Culture Wars, Corbyn, & Cardinal Pell

"It's not a miracle. It's justice." That was how "Australia's Dreyfus", Cardinal George Pell, reportedly corrected a well-meaning prison guard on the morning of 7 April, when, after spending 13 months on jail for preposterous alleged historic sex crimes against two 13-year-old choirboys, the cardinal's conviction was overturned by the unanimous judgment of the full bench of Australia's High Court, 7:0.  As is well-known, the cardinal had been convicted on the accusation of a single accuser, with no corroborating evidence whatsover, and despite the countervailing testimony of defence witnesses. 

The High Court's decision was a stinging rebuke for the two Victorian Supreme Court justices who last August rejected Pell's Appeal to have his December 2018 conviction quashed, and a ringing endorsement of the careful analytical judgment of the third Supreme Court judge, Justice Mark Weinberg, who had shown good reason why the conviction was unsafe. Weinberg, a brilliant legal mind with an impressive curriculum vitae, was the only one of the three Supreme Court judges with expertise in criminal law.

A conservative cleric: Herald Sun, 13 February1997

Although the Pell Case has often been compared to that of Alfred Dreyfus, in so far as two innocent men were robbed of their liberty and reputation on trumped up charges, their principal persecutors markedly differ, the conservative Pell's being overwhemingly men and women of the left and far left, often atheistic and militantly secular, as well as in many cases being hostile to Israel. Many embody the mindset, seen in an odiously inappropriate tweet on the day of Pell's release from jail by Victoria's state premier Dan Andrews, as well as in comments by the extreme feminista Twitterati, that the accuser in sexual assault crimes must always be believed.  (Although, the hypocrisy of the left being ever-present, that mindset does not apply in the case of a former Australian Labor Party leader accused by a young woman of rape.  Same regarding Joe Biden.)

To their shame, some lefty Jewish acquaintances of mine have joined in the foaming-at-the-mouth demonisation of Pell (that continues from leftist sources since his release) with such social media statements as "We all know he did it" (imagine what these libellous folk would say had they been around to witness such prejudiced comments about the exonerated Mendel Beilis) and with ill-informed claptrap, reminiscent of dark antisemitic tropes about the global power of the Rothschild Bank, declaring as fact that the financial power of the Vatican secured Pell's release (in fact, he received no church funds whatsoever to finance his defence).

Ballarat Courier, 4 June 2002

The principal villains in the decades-long persecution of Cardinal Pell (who since his release has quite rightly deplored the "guilt by accusation" mindset that underlay his case and threatens to underlie others if not discarded) is the ABC (taxpayer-funded, left-dominated, and habitually flouting its obligation to present news and analysis in a fair and balanced way), which has engaged in a scandalous campaign of "vigilante journalism" against him,  led by reporter Louise Milligan, whose book Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell anticipated his "fall" long before his trial and incarceration and is apparently riddled with errors, with a supporting case of ABC personnel too numerous to mention here.  They and their leftist pals in the Fairfax media and the independent Guardian Australia are still at it, since his release, exulting in the highly unfair findings of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses into Child Sexual Abuse that had been redacted until now [document here]  and pushing calls that he be defrocked. (On that unfairness, see, for instance, NewsCorp and Sky News journalist Andrew Bolt's interview with Peter Westmore here and Gerard Henderson's article here) Also in the vanguard of the anti-Pell crusade that saw the cardinal charged with the offences of which he has since been acquitted was the politically contaminated leadership of the police force in the state of Victoria, which, in what was effectively a Get Pell exercise, touted for complaints against him. (Incidentally, to see how low the anti-Pell forces have been capable of stooping, see this ABC report.)

The  interview which Cardinal Pell gave, days after his release, to one of his staunchest supporters, Andrew Bolt, discusses these sinister issues, and there are many more reports and videos online that do, one of the most interesting being this interview on the day of the release with Chris Merritt, legal affairs editor of The Australian newspaper.  There's also this, Gerard Henderson of the Sydney Institute talking to Andrew Bolt at the end of April. And be sure to have a look at Australian Catholic University vice-chancellor Professor Greg Craven's tongue-lashing of the so-called national broadcaster, on 7 April

Like their counterparts on the BBC, ABC journalists are a self-congratulatory nose-thumbing lot, who seem to forget that public funds pay their salaries. The nauseating tweet at right, a paeon of praise to her boss, which came amid a veritable frenzy of Pell-bashing tweets by Ms Milligan following the 7 April High Court verdict, is a case in point: in Aussie-speak it can best be described as "brown nosing", and one of the co-presenters of ABC's breakfast news show gets into the act.  Odiously, and arrogantly, the ABC (like the BBC) handles complaints about itself in-house, and one result was Paul Barry's contemptuously conceived and delivered riposte to its critics concerning the Pell Case, as excoriated here by Andrew Bolt. To quote briefly from Bolt's column in the Melbourne Herald-Sun of 11 April denouncing the ABC's "stunning denialism" (ABC Denies its Pell Witchhunt, Then Proves It):

Can anyone believe the ABC's claim that it didn't vilify the innocent George Pell and help hound him into jail? The ABC should be ashamed, humiliated, repentant and begging for forgiveness for its starring role in the vilification, destruction and jailing of an innocent man.... Not one single ABC presenter or reporter at any time pointed out that the many allegations the ABC aired against Pell were inherently implausible - in fact, some impossible. Not one. ABC staff instead routinely treated them as not just credible, but often true.In fact, the ABC united behind ABC reporter Louise Milligan as she peddled allegations against Pell that were so weak that every one of them - like the ones she devoted an entire 7.30 report to - was either dropped by prosecutors or now overturned by the High Court. But not before Pell spent 405 days in jail....'

