Dr. Christopher Longhurst KSO
The New Zealand Catholic Bishops’ news outlet, CathNews NZ, recently amplified survivors’ frustration at the Government’s sluggish pace in acting on the Royal Commission’s recommendations. Fair enough. But let’s not pretend the obvious question isn’t sitting in the middle of the room like a siren. When will the Church stop pointing fingers and start holding itself to the same standard?
The irony is impossible to ignore. A Church that has repeatedly resisted revisiting inadequate redress for survivors now criticises the Government for moving too slowly. A Church that has spent years defending gradual processes, lengthy reviews, and incremental reform suddenly discovers the language of urgency — but only when pointing at someone else’s failures.
Survivors know that language well. They have been speaking it for decades, mostly into silence.
The Church’s criticism of Government delay isn’t wrong. Government action has been painfully slow. But moral credibility isn’t earned by saying the right thing in a press release. It’s earned by living the standards you demand of others — especially when those standards cut close to home.
And here’s the deeper irony: the same Government the Church rebukes has directed many faith‑based survivors back to the very institutions where the abuse occurred. For them, seeking justice from the Church is not a process — it’s an endurance test. I know this not only through advocacy with other survivors, but through my own experience.
Recently, the Society of Mary declined to revisit my historic settlement, despite my request that it be reassessed against contemporary redress standards and the seriousness of the abuse I suffered. The Society’s Provincial, Mervyn Duffy SM, denied the request and mediation, responding instead through his lawyer, Gerard Dewar. Whether one agrees with that decision or not, it is difficult to reconcile with the Church’s public calls for urgency, fairness, and a survivor‑centred approach.
Nor was that my only experience. After raising concerns about the New Zealand Catholic bishops’ redress processes, their National Office for Professional Standards responded through external legal counsel rather than engaging through its pastoral redress process. For survivors, such responses don’t feel like care. They feel like institutional self‑protection dressed up as procedure.
These are not isolated grievances. Variations of the same concerns echo across the country. And they raise a blunt question: how persuasive are the Church’s calls for Government accountability when so many survivors still encounter delay, defensiveness, and legalism within the Church’s own systems?
Church leaders are right to demand urgency from the Government. Survivors have been making that same plea for years. But urgency cannot be a virtue the Church expects only from others. It must be a virtue it practices.
Before Church leaders publicly align themselves with survivors calling out Government delay, they must ask why so many survivors in their own Church still face delay, denial, and procedural stonewalling.
Their prophetic voice will carry real moral authority only when survivors can point to the Church’s own reforms as evidence that it practices what it preaches.
Until then, the New Zealand Catholic bishops’ criticism of Government delay will continue to sound less like prophecy and more like selective memory.
If urgency matters — and it does — then urgency begins at home.
