Eretz Israel is our unforgettable historic homeland...The Jews who will it shall achieve their State...And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind. (Theodor Herzl, DerJudenstaat, 1896)

We offer peace and amity to all the neighbouring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all. The State of Israel is ready to contribute its full share to the peaceful progress and development of the Middle East.
(From Proclamation of the State of Israel, 5 Iyar 5708; 14 May 1948)

With a liberal democratic political system operating under the rule of law, a flourishing market economy producing technological innovation to the benefit of the wider world, and a population as educated and cultured as anywhere in Europe or North America, Israel is a normal Western country with a right to be treated as such in the community of nations.... For the global jihad, Israel may be the first objective. But it will not be the last. (Friends of Israel Initiative)

Sunday 11 August 2019

Jesus, St Paul to the Colossians, & Prisoner Pell

In March this year, as Cardinal George Pell (pictured) began the six-year term of solitary confinement against which he has appealed (the Supreme Court of Victoria's verdict still awaits him), his 2002 biographer, journalist Tess Livingstone, reported:
'A decade ago, Pell’s close friend, the late cardinal Francis George of Chicago, who died of cancer in 2015, predicted hard times for faithful church leaders in an increasingly aggressive secular Western culture.
“I expect to die in bed; my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square,” he said. “His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilisation, as the church has done so often in human history.’’
Like many of his church heroes, Pell has been a formidable leader, a builder and a teacher. But unlike hero cardinals imprisoned for their faith over the centuries, Pell stands convicted of five grotesque crimes.
Time, and higher courts, will determine whether church history, the subject in which he excelled at Oxford, will deride him in the long term as an arch hypocrite or rank him among church heroes persecuted by sinister forces that have run amok.'  [Emphasis added here and below]
Also in March, longtime Pellophobe David Marr (one of the principal proponents of an extraordinary left-orchestrated campaign of vilification of the cardinal long before he was charged with, let alone convicted of, historic sex crimes: see, for instance's, Marr's interview with the ABC's obligingly receptive Heather Ewart here) gloated:
"[B]y jailing a cardinal for these sordid crimes Australia has demonstrated once again that the rule of law runs in this country. Getting here hasn’t been easy but no other country stares down the Catholic church as we do now. This is a day to be proud of that record. In their rage and confusion, Pell’s supporters have declared their man a martyr to the mob, a victim of press vendettas, a great priest whose reputation has been sullied beyond repair by the left. But that’s not what his fall is about. Somewhere in the past few years, Rome lost the power to protect men like him.This secular country at the far end of the Earth stood up to Rome to hold the first national inquiry in the world into the role of faiths – particularly the Catholic faith – in a systematic, old and hidden regime of child abuse."
(Incidentally, Marr neglected to tell us that in this "secular country at the far end of the Earth"  one faith, Islam, had specifically been excluded by the federal Labor government of the day from the inquiry's scrutiny.)