One of the bloggers and journalists who has done laudable service in the cause of showing that Pell could not have committed the heinous crimes for which he was convicted is Dr Chris Friel.  No rightwinger, he. In a very recent piece that highlights the anti-Pell tweets of a certain unidentifiable person called Lyndsay Farlow and which demonstrates the ABC's despicable role in Pell's persecution, Dr Friel explains that before he became interested in securing justice for Pell he investigated the role of pro-Israel "hawks" in casting Jeremy Corbyn as an antisemite.  A footnote to his article claims:

'This mirrors the antisemitism crisis in which a significant minority of Corbyn supporters are Jewish (and who are therefore deemed anti-Semitic!) a fact that the mainstream have difficulty acknowledging."

 Inter alia, in the main text:

 'Let's now turn to the ABC. The organisation would no doubt espouse values of fairness to all including Catholics, and aspire to treat controversial topics such as sex abuse and redress even-handedly. Insofar as my analysis of Farlow would be accepted, I am sure that the ABC would repudiate the idea that Farlow's concerns are that of the state broadcaster. Even if Farlow "hunts witches" the ABC does not.

Here it may be worth offering a general description of the likes of Farlow (or CLAN), namely, that they are "hawkish." A typical hawk is both polarised and polarising. Hawks will have a particular, single focus and view everything through that lens. They will then divide the world into friends and enemies accordingly, sometimes mirroring the equal and opposite pole.

The example that I spent a year studying in fine detail before I ever wrote on Pell was the "grass roots Zionist hawks" that agitate for Israel having a special concern to ward off the threat of boycotts. No doubt pro-Palestinian pressure groups exist that mirror such hawks, but from my experience it is the pro-Israel faction that is especially well-funded and organised. Although quasi-autonomous from the state of Israel, such groups will be well briefed (winning the information war is compared to winning the skies in military warfare) and also (covertly) funded by Israel as indicated by the exposure of Shai Masot delivering £1,000,000 to Joan Ryan MP to discredit her leader Jeremy Corbyn. It was my impression that the shrill, unreasonable, and abusive "group-think" ("group speech"?) of the redress-for-abuse hawks was astonishingly similar to the pro-Israel-anti-boycotts hawks.

Now, just as the BBC would officially distance itself from the pro-Israel hawks, in reality they and the mainstream tend to treat them uncritically, not least because the hawks can and do provide kompromat. In the case of Jeremy Corbyn, an MP on the fringes who was surprisingly victorious in the 2015 Labour leadership (after changes to the voting system that gave power to his grass roots), it was the hawks who had already been collecting information on him regarding his Palestinian Rights activity since 2010 well before he was prominent that supplied the data to the mainstream. This was then distorted and reproduced amidst artificial hysteria at a time of acute tension in Israel and after Corbyn had done surprisingly well in the 2017 election and might well progress further.

In other words, the hawks act like a "ginger group." Their aim is always to "ginger up" (agitate, enliven, stimulate) the mainstream. To repeat, hawks are not merely polarised but they are polarising, agitating to normalise an extreme agenda. I would argue that this is what we see with Pell and the Australian mainstream.

In the case of the ABC, with reporter Louise Milligan especially, it seems that the hawks have infiltrated the state broadcaster, something that was no doubt made easy given that many in the ABC loathe Pell's Conservative social values (on gender issues such as abortion and gay rights, but also climate change).' [Footnote numbers in original have been omitted here]

While praising Dr Friel for his support of the cardinal, I can't but regret Dr Friel's comments about Corbyn and Zionists.  I mean, "Zionist hawks" have infiltrated the BBC? Seriously?!

The ABC and the BBC are very much birds of a feather. 

In the interview that he gave to Andrew Bolt on 14 April, Cardinal Pell quite justifiably observed that "the culture wars are real".  He cited the determination that the militant left has to divest western civilisation of the Judeo-Christian foundations on which it rests.

He is quite correct of course. And complicit in this determination are leftists who infest the news rooms of both ABC and BBC, as well as sections of academia.

As Pell's longtime friend, the distinguished American Catholic scholar Dr George Weigel has remarked, in his capacity as a member of the Friends of Israel Initiative,

 ".... Israel, which has a clear right to self-defense, is beset today by a unique combination of threats: it must defend its people from attack while defending its very right to exist. No other state in the world faces this dual challenge. To deny Israel’s right to confront some of the world’s most vicious terrorist groups in order to ensure the safety of its citizens is to corrode international norms from within”a process that is already well-advanced at the United Nations, to that organization’s shame.

The assault on Israel is one part of a more general assault on the West, on democracy, and on the moral and culture heritage that grew from the fruitful interaction of Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome. One especially threatening part of this assault is the effort to use human rights claims and claims of universal criminal jurisdiction as weapons against Israeli democracy. Should these efforts succeed, similar efforts will certainly be turned against other western democracies.

Peace in the Middle East, to which all of us are firmly committed, is not a matter of Israel-and-the-Palestinians only. Responsible Israelis and responsible Palestinians both know that there will be no peace in the Middle East absent a pan-Arab recognition of Israel’s sovereign legitimacy.

Israel and the West are both confronted with two particularly grave threats in the early twenty-first century: the threat of Islamist jihadism, which has already caused enormous suffering while altering patterns of daily life throughout the world, and the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, led by men who believe that a new holocaust of the Jews will hasten the advent of the messianic age. Israel must not be put into a position of facing these threats alone. Those in the West who do not understand this should ponder the lessons of the late 1930s more carefully.

The campaign of delegitimation against Israel includes aspects of that anti-Semitism that has fouled parts of western culture for centuries and that must be forthrightly condemned by all who share the moral values of the Judaeo-Christian tradition...."

