I do not believe pacifism is scriptural. This world is fallen, and we need to take steps to protect ourselves or those whom we love. We will be accused, we will be hounded.
I would add that I spend too much time in Victoria. It continues to function as a penal colony, with kangaroo courts, and their police are fascists on the road and reliably corrupt at all other times. They have been trying to find someone to accuse Cardinal Pell for years. They now have their Rolf Harris moment.
The charges are not proven.
The charges are a new and serious blow to Pope Francis, who has already suffered several credibility setbacks in his promised “zero tolerance” policy about sex abuse.
For years, Pell has faced allegations that he mishandled cases of clergy abuse when he was archbishop of Melbourne and, later, Sydney. His actions as archbishop came under intense scrutiny in recent years by a government-authorized investigation into how the Catholic Church and other institutions have responded to the sexual abuse of children. Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse — the nation’s highest form of inquiry — has found shocking levels of abuse in Australia’s Catholic Church, revealing earlier this year that 7 per cent of Catholic priests were accused of sexually abusing children over the past several decades.
Last year, Pell acknowledged during his testimony to the commission that the Catholic Church had made “enormous mistakes” in allowing thousands of children to be raped and molested by priests. He conceded that he, too, had erred by often believing the priests over victims who alleged abuse. And he vowed to help end a rash of suicides that has plagued church abuse victims in his Australian hometown of Ballarat.
But more recently, Pell himself became the focus of a clergy sex abuse investigation, with Victoria detectives flying to the Vatican last year to interview the cardinal. It is unclear what allegations the charges announced Thursday relate to, but two men, now in their 40s, have said that Pell touched them inappropriately at a swimming pool in the late 1970s, when Pell was a senior priest in Melbourne.
Australia has no extradition treaty with the Vatican. That leaves two likely outcomes: Either Pell volunteers to return to Australia to fight the charges, or the Vatican could tell the cardinal to do so,
What I do know, and is public record, is that there have been NZ Labour MPs with gay partners who were seduced by the MP… underage (No longer, this was when Helun ran Wellington), as was the current President of France. You apply the law to all or you apply it to none in a just society.
We have the right to defend ourselves. To prepare. This means that the church has to stop rolling over and apologizing for accusations, but instead use the law as our enemies do.
As a sword.
31“Simon, Simon, listen! Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, 32but I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.” 33And he said to him, “Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death!” 34Jesus said, “I tell you, Peter, the cock will not crow this day, until you have denied three times that you know me.”
35He said to them, “When I sent you out without a purse, bag, or sandals, did you lack anything?” They said, “No, not a thing.” 36He said to them, “But now, the one who has a purse must take it, and likewise a bag. And the one who has no sword must sell his cloak and buy one. 37For I tell you, this scripture must be fulfilled in me, ‘And he was counted among the lawless’; and indeed what is written about me is being fulfilled.” 38They said, “Lord, look, here are two swords.” He replied, “It is enough.”
It is worth noting that the Canadian National Post has thrown Pope Francis (who disproves the aphorism that the pope is Catholic) off the list of great and good. It does not matter how much you appease our new rainbow guard. You are of Christ, thus you are evil.
If you are not of Christ, you can get away with almost anything. Because the prince of lies is pleased when the truth is trammeled.
And here, yes, we should stand with our Papist friends. For they will come for the ministers of the Free Kirk, leaving merely the converged state churches, where the form of religion remains, but the power has gone.
In another very eventful day, Cardinal Pell was forced to leave his post and fly back to Australia to defend himself from charges of boys molestation.
I take these charges cum grano salis. Two men apparently allege that the Cardinal touched them inappropriately in… the Seventies. Unless the two have been frozen shortly after the alleged facts and have been thawed very recently, I would take such accusations with great, great care.
Not, mind, that I consider Pell above suspicion. It is merely that in my eyes this thing of criminal proceedings for alleged facts of the Seventies has to stop, and it has to stop in any case; unless it is for genocide or, just perhaps, multiple murder.
Statutes of limitation exist exactly to avoid easy abuses like the one we might be confronted here; and in any case it is very reasonable to say that he who has shut up for forty years, including at least three decades of adulthood, should now forever hold his tongue; too many nameless priests have already had their lives ruined by people imagining, or pretending, to remember episodes many decades later. Madness, says I. Let us learn from civilised countries like Italy (last time I looked at least) and let us put an end to this nonsense.
My gut feeling (which might be wrong) is that someone is trying to settle scores with Cardinal Pell by slinging dirt at him; and not finding anything of KO value, has recurred to the easily trumped-up accusations of people in their forties. What a coincidence, huh? As we all know, some of the dirt will stick anyway.
Imagine how easy would be to make such accusations against Burke, Caffarra, or Brandmueller. Some old fag willing to state he thinks he remembers he was molested et voilà, the reputation is gone forever.
But even if I am wrong, and Pell is guilty, and obviously a fag or a perv, the statute of limitation should apply anyway. We are sliding into witch hunt land, and this makes it too easy to target good people.
I am no lawyer. I do not pretend to know what the truth of a charge is: the idea of a trial is to allow a defence and due process. Except, of course, in Victoria and Canada, where all trials are for show, and where all need lawyers to keep the state from interfering in conversations within the home.
Gillian Triggs was applauded for suggesting that our conversations around the Barbie must meet the standards of the progressives.
Liberal backbencher Eric Abetz has attacked Human Rights Commission President Gillian Triggs for a “blistering speech” at a fundraiser for former Greens leader Bob Brown’s foundation in Hobart last night during which she declared parliament and the courts had failed Australia’s most vulnerable.
Professor Triggs told the sell-out audience “there has never been a more important time to stand up for laws which prohibit racial abuse in the public arena’’
“Sadly you can say what you like around the kitchen table at home,’’ she said.
Senator Abetz said Professor Triggs had further tarnished the commission’s reputation by insisting on speaking at the fundraiser, which has raised an estimated $10,000.
I hold little hope for Pell. The charges will proceed. He will be jailed. He will not be the last.
We need to defend ourselves.
And lawyers are the correct weapon in a court.
I agree at a superficial level with much of this but the RC Church is reaping what it sowed. There has been much of dubious merit within its halls for a very long time and there is no doubt that much depravity was covered up or ignored. They were not alone in this but they masqueraded as Christian which allows them to be held to a higher standard of accountability. I remain grateful for the courage of people like Luther who rocked their boat.
I don’t know if it will help, but Bill Cosby’s trial ended in a hung jury. I think that people are developing a skepticism for charges brought so long after the fact. Until recently, I had never thought about how priests could be vulnerable to accusations. Still, the reason so few men teach in school is because of them. It is an intolerable job hazard.