Respected Jesuit priest and law professor issues reminder that Catholic Church is not a government department. Australia's long-running federal inquiry
into child sexual abuse should not "trespass on the holy ground of
religious belief and practice", Jesuit priest and law professor Fr Frank
Brennan has warned.
Brennan, Professor of Law at Australian
Catholic University, told the Freedom for Faith conference in Melbourne
on 23 September that the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses
to Child Sexual Abuse, which has announced a "wrap-up" hearing into the
Catholic Church for February 2017, "will need to be very careful about
taking on the mantle of royal commission infallibility and lecturing to
the Church about its structure, theology and doctrine in light of
contemporary secular Australian notions of truth and right".