THE catalyst for the extraordinary, 50-year-old drama playing out in ecclestiastical circles in Adelaide and Parliament House in Canberra last week was not sex or politics but theology.
If not for the determination of the 400,000-strong Traditional Anglican Communion to heal its breach with Rome, its scholarly and erudite leader, Archbishop John Hepworth, 67, would undoubtedly have gone to his grave nursing the bitter secret that for decades has caused him "incessant anguish".
An estranged Catholic and validly ordained Catholic priest, Hepworth's longstanding greatest desire has been reconciliation with the church he fled in 1974. He still regards it as the "greatest love of my life" - although he adores his three children and his wife, who is a university chemistry professor, and is on friendly terms with his first wife.
After consecrating 30 TAC bishops, ordaining at least 30 priests and confirming 6000 children in Australia, North America, India, Japan, Africa and Britain, he nurtured the desire, already strong within TAC, to petition Pope Benedict XVI for reunification.
A vote to agree on such a petition, which succeeded, was held within the TAC in October 2007. In response, the Pope met the petitioners more than halfway.
In November 2009 he responded with his apostolic constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus, providing for personal ordinariates for Anglicans entering into full communion with the Catholic Church. Historically, it represents the most significant reunification since the Reformation.
As the time for voting within the TAC approached in 2007, Hepworth knew he had to confront the ghosts that had haunted him as he often walked for hour after hour at night when sleep was impossible, or broke down in tears in airport lounges and occasionally on the altar during important church services.
"I knew that I could no longer conceal my personal story and still approach the Holy See with integrity."
So at a meeting with Monsignor David Cappo in June 2007, also attended by TAC professional standards officer Lay Canon Cheryl Woodman, he set out his reasons for fleeing the Catholic Church in 1974, alleging he was raped by priests - John Stockdale and Ronald Pickering, now dead - while he was a seminarian.
A third priest has vigorously denied allegations raised against him by Hepworth.
Hepworth alleges that Stockdale abused him while he was a seminarian, that Pickering abused him when he was a seminarian and young priest, and that the third priest did so when he was 27 and had been ordained for several years.
After his initial meeting, Hepworth detailed the abuse in a six-page letter to Cappo dated March 25, 2008, the Christian feast of the Annunciation, and he followed up with several more detailed statements.
Monsignor Ian Dempsey, with an Order of Australia award to his credit and who has carved a distinguished career as a naval chaplain, vicar-general and parish priest, took a month's leave from his large Adelaide seaside parish of Brighton after being named under parliamentary privilege by South Australian senator Nick Xenophon on last Tuesday night.
Had the matter been more deftly handled it might never have reached the point where the church's dirty linen, for better or worse, was aired in parliament. Dempsey categorically denied the allegations.
"I am aware of John Hepworth's unsubstantiated allegations against me through an inquiry instigated by the archbishop," Dempsey said. "I have made it clear in writing to the inquiry that I categorically deny the allegations, which I note are said to relate to events that occurred some 45 years ago and have nothing at all to do with underage people."
What happened between Hepworth and the Adelaide archdiocese from mid-2007 to now is hotly disputed.
In his first public utterance on the matter yesterday, Adelaide Archbishop Philip Wilson said in a statement that at the end of eight lengthy meetings, Cappo "on my behalf" urged Hepworth "to give his permission to proceed with an investigation in the allegations.
On each occasion Hepworth declined, indicating that he was not in a proper emotional state to deal with an investigation. Sensitive as we must be to the needs of complainants, we adhered to his request. He was also informed that if he was alleging any form of abuse, including rape, that this is a criminal allegation and he should go to the police."
Hepworth yesterday denied that version of events. He said the only proposals he rejected at the meetings were to be face to face with Cappo mediating. "My doctors and psychologists counselled that this was not in my best interests," he said.
Hepworth said he had spoken to police about the matter but pressing charges that would result in a long court case was never his priority. "I felt it would delay the resolution of my desire to be reconciled with the Catholic Church because nothing would happen until after the court case, which experience shows could take years."
