“I’d been following the royal commission very closely and I was horrified to see how far the abuse had spread,” says Haberland, who attended Catholic primary and secondary schools through the 1960s and ’70s. “As time went on, it was starting to really affect me mentally. It made me realise what I’d been through at the hands of the church.” It’s an extreme version of a common response to the revelations within the Catholic Church. Ormerod said the findings of the major five-yearly National Church Life Survey showed a “serious erosion of trust in the hierarchical leadership of the church’’. “This level of damage may be so high as to not just call into question the authority of individual bishops, but of the office [of bishop] itself.”

Asked whether sexual abuse by clergy had damaged their confidence in “church authorities”, 48 per cent of churchgoing Catholics either agreed or strongly agreed, while 34 per cent disagreed or strongly disagreed. Ormerod says most Catholics would interpret “church authorities” as bishops and senior church officials. Especially troubling for the church is that the “agreed/strongly agreed’’ figure in the survey, conducted in the shadow of the royal commission in 2016, was higher among older parishioners (aged 50-plus), who make up the majority of churchgoers. More than half regular churchgoers are now aged over 60. The National Church Life Survey showed a 'serious erosion of trust in the hierarchical leadership of the church'. The survey, funded by 20 Christian denominations including the Catholic, Anglican and Uniting churches, covers a wide range of subjects and has been conducted every five years since 1991.

It is the largest longitudinal study of church life in the world, involving 3000 local churches. Questions about the royal commission were part of smaller but targeted sample survey. Michael Haberland and his dog, Micky Credit:Wolter Peeters For Haberland, the royal commission’s work brought his childhood trauma flooding back, and led to a dramatic, official break from the faith At primary school he says he was beaten by members of the Presentation Sisters order for minor transgressions, forced to dress in a girl’s uniform and hair ribbon and paraded before his classmates. Thundering sermons threatened hellfire for those who lost their religious items. In high school, there were strappings and canings by the De La Salle Brothers. Haberland says he only narrowly escaped the repeated attempts of a school teacher to sexually groom him. The teacher eventually tried to corner him at a school camp.

Haberland, who is now unemployed and diagnosed with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, has withdrawn to a rural property south of Sydney. He lives there with his dog, Micky. Haberland contacted church authorities but was not sure what he wanted – an acknowledgement, an apology, certainly. Compensation? Whatever the responses, he knew he was done with the church. “I needed closure,” he said. “Can you advise me how I can be excommunicated,” he asked church officials. In November 2017, his request was finally answered. The Vicar-General of the archdiocese of Sydney sent him an Actus Formalis Defectionis AB Ecclesia Catholica:

By this decree the petitioner is considered no longer bound by the bonds of communion – faith, sacraments and pastoral governance – that permit the Faithful to receive the life of grace within the Catholic Church It’s unknown how many people have been granted this kind of official divorce from the church. The archdiocese of Melbourne said “no more than five a year” seek it. The Sydney church said it was one. In the survey, one class of religious figure escaped strong criticism – priests are still relatively well regarded by their parishioners. Asked if their “respect for clergy” had greatly declined as a result of the abuse offences, 29 per cent of Catholics parishioners agreed or strongly agreed. About 70 per cent, on the other hand, were neutral or disagreed or strongly disagreed that their image of priests had been substantially damaged. Ormerod says this indicated continued respect for local parish priests. Again, older Catholics had been more affected by the child abuse scandal.

“There remains a well of trust in their priests among local parishioners, notwithstanding all the stories that have emerged from the commission,” says Ormerod. The church is reeling globally from one of its greatest ever crises and in Australia has been struggling in the aftermath of the gruelling, five-year royal commission established by the Gillard government, which reported in December. The royal commission revealed and confirmed high levels of sexual abuse and subsequent cover-ups, noting the Catholic church had accounted for more than almost 62 per cent of all abuse survivors who reported sexual abuse in a religious institution. Justices Peter McClellan and Jennifer Coates at the final sitting of the royal commission. Credit:Jeremy Piper Seven per cent of Catholic priests had been accused of abusing children in the six decades from 1950 to 2010. In some Catholic religious orders the figures were much higher: 40 per cent for the St John of God Brothers and 22 per cent for the Christian Brothers.

Loading The survey also found that four in 10 clergy reported negative comments about the abuse scandal from their congregation or wider community at large. “In a life already dogged by low morale and an ageing population of priests, this cannot help,” says Ormerod. “Increasingly, priestly ministry is an isolated and isolating exercise.” It also found that the royal commission had been good for the church, with 48 per cent agreeing it had helped it prevent and respond to sexual abuse. “Catholics are looking for their bishops to take some genuine leadership and work with the commission’s findings in addressing the serious problem the commission has uncovered,” says Ormerod.

On Monday, Fairfax Media begins a major series on the wealth of the Catholic Church. We have pieced together, for the first time, financial information that the church has denied to parliamentary inquiries and royal commissions. Got a tip? Contact us securely on JournoTips