THE Premier, Barry O'Farrell, has questioned the Catholic Church's rules exempting priests from having to report admissions of sexual abuse made in Confession, as the country's most senior Catholic, George Pell, defended the church's handling of paedophilia in its ranks.
On Tuesday a defiant Cardinal Pell welcomed the announcement of a national royal commission into abuse and said he believed it would help decipher real claims from ''significant exaggeration''.
''We'll answer for what we've done,'' Cardinal Pell said, adding that he expected to be called to give evidence. ''We're not trying to defend the indefensible.''

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/pell-defends-confessional-silence-over-sins-of-fathers-20121113-29aii.html#ixzz2C8e3hUMC

Like Peter Fox and others, I too have sat with victims and taken impact statements and conducted investigations.

I recall one little boy who was wearing the skin of a sobbing older man telling me how his bottom (he didn’t call it his anus) was ripped apart and was bleeding profusely by Father ‘sticking his thing into me’ and how Father liked to stick his Rosary Beads ‘up there’ when he finished, and liked to draw it out, ever so slowly. And then Father would kiss the Rosary Beads and Crucifix in his hands and ‘thank me for blessing it in my special Holy Water.’

Resign, Cardinal Pell.

(Disclosure: Tess Lawrence has worked for the Catholic Church, specifically in relation to child sex abuse. In the original version of this piece, we inadvertently spelt The Age religion editor Barney Zwartz surname incorrectly (Swartz); this was corrected at 9.24 am AEST 13/11/12.)

read more: http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/philosophy/human-rights-2/resign-cardinal-pell/

Yes Gus.

Our political leaders are surely guilty of an ‘immaculate misconception’ if they don’t understand that the act of confession to a priest is all about making a transgressor feel better about his/her behaviour, which, of course, does nothing to deliver justice to the victims of that behaviour.

That there is any debate at all around the need to remove any such privilege currently being extended to priests in the confessional is offensive enough, but why not remove it for all criminal offences, including murder, rape & serious assault, & not just child sex abuse?

Cheers,

John.

A retired bishop has slammed Australia's most senior Catholic, Cardinal George Pell, as an embarrassment, saying priests must be prepared to break the confessional seal if it is for the "greater good".

Bishop Geoffrey Robinson says Cardinal Pell is out of step with the majority of Australia's bishops and should no longer speak for the Catholic Church in Australia on the issue of sexual abuse by the clergy.

He was speaking to The World Today after Attorney-General Nicola Roxon said the issue of whether priests should be forced to reveal information given to them in the confessional would be considered by the upcoming royal commission into institutionalised sexual abuse.

Bishop Robinson, who won international attention for his published work on the need for the church to confront the abuse problem, told Tim Palmer that he believed Cardinal Pell was "not a team player".

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-11-14/retired-bishop-says-pell-an-embarassment/4371794?WT.svl=news1

Grave of mien, choosing each word with studied care, every inch a prince of Rome, Cardinal George Pell defied the accusers.

 

The sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests had been exaggerated, he told a news conference in Sydney on Tuesday. There was a "press campaign" against the church, with "general smears that we are covering up and moving people around''.

 

"We object to being described as the only cab on the rank … because there is a persistent press campaign focused largely on us, that does not mean we are largely the principal culprits.''

 

With those few sentences, Australia's most senior Catholic churchman flung aside any lingering shred of moral authority attached either to his person or his office as the Cardinal Archbishop of Sydney. There were one or two perfunctory remarks about "shame" delivered in that familiar treacly baritone, but that was it. Strip away the apostolic airs and he could have been a flack for James Hardie assuring the world that the dangers of the company's asbestos products had been rather overblown.

 

It was monstrous. It was despicable. To portray the church as a victim in this filthy business was an Orwellian reversal of the polarity of right and wrong, truth and fiction. With self-serving hypocrisy, Pell delivered yet another slap in the face to those hundreds if not thousands of children, and their families, who suffered abuse. For the rest of us, it was an insult to the intelligence.

 

Nobody is suggesting the Catholic church is the only cab on the rank. In Australia and worldwide, this epidemic of child abuse has extended across the Christian denominations and into schools, state institutions, the Boy Scouts, and sports clubs and teams. In my extended family, I know of a young boy in country NSW abused by an Anglican rector. The brute was quietly moved on when his crimes were discovered. Just this week in Britain, a retired Bishop of Gloucester in the Church of England was arrested on suspicion of sexual offences committed against eight boys as young as 12.