His recall was supported by Woodman, who attended the meetings. She said yesterday that Hepworth was highly traumatised at the outset of the process and reluctant to proceed, but once he had decided to do so they were dismayed to find that the goalposts seemed to be moved from meeting to meeting. "John recoiled at the idea of confronting Dempsey, and in my experience with professional standards work it is not appropriate that victims and alleged perpetrators meet at such an early stage," she said.
Hepworth told Cappo in writing in February that he remained "deeply afraid" of the serving priest and one of the priest's friends, who holds convictions for indecent dealing with a young man. "I am much more afraid now than I was two years ago . . . I very much fear the confrontation that this disclosure may well bring."
Asked why, as a 27-year-old adult priest, he did not resist the alleged advances, Hepworth said that by the time they occurred he had been weakened spiritually and physically from all that had gone before with Stockdale and Pickering and that he was deeply lonely and unhappy and wanted priest friends.
Dempsey denied the allegations.
Wilson said the priest would not be stood aside because there were no accusations of child sexual abuse against him and there was no risk posed by his continued ministry. That position was supported by the Canon Law Society of Australia and New Zealand president Anthony Kerin.
Woodman is also dismayed that the focus of the controversy has shifted away from Stockdale, who is alleged to have initiated the abuse in the seminary. Stockdale, who died in a sex cubicle at Melbourne's "male only" Club 80 on December 31, 1995, left a devastating trail of abuse behind him in Bendigo. This is detailed on the Broken Rites website, as is Pickering's tawdry history.
Adelaide Archdiocesan officials bristle at comparisons between the slowness of Adelaide's response and the swift efficiency of the independent Melbourne process that has dealt with and resolved Hepworth's complaint against Pickering.
Within about 12 months of being approached by Hepworth, Melbourne's independent commissioner, Peter O'Callaghan QC, upheld his complaint against Pickering and concurred that he had also suffered "many other instances of sexual abuse by members of the clergy in South Australia".
As Australia's Cardinal George Pell said this week, the most important thing when such abuse allegations arise is that "the public needs to be assured that the matter is being handled appropriately" in accordance with the principles of natural justice and procedural fairness.
Adelaide officials, who operate under a different protocol to that of Melbourne, are touchy about comparisons with the Melbourne process, with one official even slamming down the telephone when questioned about the difference by a reporter from this newspaper.
"It is also not appropriate to compare this case with the investigations conducted in the Archdiocese of Melbourne. Those allegations concerned people who are now deceased, whereas the investigation in South Australia is different," an Adelaide spokeswoman said in a statement.
This, however, appears to overlook the fact Stockdale, who allegedly started all of the trouble for the young Hepworth, is also dead.
It is also a serious mistake to cast the issue, as some are seeking to do, in terms of a fight between the modernist and traditional wings of Catholicism, which will be strengthened by the addition of the Anglican ordinariates.
Few Catholic priests have been as notoriously "bells and smells" in their elaborate liturgical practices as Pickering and Stockdale.
In the intriguing realms of church politics, the controversy over the handling of Hepworth's complaint, by Wilson - who should be a role model for other clergy because he is the president of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference - is an issue that has received worldwide attention, and has set the stage for a fascinating visit ad limina to Rome next month by Australia's Catholic bishop.
At those meetings, the demise of Toowoomba bishop Bill Morris will also feature on the agenda.
For his part, Hepworth continues to offer mass each day, pray the rosary, preside over the board of St Stephen's TAC school at the Gold Coast and enjoy Biggles and James Bond as useful escapism from past horrors.
He remains deeply perturbed about one of the most ghastly twists of his ordeal, which was being confronted in the confessional when he was a Catholic priest by one of his abusers, who confessed the abuse to him in a bid to silence him with the unbreakable seal of confession.
After the years of work and thousands of kilometres of international travel he has put into reconciling the TAC with Rome, he accepts that his full return to the Catholic fold may depend on his taking off his clerical collar, his mitre and his episcopal ring and return to the status of a layman - but one, ironically, who will always be a validly ordained Catholic priest.
His status rests in the hands of Vatican curial officials, but he is ready for the verdict, however it comes down.
"I can hardly urge 400,000 TAC faithful to submit to the teaching authority of the Catholic Church if I am not prepared to do so myself," he said.
The next step of this unparalleled saga will be fascinating.