OUR SAY: Secret men's business

LIFE AS I KNOW IT: You really have to wonder how much longer Christianity is going to remain relevant in Australia beyond these token celebrations.

TURNING POINT: After five years of investigations the Royal Commission into Institutionalised Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has come to an end. Picture: JannHuizenga

And so this is Christmas and what have you done....

Well if you're a Christian, not enough it seems. So hold the birthday celebrations for the Messiah and perhaps think about this before you tuck into your boiled pudding this year.

You really have to wonder how much longer Christianity is going to remain relevant in Australia beyond these token celebrations. The institutions are slowly being eroded courtesy of antiquated views like denying all Australians the right to marry, and the widespread nihilist behaviour which is at complete odds with the faith they espouse to possess.

It doesn't get much lower in society than molesting, raping and sodomising children, yet lo and behold, it's something that has been a way of life in various Catholic and various other cloisters around the country, ever since Adam was a boy. Sadly Adam also found he had no where to turn to as he tried to understand what exactly what was happening to him.

The men running these organisations have either been conveniently asleep at the wheel or complicit in enabling these perpetrators to function freely without the criminal punishment or humiliation your garden variety paedophile would be subjected to. To some degree the congregation reiterated this with their ignorance, disbelief and inaction.

Yes a lot of good people are involved in the church but a lot of good people also turned a blind eye to ensure this kind of peddling in child sexual abuse was able to continue for so long.

These enablers provided the predatory playground for packs of brazen, entitled priests whose initial guilt as short-lived as the next confession or encounter.

Ironically trying to crucify a priest is a tricky business. It's easier for them to fly under the radar of the cloth, with access to the best legal teams in the country and secret hiding spots at their disposal just about anywhere in the country, no wonder they can't afford to pay tax. The barristers fees alone must be astronomical.

It takes some kind of special defiance to publicly preach to the masses about what is right and wrong and then turn around and sexually brutalise a child while destroying their constitution beyond repair. And then do it again, and again, receive a rap on the knuckles and move to a new town, and do it again and again.

Or openly refuse a gay couple the sacrament of marriage while marrying a man and woman whose child was later raped by the family priest.

They publicly decry brothels and abortion while allowing sexual barbarism to incur in their vestries and student dormitories. Juggling secrets and hiding evidence hoping it will all go away, actions that justified behaviours that continued to infect a broken system of token remorse -- repent, repeat, repent...

It's rather ironic The Royal Commission into Institutionalised Responses to Child Sexual Abuse wrapped up just before Christmas. It has brought horror story after horror story into our living rooms for the past five years, a long time coming and far too late for many.

Dead by their own hands or living but dead inside, still angry and hurting as if it were yesterday, reliving the horrendous acts that took away their childhood and what remained of lives.

Let's hope this Christmas is a smidgeon better for them.

Originally published as OUR SAY: Secret men's business