 

But the truly sickening thing about the Catholic church was the sinister cover-up, which ran for decades and which, for all we know, might still be happening. The statistics are there, and they are shocking. At a parliamentary inquiry in Melbourne last month, a deputy commissioner of the Victoria Police, Graham Ashton, revealed that since 1956 there had been 2110 sexual offences against 519 child victims in that state alone, about 70 per cent of them committed by Catholic priests, brothers or teachers. Not one of those crimes had ever been reported to the police by the church, he said. Not one.

 

Like the Bourbons, Pell has learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. For him, the primacy of the church is all. His pastoral failure is absolute.

 

The best and worst of the NSW Police Force showed up in bold relief this week. The best appeared in the person of Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox, of the Hunter Valley.

 

Fox was the whistleblower whose mighty blast was heard all the way to Canberra. After about 30 years of investigating the rape and other sexual abuse of children in the Hunter, sometimes with success, at other times thwarted at every turn, he decided he'd had enough. Something had to be done about the Catholic church cover-up and what he feared was the blind-eyed connivance of some of his police superiors.

 

He came to this decision after what was known as the Shine the Light rally in Newcastle in September, a public gathering held after the suicide of John Pirona, a man who had been the victim of a vicious paedophile priest.

 

Here, Fox heard my Fairfax colleague and friend Peter FitzSimons invoke the line usually attributed to Edmund Burke, that all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. "I asked myself: 'Am I one of those people allowing this to continue to flourish because I'm not saying anything?'" he later told Fairfax Media.

 

That did it. In defiance of all the police rules, he wrote his now famous letter to Barry O'Farrell asking for a royal commission. It must have been an agonising decision, but it was emphatically the right one. It led, in quick time, to Julia Gillard's announcement of the coming federal commission. No doubt Fox will be ostracised and quite probably punished in the force, shunned for breaking the code of silence, but history will record that he was indeed a good man who stood bravely against the march of evil.

 

Not so the gang of uniformed police thugs who brought about the death of the Brazilian student Roberto Laudisio Curti last March. As the coroner found, they went berserk with their boots and their Tasers. It is a mystery that the officer in charge, one Gregory Cooper, was only recently promoted to inspector. He should be flung out on his ear, which can be done at a stroke by the withdrawal of the commissioner's confidence.

Mike Carlton 

 

Vindictive attacks on Pell outside issue
There has been much criticism of the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, stemming from his press conference on Tuesday last week and his remarks concerning the proposed royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse (''Pell defends confessional silence over sins of fathers'', November 14).
Much of this criticism is directed personally to the cardinal, criticism I believe to be vindictive and in no way relevant to the question of sexual abuse by clergy now or in the past.
Criticism relating to how the Catholic Church dealt with clergy who had sexually abused children before the church protocols established in 1996 is fair, and will be examined in the royal commission.
To attack Pell as the one responsible on a national scale for suppressing instances of sexual abuse by clergy is ill-informed given that post-1996 his authority to exercise ecclesiastical jurisdiction has been limited to Melbourne and Sydney.
My letter is a call for fairness in the debate regarding the royal commission. Pell is well able to defend himself in rigorous, objective debate; to make him the butt of broad and unfounded personal attacks is un-Australian.
In my 10 years of dealings with Pell, I have found him to be a person of the highest integrity, deeply concerned about the spiritual welfare of the Sydney Catholic Archdiocese. He rightly deserves the high regard in which he is held among the Catholic clergy of the Archdiocese of Sydney.
Monsignor Vincent Redden Chairman, Council of Priests, Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/letters/even-worse-than-villawood-one-can-only-shudder-20121121-29qcl.html#ixzz2CtPSOJIq

Excellent report card, your eminence... But there has been criticism of Pell way before his last Tuesday press conference where he showed some lack of leadership and zero understanding. Spiritual care or welfare is all good as long as one understands its relative stylistic value in a world where reality has a bit more teeth than iffy faith. Pell is an ignoramus in scientific matters. Pell is an old fashioned preacher whose ideals are still anchored in the days of the inquisition... with less torture, I hope.
-------------------------

 

It is something of this medieval world view that is at play today in the debate about whether or not Catholic Priests should break the "seal of the confessional" and disclose the identity of those who confess to the crime of sexually abusing children (and other vulnerable people). For many people, probably the majority, this seems like an easy question to answer - in the affirmative.

