CHURCHES, JUDGES IN UNHOLY UNION by CHRISSIE FOSTER

CHURCH, JUDGES IN UNHOLY UNION

by Chrissie Foster, 13 January 2020

I see red when I think about the Red Mass. The Red Mass is a Catholic mass said at the end of each January for the legal fraternity marking the beginning of the legal year. The Red Mass is a European tradition dating back to the year 1310 in England and earlier in Paris – 1245.

An invitation to attend the Melbourne Red Mass at St Patrick’s Cathedral appeared on the Victorian Bar website. The Victorian Bar is a “professional association of barristers”. The invitation reads: “As this is Archbishop Comensoli’s first Red Mass since becoming Archbishop of Melbourne, it is important for the legal community of Melbourne to welcome His Grace with as many members of the profession in attendance” as possible.

This is the same archbishop who recently said he would defy new child protection laws rather than report admissions of child sexual abuse made in the confessional. Victoria recently passed legislation removing clergy exemption from mandatory reporting of a reasonable belief that a child has been sexually abused. Archbishop Peter Comensoli said he would rather go to jail than obey the new law.

Why should our legal profession “welcome” such a man? A man who publicly announced his intention to commit a crime? And not just any crime, one that disobeys child safety laws? The archbishop is the highest-ranking cleric of the Catholic church in Victoria. Many clerics obey and follow him. Priests have promised obedience to him. Comensoli’s words and actions are replicated in communities all over Victoria. Why should the legal fraternity welcome someone who dictates that priests should commit a criminal offence by failing to report to the police information about child sexual abuse?

The new law lifting the secrecy of confession was debated in the Victorian parliament last August 29. It was an extraordinary day in parliament. At least 15 members of parliament rose and stated how shocked they were that the Archbishop of Melbourne would choose to protect paedophiles rather than children. Their anger was palpable. And angry they should be, for the reality of Comensoli’s words is to knowingly allow adults to continue to rape and sexually assault children. The archbishop is apparently happy to hear admissions of crimes against children and just let child molesters and rapists go unpunished, unchecked and uncured. This failure to obey the law would allow sexual crimes against children to continue for decades.

In 2003 Catholic priest Michael McArdle swore an affidavit stating that during confession he had disclosed more than 1500 times that he was sexually assaulting children. He made this confession to 30 different priests over 25 years. Not one of those 30 priests stopped him. For decades they just forgave him. This is precisely the situation Comensoli says should remain. What finally stopped McArdle was not the church, but a child going to the police. The church could have reported him to the police decades earlier and saved countless children.

The Red Mass invitation also states: “A procession of judges, magistrates, tribunal members, judicial registrars, court officials and barristers will precede Archbishop Comensoli into the Cathedral”. That is a powerful line-up to honour and respect the Archbishop. It concludes: “After Mass the judiciary, members of the legal profession, staff and their families are invited to join Archbishop Comensoli for morning tea in the Cathedral Presbytery”.

What message does this send to our community? What faith should we have in the legal system when there are public displays of support by the legal fraternity for particular institutions?

Cardinal George Pell was the archbishop of Melbourne from 1996 until 2001. Pell would have conducted his first Red Mass in January 1997 at St Patrick’s Cathedral. As archbishop, he would have presided over any judges, magistrates, tribunal members, judicial registrars, court officials and barristers in attendance. While the legal fraternity was honouring Pell with its presence and socialising with him afterwards, the reality was that he would later appear before them in the courts. He was subsequently convicted of sexual offending against two boys about the time of the Red Mass.

In Australia the child abuse royal commission established that of all complaints of child sexual abuse in religious institutions the Catholic Church attracted most with 61.8 per cent of the complaints. The next worst was the Anglican Church with 14.7 per cent. The Cathlic Church has had a much larger problem with child sexual abuse than any other religious organisation in Australia.

After everything we have learnt through first the Victorian parliamentary inquiry and then the royal commission, I would rather our judiciary did not honour and support Catholic clergy with its presence. We all now know the shocking truth of the church’s history of widespread sexual abuse of children and the cover-ups. Why should the legal fraternity demonstrate public support for such an institution?

