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1. Fr Barron is not correct when he dismisses the sexual abuse crisis by claiming the 'wrong people are telling the story'.
   Those telling the stories are survivors and their families betrayed by the very community to whom they sought faith hope and love.
   Despite his attempt to reclaim beauty and integrity, Fr Barron comes across as a 'spin doctor' more than a prophet calling the Church back to basics in the saintly models he promotes.
   Is there also an echo of good old fashioned clericalism in the quartet of holy blokes he offers as models we need to seek today.
   I would much rather look to the witness of Edith Stein, Dorothy Day and the countless women of faith for my hope for the future.

   Posted By: Tony Robertson

2. I find it ironic that in The Dark Ages it was Christianity - mainly through its monks, nuns and monasteries - which preserved the best of Western civilisation.
   Now in this Age of Enlightenment Christianity, and in particular the catholic church, is described as writing a dark chapter in world history.
   Of course, there are blots on almost every page of the church's story - but they are not the whole story.
   They are the inevitable consequences of weak, broken, human nature.
   But they are also an opportunity to practise humility, honest self-appraisal and confession, and above all a call to conversion, not of others but of ourselves.

   Posted By: Joe

3. Father Robert Barron is correct when he says this the darkest period in the life of the church and goes on to identify some examples to support his proposition - all of which I agree with.
   He then goes on to suggest a way forward, 'back to basics: to simplicity, works of mercy,prayer and poverty, to faith hope and love.'
   How then can we do this simplicity?
   One way a small group in Seaford have discovered is to offer support to single fathers who are disconnected from their families, especially their children.
   Probably the biggest social problem in Australia at present is the break up of marriage and family life, where many children are growing up without their father in their life with horrendous consequences.
   Also the fact that 6 men suicide each day, many because they are separated from their children and family.
   We have been able to identify a way each of us can assist thoes in our church and wider community to work through this nightmare of broken families.

   Posted By: Kevin Vaughan

4. Tony R is correct. It is reprehensible for priests to shift the blame to the media as several prominent church figures have done.
   It is a similar mindset to the mentality pervading conferences for principals of Catholic schools in the early 1990s when we were warned by speakers to be ready for big payouts by insurance companies and on protocols for notification - there was total silence about 1) how it might be stopped and 2) how the victims should receive just compensation.
   

   Posted By: Graham

5. Fr Barron preaches a back to basics approach and tells us to hope for saints.
   I suspect many saints have left the Church in despair with most of the alienated young people he now targets. Talks and television series are a distraction.
   A fundamental renewal of the Church’s governance is required with a real focus on Christ’s teachings.

   Posted By: Peter Johnstone

6. 'the darkest hour is just before the dawn'.... let's hope that this may be true for us, as Church.

   Posted By: Cathy

7. Tony Robertson: I'm sure you'd be happy to know that in episode eight of Fr Barron's ten part series Catholicism, four saints are held up as examples to follow, and they're all women: Katharine Drexel, Therese of Lisieux, Edith Stein, and Mother Teresa. Also, Dorothy Day gets a mention in another episode.
   I've listened to many of Fr Barron's commentaries on his Word on Fire website and he doesn't seem to suffer from what you call '[good old fashioned clericalism' at all.
   Fr Barron comes across as a priest loyal to Vatican II, neither a traditionalist nor a liberal 'progressive'.

   Posted By: Kevin O'Loghlen

8. Peter Johnstone: A true saint wouldn't leave the church (though she might accept excommunication), and a true saint wouldn't truly despair, even in the darkest hour.

   Posted By: Paul Keen

9. Many are of the opinion that the church is passing through a time of purification. So it is a good time.
   We hope and beleive in the lord that He can change any situation
   for the good of all.

   Posted By: Fr. Carmelo Adami

10. If the sexual abuse scandal had been dealt with the same speed and zeal that operates in relation to 'liturgical abuse', would we be in this darkest hour?

    Posted By: Chris P

11. If it is the wrong people telling the 'story' of the multi-layers involved in the sexual abuse travesty then who are the right people to tell this 'story'?
    The very reason why it is the media which has, at times with great malice, reported on this is because others (perhaps Father Barron's 'right people') refused to, or denied, or obfuscated, or confected all sorts of conspiracy stories, or blamed a range of other social groups; or enabled.
    The more that self-interest and privilege actually blocked this 'story' the more it became the 'story'.
    Unfortunately, an all too open window into the priorites of a hierarchy, and their fellow travellers, more devoted to the idol of institution than of Gospel.
    Yes, this is the Church's darkest hour and for good reason.