 (See the rest of Dr Weigel's relevant remarks here)

And see an example of a naive and foolish Catholic priest in the Australian Catholic Church's ancestral Ireland here

Cardinal Pell on Jewish-Christian Understanding — & on Islam

Above and below are photos of Cardinal George Pell, then Archbishop of Sydney, when leading a large group of Catholic pilgrims bound for Europe via Egypt and the Holy Land; in the second one he is entering Ben Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo, which according to local folklore rests on the site where Pharoah's daughter found the infant Moses. In the years since that pilgrimage, Cardinal Pell has entered a figurative version of what a famous "negro spiritual" of course dubs "Egypt Land", seen as a place of exile and woe.  And, with good reason, for many people in this country and outside it believe Australian "justice" should be in the dock.

He has been long loathed by leftists and secularists, mercilessly targeted by journalists with childish insults aimed at his person and his faith and with obsessive character assassination that has rightly left many people, Catholic and non-Catholic, doubting that he could ever have got a fair trial; indeed, his conviction on the uncorroborated testimony of a single witness has dangerous implications for all Australians.

Here, in order to dispel the impression fostered in some quarters that Cardinal Pell, who has been vilified perhaps more than any other public figure in Australian history, lacks sympathy for the Jewish People, let's remind ourselves of a speech he gave in Sydney on 14 May 2001, on the topic"Christians and Jews: The way ahead":

'Last night Rabbi David quoted the Jewish saying that after the destruction of the 2nd Temple, the gift of prophecy is dead; so that those who claim to prophesy are either babes or fools. Despite this, both of us have been condemned tonight, to talk on "the way ahead", but my ambitions are very limited for a number of good reasons. A bishop has to be planning for tomorrow, although Jesus himself told us not to worry too much. Tomorrow can take care of itself, we have worries enough today! And in the Catholic community there are scattered individuals who are so busy preparing for the future that they ignore and neglect today's responsibilities.

I speak too as one less wise; my normal condition, but in this case without extensive experience of ongoing dialogue, deep theological or sociological discussion on this vexed area of Jewish a Christian relations. 

However I pray the psalms every day, with all other Catholic priests; and I love them. I don't know how many priests, especially those suffering or in trouble, who have told me how much the psalms have helped them.

In Rome 35 or 36 years ago our lecturer on the Psalms told us they were unique in any literature. 

These were the years of Vatican II and all such claims were greeted sceptically by many students.

I reserved my judgement and during the later years I have read something of the other great religions and found nothing to equal the Psalms as a body of prayerful literature.

I have come to know and love much more deeply the writings of the great prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah and especially Ezekiel, the strangest of them all. And I have come lately to study Elijah much more closely. For a long time I didn't understand his top billing among Jews and Christians and with Jesus himself! Now I believe he is particularly important, and for us now, because monotheism was nearly wiped out then by Jezebel and the prophets of Baal.

It was as a seminarian in the early '60s that I first heard a rabbi speak, my friend Rabbi John Levi, and I was upset by his energy and honesty. Then I probably considered him aggressive. I had grown up in a family which was strongly pro-Jewish, especially my father, and I even wondered whether Rabbi Levi's claims about Christian ill treatment were accurate. Further study showed me, only too sadly, that he was basically correct.

Many years ago I wrote a doctorate in history, Christian Church history. I have a respect for the past -  but know how messy and disconcerting and discomforting it can be. I recognise too the difficulty of adequately and accurately presenting the past, but we must face up to what is there, for good or ill. Then we can decide how to deal with it appropriately.

Occasionally people will say to me that the Jews complain too much about their sufferings in the past. Shouldn't we all look more to the future? Usually I reply that if we had lost five or six million of our co-religionists only sixty years ago, after many centuries of intermittent oppression of our minority status, then our sensitivities would be quite different too. I have visited Dachau and Auschwitz; terrible reminders of an unspeakable evil that must never be repeated. It is sobering to think that similar sufferings continued in the Soviet Gulags until fairly recently. In this life evil is never eliminated permanently. 

These different sensitivities were brought home to me recently in trying to develop my views on the proposed anti-discrimination legislation in Victoria. My principal legal adviser was a brilliant young Jewish lawyer, a partner in his firm. While we weren't exactly of one mind when I did take a public position, I was forced to modify my position and certainly came to understand more adequately the attitudes of a smaller minority in a culture which still has a Christian majority and a good deal of Christian instinct, sometimes for ill as well as good, about it. 

I know there are significant differences in the Jewish community too about how effective legislation can be in battling prejudice and discrimination as there are in every section of the community. But I am not opposed to limited, tight legislation outlawing incitement to racial or religious hatred. 

It has been remarked that the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel both changed public opinion in the Western world towards the Jewish People. These were powerful influences on Catholics too; but a particular catalyst for improved relations on the Catholic side came from Pope John Paul XXIII and the Second Vatican Council (1962-5). 

John XXIII unleashed forces that he never dreamed of; he had no developed programme for where he wanted the Council to go; but he had realised, and truly, that the Catholic Church was caught in a suit of defensive armour, which was heavy, and sometimes a hindrance and ineffective in defence as well as attack. The Council provoked a cultural revolution in the Catholic community in the Western world, led by middle order functionaries more than the masses (unlike Mao's cultural revolution), which has sparked great losses in some countries a but there is no doubt that its encouragement of ecumenism among Christians by legitimate Catholic participation, and encouraging inter-faith dialogue and co-operation has been a blessing in every sense.   

As Pope John Paul II said at Assisi in 1986: "Either we learn to walk together in peace and harmony, or we drift apart and ruin ourselves and others". 