What is the purpose of the Red Mass get-together with the judiciary? Why is it necessary? Does the Catholic hierarchy hold a Red Mass for housewives? Or apprentices? Or unmarried mothers? Or students? Or doctors? Victims of cleric abuse need know the judiciary is impartial.

Perhaps judges, magistrates, tribunal members, judicial registrars, court officials and barristers should reconsider attending this event.

Instead, consider the thousands of Australian children caught in the clergy machine – a tag team of offenders with friends in high places, such as archbishops, to protect them. Instead, think of the ordinary members of our community who want our justice system to give them confidence in the idea that we are all equal before the law.

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Chrissie Foster is a victim advocate and author (with Paul Kennedy) of Hell On The Way To Heaven.

ANTHONY FOSTER DIED ON 26 MAY 2017 - AND WE ARE ALL DEVASTATED!

Article by Chrissie Foster in the Australian on Friday 7 April 2017

RIGHT TO THE VERY END, THE CHURCH WASN’T LISTENING

Final royal commission hearings revealed the ugly truth of indifference to victims

It is difficult to stop crying.

A child sexual abuse expert from the U.S. Bruce Perry, simply picked a random example. He spoke via video link to the Royal Commission into institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse; he was one of 36 experts in the field who gave evidence last week at the final week of the hearing titled case study 57, Nature, Cause and Impact of Child Sexual Abuse. Perry’s example was of ‘a little five-year-old child and somebody is raping you’ and he talked of what it does to the young mind.

They were painful words to hear because that is what happened to our little five-year-old Emma and, not long after, to our six-year-old Katie. To hear what their infant minds had to deal with was crushing – a dreadful add-on to the vision of rape by the priest, which already haunts us.

It was like a knife to the heart.

The priest was Kevin O’Donnell, he was 66 years older than Emma, he was our parish priest, with access to the primary school and its 300 children where I, as a Catholic, sent our girls. He went to prison in 1995 for 14 months for sexually assaulting children (rape charges were dropped in a plea bargain). I believe that from 1958 until he was arrested, he sexually assaulted at least 100 children.

Memories haunted our girls. Emma took her life aged 26 after a traumatic teenage and young adult life filled with despair, self-harming and drug addiction. Katie began binge drinking and was hit by a car while drunk. She spent 12 months in hospital and now, 18 years later, still receives 24-hour care, as she always will. Childhood sexual abuse was the cause and self-destructive behaviour was the impact.

Four weeks before came Case Study 50, titled Catholic Church in Australia, a three-week hearing during which Australia’s archbishop gave disturbing testimony.

In his evidence, on three occasions Hobart Archbishop Julian Porteous said the reason they did not act to stop child sexual abuse was because “nobody understood the seriousness of the effects of sexual abuse on children”. This common, if absurd, excuse has been used by the hierarchy, both here and overseas, since 1994. In using it, they admit knowing about the crimes. And not stopping them. Crimes that attracted the death penalty until 1961.

Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge stated: “I have no right to go to a priest, who is not an employee of mine, and say, “Excuse me, are you in a sexual relationship?” What if that “sexual relationship” was with a child?

When, on a panel of five archbishops, one described the forced, often violent, rape of thousands of children as “misbehaving”, not one of them said a word. God almighty, what is wrong with these sanctimonious men of religion? What do they need to make them understand? Another $450 million royal commission?

I once handed my most precious treasure, my three children, to the Catholic Church for their primary school education and at that school was the pedophile O’Donnell. The archbishop of Melbourne, Frank Little, knew about O’Donnell’s crimes by then. Evidence before the royal commission has told us that in 1986, the year before Emma started school, Little received a letter from a nun informing him that O’Donnell had sexually assaulted a boy over several years.

We have lost count of how many victims have taken their lives.

Little did nothing – an act of criminal neglect.

This was not the only time Little put his priests before the safety of Catholic children. In 1978 a magistrate and a barrister approached him about a boy in their parish who had been sexually assaulted by priest Bill Baker. The archbishop yelled at the two men to leave his office. But he acted: days later he transferred Baker to another parish, where his crimes were not known. As adults, some of his victims went to police. Baker was jailed for a few of his crimes and then lived on a generous church pension.

