Monthly Archives: November 2019

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The Christian Way Forward in a Time of Crisis

by Rod Dreher, Quadrant, 7 November 2019

I wish I were here with good news. Actually, I believe I do have good news. I am not optimistic, but I am hopeful. Hope, as I will explain, is not the same thing as optimism. To find our way to hope, we first have to be painfully honest about the bad news.

These are not normal times. We in the West are in the worst spiritual and social crisis since the collapse of the Roman empire. We don’t see this collapse clearly because it is hidden by our wealth. But make no mistake: the fundamental pillars of Western civilisation are crumbling—none more consequentially than the Church.

Our crisis is actually a combination of crises.

It is a crisis of meaning. In the postmodern West, we have arrived at a place where many people no longer believe that meaning exists at all, and that we can know it.

Read on…

Australia, Catholic Church, Culture, Media, Political correctness, Religion

George Pell – ‘a challenge to the dominant consensuS’

George Weigel is an internationally known American author, political analyst, and social activist. He currently serves as a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is a highly regarded speaker. He wrote the foreword to Tess Livingstone’s book GEORGE PELL published in 2002. Weigel pays generous tribute to George Pell’s qualities as a Catholic bishop. He already notes the vicious incomprehensible slander that the newly appointed Archbishop of Sydney received. Much of that slander has become the accepted ‘truth’ about Pell.

FOREWORD to GEORGE PELL by Tess Livingstone
Duffy & Snelgrove, Sydney 2002

Dr George Pell’s appointment as Archbishop of Sydney was a major news story across Australia — one that I could follow in real-time in Washington, DC, thanks to the Internet. Having been Down Under just five months before Dr Pell’s March 2001 transfer from Melbourne, I thought I knew at least something about the robust give-and-take of Aussie journalism. But it was difficult to recognize the George Pell I had known for almost 35 years in many of the reports I read on his appointment to Sydney.

Continue reading George Pell – ‘a challenge to the dominant consensuS’ →
Catholic Church, Culture, Law, Media, Political correctness, Religion

Cardinal Pell’s supernumerary torture

I thought all sympathy and compassion for Cardinal Pell had disappeared from the public square . Indeed, It seemed the malice and malevolence of the Pell lynch mob monopolised the space.

So it is a tribute to Professor Mirko Bagaric, director of the Sentencing and Criminal Justice Project at Swinburne University, for publicly showing some compassion for the Cardinal – and for the Australian in publishing his views about the Cardinal’s circumstances. Professor Bagaric has pointed out what many of us have realised. Cardinal Pell is undergoing a supernumerary torture at the hands of the State of Victoria. He writes:

People should be sent to prison as punishment, not for punishment. Research shows that prisoners subjected to long periods of solitary confinement often suffer irreparable long-term mental and physical harm. George Pell is being subjected to modern-day torture by his prison conditions. They are grounds for a strong argument that he should be granted bail pending the outcome of his appeal to the High Court.

Pell has reportedly spent all of the time he has been incarcerated (almost nine months) in solitary confinement at the Melbourne Remand Centre. He is let out of his cell for just an hour a day. That such a high-profile Australian is being subjected to these brutal conditions should be the catalyst we need to start the debate to abolish the use of this form of incarceration for all Australian prisoners…

Studies show supermax confinement — particularly isolation of more than 15 days — has long-term detrimental effects on mental health of prisoners, including insomnia, panic, hallucinations, suicidal impulses, feelings of hopelessness and paranoia. The highest rates of prison suicide and self-harm occur among those in solitary confinement.

When inmates are placed in isolation or supermax units, they are also at risk of physical harm. Lack of exposure to sunlight can cause vitamin D deficiency, making inmates more susceptible to falls and fractures. The near total absence of movement and exercise exacerbates conditions such heart disease, diabetes and arthritis. The physical harm caused by solitary confinement often results in long-term disabilities and additional longer-term healthcare costs. This is especially the case with elderly prisoners. Pell is 78.

Now Pell’s appeal has been referred to the Full Court of the High Court, his prospects of bail are stronger. Appeal bail will be granted only in exceptional circumstances (Marotta v R [1999] HCA) and it is a hard test to satisfy. However, an important relevant factor is whether an acquittal would make the benefit of the acquittal hollow.

It is likely the circumstances of Pell’s confinement have already caused him significant psychological and physical harm. The extent of his suffering is likely to be exacerbated the longer he remains in isolation. That harm is probably irreversible.