I have participated in some of these multi-faith celebrations, as recently as last Monday in the Melbourne Exhibition Buildings for the Centenary of Federation. Afterwards I turned to Rabbi John Levi, who was sitting immediately behind me, and said "Well, the Jewish contribution was the best".  And my communications adviser said to me after: "Yes, and the Christian contribution was probably the weakest". 

For the Jubilee last year we had a memorial service for the victims of the Holocaust in St. Patrick's Cathedral and a number of Jews who were present claimed it was among the most beautiful they had attended.

We need to keep talking together; something that will remain a minority activity. But the attitudes of leaders, official or unofficial, are important in shaping the underlying attitudes of many others, community members and fellow travellers.

We need to keep speaking together, so that we respectfully listen to one another. This is not a ploy to get a message across; nor does it mean that we must agree. Nor does it mean that religious discussion has to abandon claims to truth. We are not condemned to relativism through speaking together; nor are we tacitly recognising that one religion is as good as another; not even claiming that religion is like musical taste, something that is quite difficult to validate!

Recently a man called Ulrich Schoen listed five aims in such a dialogue or conversation:

1) to dissolve [sic; resolve?] misunderstandings;

2) to improve relationships and know we are then better;

3) to lessen fear and suspicion;

4) to deepen faith in one's own religion;

5) to create greater unity and co-operation;

All of these seem to me to be worthwhile for present purposes.

Let me now list a few areas where we might be able to co-operate effectively:

a) to defend and promote belief in the one true God, the unutterable mystery of love. The growth of irreligion in Australia is most significant religious change over the last fifty years, and is part of the modern spread of secularism.

Catholics are not one people like Jews, but a great Church does have a cultural and historical momentum and modern bureaucracies can keep a shell performing efficiently, or seeming to do so. 

The denunciation of prophets bears on this challenge.

Psalm 24 peaks of a "man with clean hands and pure heart standing on the mountain of the Lord". 

In an age devoted to money and sometimes to sexual irresponsibility, the capacity to believe can atrophy. A significant challenge here!

b) Another important area of common effort could be the defence of the family. Patterns of divorce and remarriage; living in partnerships, of children affected by divorce; of increasing numbers of homeless children.

Not difficult to list the challenges, but more difficult to devise effective strategies.

Often not realised is that no country in the Western world is producing a sufficient number of children to keep the population stable. Countries like Russia and Romania, Italy and Spain have started on a process of dramatic population decline.  

Jews and Christians might cooperate together to stress the blessings that children are the continuing importance of motherhood. A bit politically incorrect to do this, but it will be increasingly necessary.

c) Last night Rabbi David mentioned the dialogue between a Rabbi and the King of the Khazars, who pointed out that at that time Jews did not have political power and so were not exposed to the temptations of that power.

That is no longer the case in Israel. I am completely supportive of Israel's right to exist peacefully and regret that the recent initiative for peace has been squandered.

I am not going to comment particularly on developments there; I do not know the scene well enough and my area of responsibility is the Sydney Archdiocese.

But Jewish conduct of that necessary struggle will impinge on the situation of Jews throughout the world; the battle for world opinion is mightily important and racists will try to exploit every ambiguity and especially any explicit injustice.

Christians too regret the steady exodus of fellow Christians from so many parts of the Middle East, forced to migrate because of constant hostile pressures.

During the last 30 or 40 years there has been a significant reduction in the amount of Christian antisemitism.  We thank God for that. To adapt to our circumstances the word of Martin Luther King "we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly". Our fortunes, as brothers, are inextricably linked.

The present Pope, John Paul II, has also contributed significantly to the progress and consolidation of Jewish-Christian relations. His visit to the synagogue in Rome, his successful visit to Israel last year; the 1994 Vatican recognition of the State of Israel. By coincidence I was in Rome and present at Castel Gandolfo when the Israeli ambassador first presented his credentials. All these things have helped.

There is no doubt that his years at Wadowice at school with the local Jewish boys and girls; playing together in the same soccer team; seeing their dispersion and execution played an essential role in his leadership in this area.

A particularly poignant moment was when the Pope prayed at the Temple Wall and I will conclude with the written prayer he left in a crevice in this wall:

"God of our fathers, You chose Abraham and his descendants to bring Your Name to the nations. We are deeply saddened by the behaviour of those, who in the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer, and asking your forgiveness we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the People of the Covenant."

 And what, if anything, has this noted Australian intellectual to say on Islam (a creed, incidentally, which has seen a marked increase in child marriages recently, but which evaded scrutiny by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which spent years probing .
'Catholics, Anglicans, Pentecostals, Jewish, Jehovah’s Witnesses and obscure cults — along with sporting groups and the entertainment industry'.)

Well, in a talk some years ago entitled “Can Islam and the Western democracies live together peacefully?” (full text here) he

indicated that “Views on this question range from näive optimism to bleakest pessimism,” but that with a far better understanding of Islam and current developments by Christians and world leaders a peaceful co-existence might be achieved.

Pell notes that the optimists “point to the roots Islam has in common with Judaism and Christianity and the worship the three great monotheistic religions offer to the one true God. There is also the common commitment that Muslims and Christians have to the family and to the defence of life, and the record of co-operation in recent decades between Muslim countries, the Holy See, and countries such as the United States in defending life and the family at the international level, particularly at the United Nations.”

However, Pell continues, “On the pessimistic side of the equation, concern begins with the Koran itself. In my own reading of the Koran, I began to note down invocations to violence. There are so many of them, however, that I abandoned this exercise after 50 or 60 or 70 pages”.

The senior Catholic Cardinal warns that the claims of Muslim tolerance of religious minorities are “largely mythical.” He emphasizes history has clearly shown that, “Considered strictly on its own terms, Islam is not a tolerant religion and its capacity for far-reaching renovation is severely limited.” However, Pell adds that the human factor of many Muslims being uncomfortable with the violence and harsh intolerance of traditional Islamic practices provides hope for positive change as has occurred in more moderate Muslim nations.