Tess Livingtone's article revealed:
'When he prays his daily Office — the psalms, scripture and prayers Catholic priests read every day from the breviary — George Pell offers part of it for his accusers, including the man whose testimony was accepted by a jury in December, landing the cardinal into an isolation cell in a Melbourne jail.
“I pray for them. That’s what we’re supposed to do,’’ he told a friend a few weeks ago.
For all the vitriol hurled at Pell, supporters are outraged, anxious for his safety and distraught over what they are convinced is a gross miscarriage of justice.
This week’s release of his video interview with Victoria police in Rome in October 2016 was a telling development for those close to Pell, as well as for others who do not like him or his views but who recognise why the claims against him are so implausible. The interview was played to the juries in both trials.
Questioned by police about accusations that he abused two choir boys after Mass in St Patrick’s ­Cathedral in 1996, Pell looked and sounded gobsmacked. He rejected the grotesque, sacrilegious claims as “deranged falsehood’’ and “a load of garbage … in the sacristy after Mass? Need I say more?’’
The allegations, as he told police, involved “vile and disgusting conduct contrary to the explicit teachings of the church, which I have spent my life representing’’. They were made, he said, knowing he was the first bishop in the Western world to create a church structure to “recognise, compensate and help heal the wounds inflicted by sexual abuse of children at the hands of some in the Catholic Church”.
Pell’s answers were succinct and clear, prompting his friends and outside observers to believe his defence would have been stronger had he taken the stand in court. In person, Pell is warmer, kinder and more humorous than he has appeared in media interviews in which, conscious of the responsibility of his position, he has measured his words carefully. The gentler, softer side of his nature shone through in the character references presented in court.
Pell, who was brought up to keep a stiff upper lip in facing ­adversity, has been stoic since he arrived back in Australia, voluntarily, in July 2017 to face the music. “It wouldn’t do for me to fall apart. What would that achieve?’’ he told one friend. “My faith and my innocence’’ were sustaining him, he said.
A few months ago, he said he was ‘‘beyond anger’’.
On occasions, the cardinal has referred to his protracted tribulations as “a small penance’’. A priest who has been close to Pell for 35 years says the cardinal is acutely conscious of the church’s failings in dealing with child abuse and that his attitude to his personal ordeal is shaped by St Paul’s letter to the Colossians, which spoke of offering personal sufferings for the good of the church....'
A leaked circular letter, apparently written by a person close to Cardinal Pell, found its way onto Facebook some time ago:


This past week, as reported by the Catholic News Agency, a letter in what has apparently been verified as in the cardinal's handwriting, has appeared on a (since deleted) pro-Pell Twitter page.  The letter thanked supporters for their letters (he's received between 1500 and 2000 since being jailed) and prayers, before expressing his opposition to a working document,the Instrumentum Laboris of the Amazonian Synod.

These lines from the letter, misunderstood and twisted (televised examples here), have enraged Pellophobes, and the Victorian Department of Justice is investigating the possibility that the cardinal, as a convicted prisoner, broke the law by perhaps arranging for his letter to be posted to the internet:
“The knowledge that my little suffering can be used for good purposes by joining Jesus' suffering gives me purpose and direction. The challenges and problems in the life of the Church must be faced with a similar spirit of faith.”
For facsimile of letter see her link; Age report here


A Victorian state minister joins the anti-Pell chorus:


But a former Victorian state premier stands his ground in declaring his belief in Pell's innocence:


Meanwhile, a disturbing report and dire prediction by Christopher Akehurst in the Aussie conservative intellectual journal Quadrant:
' .... The only Australian public figure I can think of to compare with Sir John Kerr in the pantheon of leftist demonology is the still-jailed Cardinal George Pell. He is loathed for being a conservative, a climate-change ‘denier’ and, above all, as the personification of child sexual abuse, both as a senior representative of the Catholic hierarchy and latterly as a convicted abuser himself. We do not yet know what will be the decision in his appeal, but we can be pretty sure that if the appeal is successful his enemies will not be pleased, to say the least.
A rational individual, whatever his politics, who believes Pell to be justly convicted, would shrug his shoulders if the appeal were upheld and accept that the law had taken its course. But the anti-Catholic obsessives of the Left have repeatedly shown that they have no time for that kind of rational response. At its more sophisticated, academic level, the Left has doubtless dismissed rationality itself as some sort of discredited manifestation of white ‘privilege’; at its lower shrieking street-mob base, rational argument is simply – congenitally – beyond their comprehension. And while we can expect the ABC and the ‘quality’ media, if true to past form, to do their utmost if the appeal is successful to continue their commitment to poisoning the public mind against Pell (‘Court betrays survivors’, ‘An appeal which ought never to have been permitted’ etc), the danger is that the less cerebral Left will turn physically nasty, assaulting clergy and setting fire to churches.... 
 And how would Pell himself be kept safe if freed? By going into exile like Sir John, perhaps? ....'
Be sure to read the entire article, here


8 comments:

