How significant will Cardinal George Pell’s appeal against his conviction for sexually abusing two choirboys be? Calls to talk-back radio following the lifting on the ban in Australia on reporting Pell’s conviction suggest that many people who were abused or have loved ones who were abused by clergy were immensely heartened by the news. They saw it as a sign that they were finally being believed. What will they think if Pell’s appeal succeeds? That they are no longer believed?

They are mistaken if they think this way. Whether or not Pell’s appeal succeeds has direct relevance to Pell and his accusers, but need not concern others who were abused. Accusations of abuse are now taken very seriously, and Pell’s conviction, regardless of whether it stands, demonstrates this.

The result of Pell’s appeal will do nothing to change the long and inglorious history of Catholics from the Pope down to the most humble parishioner causing serious harm while simultaneously faking or imagining their own moral superiority. It’s a very old problem, not a new one, and it extends to many institutions beyond the Church.

The systemic hidden abuse of children by clergy within the Church is not just an example of hypocrisy, but also the result of flawed moral teaching, particularly with regard to sexual morality. It seems to me that Catholic ethics, with its reliance on Natural Law Theory and notions like the Doctrine of Double Effect, is incoherent. It gets things seriously wrong.

But the drive to be philosophically consistent (no easy task) does not engage many people. Instead, Pell’s conviction brings raw emotions to the fore. White hot rage accompanied by demands for retribution are on display.

Despite our anger at perpetrators, we should open ourselves to the possibility that no one deserves to suffer, not even those who cause terrible suffering to others. We’ve evolved to react with anger to those who harm us and those we love. This survival-tracking mechanism has an obvious evolutionary benefit. If someone hurts us, we want to hurt them in return. This provides a disincentive to those who consider harming us and helps keep us safe. But we have many survival-tracking gut reactions that turn out to be unreliable. I suspect that our idea that wrongdoers deserve to suffer is one of them. Perhaps we should focus instead on preventing harm, quarantine those likely to cause it, but continue to treat them with care and respect.

Most Catholic clergy who perpetrate abuse are victims of the flawed instruction that prevented them from growing into mature adults able to satisfy their emotional and sexual needs through normal healthy human relationships. Catholics of Pell’s generation were taught as teenagers that sex outside marriage or masturbation were mortal sins deserving of eternal punishment. It’s hard to build a healthy attitude towards sexuality when you are taught such damaging things at a young age. The perpetrators of sexual violence against children are damaged people. Their innocent victims and their loved ones need our love and sympathy most, but we should not stop caring for the emotionally stunted abusers themselves. Perhaps George Pell is a victim too.

Many factors are at play, and it seems to me that some of them include faulty intuitions about sexuality and authority, which, like our belief in just deserts, serve to promote our evolutionary fitness but can also lead us astray. Admitting fundamental errors in thinking about subjects like homosexuality, contraception and masturbation for an organisation so powerfully attached to the idea of authoritative moral teaching as the Catholic Church is a huge challenge. Sadly, the Church seems unlikely to realise or acknowledge that mistakes in its moral teaching have played some role in the tragic harm caused to innocent victims of clerical sex-abuse.

The Church would have a better chance of preventing child sex abuse by clergy if it could clear up its confused thinking about sexual morality and accept things like women priests, married clergy and contraception. Unfortunately, I don’t see this happening any time soon, but hopefully, the spotlight that has been shone on this problem will provide sufficient disincentive to would-be clerical abusers to think twice before they harm children and sufficient incentive to the Church hierarchy to institute more effective procedures for handling abuse when it occurs.

The success or failure of Pell’s appeal in June will rekindle plenty of raw emotions for many people, but Pell’s is only one case among many. Regardless of whether his conviction stands, child victims of clerical sexual abuse now live in a world that is better informed and future accusations will be given greater credence. The veil of secrecy has been removed and behaviour designed to protect the Church’s reputation at the expense of innocent children will no longer be tolerated. That’s a very good thing.