Further royal commission evidence shows the Catholic hierarchy was told in 1958 that O’Donnell was raping children. They did nothing and he raped others freely for another 34 years until retiring with an honorary title from the church.

Can today’s archbishops be trusted with the safety and lives of your children?

We don’t have to look far for the answer.

Last year some parents in Melbourne tried to remove from their parish a priest after newspapers reported that the church had made a $75,000 payout to a victim of his sexual abuse. The royal commission has established that the maximum of $75,000 is only awarded in the very worst cases. Tellingly, the church sided with the priest, who

denied the abuse, against the parents. Eventually he was transferred. His new parishioners complained. He was moved again. His present location is unknown.

We have lost count of how many victims of priests have taken their lives. Of course, the crimes devastate parents and grandparents of victims, siblings, spouses and children of victims, and loving friends. Emma’s closest friend Lu, took her own life five months after Emma.

Where were the church hierarchy representatives at this final royal commission hearing? There was much they stood to learn about the damage their colleagues had done to the 4445 victims in their care. They might have better understood those blighted lives, perhaps even developed some empathy for them. But no. They stayed away. All of them.

They didn’t care then and they don’t care now.

My husband, Anthony, and I have attended 108 days of royal commission hearings and seen many other days of evidence via webcast. We are grateful to the royal commission for seeking truth and justice about these crimes. Without it, victims would still be fighting a losing battle against a powerful and once influential institution.

The royal commission will release its findings on December 15 but these will go nowhere unless politicians act on them. We hope they vote for the safety and protection of voiceless, innocent children and not cave in to the untrustworthy churches and their manipulative lawyers and lobbyists.

Implementing the recommendations will help make Australia the safest country in the world for children.

Who doesn’t want that?

Chrissie Foster is the author of Hell on the Way to Heaven with Paul Kennedy.

Anthony Foster died on Friday 26 May 2017 when he was taken off life support.

The following is probably the last tweet he made – a few weeks ago:

Anthony Foster @Anthony Foster_.Apr 6

“RIGHT TO THE VERY END, THE CHURCH WASN’T LISTENING” By Chrissie in today’s Australian tinyurl.com/zrqspx7#caRoyalComm @australian

It was almost prescient! But very tragic for everybody.

OBITUARY FOR ANTHONY FOSTER

PELL SIMPLY REFUSES TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE PICTURES - BOTH BIG AND SMALL!

This article appeared in The Age newspaper on Saturday 17 November 2012. Chrissie Foster and her family have waited a long time for this to happen. Now that it has been announced by the federal government, let us hope that the terms of the royal commission will not be full of weasel words that allow the Catholic church an out to escape the blame and responsibility of all these decades of obfuscation and hiding behind their "traditions" such as confessionals and the like. Pell defrocked? Now that would be something to behold!