The secularists in the West, indicates Pell, are the mostly poorly equipped to comprehend and respond to today’s explosion of Islamic violence and power. That is because the issue is predominantly one of religion which the secularists do not understand. Pell says, “one example of the secular incomprehension of religion is the blithe encouragement of large scale Islamic migration into Western nations, particularly in Europe.”

Pell emphasizes that the issue is one of religion and can ultimately only be satisfactorily addressed by religion, rather than politics or material power. The vacuum created by the collapse of religious faith in the West has made it especially vulnerable to conquest by a large, strongly committed religious movement.

“Radicalism,” says Pell, “whether of religious or non-religious inspiration, has always had a way of filling emptiness” and if we are going to help moderate forces within Islam the personal consequences of religious faith need to be taken more seriously. Secularism, and the emptiness and despair that it spawns, is “no match for Islam,” warns the Cardinal.

The “disastrous fall in fertility rates,” adds Pell, is “The most telling sign that Western democracy suffers a crisis of confidence”. He provides startling statistics indicating how Islam is easily taking over the West simply by having more children and the West is dying from its suicidal abortion and contraceptive practices.

Pell warns that the issues must be discussed and that participants in “useful dialogue” must “grapple with the truth and in this issue of Islam and the West the stakes are too high for fundamental misunderstandings.”

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

An Australian Dreyfus? The Cardinal Pell imbroglio

Australia's Dreyfus?

The (left-dominated, politically correct) Jewish Community Council of Victoria (JCCV; formerly the Victorian Jewish Board of Deputies), the roof body representing organised Jewish communal life in the Australian state of Victoria, has issued an abject apology to the Jewish gay rights lobby group Aleph, regarding the latter's failure to be admitted to membership two decades ago:

"Aleph Melbourne submitted a valid application for membership of the JCCV in January 1999.  The Executive of the JCCV supported admission of Aleph Melbourne as a member. On 10 May 1999 the JCCV Plenum debated the motion and voted (39 votes in favour and 46 votes against) to deny the application for membership

In the course of the debate, homophobic views were expressed by some delegates which caused long-term harm to members of our LGBTIQ+ community.

Accordingly, this Plenum now apologises unconditionally to all members of our community who were impacted by the rejection of the membership application and for the unacceptable homophobic views expressed during the debate.

We apologise for the deep offence and humiliation caused by the hateful words spoken in the course of the debate. We apologise for the subsequent distress, further marginalisation and stigmatisation caused by the rejection of Aleph Melbourne’s membership application. We now recommit ourselves to welcoming and embracing LGBTIQ+ Jews in all our work, as part of our broader commitment to social inclusion for all members of the Jewish community of Victoria. Through our genuine commitment to equality and diversity we seek to ensure that the mistakes of the past will not be repeated."

Among those resolutely opposing the admission of Aleph to the JCCV in 1999, mindful of such passages as Leviticus 18:22,  was a prominent mainstream Orthodox rabbi in Melbourne, Ronald Lubofsky, well-known and well-remembered in circles promoting Jewish-Christian understanding.  As he afterwards explained on ABC (Australia's equivalent of the BBC) radio:

"The core of the philosophy, the religious philosophy, the political philosophy of being Jewish, is in the written word. The Christians call it the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures. Some would reduce it to the Ten Commandments etc. and that excludes the notion of homosexuality, and as a consequence it’s a contradiction in terms. You simply cannot consider the two ideals as being compatible. So true enough, the members of this group are Jewish and it may well be that they are secular in their intent, but I’m afraid that as a group, as an organisation, they cannot claim parity as individuals absolutely. This is a point which I and others have made, that Jewish gay people, lesbian people, they can join synagogues, they can join the organisations which are represented under the umbrella of the Jewish Community Council of Victoria, they can be the presidents of those organisations, but as an organisation, as an ideology, they’re not compatible.... 

These are individuals who do not produce families, these are individuals who perform sexually in a way which is aberrant, to say the least, with regard to Judaism. It is something which runs counter to the fundamentals of Judaism, that is the family unit..."

This is not unlike Cardinal George Pell's attitude towards homosexuals, to judge by what the cardinal told a reporter:

'How was he to know if someone was gay or not? If someone came before him in Mass with cupped hands of course he would give the bread and wine. He was hardly going to quiz each parishioner.

But if someone came before him in a rainbow sash — as the gay parishioners had — in what he saw as an open act of rebellion against the church, then he was duty bound as a servant of the church to defend its honour.'

Lay Catholics are now copping abuse

As we all know, Cardinal Pell, who is not in good health, has since been convicted of sexually abusing two choirboys in a busy cathedral after Mass 22 years ago, and languishes in a prison cell awaiting the outcome of an Appeal in June against his sentence of six years' imprisonment with no possibility of parole for three years and eight months.  A day of prayer for him scheduled by one Melbourne Catholic institution for Saturday, 9 March, was cancelled owing to an outcry. He's in solitary confinement, for his own protection apparently, is permitted no sacramental wine and no breviary, although he does have his rosary. He's permitted only one visitor a week, few books, and gets to leave his cell for just one hour each day. 

What a victory his fate is for visceral haters of the Catholic Church, for whom the theologically conservative Pell has long been, in his own words (in the course of his interview here with columnist Andrew Bolt) "a hate figure", and which has ensured a "lynch-mob mentality" towards him that included, among an avalanche of prejudicial press items (here's a taster), intemperate comments (taster here), an acclaimed obscene portrait of him and a much-publicised spiteful song, and which now sees Open Season on Australian Catholicism itself in full swing: see, for example, here. 
 

