Nothing quite brings out the true face of the “tolerance and kindness” mob than the death of someone they adamantly refused to tolerate. Almost as soon as the death of Cardinal George Pell was announced, the Australian left turned into a squirming, orgiastic herd of pigs joyously rolling in the filth of their own hate. Most of it doesn’t bear repeating, as you can easily imagine it for yourself
One of the few to conduct themselves with decency was lawyer Greg Barns. Barns, a former adviser to numerous Liberal governments, is about as wet and “progressive” as they come. Yet Barns at least had the decency to remind the Twitter cesspool that, “whatever you thought of him as a person or leader he was a victim of appalling trial by media in Australia”.
Why does the left hate Pell so much? Where do the same people violently protecting groomers and relentlessly sexualising children get off, accusing anyone else of allegedly “sheltering paedophiles”?
The blunt truth is that Pell paid the highest price imaginable for refusing to kneel before the green-left’s rainbow flag.
Pell entered seminary training. somewhat reluctantly, in early 1960, turning down the chance to play for the Richmond Tigers or pursue a lucrative career in law or medicine. [He…] was promoted to the rank of cardinal in 2003 under Pope John Paul II, one of his church heroes, was a firm believer in doctrinal orthodoxy and unity within the church […]
Never a shrinking violet, he was sometimes controversial, speaking on a variety of issues – from AIDS, the LGBTI agenda and wokeness undermining education, to the dangers of what he regarded as the racist undertones of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Mark I in the mid-1990s. An ardent opponent of cancel culture and virtue signalling, he was an unashamed climate change sceptic, noting last year that the green movement had the characteristics of “a low level, not too demanding, pseudo-religion”. He was also, in line with church teaching, a strong opponent of abortion and euthanasia but active in organising support services for those in difficult situations.
While always on the side of underdogs economically, he drew a sharp line between church and state on matters that belong with Caesar rather than God […]
Upholding democratic values, free speech and good economic management and defending the traditional family were among his political priorities, irrespective of political affiliations. He had friends across the political spectrum, and maintained good relationships with other churches and non-Christian religious groups, including Jews and Muslims.
But there’s no escaping the elephant in the room. As Australia’s highest-ranking Catholic clergyman, Pell was always going to be smeared by association with the heinous crimes of a tiny minority of priestly abusers, and the bishops who protected them — which Pell adamantly denied being.
(It also begs the question of why politicians and celebrities who were formerly teachers aren’t smeared by association with the paedophiles in the teaching profession, who easily outnumber the paedophiles in churches.)
His haters smear Pell for the malfeasance of his superiors, but it should in fact be remembered that he was the architect of the first formal church process in the world for dealing with revelations of clerical abuse. While the “Melbourne Response” was flawed, it was described by victim support group Broken Rites as “the best of a bad lot’’. For all its obvious faults, it was at least a fumbling first effort to deal with a problem that had been swept under the carpet at all levels of society for decades.
The Melbourne Response was flawed and weak. But so were others, none of whom have been subject to anything near the same level of unhinged hatred.
The fact that many other institutions, from schools to sporting associations, were just as complicit and just as hamfisted at remedying the sins of a minority of their members, is conveniently forgotten by people whose only compass seems to be hating religion. Indeed, the fact that schools are continuing to shelter and enable an “epidemic” (to use one investigator’s words) of abusers (described by one US government researcher as likely 100 times as bad as in the churches) is never even remarked upon. That a creepy underbelly of the “rainbow” lobby is more-or-less openly sexualising children is often violently defended by the same people spitting on Pell’s memory.
There’s no denying, though, that Pell made some spectacularly poor misjudgements.
None greater than his decision to attend court to support perhaps the church’s worst pedophile, former priest Gerald Ridsdale, in the early 1990s. This act of strategic foolishness came to define him in the eyes of sex abuse victims.
For his part, Pell adamantly maintained that he was lied to by church officials about Ridsdale and another disgraced Melbourne priest, Peter Searson.
Pell was also set up to be the target of some very powerful and sinister forces. Whether the corrupt dealings of certain Vatican financiers or corrupt politicians in Australia, an array of malefic VIPs had reason to try and take Pell down. Some of them briefly succeeded.
The unanimous decision by the High Court of Australia in April 2020 to quash five child sexual abuse convictions against Cardinal Pell, for which he served 13 months in Victorian jails, largely in solitary confinement, was an emphatic verdict rooted in evidence, judicial precedents and the law […]
The matter also raised significant questions about Victorian justice […] As Paul Kelly wrote, state power was “recruited in an effort to destroy Pell. This situation cannot be swept under the carpet.”
The Australian
Pell said that his Christian faith kept him going during his false imprisonment, and taught him not to be bitter against his persecutors. It also seems that death had no dominion over him.
George Pell died happy, having conquered legal and prison misery, elbowing his way back into the Vatican factional system.
“He was full of beans,” a close friend said after speaking to Cardinal Pell in recent days.
The Australian