    Posted By: Mark Johnson

12. Let us look no further than our current church to find saints and prophets!
    They abound in all our communities - or have left them - serving in numerous ways and speaking about their great hope for the church at dinner tables across our nation.
    But their voices are barely attended and their skills so often ineffectively mobilised.
    If the desire and energy of the people of God in this land were to be harnessed and taken seriously we would not need visiting clerics to point us in a direction of their surmising. Given the opportunity, and entrusted to the Spirit, we have more than abundant capacity, gifts and hope to shape our own.

    Posted By: vivien

13. Mark et al: The 'story' Fr Barron is referring to is not the sex abuse crisis, but rather the story of the Church.
    We are more than the horror of what has happened, we are not all paedophiles.
    As he said, this is a terrible part of the Church's story, but is not all of it.
    The secular media (while useful in the reporting of the crisis) would reduce us to nothing more than this terrible event. But our story does not end there.
    We know that the Church is also good and beautiful, and we all work hard to bring that good to fruit in the world, do we not?
    We are not rats on a sinking ship. We are a people of God, keeping the faith and holding the light amidst the darkness, awaiting the great dawn. Let's wait together in hope.

    Posted By: Trish

14. Trish is right. The 'story' Fr Barron is referring to is the story of the entire Church and its history, which he has told is the TV series.
    That is the story that Barron alleges is being distorted.
    
    The extent to which this false narrative has been adopted is apparent in these comments. Plenty of people jumped to the reductive conclusion that Barron was referring specifically to the abuse crisis. They've been well programmed.
    
    

    Posted By: David Kennedy

15. I've heard only good things about his TV series, so I presume it is the Age's distortions or misquotations of him which make Fr Barron appear to promote the series with such cheap, false and sensationalist slogans.
    I'm sure he knows that Ss Francis, Dominic and Ignatius strongly supported the Crusades and the Inquistions as excellent means of dealing with the crises of their times.
    And that it was precisely the Inquisitions which ensured that very few innocent people in Catholic lands were burned as 'witches'
    as they were by the thousands in Protestant countries.
    It's nothing new that the Church's enemies attack her by portraying the sins of a few of her members as typical or inherent to the Church, when such sins are even more common outside the Church.
    What is new is that her enemies now use sophisticated mass media campaigns. The Church up til now has avoided as beneath its dignity, anything resembling a pro-Church PR campaign. But surely this should be part of her evangelism in this mass media and internet age?

    Posted By: Peter G

16. On reflection, and for the record, I (and everyone else I guess) have preferred narratives too.
    We just need to be careful they don't carry us away from reality.
    No-one is innocent here, least of all me!

    Posted By: David Kennedy

17. David and Trish: The second paragraph of the above article and from the original piece does not support your more broad understanding.
    Regardless, are you both trying to say that such a (if you like) mere chapter is minimized in relation to a more wondrous narrative of the larger 'story'?
    And that if other 'story' tellers could only have their versions amplified then sexual abuse and the even more widespread cover-up would be put in perspective?
    This tendency to refuse to see the many ramifications of the enormity of the sexual abuse travesty is part of the reason why it has grown in the first place.
    The scale and deep harm of the abuse is one thing, but the exposure of an ecclesial culture which enabled it and then defended and justified it reveals a larger dimension.
    The issue is so serious because it reveals an utterly dysfunctional ecclesiology and institutional culture from which this travesty has arisen.
    Sure, there are wonderful people and groups expressing their faith by inspired work; as there are many ordinary folk doing wonderful and often unacknowledged work.
    But sitting atop of these is a system that has been shown to be damaged and damaging.
    The entire narrative of the Church is maimed by the sexual abuse crisis.
    But of course we could just delete and then have the same event occur further on?
    Let us learn from seeing the dark heart, and then with Grace becoming a less co-dependent People of God.