  1. This is interesting
    Lessons learned from Carl Beech and what they mean for Cardinal Pell
    https://audioboom.com/posts/7335732-lessons-learned-from-carl-beech-and-what-they-mean-for-cardinal-pell
    Damian speaks to journalist Catherine Lafferty, who was in court for Carl Beech's trial, about the sensitivities surrounding sex abuse allegations. Have the police jumped to conclusions in Cardinal Pell's case too?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It is, thanks. So it this, I feel: https://www.thecourier.com.au/story/6317644/telling-the-rise-and-fall-of-george-pell-was-this-journalists-most-challenging-story/

      Delete
  2. ‪Avraham Reiss‬‏12 August 2019 at 03:27

    jesus christ!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Harvard Law Professor Alan M. Dershowitz said:

    The Grand Mufti [Islamic leader] of Jerusalem,
    in addition to becoming Hitler’s ally during
    World War II, adapted Nazi genocidal
    theory to Islamic theology.

    He called on his Muslim brothers to:

    “Murder the Jews! Murder them all.”

    Other Islamic leaders used Nazi words like
    “extermination” in referring to the goals
    of Arab victory [against Israel].

    SOURCE: Chutzpah
    by Alan M. Dershowitz (chapter 4, page 119)
    published in year 1991, by Little Brown & Co
    ISBN: 9780316181372 * ISBN: 0316181374

    ===================================

    Martin Gilbert said:

    Determined to keep Jews from Palestine,
    on 12 May [1942 CE] Haj Amin [al Husseini,
    the Mufti* of Jerusalem] asked
    Hitler to press the Bulgarian government
    not to allow the [Jewish] children to leave.

    His intervention was effective.

    On 27 May [1942 CE], Clifford Norton reported
    from Berne that the Bulgarian government
    “have now decided, under German pressure,”
    to close the Bulgarian Turkish frontier
    “to all Jews.”

    * NOTE: A mufti is an Islamic
    scholar and interpreter of Islamic religious laws.

    SOURCE: Churchill and the Jews
    (chapter 17, page 194) by Martin Gilbert, year 2007 CE

    ===================================

    Mr. Sean Durns [a senior research
    analyst for CAMERA dot org] said:


    In 1937, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem,
    Amin al-Husseini released an
    “Appeal to All Muslims of the World,” urging
    them “to cleanse their lands of the Jews”
    and laying the foundation for the anti-Semitic
    arguments used by radical Arab nationalists
    and Islamists to this day.

    SOURCE:
    The Mufti’s war against the Jews
    by Mr. Sean Durns, 2019 July 24
    www.jns.org/opinion/the-muftis-war-against-the-jews/

    ReplyDelete
  4. James Bowen's comment is resonant. Sir Cliff Richard was accused of assaulting a boy at a Billy Graham Rally. I think the Police called it a concert. A Rally is a very different thing. I know how these things are organised and the accusation was ridiculous from the outset. Today's police are appallingly ignorant of the Law and of the Church. Sir Cliff endured trial by media, but eventually the Police realise that they were dealing with a false accusation. It too over a year. Very slowly and piece by piece the convictions against Rolf Harris are also being dismissed. They could all be bundled together to convict him, but not to exonerate him. This may never be completely resolved as he is old, ill and now out of prison. The trial was a shambles and should have been stopped when a "witness" changed her evidence to fit proven facts. https://www.rolfharrisisinnocent.com/
    The trouble with all these false cases is that they make things harder for the genuine victims.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The cardinal was such a "hate figure" for militant leftist elements in Australian society and media long before these charges that many observers, regardless of religion, wonder whether he ever stood a chance of a fair trial.

      Delete
  5. I'm not surprised. The basic principles of Justice are being forgotten or eaten away. Innocent until proven guilty, double jeopardy, trying the offence and not a bundle of "offences", "hate" crime and speech etc. https://youtu.be/odcvqVCgHdk

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for that link, Ian. The cardinal will know his fate in a few hours - his appeal verdict is being handed down on Wednesday morning.

      Delete

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