The strength of any bail application would be enhanced by the fact there is a reasoned dissenting judgment by Justice Weinberg, and that Pell is not a flight risk.

Supermax and isolation units should be abolished. We can protect prisoners from other prisoners in ways that do not involve barbaric conditions: employ more prison officers. The additional cost would be less damaging than the moral stain stemming from the deliberate infliction of intense, ­unnecessary pain on inmates.

Could the Andrews government just for a moment break from its class’s malevolence towards all things Catholic and do the compassionate and just thing – FREE CARDINAL PELL ON BAIL while he awaits the High Court process.

Australia, Catholic Church, Culture, Law, Media, Political correctness, Religion

Chris Friel analyses Milligan’s ‘Cardinal’

Academic Chris Friel, on the other side of the world in Cornwall, has produced a series of permanently relevant articles on the conviction of Cardinal Pell. His latest is a forensic analyses of Louise Milligan’s book CARDINAL. Milligan’s book has been a boon for Australia’s army of anti-Catholic bigots.

Milligan’s Cardinal

By Chris S Friel

Introduction. In this paper I will critically review Louise Milligan’s Cardinal, drawing chiefly on the 2019 edition published after Pell’s conviction in 2018 for child sex abuse. The subtitle reads, New Revelations, The Rise and Fall of George Pell. The first edition was published in 2017. The book by the renowned ABC journalist was the primary instrument in the “trial by media,” and very plausibly, it softened up the jury – despite the fact that it was removed just before the police pressed charges against the accused. As my review will make clear, I regard the book as a malign influence.

We can cite the blurb to make some opening remarks. Thus we learn that “Pell’s ascendancy was seemingly unstoppable … But … Louise Milligan pieces together decades of disturbing activities highlighting Pell’s actions and cover-ups. The book is a testament to the most intimate stories of complainants.” My review will address the “actions” rather than the supposed “cover-ups,” for such actions are relevant to the two trials Pell faced: the “swimmers trial” relating to indecency alleged in the 1970s, and the “cathedral trial” in which a jury found Pell guilty. Arguably, it was in bringing such actions to “light” that Milligan stopped Pell’s ascendency. To all this we can add the blurb from Senator Derryn Hinch, “This book is one of the most forensic, explosive, historically detailed tomes I have ever read.”

We take such words as our cue. We hope to explode the pretensions of Milligan’s work and subject those historical details to rational scrutiny. The word “forensic,” actually, is etymologically linked to the word “forum,” and so pertains to the public square. We hope our rational scrutiny will prove forensic in the full sense of the word.

Read on…

Catholic Church, Culture, Law, Media, Political correctness

Madame defarge speaks – again

The Guardian Australia in its report of the Pell High Court appeal sounded out the ubiquitous Chrissie Foster for her reaction. It was the usual stuff from the pale Madame Defarge of the Pell case. There was no way she would let the opportunity pass. The Cardinal should be marched directly to the blade. All that justice stuff is injustice.

Chrissie Foster, whose daughters were abused by the pedophile priest Kevin O’Donnell and who detailed a lack of support from Pell when she reported the offending to the church, said she was “devastated” by the court’s decision.

“The more I think about it the more devastated I feel about it,” she said. “It’s so hard to get a conviction of this crime against children. This case got that conviction. Now it’s going out of Victoria to the high court to be rehashed over.

“George has had the best of everything, the best defence money can buy, the best county court judge, and three top minds in the appellate court judges who heard the first appeal. And it feels now it’s all back to square one. It really is upsetting. What do we have to do to have this conviction stick?”

Catholic Church, Culture, Law, Media, Political correctness

The cardinal Pell I know

The Catholic weekly published an article by Samuel Brebner, a 23-year-old Catholic from New Zealand. Among other comments, he said this about Cardinal Pell.

I worked for Cardinal Pell in 2012, as part of a gap year I did with an organisation called NET (National Evangelisation Teams) in Australia. I, along with five other young Catholic adults, were assigned to the Sydney Team. Our full-time job was to do youth ministry in the archdiocese; running high school retreats, organising youth groups, and helping out at large-scale events.

Right from the moment I arrived in Australia, what struck me about Cardinal Pell was the stark differences in the attitudes people held towards him. To some, Pell was a monster, a man who embodied everything bad about that Catholic church and who had allegedly been complicit in covering up sexual abuse by Australian priests.

