Barnstorming his way across America, the Sydney Bishop Geoffrey Robinson sounded at times like Martin Luther."Here I stand," he told an audience in Seattle.
"I can do no other."
He said he knew he was quoting Luther, then announced with a twinkle in his eye to the overflowing crowd, "I am no Martin Luther."
Indeed, in manner, he is no firebrand. In a 15-city speaking tour before audiences clamouring to hear more about his bestseller, Confronting Power And Sex In The Catholic Church, Robinson spoke in a soft Cambridge accent; a tall handsome man in a grey suit and a Roman collar who was often honest enough to answer questions with "I don't know".
But the change-oriented Catholics who crowded into Robinson's talks applauded him for his bluntness. Months ago, Robinson had told an audience in Australia, "John Paul II could have stopped this scandal, and he did nothing."
For this he was accused of heresy by a ranking cardinal in Rome and told to scrap his US tour.
He came anyway, with a speech in his pocket that blamed the last Pope for contributing to the sex scandal that has shaken the church as seismically as Luther shook it more than 500 years ago.
Robinson told his audiences he had great admiration for much of what John Paul II did during his 26-year papacy. "But before they make him a saint, they ought to ask what he did to correct this scandal."
He didn't know why the Pope was so silent about the scandal or why he failed to even ask questions about its cause and its cure. He explained, "It's very difficult - even for a Pope - to change the culture."
Robinson was talking about the aura of the sacred that surrounds the celibate priesthood, which Popes have encouraged for 1000 years by sticking with the celibacy rule, despite a good deal of evidence that mandatory celibacy creates what Robinson calls "unhealthy living conditions" in the priesthood. "Celibate" in this false equation means "sexless" and "sexless" means "holy".
Trouble is that the people have been programmed to believe in the aura, and the church's leaders use that belief to keep the people in their place.
Disaster comes when a few bad priest-seducers exploit their aura of holiness with vulnerable young people, even to the point of assuring them as they are played with that they are being played with by Jesus.
In his US talks, Robinson kept saying that "only the Pope" can change the cultural climate that nurtures such abuse, but he allowed that change could happen if the people could get to their bishops.
"Engage your bishops," he said, "with conversation rather than confrontation."
A retired missionary priest in Robinson's audience at Costa Mesa, California, said: "That's nonsense. The bishops know what needs to be done. Theoretically, they have the power to do a lot of things. They could ordain married men tomorrow. But they won't because they're afraid of Rome."
About the fear, Robinson agrees. "Rome keeps us on a very short leash." He confessed that he was afraid to begin writing his book until he had resigned his post as an auxiliary bishop in Sydney.
Insofar as bishops are content to remain on that short leash, they remain so excessively papal as to ignore the needs of their own people. That need not be, and Robinson knows it. In his book, almost in passing, he suggests that Catholics in every nation could survive and thrive with a measure of independence from Rome, modelling themselves on the ancient autochthonous churches of the Middle East, who have their own patriarchs, their own priests (some married, some not) and their own liturgies.
These "home-grown" churches are in communion with Rome (hence Catholic), but they have their own governance structures that tend to make for a church that is more accountable to its people.
Amazing how Vatican charges against Robinson mirror the church's case against Martin Luther almost 500 years ago.
In 1521, a cardinal from Rome denounced Luther as a heretic, and put his indictment before the Diet of Worms in what is now Germany.
After some debate and testimony by Luther himself, that body issued a decree that made Luther into an outlaw, banned the reading and the possession of his writings and permitted anyone to kill him without legal consequence.
We can draw a lesson here if we pay attention to the rest of the story: public opinion in Germany forced the Emperor Charles V to stop enforcement of the Edict of Worms.
Is it too much to hope that public opinion - around the world and in Australia itself - will stay the execution of Geoff Robinson?
It would help if a number of Australian bishops, taking another look at all those places in scripture where Jesus told the Apostles to fear not, were to tell Pope Benedict during his upcoming visit for World Youth Day to lay off Robinson.
He is not another Luther, and he is more loyal to the Pope than many of the Vatican functionaries I have known.
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