The Archbishop of Melbourne, Peter Comensoli, believes that George Pell is innocent. He also believes that Pell’s victim is telling the truth. His solution for this contradiction is the obvious one: the victim identified the wrong rapist. Not even Pell’s defence lawyers had tried that one on; there weren’t a lot of 190cm archbishops trolling around St Patrick’s Cathedral in 1996-7.
It’s laughable, yes, in the same way as is Andrew Bolt’s complete loss of faith in our legal system. As are the campaigns seemingly being waged by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian to convince us that the dissenting judgment of Justice Weinberg in Pell’s appeal is the only one that matters and, of itself, a sufficient basis for the High Court to step in and declare the cardinal a martyr.
We are immersed fully in the Upside Down: where the rule of law is defended by lefties, and the conservatives threaten to burn the entire temple of justice to the ground if their hero is not absolved and reinstated to stain-free eminence.
I’m taken to this conclusion by an article in the conservative chronicle Quadrant, where the author expresses his hope “that the Pope, whatever happens, will keep Pell frocked and as a cardinal”. “Secular justice has gone badly off the rails. The Church should form its own view independently and act accordingly. It wouldn’t be the first time in history that a cleric has been unjustly imprisoned. I believe Saint Peter spent some time there.”
It’s true that Saint Peter was imprisoned by the Romans (and crucified) — although that wasn’t for raping a choir boy. But the point of interest is the rejection of “secular justice”.
This rush to condemn, not the convicted paedophile but the criminal justice system that convicted him, transcends rationality to such a monstrous extent that it clearly reflects something much more significant than George Pell’s personal credibility. Sure, some people may find themselves incapable of believing him guilty, but here we have a large part of the institutional establishment going out on the weirdest limb imaginable (it bears repeating: defending a convicted paedophile) because they cannot abide this single declaration of guilt in a system that produces thousands of them every year.
If you hadn’t noticed already, the Pell reaction demonstrates that Australia is descending into full-blown Trumpishness. It was obvious when Trump was elected that his real accomplishment was to convince so many people to switch off their left brains and vote exclusively with their feelings; mostly, of loss and resentment.
So he has continued, governing by emotional reflex and keeping his followers at a high pitch of irrationality. “Fake news” is only the most obvious manifestation; right now, Trump is attacking his own Federal Reserve and demanding that the G7 re-admit Russia while spewing venom at Denmark for not selling him Greenland. It’s unsurprising that truth has lost its meaning when that sentence is literally true.
Australia is not, of course, ruled by a tyrannical narcissist, but we are marching carefully to his beat. More significantly, we have been observing the identical anti-intellectual, anti-expertise, anti-science trend. Government ministers now routinely attack their own institutions and confidently make statements that defy fact, science and logic. Barnaby Joyce, one of the most counter-rational men in Australian politics, is enjoying more prominence as a backbencher than he ever did as deputy prime minister.
The fact is that no institution in society is secure. This is not just because they have discredited themselves (like our banks and parliaments have achieved through their amoral venality); even the universities, CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology are mistrusted. We are seeing a full-scale assault on the establishment, but it’s not being waged by millennials in balaclavas throwing Molotov cocktails at the police. The anarchists are in the building.
In this context, it won’t matter whether Pell gets special leave to run his High Court appeal, or whether that appeal succeeds. If he stays in prison, he will be the Lindy Chamberlain of cardinals to his defenders. If he wins, they will declare his innocence established while ignoring that that result is not possible since the best he can hope for is to be spared a third trial.
Either way, the paper warriors defending Pell have marked their own cards. They have signed out from the police, the prosecutors, the courts, the jury system, the burden of proof and the entire rule of law. In its place is the new primacy of feelings: they feel Pell must not be guilty, therefore he is innocent. All else — most significantly, the fully tested testimony of the victim that they have never seen — gives way before their emotional need.
This is the post-truth world we were warning each other about in 2016. Welcome to the new abnormal.
How can this trend be countered? Write to boss@crikey.com.au with your thoughts.
It would be interesting to know if the Catholic church is funding the enormously expensive legal talent that George Pell has ready access to. All the hard right-wing Pell lovers and committed catholics would faint at this question. Oh yeah! Wasn’t it George Pell’s great accomplishment in setting up the Melbourne Response: ostensibly to fund victims of child abuse by catholic priests? Wrong. It was Pell’s efforts to scrimp on the payments.
WTF is the matter with this country? Ordinary crooks would have to access to the High Court. Put a dog collar on a man and he becomes a heavily put-upon martyr. Bollocks.
