The Perpetrators of Child Abuse were still in denial, as they dismissed key recommendations of the Australian Royal Commission. Among them was the Archbishop of Melbourne, who said that the Catholic Church will excommunicate whistle-blowers who report child rapists, regardless of what the Royal Commission recommended.
Have they learnt nothing from this four year Inquiry?
I think that the government will adopt all or most of the recommendations to regulate child protection. They have to. However, the churches will have to change their attitudes and emerge from the entrenched denial stage which they still occupy.
They still believe that for a priest, the duty of protecting children is secondary to avoiding excommunication - and they still believe that churches are above the law and that their own club rules are more important than the law of the land and common decency.
As Paula Kirby once summed up, "Religion actively discourages moral progress, because religion DEFINES morality as the attitudes that prevailed hundreds or thousands of years ago".
Churches have been talking recently about "religious freedom" - which means they want to retain the unmerited privileges they already enjoy; and believe they are entitled to even more.
This Royal Commission has provided stark evidence that the churches have abused the "religious freedoms" which they already enjoy and need to be treated like normal citizens.