So much heartbreak, so much pain, it's about time

November 17, 2012
By Chrissie Foster

Happy bedtime: Chrissie Foster with Aimee, Emma and Katie before their world was shattered.
I COULD never stand to live in a world without justice and truth: at last there will be a platform for both. Prime Minister Julia Gillard's announcement of a royal commission on child sexual abuse has brought to an end the cries from victims and victim supporters. Of course, there have been many tears this week. More will be shed. But the royal commission is a cause for celebration.
For my family, the struggle to achieve this breakthrough began 16 years ago, on March 26, 1996. This was the day my daughter Emma, after almost a year of starving her 13-year-old body to an emaciated 41 kilograms, numerous self-harming horrors and attempts to take her own life, disclosed that our parish priest had sexually assaulted her. Not once, but on many occasions over her primary school years.
Fifteen months later more horror and heartbreak surfaced through a half-finished suicide note from our second daughter, Katie. She had hidden the note in a shoebox. It was written in her very neatest handwriting. Katie had been another victim of our parish priest.
There was no cure for my much-loved daughters. The pain never leaves. After years of subsequent torment, Emma took her own life at the age of 26. Katie, while drunk after binge drinking, was hit by a car in 1999 (she was 15) and still receives 24-hour care as a result of her injuries.
There are many of these stories. Ours is not rare. The Prime Minister's announcement was a godsend, proof that our many voices have been heard and believed, at long last. It feels like justice. The burning truth has ignited a light and we must shine it on the Catholic Church because of its cover-up. The Catholic hierarchy fiercely lobbied against a royal commission. But a royal commission had to be called. The claim from the hierarchy and biased commentators - that the Catholic Church is no different to other organisations in relation to child sex crimes and cover-ups - is nonsense. On the first day of the Victorian parliamentary inquiry I sat and listened to the evidence of Victoria Police and three professors.
All stated they would speak only about the Catholic Church. They based their submissions on records and research. Facts. Catholic Church sex offenders committed six times more sexual assaults on children than all the other religions combined. At least one in 20 Melbourne priests was a child sex offender, but the real figure was probably one in 15. There was a systemic obstruction of police inquiries over five decades.
Officers in two police forces - Victoria and New South Wales - have made allegations of extensive church interference with investigations. The royal commission should look closely at this. It should examine the influence of the religious leaders on police and governments.
Why did state governments allow the church's flawed and destructive Melbourne Response and Towards Healing schemes to exist unchallenged for more than 15 years? At his media conference on Tuesday, Cardinal George Pell, ignoring the Victorian inquiry's expert evidence, chose to blame the ''press'' for a ''smear'' campaign against the Catholic Church. But the media is not the problem. Along with brave victims willing to go to police despite their trauma, the ''press'' has helped find a solution. If journalists had not written and broadcast stories of crimes and cover-ups, the likes of Father Gerald Ridsdale and countless other convicted criminal priests would still be celebrating Mass in Australia's Catholic parishes.
One thing is certain: the priesthood never lifted a finger to protect children from ongoing sexual assaults and rapes. Rather, the church paid for the paedophiles' legal defences. Not one priest or brother did it help jail.
Cardinal Pell said the confessional seal was ''inviolable''. I say the lives and bodies of our children are inviolable. Why should a foreign state law - the Vatican's Canon Law - override our Australian laws in protecting our children?
To understand why the confessional seal must be broken to protect children, we need only look at evidence given to a Queensland court in 2004. Father Michael McArdle, after pleading guilty to and being convicted of child sexual assault offences, swore an affidavit. In it he stated he had confessed to sexually assaulting children 1500 times to 30 different priests over a 25-year period.
Every one of those ''good'' priests, as if of one mind and voice, said to the criminal: ''Go home and pray.'' Is that what they are taught to say to each other when told of such crimes? Not one of the 30 priests urged him to get help or go to police. Nor did they report his crimes. The victims were abandoned to become hurting adults, their lives shattered. Distraught. Suicidal.
This is a rare insight into the secret world of paedophile priest confession. We must learn from it. The church system was designed to protect the priest and church from scandal. It was not established to consider the futures of Australia's children. We must not be distracted by the confusion and side issues thrown our way by the church hierarchy.
If mandatory reporting had been enforced at McArdle's first confession, then the next 25 years of pain and suffering for children would never have occurred. The guilt of which he was unburdened though confession only served him to reoffend within the same week. Cardinal Pell said he welcomed the royal commission. Why then did he deny its need just the previous day and the 20 years before?
Recently he spoke of a ''cancer'' in the church. He is part of that cancer. Perhaps it is time for Cardinal Pell to step down and hand over to another cleric who possesses some empathy and compassion for children.
As for the royal commission, the government must strive to write the best terms of reference that encompass the essential need to expose child sexual assault and its cover-up in organisations.
Justice and accountability are needed for past crimes against children. Though it will not help my daughters, this will ensure change and safety for all future children. Only with this reality will victims become survivors.
Chrissie Foster is the co-author of "Hell On The Way To Heaven".

WHAT DO ZIONISTS AND CATHOLIC BISHOPS HAVE IN COMMON?