But what if you believe that every person has an immortal soul and that those who die in sin are condemned to hell - forever - with no hope of remission from punishment, no relief, never? What if you believe that while evil should be prevented and punished in this world - nothing should impede or deter even the worst of men from saving their soul? And what if you believe that one of the roles of a Catholic priest is to offer the possibility of salvation to the penitent?

 

Key to understanding this position is the idea of eternity - and the metaphysical horror that many feel at the prospect of suffering without end. This idea has exercised such a hold on believers that they have even been prepared to countenance acts of temporal injustice. For example, during the more violent phases of the Inquisition, the punishment of an innocent person was judged to be a regrettable "'lesser evil" than that of a multitude falling into the error of heresy and suffering eternal damnation. It was believed that God would "spot the error" and make all good for the innocent in the next life. In other words, today's suffering of the innocent should be deplored and prevented, but, seen in the context of eternity, souls (rather than bodies) must be saved.
...

Personally, I do not believe in hell, nor in a God that punishes for an eternity. Nor do I think that popes and priests have an exclusive capacity to offer God's forgiveness. But I know many people who do so believe - deeply and sincerely. Among that number are priests who religiously hold to the same world view that led Henry IV to cross the Alps and kneel at the feet of the Pope. These men may deplore the abuse of the innocent. They may do all within their power to convince abusers to stop and to hand themselves in to the police. They may feel impelled by compassion to speak out. But some of them will not. Instead, they will remain silent in the belief that if, one day, an abuser wishes to confess for the sake of their soul, then fear of disclosure by a priest should not prevent them from doing so.

That is why I expect that when society substantially pierces the veil of confidentiality that surrounds the confessional - as it must do - a number of priests will choose, as a matter of conscience, to go to gaol rather than uphold that law

http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2012/11/19/3635962.htm?WT.svl=featuredSitesScroller. 
---------------------------------
This near correct assessment comes from Simon Longstaff is Executive Director of St James Ethics Centre

Meanwhile upcoming in the Law courts:

http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/opinion/cartoons/alan-moir-20090907-fdxk.html
Wednesday, November 21, 2012 cartoon from Alan Moir...

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DON’T YOU FEEL just a little bit uncomfortable about that 95 per cent figure for those who support the call for a Royal Commission into the sexual abuse of children?

Surely, such unanimity should ring some alarm bells, some nagging thought that maybe, just maybe, we are being manipulated. The Government party proposes it, the Opposition supports it, the media – who have been taking a proactive role in agitating for it – congratulates itself on achieving it.

The moderator may ask me why I write media as a singular noun ― don’t you know your Latin, you drongo? But the fact is that in this matter, the media is speaking with a single voice, without demur, with no examination about why a royal commission is necessary. If Irish experience is anything to go by, it will go on for ten years or more at great expense to the taxpayer and great enrichment of the legal profession. Not to speak of all the outrage that it will allow journalists to spill over the country.

Here is what we know.

Children have been abused by people who were entrusted with their care. Some of those abusers were priests with a vow of celibacy or religious brothers with a vow of chastity (a much more rigorous imposition). Some were teachers or scout leaders or youth workers or club workers. Some were close relatives or family friends of the young person, a few were total strangers. We do not need a Royal Commission to tell us all that.

The law of the land is sufficiently strong to deal with such crimes and if it needs to be strengthened, then that should be done. Many of the abused have been scarred for life and need ongoing care, but we have been told that this is not about compensation and we believe that. However, ongoing care can be expensive and an injured party is entitled to seek damages as in any normal injury

http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/life/crime/the-royal-correctorate/

-------------------------------

The burden of proof...

http://www.abc.net.au/austory/content/2005/s1312548.htm

http://www.abc.net.au/austory/content/2005/s1318800.htm

 

The Catholic Church tried to strike an agreement with New South Wales Police that would have helped shut down investigations into paedophile priests and placed police in breach of the Crimes Act.

Police records, accessed under freedom of information laws by Greens MP David Shoebridge, show two attempts were made to finalise memorandums of understanding (MOUs) between police and the church over how to deal with complaints of sexual and physical abuse by Catholic Church personnel.

The first agreement, which was unsigned, includes a clause that reads: "Church authorities shall make available the report of an assessment and any other matter relevant to the accused's account of events only if required to do so by court order."

Barrister Geoffrey Watson SC says the agreement would have placed police in breach of the Crimes Act.

