Australian Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Canberra and Goulburn defended the role of Pope Benedict XVI in the sex abuse crisis on Monday, the day after issuing an 4,000-word open letter, “Seeing the Faces, Hearing the Voices, A Pentecost Letter on Sexual Abuse of the Young in the Catholic Church.” In the letter he described the culture that led to the sexual abuse crisis in his country.

Archbishop Coleridge offered a blunt assessment of the cultural failings of the Australian Church and focused on several key factors:

• a poor understanding and communication of the Church’s teaching on sexuality, “shown particularly in a rigorist attitude to the body and sexuality”;
• certain areas of seminary training that “failed to take proper account of human formation and promoted therefore a kind of institutionalized immaturity”;
• clericalism that was “understood as a hierarchy of power, not service”;
• an atmosphere of triumphalism, “a kind of institutional pride”;
• the Church’s “culture of forgiveness which tends to view things in terms of sin and forgiveness rather than crime and punishment”;
• a tendency toward discretion that “turned dark when it was used to conceal crime and to protect the reputation of the Church or the image of the priesthood”; and an underestimation of “the power and subtlety of evil.”

He also noted that while clerical celibacy was not in itself a factor, “like any form of the Christian life lived seriously – it has its perils.”

He stressed that there are no easy fixes to the problem and that the Church is Australia is “in for the long haul.” Still, he expressed hope for the future: “History shows that new and unexpected surges of Gospel energy have come not infrequently in the wake of devastation.”

While sharply critical of the failures of some of Australia’s bishops in his letter, he vigorously defended Pope Benedict on Australian radio on Monday as the key figure for leading the Church through this difficult time. "As cardinal and as pope, he has acted as vigorously as I think he can without claiming that he's got a magic wand or that the pope can just speak a word from on high and it all happens," Archbishop Coleridge said.