It is a well-known fact that when human rights activists attack Israel and its ongoing apartheid treatment of the Palestinians, the two standard responses are "anti-semitic" and "look at countries such as........." "why don't you attack them?" "Why don't you look at their appalling behaviour to gays and lesbian?" This last statement because the attacks on Israel - "The Only Democracy in The Middle East" by a gay person are to show how one-sided and lacking in understanding these homosexuals are!!! Israel doesn't behave like that to its GLTH communities.

Now look at the outcry from the Catholic church hierarchy over the calls for a royal commission into the ongoing child sex abuses committed by priests and others in the system over at least the last 50 years - and no doubt the previous 500 years as well!!

"Why is the Catholic church singled out when there are others guilty of committing these crimes in other religions and in the wider community in general?

The similarity hits one when one makes analyses of the current and ongoing situations in the Vatican and Jerusalem - the world is grossly unfair and prejudiced when singling us out - we are not like we have been painted and others are much worse and commit crimes against humanity of which we are not guilty !!

It has been interesting to hear how quickly the so-called democracies have rushed to defend Israel - "Israel is fully entitled to defend itself against aggression from the Palestians" - and from all sides of political spectra - and the same when a royal commission was announced into aspects of child sexual abuse - it will be wide ranging and the Prime Minister assured cardinal George Pell - he who is a man perpetually dressed in women's clothing - that the catholic church has not been singled out and other organisations will be scrutinised by the royal commission as well. Weasel words spoken by a weasel politician - well aren't most of them anyway?

CHRISSIE FOSTER: THE SILENCE OF THE CLOTH UNDER SIEGE

The silence of the cloth under siege
Chrissie Foster

March 10, 2012

Chrissie Foster and her husband, Anthony, with a portrait of their family, torn apart from church sex crimes. Photo: Craig Sillitoe

FORGET religion. Forget God. This is about the safety of children.

The landmark Protecting Victoria's Vulnerable Children inquiry, headed by a retired Supreme Court judge, Philip Cummins, has made powerful recommendations about Victorian churches' handling of child sex crimes.

Citing the Catholic Church's system as an example of inadequate child protection, the Cummins report said: ''Any private system of investigation and compensation which has the tendency, whether intended or unintended, to divert victims from recourse to the state, and to prevent abusers from being held responsible and punished by the state, is a system that should come under clear public scrutiny and consideration … Crime is a public, not a private, matter.''

The inquiry believes the closed doors of the Catholic Church need to be opened. Recommendation 48 declares: ''A formal investigation should be conducted into the processes by which religious organisations respond to the criminal abuse of children by religious personnel within their organisations. Such an investigation should possess the powers to compel the elicitation of witness evidence and of documentary and electronic evidence.''

For a long time, victims and their families have been arguing for a royal commission on the Catholic Church's mishandling and cover-ups of child sex crimes. We were pleased with, indeed much relieved by, the findings of the Cummins report.
It is frightening that the church's so-called Melbourne Response, and the similar rest-of-Australia scheme ironically called Towards Healing, have been operating unchallenged by the state for 16 years. In that time the church has minimised payouts to victims and locked away the truth that could make for a safer future for children.

Church authorities keep the facts to themselves. But let us consider, on the evidence that is available to us, just how damaging these schemes have been.
We know that between 1993 and 2011, 65 Victorian Catholic priests and brothers have been convicted in the courts. A further 53 different Catholic priests and brothers have been involved in out-of-court settlements.

That is a total of 118 clergy offenders in Victoria alone. But 118 is not an accurate number. It is a minimum. Many more clergy offenders have eluded media scrutiny and still more have been secreted away in the church's self-serving internal systems.

Only the church knows the true number of offenders. It is time for us all to know.
The career paedophiles of the Catholic Church, who had trust, authority and access to endless numbers of Victorian school children, were living the dream of every paedophile. History tells us the only sanction paedophile priests faced if discovered to be criminals was relocation to another parish. Never laicisation. Never police intervention.

Sexual assaults are costly both to the child and society. Victims suffer directly, and taxpayers foot the bill in supporting and repairing these broken lives.
But the highest price of all is suicide. Clergy childhood sexual assault costs lives. Victoria Police investigations over the past 10 years have shown 35 suicides, most from just two clergy. There are other suicides from other clergy offenders; my daughter is one of them. Sometimes I wonder if these suicides are murder.