Many of those ebullient at Pell's downfull undoubtedly see the Church as a relic of the pre-Enlightenment era. Yet, it must be asked, how "enlightened" is it for a court of law to find a person guilty and deprive him of his liberty and his reputation on the testimony of a single plaintiff, uncorroborated by forensic evidence.

In a nutshell: doubting the justice of Pell's conviction (from here)

Does not this have grievous implications for all Australians who find themselves defendants, not just Pell?  The cardinal has not been proven guilty beyond all reasonable doubt. The "guilty" verdict is unsafe.  No wonder that many people are comparing his case to that of the famously wronged Alfred Dreyfus, as well as to such proven miscarriages of Australian justice as the Lindy Chamberlain and Josephine Greensill jailings.

"[T]he boy from Ballarat with the film-star looks."  

In its blurb, that's how Dublin-born lapsed Catholic  ABC journalist Louise Milligan's much-hyped book   The Rise and Fall of Cardinal Pell, now triumphantly reissued with an update following his controversial 11 December 2018 conviction on historic sex abuse charges, describes the big imposing former Australian Rules ruckman (pictured left in his forties).

The book was commissioned by Louise Adler, the  leftwing Israel-critical head of Melbourne University Press, who also commissioned Antony Loewenstein's despicable My Israel Question. (She 'resigned in January following reports of internal conflict over Cardinal and budget subsidies. The university's chancellor, Allen Myers, is one of Pell's lawyers' notes a very recent publicity feature on Milligan in the Financial Review, in which she deplores those who question Pell's conviction.)

"In the end", Ms Milligan (who since the original publication of her book has been snapped up by the ABC's Four Corners current program along with the ABC's openly anti-Israel Middle East correspondent Sophie McNeill)  told ABC news website readers gloatingly in March, after Pell's sentencing, 

"he was just an elderly, grey-faced man in the dock.

Not a prince of the church, not a cardinal, but a man convicted of and sentenced for terrible crimes against children.

A man who once flew first class will celebrate his 78th birthday in prison, and at the very least, his 79th, 80th and 81st....

We saw a man in a beige jacket and black shirt who seemed to have aged years in a matter of weeks....

Here was the man who dined with prime ministers, who went into battle in the culture wars, who cast an enormous shadow over the Catholic Church and Australian culture life.

He spent his days telling the rest of us how we ought to live our lives, and now, here he was, scratching out his signature on the sex offender register.

He could be on that register for life...."

    In 2015 Pell's successor as Sydney's Catholic Archbishop, Anthony Fisher, identified the reasons for the "unfair"targeting of the cardinal: 

“For so long he was the most prominent churchman in Australia, so people assume he’s in charge of everything and has been since birth,” he said, noting that Pell was never the bishop in Ballarat and had no direct responsibility for [convicted paedophile Gerald] Ridsdale or other priests in the diocese.“Add to that a lot of people didn’t like him for the very strong conservative stand he took on a number of issues, and they would be happy to see him humbled,” Fisher said.

From a vile longstanding anti-Pell Facebook page

Fisher said there’s also a personal edge to the anti-Pell sentiment.

“Probably, some people too are looking for public contrition. They think George looks too self-confident or too gruff, too defiant. There’s a kind of Aussie male macho element about his whole demeanor they don’t like,” he said.

“They’d like to see him crying, they’d like to see him blush … they’d like to see him in some way looking hurt,” Fisher said. “Maybe they’re thinking that by putting him through this again, he’ll finally crack.”

Noting that Pell has responded to most of these charges several times before, Fisher said the experience of having to do it again seems to be taking a toll.

“People think he’s indestructible, but I’ve sensed seeing him this time that it’s getting to him,” he said. “It just goes on and on. No matter how many inquiries there are it just keeps coming back, and it gets a bit more vicious each time.”

(See Louise Milligan's biased piece here, for instance, and the despicable comments about Pell below the line.)

Even before Pell's trial doubts were being expressed that he could ever expect a fair one.  In the conservative Quadrant magazine (3 July 2017) David Flint, an emeritus professor of law, wrote inter alia:

'Without in any way debating his guilt or innocence, like every Australian, Cardinal George Pell is entitled to a fair trial.

If he is denied this, will this be because of the leaks to the media about the police investigation, will it be the failure of the Victorian government to take serious action against this, or will it be because of those in the media who have engaged in character assassination?

Australians may well wonder why the announcement that the police had finally decided to make charges was made by a deputy and not Victoria’s Chief Commissioner Graeme Aston. Was it because he had, in one of his conversations about the case in the media, described  the complainants as ”victims”? Did the police believe that by using his deputy his apparent pre-judgement of the case was somehow extinguished from the minds of potential jurors? 

.... Pell was undoubtedly the pioneer here in dealing with institutional sex abuse. He subsequently cooperated fully with the Royal Commission. Recalled in 2015, the hearing was delayed by curious attempts to force him to fly to Melbourne even when it was revealed his doctors warned that the long flight could be fatal.

Just before he was to appear, the world’s media were filled with well-timed leaks revealing a police investigation about which even the Cardinal had not been informed.... 

In the meantime, the Royal Commission video examination was extraordinarily long and unnecessarily hostile....'

(See also this refutation of misrepresentations regarding the cardinal and the Commission)

In a speech in Hobart in 2017 believing Catholic-turned-agnostic Dr Gerard Henderson, director of the Sydney Institute, made, inter alia, these salient points:

"In its wisdom, the Royal Commission decided not to conduct hearings into institutional responses by the Australian media to instances of child sexual abuse.... The Royal Commission also did not hold hearings with respect to Islamic institutions or government schools.

