The case of Fr Daniel Donovan...

The news in the Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday concerning ACU National lecturer, Fr Daniel Donovan, is depressing. It is also again illustrative of how the institutional Church in this country is continually cowed into silence by the thought police who seem to infest the institution across the Western world.

The leadership of the institution have a choice: they can continue to give succour to these insecure individuals who run around anonymously with notebooks, taperecorders and video cameras "reporting" on individuals whom they believe are not orthodox enough for their way of thinking, or the leadership can take a stand and say "enough is enough — it is this 'police state' mentality that has been encouraged in the Church which is the more morally objectionable".

It is a smarmy tactic undertaken by this small minority in society who attempt to take some half truth and turn it into something else. I have been subjected to it in recent times at a fairly minor level by one individual who also has waged a tireless campaign against a couple of other lecturers at ACU. In my case the allegation concerns my allowing the use of the "f" word in discussion forums on this website and others. My allowance of that word has been clearly explained on many occasions. It is NOT some carte blanche encouragement of the use of vulgar language in these discussion forums. The reason I have allowed the use of this word, and colloquial language in general, is that this word is generally used in the community today and is appropriately used on some occasions. The objective of this discussion forum, and the others I have been associated with, has been to encourage discussion of issues of spirituality and belief in language which is broadly accessible in contemporary society and hopefully similar to the kind of language that we might use in the discussion of issues in our homes or or in the street. In particular I have endeavoured to encourage language which stands in contradistinction against these hypocritical, Pharisee-like, "look at me and how holier than though I am" forms of language that have been helping to drive so many people away from "the Good News".

The particular person who takes issue with me dismisses all these explanations and continually and repeatedly attempts to malign my reputation by engaging in this morally reprehensible, smarmy campaign of half-truth to imply (rather than say outright — typical of these people, he hardly has the courage to do that) that I am a person of low moral standards.

Fr Donovan

It is a cheap tactic, and a morally obnoxious one, to take some half truth and then to endeavour to turn it into a full truth. The moral reality is that the inverse of a half-truth is usually not "the truth" but in fact "a lie". There is a significant minority of individuals in the Church who engage in this behaviour and this complainant against Fr Daniel Donovan would seem to be the latest of them. Go to a lecture, take some notes of what the teacher said, and then pull them out of context and try and imply the teacher was saying something precisely the opposite of what had originally been intended. Again we have seen this kind of behaviour in our own community by the individual — the same one who has endeavoured to publicly harm my reputation — who took the words of another ACU Lecturer, Ian Elmer, out of context and turned them on their head. When he is confronted by his immoral and despicable behaviour he slinks away pretending not to hear.

The great pity in this behaviour is actually not so much the behaviour itself. It is the fact that the institutional leadership at times either encourage it — as seems to be the case of what is happening in Fr Donovan's situation — or the leadership encourages it by its silence in not confronting these behaviours.

It is high time the leadership of the institution — and by this I mean people like Cardinal Pell and His Holiness — spent a little more time giving homilies on the immorality of this behaviour that is taking place within the bosom the Church, rather than these endless homilies on the immorality of abortion and these other more publicly identifiable "sins" in modern society. These behaviours have been a cancer in the institutional Church and it is little wonder that 85% of the population have distanced themselves from an institution that encourages it. I suggest that in the long run of judgment of human affairs there is going to be as much condemnation directed at those who have been complicit in these endeavours to drive people out of the Church as those who have been engaged in the abortion industry. There is another sort of "death" involved here. Do we create a toll board comparing the number of abortions that take place in modern society alongside the number of people who have been subjected to a form of "spiritual death" by having their Church stolen from under their feet?

Western society today is spiritually famished and starving. It really is highly objectionable when our spiritual leaders engage in this encouragement — either by active endeavour to support the "thought police" element in the Church, or by their silence in not confronting the behaviours and labelling it for what it is — and by their behaviour in showing total indifference to this now great majority in society who today are "spiritually starved".

While we acknowledge any institution needs mechanisms that sets limits on what is taught or broadcast on behalf of the institution, what is being objected to in this developing trend within the Catholicism is that this behaviour is not legitimate criticism. It is a kindergarten game some people engage in trying to somehow prove they are more "morally worthy" than others. It is this morally objectionable behaviour which is objected to — and the behaviour of a leadership which tolerates it or encourages it out of some misguided belief they can re-evangelise the Church using this sort of mindset. We do not object to legitimate debate and discussion on what the meaning of Scriptural passages or Church teachings might be. There is a fine line where legitimate differences of opinion cross the rubicon and become "police state" type behaviours. Jesus Christ himself objected exceedingly strongly to these behaviours in his many discourses against the behaviour of Pharisees. It is time for our spiritual leaders to give homilies on this kind of behaviour as Jesus did and to get off the trolleybus of believing the only lectures society needs today are on Sixth Commandment transgressions or abortion. This pharisaical behaviour has done enormous damage to the institutional Church over recent decades.

One would hope that Fr Donovan's case might lead to a strengthening of resolve on the part of the moderate bishops and leaders in the institutional Church to at long last stand up in their pulpits and proclaim "enough is enough. This behaviour some people engage in of dobbing other people in is itself highly objectionable morally and we will not tolerate it." Give us your homilies on this subject, Gentlemen. All priests, all religious, all university lecturers, all teachers in Catholic schools have for far too long been "cowed into silence" out of fear of the activities of this small element in the Church who self-elect themselves as the thought police.

It is time for the leadership to put their foot down and proclaim that these activities are not going to be encouraged any longer.

Blessings,
Brian Coyne
[Editor and Publisher]

Links:
Sydney Morning Herald article:
www.smh.com.au/news/national/priest-fights-sins-of-class-notes/2007/04/13/1175971356372.html?page=fullpage
CathNews story: www.cathnews.com/news/704/69.php
Fr Donovan (ACU National website): rel-ed.acu.edu.au/ren2/staff.html

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