"If you become aware of a serious criminal offence, you've got to tell the police," he told the ABC's Lateline program.

"When I looked at the MOUs they were really in effect trying to get the police to condone the failure to comply with that law, or even perhaps worse, get the police to participate in that."

NSW Police say neither memorandum of understanding was ever signed, or in force.

But a senior official with the Catholic Church has told Lateline an agreement was operational and the church dealt with police under the provisions of the first draft agreement.

"We were practising the provisions of the MOU and dealing with the police under those provisions," said Michael Salmon, director of the Professional Standards Resource Group of the Catholic Church in NSW.

"We had an understanding from police it was approved.

-----------------------

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-03/catholic-church-tried-to-strike-deal-with-police-over-child-sex/4997774

see all stories on these affairs on this site... and toon at top.

 

George Pell wants to insure priests against being sued for child sexual abuse. My head is still rotating on its axis. Our man in purple, our alpha priest, moral paragon. Our Vatican princeling, just days from taking up his dauphindom in Rome: he said that? He dropped this fissile solipsism on our public debate and left, smacking the dust from his hands like, we're done now, right?

For this was no dinner party throw-away. The cardinal – fully frocked, schooled and premeditated – breathed his proposition into the stone tablets of a royal commission. He wanted it recorded and kept. Forever.

But insurance? Does he think child sex is some unavoidable occupational hazard? Something a priest will sooner or later fall to? An accident? If you wanted to maximise the damage already done to countless children, you'd be hard put to find a surer way, or crueller.

It was already accepted that the church had systematically preyed on its charges, breaking their still-soft hearts by telling them not just to take it and be quiet, but that this – this! – is how God loves them.

That was just the proto-damage. The church knowingly exacerbated it by arguing that it was the child's fault. This cynical use of attack as defence was unalloyed evil, meant to demolish an already frail defendant by pretending that the church, and its interfering priests, were the true victims.

Sexual abuse fires slow-release poison into the child's core but such lofty, casualising denial retrospectively reloads the gun with soft-nose bullets. The entry wound maims, yes. But it's the exit wound that tears you apart.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/cleaning-up-the-postgeorge-pell-parish-in-sydney-20140402-zqpn5.html#ixzz2xtFlckWv

 

"I don't think it's altogether helped by having songs about a key witness, calling him scum, and a buffoon, and a coward and that sort of thing before the commission does its task," Father Brennan told ABC's the Drum program.

"Because if we turn it into a laughing stock, then the big losers ... will be the victims themselves."

But some survivors have already expressed anger at the royal commission for allowing the Cardinal to give evidence from Rome, rather than returning to Australia.

Minchin is donating the proceeds of the song, called Come Home (Cardinal Pell) to a GoFundMe page set up to send 15 representatives, including survivors, to Rome to witness Pell's testimony in person.

The crowdfunding campaign surpassed its initial target of $55,000, reaching almost $170,000 by this morning.

The video of Minchin performing the song, which includes such lines as "Go home Cardinal Pell, I've got a nice spot in hell, with your name on it, so I suggest you toughen up and go", has had almost 400,000 views on YouTube.

The song peaked at number one on the Australian iTunes songs chart earlier on Wednesday.

 

Read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-17/priest-says-tim-minchin-song-hurting-abuse-survivors/7178606

 

See toon and articles from top...

The bishop said he had worked hard to end a culture of not listening.

"I think the serious matters of the past, the crimes against children, the culture of not wanting to know and the culture of covering up are being addressed," he said.

"I believe I have turned over the ground and others will continue.

"There are very fine leaders in the Anglican church of Newcastle who will continue to run with the momentum for a healthy future."

Bishop praised for courage and strength

One of the abuse survivors who had met regularly with Bishop Thompson was CKA.

CKA said Newcastle had lost a good man.

"I am quite sad that Bishop Greg is going. He has been a good strong advocate for people," CKA said.

Read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-16/newcastle-anglican-bishop-greg-thompson-quits/8359408

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Here the truth which cannot be said is that the police, well some of the police, in Newcastle have protected the 'religious protection racket"

SYDNEY, Australia — Australia’s senior Roman Catholic prelate, and one of Pope Francis’ top advisers, has been charged with sexual assault, the police in the Australian state of Victoria said on Thursday.

The prelate, Cardinal George Pell, became the highest-ranking Vatican official in recent years to face criminal charges involving accusations of sexual offenses.

