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The Press
December 6, 2003
Father Consedine's words
by Yvonne Martin
Jim
Consedine was one of Christchurch's best-known
Catholic priests, and even with the shame of sexual abuse claims, there are
many who still stand by him.
`He plays peek-a-boo in the street with my toddler. He offers to mind the kids
for me when I'm sick and he plays a cheeky chicken song on his guitar to make
the children hoot with laughter," said a woman from Father Jim Consedine's former Lyttelton
parish.
This is the real Father Consedine, she wrote to The
Press, not the shamed cleric ousted from his parish of 17 years and stripped of
his priestly powers for alleged sexual misconduct against women.
"I am only one of many parishioners from
When she was at
A month later, recovering from chemotherapy at home, he was back, with more
hugs for her and her two children.
"We once gave Father Jim a thank-you card with a picture of a sunflower
standing tall and high above the others in its field. He is like that
sunflower. I never really understood the `tall poppy syndrome' but I do now,"
she says.
Depending on whom you speak to, enigmatic Consedine
is either a saint persecuted for his radical, outspoken style, or a sinner who
struggled to keep his hands in his cassock.
He certainly knew how to enrapture his congregation. Consedine
gave a particularly resonant sermon on the issue of clergy abuse in the middle
of last year, when another order's problems were exposed.
However, he refused to talk about it afterwards with The Press, saying that
what he told Sumner's Star of the Sea parish was between him and it.
By then, he was already facing one complaint of inappropriate touching and
comments. Another three, dating back to when he was chaplain with the Youth
Christian Workers movement in the 1970s, were soon to rear again -- the most
serious being sexual violation.
Like many parishioners, the Lyttelton mother-of-two
struggles to reconcile the Consedine she knew with
the man described in the women's complaints.
A year after his sudden departure to an Australian therapy programme,
parishioners are still feeling conflicted, grief-stricken, and more than a
little at sea.
The familiar, towering figure of Consedine, with his
trademark shrubby eyebrows, and glasses, was not to return after his therapy
ended.
The Catholic Bishop of
Consedine was last heard of speaking about justice in
Adding to the parish's grief, the Rev John Collins, the Woolston
priest whose onerous workload included administering the Lyttelton
and Sumner parishes, died suddenly in September, aged 60.
Until now, the reeling Catholic community has kept its feelings about Consedine within the pews.
But as the dust left by Consedine's departure has
settled, his friends are beginning to speak out about his strengths and
foibles.
They also question the Church's handling of the sorry affair, and whether its
insistence on celibacy tips priests like Consedine
over the edge and out of the dwindling priesthood.
How did Consedine go from a pugnacious priest and
justice campaigner to a religious exile, shunned by the Church?
To D6 Continued from D1
As a priest, he was seen as exceptional at comforting people in sickness or
turmoil, and was therefore in demand for funerals.
He was no stranger to grief himself. The loss of his beloved niece, Suzanne Consedine, who died after falling from a bluff on an
Outward Bound course at Anakiwa in 1993, was a cruel
blow which affected him profoundly.
Judge Mick Brown, a retired Youth Court judge in
"I lost a child in a motor accident about six years ago and he was so
wonderful at that time. He was exquisite," says Brown.
"He was a lovely, compassionate person and I was horrified when I heard
what had happened. He was one of the better people, and he still is as far as
I'm concerned."
Born and raised in Addington, the son of a railway
worker, Consedine was instilled with a strong sense
of social justice and an Irish Catholic heritage. All five Consedine
children have been active in the peace and anti- apartheid movements. His
brother Robert Consedine has long been involved in
Treaty of Waitangi workshops, helping New Zealanders confront their colonial
history.
Catholic priests who double as political activists are rare these days. But Consedine ranked right up there with controversial
homosexual-rights campaigner Felix Donnelly as a rabble-rouser.
He had some extreme liberal views and moved easily in political, rather than
church circles. In other ways, like opposing abortion, he was conservative.