In July 2010 the Archbishop of Melbourne, Denis Hart, wrote a pastoral letter, stating: ''Since 1996, we have introduced procedures to protect parishioners and children against sexual abuse, and processes have been developed and applied.'' But only seven months earlier, my husband and I had wanted to visit the shower room in the school hall where our paedophile parish priest had raped our five-year-old daughter. We learnt that, 20 years later, the priest was still the only person possessing a key to this secluded room.

Archbishop Hart's letter to parishioners also announced: ''Seminarians are required to undertake study of the church's code of conduct for priests.''
I had to wonder what effect the church's ''code of conduct'' - mere words on paper - would have in deterring a paedophile.

In the past, no threat of the wrath of God from God's law, no threat of laicisation from canon law and no threat of prison from civil law - all words on paper - had ever worked.

But now, time is up for the church. The cries for justice for Victoria's children must be heard. The state government must say yes to a state-led inquiry, as called for by the Cummins report.

Our state must protect our children. We must have a royal commission now.

Chrissie Foster is the co-author of Hell on the Way to Heaven (2010).

CATHOLIC CHURCH'S LATEST ATTACK ON EUTHANASIA

1 FEBRUARY 2011

Article in the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper:

Euthanasia a bad law by bad people, says bishop

By Leesha McKenny


Start of the legal year ... the Red Mass yesterday. Photo: Dean Sewell

EUTHANASIA was contrary to the ideals of justice and charity and would corrupt society, a Catholic bishop has warned the legal fraternity.

The Bishop of Parramatta, Anthony Fisher, used a service at St Mary's Cathedral yesterday attended by the NSW Attorney-General, John Hatzistergos, the shadow attorney-general, Greg Smith, and leading judges and barristers, to warn that ''state-sanctioned killing'' undermined the legitimacy of the state and its criminal law.

''Even were such a proposal to gain a parliamentary majority this would not make it right,'' he said.

Illustration: Cathy Wilcox

''Bad laws are mostly made by bad people and in turn make people bad.''

Bishop Fisher called on those gathered for the 81st annual Red Mass, which marks the start of the legal year, to resist efforts to legalise voluntary euthanasia.

The Greens leader, Bob Brown, has vowed to reintroduce a bill to overturn federal legislation that prevents its legalisation in the ACT and Northern Territory.

In NSW the Greens intend to introduce a private member's bill in support of legalising euthanasia after the election in March.

A NSW Greens MP, Cate Faehrmann, said the bishop's comments were an example of an ''out-of-touch commentator driven by out-of-touch ideology''. ''The vast majority of people support voluntary euthanasia as long as it's with appropriate safeguards, which is what the legislation I am proposing is about.''

Bishop Fisher, a former lawyer, said the proposed legislation was ''the killing of those who suffer by those who are comfortable, of the vulnerable by the powerful, of the sick by those professed to heal them''.

''Pope John Paul II went so far as to deem such laws 'lacking authentic juridical validity' and requiring lawyers and health professionals to refuse conscientiously to follow them,'' he said.

That remark echoed comments of Cardinal George Pell in a newspaper interview last month, where he denounced Catholic politicians who defied the church's teachings when considering controversial issues such as euthanasia or same-sex adoption.

The Premier, Kristina Keneally, a devout Catholic, told News Ltd at the time that the cardinal's comments risked being ''interpreted as condemnatory and threatening''.

But she said yesterday she did not personally support the legalisation of voluntary euthanasia.

''As I have said previously, a politician's faith and how they reconcile their beliefs in their public decision-making is a matter for each individual MP.

"The NSW government is yet to see the Greens' proposed legislation and will give it due consideration when it is forthcoming."

When asked if the bishop's comments on euthanasia were appropriate, Richard Perrignon, president of the St Thomas More Society (which sponsors the Red Mass), said the bishop was well-known for his views on euthanasia.

''It's a democracy we live in and people are entitled to their views - even prelates,'' he said.

