MSC Report Card

(under construction) 

The MSC higher-ups that directed the NT Aboriginal program in the 70s-80s were: 

Bishop John O'Loughlin, NT diocese (MSC’s first/last Bishop)

The Very Reverent Father Malcolm Fyfe, Provincial Superior, Director of Catholic Education, Vicar for Missions,(1978-83), then again, 2005-2023

 

Given their main roles were to direct the education of First Nations children, let's flip-the-script - assess the report cards of the Educators for the period they were in charge of setting the moral tone.

 

Report of the Northern Territory Board of Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse, 2007 (try acronymizing that!) found that it:

• involves both female and male victims - from the very young to adulthood
  
  

• is committed by non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal males of all ages – with a proportion (polite for a lot) of assaults being committed by offenders who are themselves children
  
  

• has led to inter-generational cycles of offending – such that victims have subsequently become offenders and, in turn, created a further generation of victims and offenders. (P59)
  
  

Ok, that sounds: not good.  As: a Legacy Report Card

 

The key words above are: created ... inter-generational cycles

 

The report was 2007.  The downstream-end of the generational-cycles - which MSC played a key role in creating.  Indeed it had gotten so bad it prompted the inquiry.

That slow-mo train crash played out, for a significant period of time, during O'Laughlin/Fyfe's watch. 

 

MSC created an alternative, artificial reality portal in time that 

(a) didn't previously exist   

(b) didn't have to exist - could easily have been something else - something better ...     

 

There were known alternatives espoused by grown not adults, not kiddies. Even that far back in the day.  Several renowned anthropologists presented strong studies against it, warning how destructive it was, including William Stanner, who spent decades living amongst Aboriginals.

 

He concluded: “The old men lost their authority… the sanctions of their law weakened.”

He linked this to MSC’s elder replacement regime.

He famously coined the phrase The Great Australian Silence back in a 1968 seminar to condemn it.

 

With Creation/Severance comes Responsibility.  Especially when you force your brain-wave onto others - ban/vilify known alternative approaches.

 

For an ORG whose central tenet is The Catholic God's creation of The World, it's worth looking at what kinda alternative-world MSC's intervention created in God's name. 

 

NT Report: (T)he Inquiry accepts that sexual abuse of Aboriginal children is common, widespread and grossly under-reported .. abuse is rife. p17

 

Hell!  Like Hell-on-earth style. 

 

For the subject of Protection of those Under-your-care, sorry O’Loughlin & Fyfe, gotta give you … : F

If i was your father, Reverend Fathers, i’d scold you.  

Don’t worry - you won’t have to drop your daks - in case you’re wondering …

 

With combined roles of Bishop/Director of Catholic Education/Missions/Religious Superiors, you two were, in effect, Australia’s Experts-in-Chief at the coal-face of Aboriginal Affairs in the 70’s-80’s.  The executive power. 

 

The NT, twice the size of Texas, was your O'Fyfe-dom.

 

A reign marked by a culture of peak-dismissiveness of other cultures.  

MSC's enforced influence in the NT was Hegemony in Action - fully-fledged. 

Anyone questioning their Superior wisdom - presenting relevant information, they saw that as information to be stamped out - going forward … or backwards … to be replaced with:  the Sacred Heart of Jesus

 

Before we had algorithms to suppress truth on behalf of THE Science, we had THE Church doing it through Culture.  As a sociologist, i suspect it’s the same thing. 

Both are projected as impenetrable uber-human intelligence systems - where the system is in control.  It’s an ORG - not one individual.

As with now though, there were/are still real people making decisions to direct the systems.  That played/play roles in shaping that system - taking it in one direction or another.

 

Even if you dismiss the evidence from the Aboriginal activists & renowned anthropologists, there was also on-the-ground dissent towards Fyfe/O'Loughlin's policies, from real MSC missionary actors at the real coal-face, living amongst the communities.  

They were ignored. Shut-down.  

Those big-picture decisions to bury dissent were made by the higher-ups.

 

Bottom-line:

Charged with transitioning/assimilating First Nations People to the Western/Catholic way of thinking, the end legacy was:

an entrenched culture of child-sexual-abuse

 

The Board of Inquiry Report emphasizes the prevalence of anal rape - & that: many sexual offenders were, in fact, children themselves.  

That’s the community atmosphere MSC's cultural severance ended up callaterally creating  - one of normalized sexual violence. 

With a lot of anal rape.

 

Good job Fyfe & O'Laughlin.  Not saying you were out there doing it, necessarily, but that cultural disaster unfolded on your watch. 

 

You can argue that wasn't your objective with cultural severance, but it's nigh-impossible to argue it wasn't a direct result.

 

It’s way more nuanced than that, of course, we'll explore that later.

 

In short: The missionaries were trainee priests doing their 2-years national MSC service. Upon completion, most chose the cushier school/parish/admin appointments, a rare few decided to stick with it.

 

Of the stick-with-its, which takes a certain type, all of them, including Leary, Burke, Pat Dodson (who we will look at later), conflicted with the MSC higher-ups - namely Fyfe/O’Loughlin - who overruled them.

 

Naturally, Fyfe (who is still alive, mentally alert) will say when presented with this report card: Oh, i had no idea! Really? but the NT Report reports that the abuse was so rife that it leaves little room for Fyfe, who had previous form sweeping sexual abuse under-the-rug at Monivae College, Victoria, to again plead ignorance.

 

NT Report: The person (victim/survivor) said that Aboriginal law had started breaking down at the time she was abused and had now deteriorated to such an extent that young children in the community were sexually abusing one another.

 

So, you’ve broken down one culture, replaced it with your child-social experiment, it’s resulted in (stolen) young children sexually abusing one another …

What on God’s earth was going on in those top-end missions you were running, John & Malcolm?  Let’s find out.