Consedine quit his prison chaplaincy after 23 years
last year when a policy change meant that chaplains were classed as Corrections
Department staff. This would have effectively gagged him, unless he got
permission from his new bosses to talk, and he walked from the job.
As parish priest, Consedine opened the presbytery's
doors to the homeless, and one of his female accusers, Bonnie Quilter, is among
those who landed in jail after pilfering thousands of dollars from his parish.
He also led the campaign for restorative justice, which the Government adopted
as a $5 million pilot in 2000. His 1995 book, Restorative Justice: Healing the
Effects of Crime is still regarded as the movement's bible and has been
translated into many languages.
"His efforts to publish that book and to work with restorative-justice
groups is the single most important individual contribution to the movement in
It was all the more dizzying, then, when sexual accusations emerged against Consedine in October last year: allegations that while
working with Young Christian Workers 30 years ago he pinned women against
objects and rubbed aggressively against them for sexual gratification -- known
as frottage; claims that he indecently touched one young woman when she was
traumatised after leaving a husband who beat her, and accusations that he
sexually violated another woman, whom he would visit day and night.
These historic allegations by three women have now been accepted as
"credible" by the Church's own investigative body, which recommended
action.
But it has been a long, lumbering process for the women concerned.
They say they confronted Consedine over his behaviour
at the time. "His reaction initially was to laugh at our concerns and then
to respond angrily to us," says one complainant.
Sexual allegations were first aired publicly about Consedine
in June 1984.
Anonymous leaflets alleging misconduct and signed "Women in
Church-goers leaving Sunday Mass found the leaflets on the trestle table
alongside the parish newsletters. "We were shocked and spewing," a
female former parishioner recalls. "Everybody rushed to his defence. We
should have believed the women."
The reaction of then-Bishop Brian Ashby was even stronger. He labelled the
document as "vile" and "scurrilous" and vowed to
"track down the perpetrators of this libel".
The police stepped in, sending posters to
Unsurprisingly, the women complainants went underground and stayed there until
they felt the church hierarchy was ready to face their claims.
By last year, the Church had introduced a protocol for dealing with abuse
complaints, but the women still struggled for justice.
In February they put their case in the hands of lawyers.
At first it looked as though it would be the end of the matter when Consedine left his parish for therapy in
But suddenly, and inexplicably, in September the complainants were belatedly
informed by the Vicar- General, the Rev Monsignor Gerard O'Connor,
that the Church had acted.
Two months earlier the Bishop had accepted Consedine's
resignation and removed his priestly powers. "I hope this goes some way
towards lessening the distress you have felt and brings about some sense of healing
for you," wrote the Vicar- General. Church lawyers added in a follow-up
letter that the diocese would not be paying compensation claimed by the women,
and suggested they try Consedine.
Patrick McPherson, the Grant Cameron Associates lawyer acting for the women,
says the process has been fraught and protracted.
A fourth complainant, invalid beneficiary Bonnie Quilter, has gone a step
further. She is suing the Church for exemplary damages over how her case was
handled, and an initial conference is due in February.
* * * Just how much personal responsibility Consedine
accepts in all of this is unknown as he continues his stonewall of silence.
Various documents gathered by The Press reflect contradictory attitudes.
Last June, while undergoing treatment at Encompass, the programme specialising
in clergy sexual disorders, Consedine invited the
women to enter a restorative- justice process. They refused. For such a process
to work, they figured Consedine needed to admit his
guilt. Church lawyers insist that Consedine has made
no admissions of guilt. "Part of the outcome hoped for from anyone
attending this (Encompass) course would be that they would come to acknowledge
those parts of their behaviour which are unacceptable," they wrote last
month. "To date, this does not appear to be the case in respect of Jim Consedine."
However, Consedine did write a letter to the women's
support person earlier acknowledging he behaved badly and seeking forgiveness.
