UNDER ORDERS

The Australian Catholic Church is reeling after the Vatican's order to the
Sisters of Charity to abandon a legal heroin injecting room. Chris McGillon
and Paolo Totaro report.

On the face of it, the Vatican's decision to put a stop to the involvement
of the Sisters of Charity in Australia's first trial of a legal heroin
injecting room in Kings Cross reflects a straight-forward concern with
"sending the wrong signals" about drug abuse in the community, particularly
the Catholic community.

But scratch below the surface and there is a complex web of church
political agendas at play.

What these have produced is the Vatican riding roughshod over the
Australian church, a shift of power (and the ideological persuasion that
goes with it) within the local episcopacy, and the subversion of efforts to
deal with the most pressing problem confronting the church - the absence of
genuine dialogue between its leaders and its members, most importantly women.

The decision to support a NSW Government-approved injecting room trial
stemmed from quiet but crucial talks in the boardrooms of St Vincent's
Hospital in May. There, a Who's Who of Sydney's establishment, among them
Ros Packer, David Gonski, Ted Harris, Dr John Yu and the chairman of the
Sisters of Charity Health Service (SCHS), Peter Joseph, effectively
rubber-stamped a decision that had been under formal discussion inside the
Catholic Church for many months.

Spearheaded by its most senior and vocal medical advisers, Dr Alex Wodak,
head of St Vincent's Drug and Alcohol services, and Dr Tina Clifton, chief
executive officer of SCHS, the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity had
explored and quietly adopted the proposal's ethical and moral ramifications.

The order not only approved the trial but crafted a carefully worded
defence of its position, arguing that Catholic moral tradition affirmed
that harm-minimisation strategies - even illegal acts - were ethically
appropriate under specific conditions.

Under these provisos, the benefits of co-operation, they argued, outweighed
the downsides, and the order's decision to manage the trial was announced
in late July.

The announcement was widely greeted in Catholic circles as a heroic, indeed
Gospel-inspired, reaction to the problem of the increasing number of
avoidable deaths due to unsafe heroin injection.

The order's decision was even given a ringing endorsement by The Catholic
Weekly - the official mouthpiece of the Archdiocese of Sydney. In an
editorial published on August 8, it said of the trial: "For their part, the
users will be recognised as what they are - victims, rather than
perpetrators, of evil. Redirecting the blame for drug abuse in this manner
will represent a great step forward for human dignity. The decision is
consistent with the church's teaching that human life must be respected in
all its stages and conditions."

It is inconceivable that the editorial would have been run without at least
the tacit approval of the Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal Edward Clancy.

But others within the Catholic community vehemently opposed SCHS's
decision. These included the small but highly vocal lay Catholics who have
long thought that the church in Australia has run off the rails and have
made their views known to Rome.

Also opposed to any church involvement with the heroin trial were powerful
conservatives within the hierarchy, particularly Melbourne's Archbishop
George Pell.

Two weeks after The Catholic Weekly endorsed the SCHS decision, its sister
Melbourne newspaper, Kairos, carried an article by Father Anthony Fisher,
the episcopal vicar for health care for the Melbourne Archdiocese,
attacking church involvement with the injecting room.

Fisher, described by one church source as "Pell's right-hand man", wrote
that "no program set up to facilitate or condone drug abuse could be
ethical - let alone acceptable for a church agency".

Fisher's reasoning was consistent with other official church teaching on
issues such as the use of condoms to combat the spread of AIDS - an
activity that is intrinsically immoral is unacceptable even if it would
reduce great harm. But this entire moral position is under debate among
theologians and ethicists.

Moreover, the Sisters of Charity had always insisted that they did not
condone drug-trafficking or the use of illicit drugs, but believed that
some drug users must be given every chance of recovery and rehabilitation.

Fisher acknowledged this, but it was clear where his sympathies lay.

In fact, his article was the first sign that the decision taken by the
order - and at the very least not initially opposed in any active way by
Cardinal Clancy - was under serious challenge.

Two articles highly critical of the Sisters of Charity appeared in The
Catholic Weekly last week. One, written by Fr J.J. Walter, a founding
editor of The Priest (a publication for Australian clergy), argued that the
nuns' decision "considered as their free act of choice, immediately
embraces all the necessities to facilitate drug abuse - bar the drugs
themselves".

Another, by Waverley parish's Father John George, argued that the move by
the Sisters of Charity contravened Australia's obligations to the United
Nations.

But church conservatives had another - and in Rome's eyes much more
powerful - argument with which to use against the Sisters of Charity and
the kind of socially activist church they represent.

The letter to Cardinal Clancy from Cardinal Ratzinger of the Vatican's
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith expressing Rome's view that
church involvement in the injecting room trial was "not acceptable" did not
rely on a moral argument. It didn't have to.

In November last year, Ratzinger and other Vatican officials met secretly
for four days with senior members of the Australian hierarchy and produced
a document titled The Statement of Conclusions, setting out what was
allegedly wrong with the local church and how Rome thought it should be
remedied.

In its section on consecrated life, the statement urged priests and
religious brothers and sisters to return to communal styles of living and
traditional forms of work: "It is not enough that religious engage in any
work whatsoever, even if they do this 'in the spirit of the Founder'."

It also warned that because priests and religious brothers and sisters
occupied a prominent place in the eyes of the faithful and the secular
media, what was required of them was "a more evident fidelity to [church
teaching authority] than is required of ordinary faithful".

In other words, priests and religious brothers and sisters are special
people who must offer a distinctively Catholic witness to the world.
Whatever the pastoral needs the Sisters of Charity have identified and
chosen to respond to in terms of the victims of drug abuse, managing a
heroin injecting room is too far removed from the traditional role of a nun
for the Vatican's comfort.

Given the controversy and division sparked by The Statement of Conclusions
- - even among the Australian bishops, many of whom hardly had time to read
it before they were required to give it their assent - Catholics could be
forgiven for assuming that the document had been put on the shelf to gather
dust.

But Rome's decision on the Sisters of Charity is a sudden reminder that
this blueprint for the Australian church is as menacing as ever.

One of its leading proponents is Archbishop Pell. Rome's views fit in with
his about what is wrong with the local church and how it should be put
right. With good reason then, there is a strong suspicion that Pell (who is
a member of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and is in Rome
for the just-concluded Synod of Bishops for Europe) has been behind the
intervention.

The fact that church agencies in his archdiocese, including the Jesuit
Social Services, were involved in discussions with the new Victorian
Premier, Steve Bracks, about establishing legal injecting rooms in
Melbourne strengthens this suspicion.

But even if Pell was not involved in the Vatican's move, his position
within the Australian church has been strengthened by it. After all, the
big loser on this issue is the only person who effectively outranks Pell in
the local hierarchy - Cardinal Clancy. He is due to retire within the next
few months. But the way that his authority has been undermined over the
involvement of the Sisters of Charity with the injecting room will be a
salutary lesson for his successor.

Things have just got a whole lot messier - and nastier - in the Australian
Catholic Church.