“Cardinal Pell has been charged on summons, and he is required to appear at the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court” on July 18, Shane Patton, the deputy police commissioner, said at a news conference.

The charges were served on the cardinal’s legal representatives in Melbourne. Commissioner Patton said there were multiple complainants, but refused to provide further details about them, including their ages.

read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/28/world/australia/cardinal-george-pell-charged-sexual-abuse.html?

Archbishop Anthony Fisher, from St Mary’s in Sydney, must have been exhausted from all the fire and fury he recently poured down on the head of wretched LGBTQI sinners. 

But he’s picked himself up from the floor of the pulpit to tear off an epistle to Fairfax Media in response to the story about the billions of dollars of loot in the vaults of the Catholic Church in Australia and how it was insufficiently disclosed to the royal commission. 

Contrary to the impression left by the Smage investigation, the church is funded by cake stalls, local finance committees and the Vinnies second-hand clothes shops. Assets remain dispersed among dioceses, parishes, orders and lay organisations, making it hard to work out where the wealth is located. 

The church saved a lot of money under Big George Pell’s reign because the organisation was incorporated in much the same way as a local book club. Victims of priestly sex abuse couldn’t get to larger compensation figures because the wealth was so diffuse. 

There now needs to be a stocktake on whether the church has done more damage than good to people. 

In the meantime, a bunch of godly types has come up with a submission to the Mayor of Hornsby’s religious freedoms inquiry. They want a religious freedoms act and a religious freedoms commissioner to oversee exemptions to anti-discrimination laws and the right for Christian health facilities to heal only Christians, et cetera. 

Professor Patrick Parkinson from the University of Sydney is spearheading the Freedom for Faith outfit, and he defined the issue with characteristic clarity: “Christians are not into freedom to discriminate, they’re really into freedom to select.” 

read more:

https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/2018/02/17/gadfly-holy-owned-subsidi...

 

Read from top...

...

In a 90-minute interview with Reuters in his Rome apartment across the street from a Vatican gate, Cardinal Pell discussed the harm the worldwide sexual abuse scandal had done to the Church and the current state of affairs in the Vatican.

He again called sex abuse a “cancer” within the Church.

The Cardinal, his supporters and lawyers have suggested there could have been a link between the resistance he faced during his time as treasurer and his forced departure from Rome to face prosecution in Australia.

“I hope for the sake of the church, there’s nothing in it,” Cardinal Pell said of the theory.

“In fact— I say that quite sincerely—because some Australian people, my own family, said to me: ’Well, if the Mafia is going after you or somebody else is going after you, that’s one thing. It’s a little bit worse if it comes from within the church.

“But I think we will find out, whether there is or there isn’t [a connection].”

He said the Vatican risked “going broke” unless it tames ballooning deficits and expressed hope his successor would be spared the resistance to reform that he said “thwarted” his time as the head of the Church’s finances.

He said he knew when he took the treasury job that the Holy See’s finances were “a bit of a mess.”

“I never, never thought it would be as Technicolor as it proved,” Cardinal Pell said.

“I didn’t know that there was so much criminality involved.”

Pope Francis appointed Cardinal Pell, the former archbishop of Sydney, in 2014 to head the newly-created Secretariat for the Economy and mandated him with cleaning up the Vatican’s murky finances.

The Australian ran into resistance from some Vatican officials, particularly Italian Cardinal Angelo Becciu who was then deputy secretary of state who wanted Vatican departments to continue controlling their own funds.

He left Rome two years ago to face allegations he had abused young choirboys during his time in Melbourne.

After being sentenced to six years in prison in Melbourne for crimes he insists he did not commit, Cardinal Pell was freed after the convictions were thrown out by the High Court which found there was reasonable doubt in the testimony of an accuser.

He has since returned to Rome but not to official duties.

 

 

Read more:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/world/2020/12/09/george-pell-speaks/

 

Wow! Here is the new scenario for a new Filum about sex abuse in the Catholic Church: GOD's ACCOUNTANT... Imagine, a young priest/bishop fights allegations of sex abuse in his parishdom so well, that he become Cardinal and the ACCOUNTANT of the Vatican, to protect the cash. His Eminence Grise Richelieu would be proud. But we'll never know. We shall start a new campaign: "PELL FOR POPE"...

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Time for institutions to apologise for Pell witch hunt

 

Herald Sun·1 day ago