Father Ed Donelan came to New Mexico from Massachusetts. The priest worked as a chaplain at a facility for “juvenile delinquents,” and later ran a home for boys he called the Hacienda de los Muchachos. Donelan sexually abused youth at both facilities. This essay considers how Donelan leveraged New Mexico’s juvenile justice and habilitation systems, and racial inequities baked into them, to abuse young people. Within those systems, a Catholic culture of clericalism granted Donelan unlimited access to youth, and enabled him to move unchecked between spiritual and quasi-parental forms of authority. Donelan’s story shows that clericalism is not a one-size-fits-all problem; it manifests differently in relation to different communities. Here clericalism intersects with place-based power structures of race and colonialism to damage in locally specific ways. Donelan’s case demonstrates that scholars who study clerical sexual abuse need to pay attention not only to priests, but also to church and state institutions that rendered certain populations of children especially vulnerable to their bad actions.

Habits and institutions gradually emerged in earliest Christianity. They were soon enrolled in the Roman empire and subsequently into various forms of Christendom. The English Christendom lasted many centuries and in the period of empire planted the Anglican Church in Australia. This Christendom model was fractured decisively in New South Wales in the first half of the nineteenth century. The recent Royal Commission into abuse in institutions has brought to light serious abuse in the Church and associated it with a form of clericalism. The Commission identifies this issue but does not offer any analysis of its character or causes, which has the effect of diminishing the contribution that the Commission might have made to addressing the problem. A preliminary attempt is offered in this article.

This article is a personal reflection on the twelve-year experience of being a parish without a resident priest. The article offers a socio-historical picture of St. Joseph's Parish, Bunhill Row, London EC1. It considers how some Church documents refer to ‘parish’, including the Code of Canon Law; the 1980 National Pastoral Congress; and Pope Francis’ vision of ‘parish’ in ‘The Joy of the Gospel’ and some other addresses. It concludes with some personal reflections.