A spokesman for Mr Hatzistergos, who is Greek Orthodox, referred to comments made in 2002 when he spoke against the Rights of the Terminally Ill Bill. The bill introduced by a Greens MP, Ian Cohen, was defeated.

2 FEBRUARY 2011

Letters in response to above article in SMH:

Dignity, morality and democracy in death

Shakespeare letters illo


Photo: John Shakespeare

I take great exception to Bishop Anthony Fisher's comments on euthanasia and his pejorative remarks towards those who are in favour of it (''Euthanasia a bad law by bad people, says bishop'', February 1). Legally and medically supervised euthanasia is not ''killing of those who suffer by those who are comfortable''. Any doctor, lawyer and especially family member of a patient undergoing euthanasia will feel the opposite of comfortable and will be acutely aware that a person's death is being caused. But they will be satisfied they are doing something that allows the patient to die without pain and in dignity.

It is not the ''killing of those vulnerable by the powerful''. In fact the process will empower a person dying from an illness over which they no longer have any control, and allow them to have control over the manner in which they die. The ultimate decision will be theirs alone.

It is not the ''killing of the sick by those who profess to heal them''. As doctors we should be there for a patient as much to help them die in peace and comfort when we can no longer do anything for them, as to help them with sickness.

Dr John Frith Paddington

The NSW Greens MP Cate Faehrmann suggests Bishop Fisher's comments rejecting euthanasia legislation represent ''out-of-touch ideology''. Yet her own stance, that such legislation is proper because ''the vast majority of people support voluntary euthanasia as long as it's with appropriate safeguards'', seems to suggest that moral issues be decided by popular opinion. So if the vast majority of people think it is OK to diddle their taxes, it is OK to do so. Try that on the Tax Office.

Perhaps Ms Faehrmann could undertake some of the ethics classes being promoted by the Greens. There she might learn that morality is not a matter of majority opinion.

She also might learn to share Bishop Fisher's concerns that euthanasia involves ''the killing of those who suffer by those who are comfortable, of the vulnerable by the powerful, of the sick by those professed to heal them''' and that a society is judged by how it treats its most vulnerable.

Neil Ormerod Professor of Theology, Australian Catholic University, Strathfield

How on earth can the Bishop of Parramatta argue that even a parliamentary majority ''would not make [euthanasia] right''? Clearly, such a majority would indicate that the moral convictions of Australian society have changed and that morality and law are in opposition to each other.

In Dishonest to God, Mary Warnock says ''a democratically elected parliament is the best interpreter of where the consensus lies''. If not here, where else could it possibly be found?

In the 21st century, the quiet majority of Australians neither expect nor approve of the church leading moral opinion.

Matthew Endacott Brandy Hill

Purple prose such as ''state-sanctioned killing''' does not embellish Bishop Anthony Fisher's argument against the right of suffering individuals to have their wishes respected. The bishop's lack of reflection on his pronouncement that ''bad laws are mostly made by bad people and in turn make people bad'' is striking, especially given his audience, and the worldwide challenge to the church to properly address the deficiencies of canon law in light of its treatment of young people.

It is here, not in acceding to requests by competent adults, that the suffering of the vulnerable at the hands of the powerful is perpetuated.

Julia Anaf Norwood (SA)

Bishop Anthony Fisher is quite right: ''Bad laws are mostly made by bad people and in turn make people bad.'' For example, the Catholic Church's canon law provisions on birth control, women priests, clerical celibacy and homosexuality.

Michael Frawley Downer (ACT)

"HELL ON THE WAY TO HEAVEN" - BY CHRISSIE FOSTER

AN INDICTMENT OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, RELIGION AND POLITICS

I am 84 years old and have been an atheist for practically all of my adult life. I was brought up by my Jewish family to be a good practising Jewish man, to believe in god and to be a good heterosexual husband and father.

Being young, naive, trusting and obedient, as an adolescent and a young adult I did as I was told by my mother who was doing her best to be both parents to me as my father died when I was three and I had a stepfather with whom I was not very close. My father had been a religious young Jew and an ardent zionist, but he died at the age of 31 in 1930 and it is difficult to know what his responses would have been to the excesses of the Jewish state he believed in becoming Israel and a terrorist police state.

