Sydney, Australia - ANGLICAN clergy and church workers accused of cheating on their spouses are set to be included on Australia's first national church register of child and sex offences.
The national register gives church authorities the ability to screen priests and lay workers for complaints of child abuse, even those unproven, as they move to reclaim the moral high ground lost to a succession of scandals.
But the morally conservative Sydney diocese is expected to go one step further and insist that formal complaints of clerical sexual infidelity be included on the register. Clerical chastity, or a ban on sex outside of marriage, is a legal standard for the church and is in its voluntary code of conduct.
Including such a breach under the umbrella of sexually inappropriate behaviour would likely make it hard for a Sydney clergy member to obtain another licence as a minister. The database would distinguish between rumour or innuendo and a complainant who provided written details of an alleged affair. The director of the diocese's professional standards, Philip Gerber, said the provision for "high moral behaviour" was not controversial within the church or the community. Nor did he expect any legal challenge since any complaint would need to be verified, and church members and clergy were naturally aware of the church's high expectations. And the database will not be available to the wider church membership. It will be restricted to the most senior levels of the church - three people in each diocese, including the bishop or archbishop, their delegate and the director of professional standards who oversees all complaints.
"We don't want to go snooping around in people's bedrooms," Mr Gerber said. "On the other hand, both the people in the church and presumably the community expect ministers will be faithful to their spouses."
The centralised register could be introduced as early as March next year. It goes well beyond state-run child abuse registers, which do not include complaints of non-criminal sexual conduct among adults. It will include allegations of neglect and emotional and physical abuse of children. It creates a special category of spiritual abuse that refers to invoking God or religion to exploit children. But the centralised register will not include a so-called white pages of biographical detail on clergy after this idea was deemed too difficult and costly. The chairman of the church's professional standards commission, the barrister Garth Blake, yesterday called on the Federal Government to push for uniform national child protection laws. There were potentially eight regimes, and NSW's did not cover volunteers.
Mr Blake said: "I have a vision that churches in Australia, instead of being known for how they have failed children, might be known for how they care for them … We are starting from a very low base and don't have any moral credibility in this area, but we have made some significant steps [towards world-best child protection standards]."