Dated April 11, 2000, it read: "I deeply regret the hurt I caused those
young women. I could give a whole range of reasons as to what happened and why
it happened. This is not the place for that. I acted most inappropriately and I
regret that behaviour."
Consedine may have had personal problems, but colleagues
say that the Church should accept part-blame. "Jim has to answer for what
he's done, but to me the root cause of the whole problem is the absurd
insistence on celibacy," says long-time political activist Murray Horton.
"Jim was a highly progressive person and clergyman, but he obviously had a
fatal flaw in his own personal relationships with women."
A woman who campaigned for justice alongside Consedine
agreed that he struggled with celibacy.
"He was a sexual sort of joker. I wasn't sorry in many ways that he was
exposed," she says.
"If only he had left the priesthood when this was first exposed and
married somebody, he would have been happier. People could have let it go. But
he could not give the power of the priesthood away."
Parishioner John Corcoran can relate well to the pressures Consedine
was under.
He entered the seminary in the 1960s, optimistic that the Catholic Church was
about to ordain married priests, but left, disappointed, eight years later.
"I didn't feel I had the kind of spiritual life that would sustain me in a
celibate state. All of us made mistakes. The problem is that we are judging now
in the 21st century the standards of what people said and did 10, 15, or 40
years ago," he says.
"Jim has been very unfairly dealt to by the Church, among others. He has
been accused of things and not defended by the Church. Forgiveness and love are
the prime concepts that Christ came on Earth to tell people and these two
concepts have not been extended to Jim in recent times."
The parish was not consulted over its leader's fate, but Corcoran said he would
personally welcome Consedine back with open arms. He
believed many parishioners felt the same.
"He has brought to people who have become disillusioned with the Church a
place where they can be. By his removal, a lot of these people are feeling
grief-stricken and lost."
Even one of Consedine's accusers from the 1970s has a
modicum of sympathy over his ousting.
"I don't have sympathy for him personally, but I have some sympathy for
the argument that they sheltered him for so long and when it was no longer
possible, they just cut him loose," she says.
"Then they can say `we're not responsible for Consedine
any more'. I'm disgusted by that self-serving response."
Catholic Communications director Lyndsay Freer says
the church protocol for dealing with abuse complaints was carefully followed in
Consedine's case.
"Concern for the needs of those who have suffered abuse is a priority for
the Church, and the diocese of
Those who know Consedine best say that worse than the
public exposure and people twittering behind their hands is the trauma of
having to leave home.
"There are always groups around the world that would welcome him,"
says a former parishioner. "But the worst punishment for him would be
leaving
.
FATHER CONSEDINE'S WORDS
On
sex offenders:
"Most sex offenders offend against family members or trusted
friends. Public predators are relatively few and far between."
On
juvenile sex offenders:
"What they need is time and space, acceptance and affirmation,
forgiveness and healing in a therapeutic setting, to enable them to come to
terms with inappropriate and offensive behaviour.
"Like the rest of us, they have to learn how to cope with thoughts and
fantasies and desires that are unacceptable when acted upon. They have to learn
when certain sexual activity is okay, and when it is not."
On
"A power of malevolence, of evil, underpinned much of what
happened with the ERU, where violence, intimidation, and abuse became
acceptable, despite all the talk of professionalism.
"People need to recognise the spirit of the culture they work in and
confront its negative aspects when appropriate."
On
the state of
He sees the nation as "spiritually bereft" and "morally
bankrupt".
"We have lost touch with the things that nourish our spirit, God, as
people perceive God, and the life of Mother Earth. Instead we have created new
gods of consumerism."
On
accountability:
"Financiers, money-lenders, lawyers, economists, and accountants
who dominate decision-making, politicians who ignore legitimate protest,
bankers who charge too much interest, and even Church leaders who `fail to give
flesh to their moral authority' are rarely called to account."
On
the argument that churches should stay out of politics:
"You must proclaim and promote a God-given dignity that people
have, so you cannot stand by and see people oppressed through poverty or
slavery or anything else."