While the Royal Commission chose not to conduct hearings into the ABC or Islamic institutions or government schools, it focused overwhelmingly on the Catholic Church in general and Cardinal George Pell in particular. This was lapped up by sections of the Australian media—particularly the ABC, Fairfax Media (mainly the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald), the Saturday Paper, the Guardian Australia, Channel 9’s 60 Minutes, Channel 10’s The Project and Sky News’s Paul Murray Live and Hinch Live (the latter program is no longer extant).

While all these media outlets employ objective journalists, it is true that some contain a high proportion of alienated ex-Catholics along with Catholics who disagree with the social conservatism of George Pell. Then there are the atheists, many of a sneering disposition, who resent believers—particularly Christians. In short, sections of the media have used the Royal Commission’s obsession with Catholicism to run campaigns against the Catholic Church....

The Christian tradition today faces two fundamental challenges—from militant Islamists who want to kill Christians and place the so-called Islamic State’s black flag on the Vatican; and from intolerant atheists who hold believers in contempt, particularly Christians, and wish to restrict their freedom of expression and action."

Catholic journalist Michael Warren Davis observed in 2017:

 'Let’s be clear: he’s guilty, as he’s admitted, of not being aware of the abuses by priests under his charge. That’s a serious ministerial lapse ... Yet, somehow, I doubt the anti-Pell crowd is up in arms because he’s an inadequate prelate. One suspects they’re not concerned about a marked aloofness in the Catholic hierarchy. Indeed, as [Julia] Yost points out, Archbishop Frank Little – Pell’s superior when the abuses took place – is known to have actively covered up abuses. Is it worth noting that Little was a progressive, and Pell’s a conservative? Julia Yost makes that transparently clear in [her] First Things critique of ABC operative Louise Milligan’s recent hatchet job.'

Distinguished Catholic scholar Dr George Weigel who happens to be a founder member of the Friends of Israel initiative (part of what he says about Israel has long featured on this blog's sidebar, and the rest can be read here) has known George Pell for 50 years.  (See here too.) He characterises the Pell imbroglio as "this generation's Dreyfus Case".  There are very many, and not all within the Catholic Church, who share that view.

"Look, I know I'm innocent," Weigel quoted the cardinal, on the eve of his sentencing in March,  as telling him, "The only judgement I fear is the Last Judgement."

Added Weigel: "This whole thing had weirdness about it from the get-go ... who put the Victorian police up to this?" (Update: see also Weigel's fine Easter article here)


Here's John Macaulay, a prominent Sydney Catholic and conservative, explaining why the cardinal's prosecution and conviction is "extraordinary beyond belief":

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=ht7cWkd-KF4

Phillip Breene, writing in The Spectator on 9 March this year ("Prosecuting Pell: Can public hate figures get a fair trial?") observed:

"The important question is not simply whether the verdict in this case is sound but whether a responsible public Prosecutor should have brought the charges...

This is the difficulty with trials in which the defendant is a controversial public figure and has been demonised among the population from which the jury is drawn."

And here's Pell's biographer Tess Livingstone (behind a paywall, I'm afraid) giving her take on the conviction:

Full text available here

'....The guilty verdict was delivered in December by a unanimous jury, in a properly constituted court, after an earlier jury was dismissed on September 20 because it split 10-2 in Pell’s favour. Hence the second trial, in which many people, whether they like or loathe Pell and all he stands for, believe went badly wrong.

If so, the jury were not the only ones to get it wrong, nor the most culpable. Hard questions need to be asked about police and judicial processes, including how and why certain allegations ever made it to court, let alone to trial.

During the first trial, observers in the gallery claimed: “Even if he didn’t do it he deserves to be punished. He was in charge of the whole show’’. How much did such sentiments influence the verdicts, if at all? Australian justice cannot sink so low.

Studied closely, the five convictions of child sexual abuse are grotesque, implausible and break the bounds of credulity. In religious terms, they would be grave sacrileges....

It is extremely unfortunate, some of Pell’s friends believe, that the two juries hearing the case were taken around the cathedral on a quiet weekday when it is usually all but deserted, rather than having the chance to see its hustle and bustle on Sunday mornings....

According to the evidence, Pell was fully vested when he committed the crimes of which he was found guilty. Over his trousers and shirt, he wore an alb — a long, straight white garment, extending from shoulder to the floor, with no openings and no splits at the front or sides that would have allowed the garment to be moved aside, as alleged. Over the alb, Pell wore a cincture — a thick cord tied several times around his waist, and over that a heavy chasuble (the outer robe). Those garments, worn by every priest at Mass, have spiritual significance. The choir boys were also vested in robes over their shirts and trousers.  [This video explains such vestments.]

It's an ill wind that blows nobody good

The timing was odd for another reason. The scandal of clerical abuse was a major issue in the news in late 1996 in Melbourne after the inglorious legacy of Pell’s predecessor, Archbishop Frank Little. Pell had launched the Melbourne Response in October 1996, a system to deal with the problem led by an independent QC and the first of its kind for the Catholic Church in the world. In that atmosphere, the notion of Pell committing grotesque offences in a semipublic place with an open door (a point not disputed by the prosecution) at a busy time defies logic.

During the committal hearing, [magistrate] Ms Wallington dismissed even more grotesque charges against Pell, dating back decades before 1996 to provincial Victoria. As [Pell's lawyer] Richter said in his summing up in the Committal hearing, one charge that was subsequently dismissed owed “more to the watching of Satanist movies’’.

It was extreme, violent and satanic, lending weight to the view that Pell has been the victim of a vile stitch up. If so, it needs to be uncovered. In the committal hearing, Richter said had the police made proper investigations (as the defence did) they would have discovered no evidence that Pell was ever at the institution where the alleged Satanic incident occurred....'

