highest honour a university can bestow.

His honorary degree citation says Arbuckle's doctorate recognises his "contribution to the academic tradition of the Church and for bringing the interplay between faith and reason to bear on complex religious and social policy issues for the betterment of society."

Known as the priest and anthropologist who asks the tough questions, he has tackled topics like fundamentalism, conspiracy madness, and the culture of abuse and cover-ups in the Church.

"I am especially pleased with this award," he says.

"The type of work I've done has often meant that I must struggle to academically and pastorally pioneer new ground. This can be an exacting task but a thrilling one. So I am most grateful to the Chancellor and Senate of ACU for this honour," Arbuckle says.

"It acknowledges the important role that the social sciences have in proclaiming the Gospel.

"The more we understand the complexity of the world around us, the better prepared we are to help people grasp the relevance of Gospel values in their lives."

Not content to receive his award, Arbuckle continued to pose questions and challenges during his graduation speech.

"The world is awash with these alarming theories today. Autocrats use them to gain and hold onto power. So what are they, why do they flourish in times of chaos and do the scriptures say anything about them? These urgent questions need pastoral answers," Arbuckle says.

"The pandemic was an illness, but it has catalysed enormous political upheavals in nations, and massive injustices in many parts of the world, and opened the way also for anarchy and populous figures to emerge."

Speaking to ACU graduates, Arbuckle said that in this (post-Covid) world, we have to find some balance and that for centuries The Good Samaritan story has acted very well as a moral foundation of Western society.

Challenging graduates, he said it was their task to re-own and live the Good Samaritan values of justice, compassion and mercy and in so doing, they will help to maintain our democratic way of life.

A little bio

Before leaving New Zealand, he and John Faisandier wrote The Church in a Multi-Cultural Society: The Pastoral Needs of Maoris and Polynesian Immigrants. Based on a nationwide survey, they wrote the 1975 report at the then New Zealand Catholic Bishops' Conference's behest.

Since 1990 Arbuckle has been the co-director of the Refounding and Pastoral Development Unit, Sydney where his mission focus has been to preserve Good Samaritan values of compassion and justice in public and private healthcare institutions.

As an anthropologist, he has been a consultant to global private and public healthcare systems.

In 2008 he was appointed to a NSW government Independent Panel to oversee the reform of the state's public hospital system.

2010 saw him at Oxford University researching issues confronting England's National Health Service.

He later delivered Oxford's Martin D'Arcy SJ Memorial Lectures on Humanising Healthcare Reforms.

Graduating in social anthropology from Christ College, Cambridge University in 1963, Arbuckle is now an international award-winning author who has written 25 books on various anthropological quests, including institutional ageing, refounding the Church and maintaining the Catholic ethos in healthcare and schools.

In his research and lecturing, Arbuckle has chiefly concentrated on ways in which the original founding values of our institutions can be maintained and fostered.

Approaching his 90th year, Arbuckle works on his 26th book. It's about conspiracy theories.

Arbuckle's Marist connection goes back to his days as a St John's College, Hastings, New Zealand where he was a pupil.

Sources

• ACU (Supplied)
• Supplied

The claim is made by in Abuse and Cover-Up Refounding the Catholic Church in Trauma, a new book by New Zealand born anthropologist, theologian and international scholar, Fr Gerald Arbuckle SM.

Using the psalmist's image, Arbuckle says the Church was once a "strong mountain of great prosperity", but that power and prestige previously granted the Church has all but disintegrated.

Arbuckle describes the Church as the People of God who are demoralised and who are not sure what to do.

"The gap between Church rhetoric and reality is a chasm."

"Lay people feel betrayed, disillusioned, and angry," writes Arbuckle.

He says the suppression of public grief has only intensified the sadness and rage in people's hearts, destroying people's trust in their leaders.

"The short-sighted fear of scandal has been, and is, the curse of the Church…. Because it is an easy and much-used cover for cowardice, it exploits the future in the interests of the present, preferring scandal of missions to come to that of hundreds now", notes Arbuckle; quoting 1907 ‘modernist' George Tyrrel.

‘Pulling no punches', Arbuckle labels the culture of abuse and the system of cover-up as "systemic corruption."

"Sexual abuse cover-ups are systemic institutional evil because the culture of the church in this matter is corrupt", writes Arbuckle.

Arbuckle laments the contemporary tragedy of the disappearance of evil and contrasts it with the vision of the People of God, as outlined by Pope Francis; "to create a culture where each person has the right to breathe air free of every kind of abuse.

A culture free of cover-ups, which end up vitiating all our relationships".

Calling for major culture change in the Church, Arbuckle says the church must seek forgiveness, mercy, and repentance.

Published by Orbis Books, Abuse and Cover-Up: Refounding the Catholic Church in Trauma is praxis-oriented book focusing on the cultural reasons for this trauma and how the People of God can move forward.

Pivotal to the discussion, Arbuckle asks two fundamental questions:

Why is the culture of the Catholic Church, despite Vatican II's emphasis on collegiality and transparency, still prone to covering up abuses of power?

How can this culture change for the Church to move forward?

An anthropologist, Arbuckle maintains that because of its ruthless excavation and exposure of the preconceptions on which we base our lives, anthropology is among the most challenging disciplines of the entire academic curriculum.

"Applied cultural anthropology does not tell us what we want to know, rather it unsettles the foundations of what we thought we knew already."

Reviews of the book are positive.

"Among the many books on clergy sex abuse, this work of the anthropologist and theologian Gerald Arbuckle is, without doubt, the most helpful. . . . A book that must be meditated upon by the Vatican officers and all the bishops", writes the triple doctoral graduate Peter Phan, Ellacuria Chair of Catholic Social Thought at Georgetown University.

"Not just an analysis of the phenomenon of abuse and cover-up, but also the action plans and strategies needed for refounding the Church", writes Massimo Faggioli, Church historian, Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University, Philadelphia.

Source

• sm.org.nz