    Posted By: Mark Johnson

18. Mark: Thanks for, inadvertently, giving a textbook example of the kind of narrative I referred to.
    First, put your academic hat on. If you saw a sentence in an essay that stitched together two separate quotes, without any indication of the context, wouldn't your alarm bells go off?
    If the writer was known to have an animus towards the person in question, or the institution they represent, wouldn't the bells ring even harder? If the speaker were a highly intelligent, and unlikely to make such a statement, wouldn't the bells be ringing off their hinges?
    Now read the story again.
    Call me a cynic, but I see no reason for privilege what is written there over the many thoughtful statements Fr Barron has made over the last few years.
    Second, you state that 'the issue is so serious because it reveals an utterly dysfunctional ecclesiology and institutional culture from which this travesty has arisen.'
    You've chosen to frame the issue that way. But all you've done is beg the question.
    If you want to convince, you need to offer reasons, not just assert. It is just as plausible that the crisis was a consequence of the moral disorientation widespread (and still widespread) in the *surrounding* culture. Or maybe it's both.
    But in any case, the abuse crisis isn't the privileged lens through which the Church must always be viewed.
    Fr Barron has said nothing more, and I think he's right about that.

    Posted By: David Kennedy

19. No, Mark. That's just bizarre.

    Posted By: Trish

20. David Kennnedy: Firstly, this isnt a to and fro about Fr Barron.
    Rather it is about preventing a supposedly more wondrous narrative (through whose telling we have yet to find out) being wielded to erase the significance of that of sexual abuse and its myriad ramifications.
    Secondly, the only question begging is why some still continue to wriggle out of the hard facts of the sexual abuse travesty.
    Sure, if you so choose, to *suggest* the (non-specified) influence of some confected surrounding and supposedly uniform culture, but we still wait for clarification as to why a most certainly uniform and centralised ecclesial culture denied, obfuscated, evaded, scape-goated and thereby enabled?
    Rather than lessening one 'story' so as the glorious other can be trumpeted by a select few without static, it is now time to actually see through the hubris of one with the lens of the other.
    The resulting humiliation will only enable a more authentic 'story' to emerge.

    Posted By: Mark Johnson

21. Mark: What you've done is reiterate your preference for your chosen point of view. And that isn't enough to convince anyone.
    Why should the entirety of the Church's history be reduced to the sex abuse scandal of the late twentieth century? What gives this event priority over all others (good and bad) in the life of the Church?
    Isn't it that you find this perspective *useful*?
    That it's a platform for your program of political 'reform' within the Church? The same program which you still would have had if the abuse scandal had never happened?

    Posted By: David Kennedy

22. David: Firstly, it is not a choice to interpet the current life of the Church via the systemic abuses and cover up which occurred (and have yet to be exposed in other countries).
    This has happened and the entire Church witnessed the spectacle of power being dragged into the light of accountability.
    As for the hypothetical of whether or not I would be arguing for reform if such a shocking episode had not occurred... I honestly cannot say. I suspect that I would not.
    What I do know is that faithfulness demands that what has been exposed by the abuse scandal cannot be ignored, and (as referred to earlier) in fact provides the needed catalyst to reform. Simply too much has been seen to not demand reform.
    

    Posted By: Mark Johnson

23. Mark: I think you're battling a straw man there. I can't think of any sane person who is arguing that the abuse crisis should be ignored.
    But ignoring the abuse, and making it the sole and privileged fact about the Church, aren't the only two options. Can we at least agree on that?

    Posted By: David Kennedy

24. David: We can agree there.
    But such either/or demarcation misses the point.
    What to my eyes is so significant about the abuse crisis is that a window was opened exposing the priorities of hierarchical culture. And those priorities are detrimental to the Church (as their playing out has shown).
    Their vision of Church has been shown to be too narrow, to self-interested and self-invested.
    So it isn't just a matter of ignoring or exclusively seeing via sexual and other abuse, it's more nuanced than that.
    Rather, it is the revealing of a hidden story.
    And just what are the roots of this need to be explored and exposed so to prevent such a multi-layered travesty from repeating.
    Within the manifest 'story' has been a recent episode that speaks of hidden narratives.
    Hence the importance of not losing this episode, not just for its own significance (obviously) but the larger revealed.
    This isn't a matter of Church bashing. Quite the opposite. It's about seizing an opportunity before indolence and apathy reassert themselves, and memory fades, as the needed opiate of bright, polite, and shining stories are clung to.
    Can we also agree that the Church is more than a particular culture, and that the wellbeing of Church is not synonymous with the good name of this culture?

    Posted By: Mark Johnson

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