Tag Archives: Cardinal George Pell

Culture, Feminism, Law, Left, Media, radicalism, Religion

THE PELL LYNCH MOB – UNDETERRED AND UNBOWED

 GCWEDIT

The main point that emerges from Ross Fitzgerald’s review of Gerard Henderson’s book, Cardinal Pell, the Media Pile-on and Collective Guilt, is that the cardinal’s antagonists remain immovable in their belief that he is guilty as charged. It does not matter what has been said, how detailed and coherent the analysis of the ‘choirboy’s’ absurd story, the 7-0 verdict of the High Court, and the international consternation at the failure of Australia’s legal system, they remain impervious. You only have to follow Louise Milligan’s twitter account to witness the mob’s delusion and unrestrained hatred of Cardinal Pell. Indeed, I have described Milligan as delusional, but I wonder. Is it delusion or is it pure malice? Is she mad or bad? Gerard Henderson’s highly recommended book provides evidence for one or the other – or perhaps both.

*****

Cardinal George Pell: a man of sorrows

Ross Fitzgerald, The Australian, 8 December 2021

The case of George Pell revealed deep fault lines in Australian society. Some people were convinced of his innocence, but many others wanted him to be guilty.

The trial, retrial, and conviction in December 2018 of Cardinal Pell for historical child sexual abuse of two choirboys at Melbourne’s St Patrick’s Cathedral that allegedly occurred in the mid-1990s, gained international attention.

Sensationally, in April 2020, all seven judges of the High Court of Australia quashed Pell’s conviction.

On April 7, 2020 at 10am, Chief Justice Susan Kiefel quoted from the unanimous judgment: “It is evident that there is a possibility that an innocent person has been convicted because the evidence did not establish guilt to the requisite standard of proof.” That Tuesday morning, as a high-profile convicted pedophile, Cardinal Pell was in solitary confinement at the maximum security Barwon Prison, near Geelong. He had been incarcerated in various prisons for 405 days.

As Gerard Henderson documents in this scrupulously researched book, the High Court’s decision had huge reverberations. Even though the evidence against him was weak, most of Pell’s opponents, in Australia and overseas, retain their unambiguously entrenched positions.

Henderson argues, convincingly, that the Cardinal’s many antagonists continue to deny him the presumption of innocence.

Read the rest here …

Australia, Catholic Church, Culture, Law, Left, Media

Are the expected problems of quotas emerging?

In April this year, Janet Albrechtsen wrote a powerful and thoroughly warranted piece (In political tribalism, ego is not a dirty word) against two female executives who joined the campaign to destroy Christian Porter of the Liberal Party. It was a beautiful political assassination that was roaringly successful, leaving the leaders of the lynch mob, Jo Dyer and Louise Milligan, cock-a-hoop, fired up and ready for their next male victim. And as with Cardinal Pell and Christian Porter no quarter will be given. Albrechtsen, one of the most articulate voices in Australia on the conservative side, focused on the depressing message given by these two shooting-from-the-lip female executives

For a staggering show of vanity, it’s hard to go past comments from Emily Rich last week. The director of start-ups for Asia-Pacific at Microsoft believes Christian Porter’s new role as Industry, Science and Technology Minister will deter tech people from engaging with the Morrison government. “And it should,” she pronounced.

Emily Rich, an executive at Microsoft.
Emily Rich, an executive at Microsoft.

“To borrow the words of Grace Tame, I’m using my voice amongst a growing chorus of voices that will not be silent,” she told The Australian Financial Review, condemning Porter’s new role following unproven and unprovable allegations made against him of rape when he was a 17-year-old debating student.

Continue reading Are the expected problems of quotas emerging? →
Australia, Culture, Law, Left, Politics

Milligan’s manic campaign continues to disintegrate

In Gerard Henderson’s must-read Media Watch Dog No. 531 of 26 February 2021, one finds correspondence between Henderson and Gavin Silbert QC, ‘one of Australia’s leading lawyers’, and formerly Victorian Chief Crown Prosecutor (2008-218).

There are three points of interest for me. First, this eminent lawyer with vast experience in Victoria destroys the Milligan mob case against Cardinal Pell. He could not be clearer. He had this to say:

‘I have just finished reading The Persecution of George Pell by Keith Windschuttle which is as good an analysis  as one could hope to find. We lawyers are used to defending clients and interpret their acquittals as a failure of the prosecution to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt. I must say, that after reading this I was persuaded that not only was the standard of proof not met, but that Pell was an innocent man.’

Louise Milligan ignores all commentary that does not fit in with her spite and delusion, dismissing her critics as supporters of paedophiles. But even she could not ignore the opinion of someone she quotes approvingly in her book Witness. Silbert in the same correspondence:

‘I am certain that I am the same person interviewed by Louis Milligan for her book Witness  but I have not read the book and am reluctant to comment.‘

The third point of interest is Silbert’s justified criticism of Victoria police.

‘All I would say is that Victoria Police have the sole function of charging in Victoria and their recent practice of attempting to obtain the imprimatur of the DPP and/or Crown Prosecutors is without any legal justification; they have sought to do this of late to protect themselves from criticism particularly in matters of political sensitivity or high public interest. My invariable practice was to tell Victoria Police that it was a matter for them and to refuse to offer any advice.’

