Former prime minister Tony Abbott’s address at the funeral of George Pell was a masterclass in several traits we’ve come to associate with his time in public life.
During his time as PM, this publication called Abbott “Australia’s most powerful sycophant”. Guy Rundle wrote that Abbott belied his reputation as an assertive and singular political thinker, and in fact was the exact opposite: “a sycophant by nature who seeks out opportunities to please those more powerful than he by being more ardent in pursuit of their interests than they ever asked him to be in the first place”.
This trait was in full flow when recently Abbott saw off one of his heroes — “In short, he’s the greatest Catholic Australia has produced and one of our country’s greatest sons … That’s the heroic virtue that makes him, to my mind, a saint for our times”. He continued, via Kipling:
If character means to trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too; if it means bearing to hear the truth you’ve spoken, twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, George Pell was the greatest man I’ve ever known.
There was also his strange, joyless sense of humour:
And as I heard the chant [from protesters outside the church], ‘Cardinal Pell should go to hell’, I thought, ‘Aha! At least they now believe in the afterlife.’
Perhaps this is St George Pell’s first miracle.
On a day for reflection, Abbott could summon no thoughts as to why survivors of abuse at the hands of the Catholic Church might not want to send their well-wishes to the departed cardinal — who a royal commission in 2017 found was “conscious of child sexual abuse by clergy” as early as 1973 and had failed to act on complaints about priests.
Abbott’s gag at their expense called to mind his wink to ABC presenter Jon Faine when talking to a pensioner who identified herself as a sex worker, or his wish that Julia Gillard would “make an honest woman of herself”.
Most directly, it brought back the joke Abbott made about former NSW Liberal leader John Brogden, who had resigned in 2005 after being found in his office with self-inflicted wounds: Abbott quipped that if the Liberal Party made a certain policy switch, “we would be as dead as the former Liberal leader’s political prospects”.
And so, to great applause, Abbott saw off his spiritual guide with a mixture of sycophancy and strange, cruel humour, leaving one to wonder, yet again, if he’s not reading the wider mood of the country — or if he simply doesn’t care.
If you want to see the people getting in the way of the human race, then the inside of St Mary’s yesterday was the place. The climate change deniers, the misogynists, those who hid child abusers and consider them less a danger than women exercising control over their own bodies and their lives…. the haters of homosexuals and trans people and the powerless.
Yes, they were all there.
The important things don’t matter, and all that counts is toeing the line and tugging the forelock. Authoritarians.
https://theauthoritarians.org/
Abbott tugs more than that…
Including toxic reactionary Peter “anchor babies Dutton.
And these are the same people who claim that their side of politics believes in the primacy of the “individual”! As long as the “individual” is the same as them!
I was stunned by Abbott’s speech. He praised Pell’s comments on climate change advocates and defended him against being charged. Neither were appropriate for a funeral. Abbott thought he was campaigning again. It was a timely reminder that we are well rid of him.
The only thing that makes me miss Abbott as pm is the thought that we could now be enjoying the insane spectacle of him knighting a king. That missed opportunity probably keeps him awake at night
Er – Prince consort.
I posit that George’s Pell’s first – & only – miracle was that he escaped conviction. You bet you are, you bet I am…
Actually that “Miracle” was contrived by earthly players…
We Australians could imagine the horror, the fear, the intimidating threats to the child him or herself or to the child’s family and then the painful injuries. We could imagine and we could empathise with those who had been abused and intimidated into silence not just by those evil perpetrators but also by a complicit society. As the stories of the cruelty emerged and the forces of silence broke down there were ordinary Catholics roaring that the victims were just after money. That horrible cynicism of the self-righteous who had persuaded themselves that they were morally superior. That was a conceit afforded them by their horrible, sick church leaders. Good riddance to Cardinal George Pell. Now maybe that church can recover some standing in the Australian community because money reparations are of little comfort really but at least they represent justice under our common law not flawed Canon law that let these hideous men get away with their crimes.
Well put. I attended a Christian men’s conference in Perth. One topic discussed in detail, eloquently done by a lived experience youth worker, was the life-long mental damage inflicted by sexual abuse. The conference was held in Riverview church, one of the more enlightened, and populated by predominately ex Catholics searching for a home with relevance, rather than one with outdated meaningless pompous ceremony, a bit like the UK royalty.
A book by Johan Hari, ” Chasing the Scream”, investigates the connection between early age sexual trauma and hard core heroin and substance abuse. The link is real, and the refusal of Abbott and his ilk to recognise it, is bewildering. Pell and his ilk, the Catholic church, cynics in the congregation, church facilitators….all deserve to burn in their version of the hell in which they believe.
Abbott actually gets more bizarre if that is possible. A gathering of cultists, unable to empathise with anyone but their fellow cultists. Abbotts eulogy was beyond weird, a strange humourless man ‘Pell Like’ in his conduct.