Should read ‘no access to’
The catholic church and other like institutions do not represent christianity, they represents wealth and political power, the catholic church was in bed with hitler, mussolini and the U.S mafia in the 1930`s/1940`s
and accepted money from all of them, was involved in the smuggling of many top nazi`s to south america after world war 2, so why would would any intelligent person expect anything better of its ruling clergy, its a real shame for the few of good of faith that really believe the doctrine preached by the corrupt liars that do and always have controlled the direction and ideology of this vast money making power grabbing multi national business, and thats what it really is.
At the time that he was first charged, I saw an email circulated via the IPA seeking donations to Pell’s legal defence fund. The Church might be contributing, but so are a lot of conservatives.
It seems that the conservatives are now the defenders of child molesters, how in gods name can these people refer to themselves as christians, conservatism and christianity are black and white, poles apart, these sactimonius hypocrites oppose anything remotely representing a christian ideology, they support politicians and laws that punish the poor and although a lot of them come from refugee backgrounds in their past, are quite happy to see genuine refugees seeking asylum sentenced to and kept in indefinite detention in filthy conditions, and then, like the Mafia, go off to church on sunday, or whatever day their phony religions call a holy day and pray to a god that would not want a bar of them, I hope there is really a judgement day and these parasites get what they deserve.
Has ever been thus.
Sadly, from the behaviour of these hideous human creatures I draw the conclusion there is no Hell and therefore their punishment must be administered here on this plane of wretched misery and pain. Happy and joyful to do so, by the way.
Why do we bother with courts at all – when we have the infallibility of these defenders of the faith on offer?
Their “evidence based” faith holds that “Climate Change is not real : God is”? Any wonder they defend him when he’s a pre-eminent disciple of that dogma?
Unfortunately Mr Bradley, I think you have rarely told it more accurately. In my heart I am not sure of Pell. I was surprised to learn he had been charged, let alone convicted. Pell gave no heed to the victims, but this was the policy of two of the last three popes. John Paul II was a protector of paedophiles and venal cardinals, which blighted the Church. They have hidden from the secular law at every turn and now they want more power. I object to the way that religions demand everyone else subsidise them. The Catholic church has its hand in our pocket al the time and then expects us to pay for its crimes.
Unfortunately, I must confess that, having heard all the “gossip”, whispers that followed Pell around, I was unsure that they would find a credible witness.
One of my sisters, a lawyer, phoned me to tell me that they had found an undamaged victim, a rarity and a credible witness.
Most children who suffer sexual abuse do not come out unscathed.
The slide into self harming activities, such as drugs, alcohol abuse, promiscuity and also sometimes, becoming a sexual predator and makes them easy pickings for a legal team working on destroying the credibility of the witness. The emotional distortions of the abused also makes it hard to determine credibility.
Two out of three appeal judges found the witness credible. Even if this goes to the High Court, and the High Court decides to hear the appeal, it will not render the verdict unsafe.
Cardinal Pell is a convicted pedophile.
If the High Court agrees to hear it, the appeal will be on points of law, not the soundness of the verdict.
I wish the SMH and Bolt and friends would just be quiet.
Consider this, the reason why the verdict in the case was suppressed, was, because Pell was about to face trial on another case of sexual abuse. Unfortunately a witness died and the case could not proceed.
If the MSM keep banging on about Pell it may bring other credible witnesses out for other cases.
Why do we have courts when the general publican just knows a man is guilty.
Morrison is Trump-lite. That is to say he is more subtle about advancing conservative issues such as locking up refugees from the middle-east, denying constitutional recognition of indigenous Australians, doing nothing on climate change, attacking critics such as Get-up, ABC, Witness K, supporting Trump in the Persian Gulf and lying during the last election. His ‘daggy dad act’ is a clever way to hide his totalitarian tendencies as was his seeming ‘innocence’about how he became the LNP leader. In a way while Trump is obvious in his mendacity Morrison is more cunning, secretive and quietly dangerous to democracy. As said on 4 Corners last night Australia is now a ‘Pre-Police State’. We urgently need push back against the slide towards State autocracy.
And will these same conservatives who defend Pell & condemn the justice system apply their energies to protecting Witness K & Collaery? At least we know many of the facts around the Timor-Leste espionage case & can more easily judge the whistleblowers for exposing criminality by our government.
Or are the conservatives too focussed on a convicted paedophile to care about K & Collaery?
Collaery was/is not a conservative. Clearly distinguishable.
In QLD in the 1980s, there was a premier who would comment on important issues by saying “don’t you worry about that” in a form of broken English that made many listeners believe that he was harmless. He was not harmless. That “daggy dad” was definitely “cunning, secretive and quietly dangerous to democracy”.
IF you doubt what Philip says, read ‘the Hillbilly Dictator” by Evan Whitton, a book based on evidence given at the corruption enquiry in QLD>