When will we have a commission investigating Victoria Police’s role in the Cardinal Pell witch hunt?

Catholic Church, Left, Political, Religion

A moral panic in the 1980s

This is the first of two outstanding articles by Julia Yost in First Things. She reviews We Believe the Children: A Moral Panic in the 1980s by Richard Beck
public affairs, 352 pages, $26.99. The article has direct relevance to the ‘Pell Affair’.

Children of Desire
by Julia Yost

My sister and I were preschoolers in the 1980s. Once upon an afternoon, our mother instructed us: If ever she were unable to pick us up and had to send another grownup in her stead, she would impart to that grownup a “secret word.” If ever a grownup approached us, neighbor or stranger, claiming that our mother wanted us to go with him in his car, we were to require of him this “secret word.” If he did not know it, we should run to the nearest policeman. We rehearsed. Our mother: “Hi, little girls. [Lies, lies, lies.] Why don’t you get in my car?” Our line was: “What’s the secret word?”

It was snickerdoodle, if you want to know. It never did turn out to be useful. Our mother was reacting to news reports that America was creeping and crawling with child predators. These were people undetectable by the casual observer but secretly organized in rings or cults dedicated to the violation of children, whether recreationally or as stipulated by satanic rites. Often they operated preschools or daycare centers as fronts for culling. Read on…

Catholic Church, History, Politics, Religion

Author Louise Milligan refuses to answer questions about her hatchet job

Louise Milligan is an ABC journalist of note – so we are to understand. She wrote a book Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell. That book was published by the prestigious publisher MUP (Melbourne University Press) whose CEO and publisher is the highly respected Louise Adler – at least in Australia’s leftist publishing industry. Milligan’s book has received the loud acclaim of Australia’s vast anti-Catholic constituency which will go to justifying Adler’s business decision to publish.

Gerard Henderson sent a series of questions about the book to Milligan. In the No. 363 June 2 edition of Media Watch Dog, Henderson reported he received a response from Adler. Milligan was silent. Adler did not answer the questions, but in her short reply said:

‘MUP stands by the forensic and meticulous research that the author conducted to produce this important contribution to the community’s understanding of the Catholic Church’s response to child abuse.’ Continue reading Author Louise Milligan refuses to answer questions about her hatchet job →

Catholic Church, Left, Politics, Religion

Gerard Henderson: The media, the Commission and the Church

Gerard Henderson of the Sydney Institute, author, historian and media commentator has been one of the few to offer a sustained response to the shameful bias of the leftist media on the subject of child sexual abuse. In the following article he brings together his recent criticisms of the media’s persecution of Cardinal George Pell and their manipulation of the findings of The Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

My research in the early 1970s on Catholics and politics in Australia led me to what remained of the Central Catholic Library in Melbourne, which had been established by the Irish-born Jesuit Fr William Hackett. The Central Catholic Library was frequented in the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s by the men – and they were all men – who established the Campion Society in Melbourne. It was there that Bob Santamaria met his future wife Helen Power who worked at the library.

B A Santamaria was a pragmatic person. Contrary to what some have claimed, I never believed that he was much influenced by the views of the English distributists such as G K Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc – but others in the Campion Society, like Frank Maher and Denys Jackson, were. Nor do I believe that Santamaria spent much time reading the historical and cultural studies written by such English Catholic intellectuals as Christopher Hollis, Fr C C Martindale SJ and Christopher Dawson. But, again, others did. Read on…

Catholic Church, Politics, Religion

The Catholic Inquisition – aka Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

Gerard Henderson offers compelling criticism of those running the Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse whose primary task appears to be the destruction of Cardinal George Pell. Media Watch Dog No. 347, 3 February 2017.

  

ROYAL COMMISSION CENSORS PROFESSOR MICHAEL HAINS’ SUBMISSION RE PAUL BONGIORNO, STEPHEN CRITTENDEN AND THE ROYAL COMMISSION’S TERMS OF REFERENCE

 On 5 May 2016, the Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse released a document titled Issues Paper 11: Catholic Church Final Hearing.  The document commenced as follows:

The Royal Commission will hold a final hearing regarding the institutional response of the Catholic Church to child sexual abuse in February 2017. This hearing is expected to include consideration of the following:

  1. Data regarding the extent of child sexual abuse within Catholic institutions.
  2. Factors that may have contributed to the occurrence of child sexual abuse in Catholic institutions, particularly by clergy and religious.
  3. Factors that may have affected the institutional response of the Catholic Church to child sexual abuse.
  4. The response of Catholic Church authorities to the findings and observations made in relevant Royal Commission case study reports.
  5. Current and future approaches of Catholic Church authorities to:
  • responding to child and adult victims and survivors of child sexual    abuse, including secondary victims
  • responding to individuals subject to allegations of child sexual abuse.
  • the protection of children and the prevention of child sexual abuse.

The Royal Commission, under the title “Submissions”, then advised that submissions on Issues Paper 11 are invited – from, among others, “academics or other professionals” – concerning a range of matters. Continue reading The Catholic Inquisition – aka Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse →