The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and the Roman Catholic Church.

The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse received more reports of sexual abuse of minors from victims of personnel from the Catholic Church than from any other source. It looked beyond the circumstances of the individual reports, to the response of Church leaders. It then took the inquiry to the more fundamental issue of the elements of the Church's structure and its unique culture that enabled sexual abuse and supported the hierarchy's counter-productive responses. This commentary looks at the structural and cultural aspects of the institutional Church most directly connected to sexual abuse by clerics and the ensuing cover-up and it examines their theological and historical foundations. The reality that sexual abuse by clerics was not only known but condoned and covered up cannot be justified but it can be explained in great part by the Church's justification for its own structure and the role of its clerics.