My disillusionment with religion began when I was fairly young and has only intensified over the years when I have watched the excesses of all religions behaving contrary to what they all preach, and the death and destruction this has brought to the life and death of so many around the world.

When I came out as a gay man at the age of 61 I started discovering so many in the gay, lesbian, transgender and HIV/AIDS communities who had turned against their religions because they had been abused by religious people, by families, by employers, by those around them - and us - on a daily basis of homophobia and hate based often on the teachings of their religions.

During the five year period that I was a carer of people living with, and dying of AIDS I found many who had been thrown out of their homes by families because they were gay and because their families professed religion - mostly Catholics and Jews in my experience.

Many of these people had had nowhere to turn, and no one to turn to, and fortunately so many in the gay and lesbian communities had formed organisations to care for desperate people at their wits' and life's ends.

Although in my sixties and seventies, I learnt a great deal from the sufferings of these people and it had a profound and traumatic effect on me and my life for many years.

It is only in recent years that it has eased off somewhat, and I have become more peaceful in my later years due mainly to my partner of 18 years and my many caring and understanding friends.

Through one of these friends we were introduced into the life of Katie Foster who was being cared for on this particular day and brought Katie to our house - in a wheelchair - all the way from Oakleigh - quite an expedition to get to Preston from there on public transport. This would have been about 2007 or 2008 and from then on we continued to hear about the Foster family and what had happened to them to turn their lives upside down so that they were on a roller-coaster ride because of the Catholic church in their lives.

Our friend knew the Fosters through her own family who also lived in Oakleigh and had known them for years with their children attending the same Catholic church and schools.

When Chrissie Foster wrote the book with a journalist, Paul Kennedy, we received some of the early copies after it went on sale because our friend brought some to our house and gave us one. She then bought copies for people she knew and so did we.

At that stage we didn't know we were going to meet the Fosters, but our friend turned 60 and had a "mingling" for family and friends - she didn't want to call it a birthday party and amongst the friends were the Fosters.

My partner was nearly finished reading the book at that stage, and I was in the middle of a fairly long and comprehensive book of research called "The Invention of the Jewish People" - another book on religion and politics and the collision of it all due to the state of Israel and the lies and wars it has waged - in the name of the Jews - over the years since Israel was created in 1948.

I have just finished reading Chrissie's book after finishing the other one, and I found it devastating in its impact. What the Fosters have gone through and how they have suffered and come out fighting at the end of it is unbelievable in itself, but to meet them and talk to them and then be invited to their home to meet them and see Katie once again, this time in the loving and caring environment of her home made a lasting impression on us and it was one that will stay with me for a long time.

For a family to have suffered as they did due to the abuse of their two older daughters at the hands of their Catholic priest at the school the girls attended due to Chrissie's religious beliefs and her faith in her religion and to read and hear how it was all shattered as were their lives is to know what religion is capable of in all our lives.

Those responsible for this devastation in the lives of the Fosters and countless hundreds and thousands around the world are the Catholic church and its hierarchy from the fascist pope downwards, all other religions and the countries which house them and give them privileges which no other citizens are allowed - tax exemptions so that they can steal people's lives and incomes as they get richer and richer shows a collusion beyond comprehension.

Countries like Australia which give the Catholic church so much power and refuse to tax any part of it is in itself a criminal act, and the challenges which the Fosters faced in attacking the institutions which house us is as daunting as it is bravery of the first degree.

The Fosters may have won some compensation in their legal challenges to the Catholic church hierarchy, but it robbed them of their most precious possessions, the lives of two of their daughters.

There is hope that their youngest daughter, who escaped the sexual assaults perpetrated on her two older sisters will, in time, be able to live a comparatively normal life and achieve some measure of happiness.

The oldest daughter committed suicide and the middle daughter harmed herself and has ended up in a physically and mentally impaired state, but we actually saw a change for the better in her from when she visited us at our house some 3 years ago, and so there is some hope that as the years pass, she may regain some of her lost abilities, but for the parents, Chrissie and Anthony, their lives have been shattered forever, and one can only hope that also, over time, there may be some healing and some peace restored to all of them.