Continue reading The cardinal Pell I know →
Australia, Culture, Law, Media, Political correctness, Religion

Pell’s accuser has psychological problems – what else?

Chris Merritt, the Australian’s legal affairs editor, reported that the liar in the Pell case has psychological problems:

‘Victorian law meant the jury could not be told that the complainant had been treated for psychological problems.

‘Section 32D of Victoria’s Evidence (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act also meant Pell’s legal team could not tell the jury the cardinal had been denied access to records of that treatment.’

What else about this man is hidden from the public?

Catholic Church, Media, Religion

George Pell – the person

Nobody in Australia has been more vilified publicly than Cardinal George Pell. Even worse, most of the vilification has come through or aided by great Australian companies or organizations at the head of which has been, and still is, the billion-dollar government funded ABC (The Australian Broadcasting Corporation). The extent of the slander and abuse has baffled overseas people of standing, in the Church and academia, who know the Cardinal or have had dealings with him.

Of course, there are many people in Australia who have high regard for the Cardinal, but they are not often heard from. Others are reluctant to speak publicly because they know the same people who have destroyed the Cardinal will do their best to destroy them. Journalist Tess Livingstone is an exception. She has written two favourable books about Cardinal Pell and a number of articles. Below is one of those articles.

*****

CARDINAL GEORGE PELL

By Tess Livingstone

WHEN HE PRAYS his daily Office — the psalms, scripture and prayers Catholic priests read every day from the Roman breviary — George Pell offers part of it for his accusers, including the man whose testimony was accepted by a jury in December, landing the cardinal into an isolation cell in a Melbourne jail.

Continue reading George Pell – the person →
Catholic Church, Culture, Law, Media, Political correctness, Religion

The adolescent logic of the majority judgement

In the Australian of 15 November, former Labor Minister Peter Baldwin focused on the weird reasoning of the majority judgement in the Pell appeal.

George Pell sex abuse conviction must be examined

by PETER BALDWIN

I have never been a huge fan of ­George Pell, sharing neither his relig­ious convictions nor his conservati­ve world view.

However, I was relieved by the decision of the High Court this week to hear his final appeal.

This follows the decision in August by a majority of the Victorian Court of Appeal to uphold the jury verdict convicting Pell of criminal sexual abuse.

I was surprised and disconcerted, astonished actually, by this outcome, so much so I ploughed through all 325 pages of the majority judgment by justices Anne Ferguson and Chris Maxwell and the longer dissenting judgment by Justice Mark Weinberg in an effort to understand where their reasonings diverged.

There were aspects of the matter that surprised me at the outset.

Continue reading The adolescent logic of the majority judgement →
Australia, Catholic Church, Law, Media, Political correctness, Religion

A BLIGHT ON THE WHOLE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

Many powerful compelling pieces have been written attacking and deploring Cardinal Pell’s conviction for the sexual abuse of two minors. Noteworthy are Keith Windschuttle’s and Andrew Bolt’s demonstration that the alleged abuse was impossible given the complainant’s timeline. In his article below, retired lawyer Anthony Charles Smith raises frightening questions about Australia’s legal system and the competence of those on the bench. Like many others, he points out that the Pell conviction shows nobody is safe in Australia at the moment. The article appeared in the September issue of Annals Australasia.

A BLIGHT ON THE WHOLE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

By Anthony Charles Smith

I am not a Roman Catholic and don’t write this from any religious perspective but rather these days as a retired barrister very troubled by the charging and conviction of George Pell.

I spent nearly thirty years of my working life at the Bar to 2013, a substantial quantity of that practice was as a defence barrister. I have read the particulars of the allegations against the accused Cardinal George Pell and the circumstances in which they were made. I have also read Frank Brennan’s analysis of the evidence presented at the trial. I have read opinions on the trial such as that of the left-wing barrister Greg Barns and the author John Silvester in “The Age”. I have read the relevant portions of the Court of Appeal’s majority judgment and the dissenting judgment. I have also read Paul Kelly’s lengthy article in the “Weekend Australian” following the decision of the Court of Appeal.

In the 1980s and early 90s, I say without the slightest hesitation that these allegations would have been given short shrift by competent, experienced Crown Prosecutors. They lack any corroboration, are fanciful beyond rational belief and contain within them internal inconsistencies of an irreconcilable nature as to time, opportunity, practicality, place and circumstance.

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