(Curiouser and curiouser: see here)  Any serious student of the Pell imbroglio should also read this article by veteran award-winning Australian crime writer John Silvester.  Inter alia:

From here

"Pell was found guilty beyond reasonable doubt on the uncorroborated evidence of one witness, without forensic evidence, a pattern of behaviour or a confession.

 It is a matter of public record that it is rare to run a case on the word of one witness, let alone gain a conviction....

Pell has become a lightning rod in the worldwide storm of anger at a systemic cover-up of priestly abuses. But that doesn't make him a child molester. If Pell did molest those two teenagers in the busy cathedral, it certainly does not fit the usual pattern of paedophile priests....

He could not have known if one of them was not the son of the chief commissioner, the premier or the chief justice who were waiting outside to collect them. He could not have known if one of them would walk straight out and blow the whistle on him, and with two kids in the room he would have been sunk...."

In this month's issue of the conservative political and intellectual magazine Quadrant, the front cover of which bears the unequivocal headline "The Persecution of George Pell", former Anglican priest Peter Wales puts it  this way:

"... If you wanted to invent a perfect nemesis for Australia's left-wing media, you could not  do better than to come up with an intelligent, energetic, tough-minded, Australian-rules-playing, politically and religiously conservative straight white male.

 The ABC’s almost psychotic obsession with finding something dreadful to report about Cardinal Pell was noted at least as long ago as 2015, when Gerard Henderson suggested the mainstream media had the wrong target, and was focussing on Pell simply because he is a social conservative....'  (See another pertinent Peter Wales article here)

Writes Quadrant editor-in-chief Keith Windschuttle in another trenchant article:  

'The current heroine of the news media pursuing this story is Louise Milligan, who has a best-seller with her book Cardinal, and her own special reports on ABC television’s 7.30 and Four Corners programs. The latest edition of her book lists the number of awards this work has won her: the Walkley Book Award, two Quill awards from the Melbourne Press Club, the Sir Owen Dixon Chambers Law Reporter of the Year award, the Civic Choice award in the Melbourne Prize for Literature. The new edition also carries accolades from an impressive array of left-wing journalists and authors: Annabel Crabb, David Marr, David Armstrong, Peter Fitzsimons, Kate McClymont, Quentin Dempster, Michaela Bond, Derryn Hinch, Yvonne Rance, Gerard Windsor and Anton Rose, plus a foreword by novelist/historian Tom Keneally who says Pell got what he deserved because he was “a notable neo-conservative”, who “had questioned climate change” and “has raised only muted opposition to the  federal government’s heinous asylum seeker policy”....'

Windschuttle places great significance on a case in Philadelphia dating to 1998, involving a boy referred to as "Billy".

See in full context here

'The Philadelphia case was written up in Rolling Stone in September 2011, well before Victoria’s police began what they called their “trawling operation” against George Pell, hoping to find someone to testify against him....

The only difference between the American and Australian evidence was the account of a second alleged meeting, which the boys said took place “a few months later” in Philadelphia and “a month or so later” in Melbourne. In the American version, it was a different priest involved this time, who led the same boy to the sacristy, told him to undress and then fellated him. In the Australian version, Pell allegedly found the boy in the back corridor of the cathedral, forced him up against a wall and fondled his genitals.

Nonetheless, the two accounts are so close to being identical that the likelihood of the Australian version being original is most implausible. There are far too many similarities in the stories for them to be explained by coincidence. The conclusion is unavoidable:

“The Kid” [Louise Milligan's term for the still anonymous Australian testifier] was repeating a story he had found in a magazine – or repeating a story someone else had found for him in the media – thereby deriving his account of what Pell did from evidence given in a trial in the United States four years earlier. In short, the testimony that convicted George Pell was a sham. This does not mean the accuser was deliberately making it up. He might have come to persuade himself the events actually happened, or some therapist might have helped him “recover” his memory. But no matter how sincere the accuser’s beliefs were, that does not make them true, especially when there is so much other evidence against them.

There is little doubt that if members of the jury in Pell’s case had been informed of the surprising similarities between the two versions, some of them must have had serious questions about their witness’s veracity. The result would have been either a second hung jury or a not guilty verdict....'

Surely this not too dissimilar allegation, about the late Rabbi Lubofsky, might not, unwittingly, have been grist to the anti-Pell mill.  It appears to have first surfaced publicly several years ago, when it was referred to on the Facebook page of a well-known victim of paedophilia turned victims' advocate, though without mention of names:

 It was, incidentally, repeated on high-profile Aleph activist mikeybear's blog in this form in January 2018:

"It was alleged by two men in 2012 that the late Rabbi Emeritus Ronald Lubofsky AM [Member of the Order of Australia] of St. Kilda Synagogue masturbated in front of them during their bar mitzvah lessons in the 1970s and 1980s.  These men would have been 12 or 13 years old boys at the time.  So far neither of the men have gone public with the details of the sexual abuse."

And again there, this year, following Pell's conviction:

 "What do Cardinal George Pell and Rabbi Ronald Lubofsky have in common?

What do Rabbi Emeritus Ronald Lubofsky AM and His Eminence Cardinal George Pell AC [Companion of the Order of Australia] have in common? 

Both appointed to the Order of Australia.

 Both revered in their religious circles.

Both vehemently opposed to homosexuality and sexual immorality.

Both sexually abused / predated on young boys."

Rabbi Lubofsky, by the way, died in 2000.

It's not necessary to be convinced of Pell's innocence to deplore his conviction.  The conviction is "unsafe" and that's enough to believe it should be set aside.  To quote Michael Warren Davis again: 

"Pell’s cause is an unpopular one, to say the least. Our taste-makers decided to destroy this man long ago. But, if his conviction goes uncontested, who will be next? Who else will be condemned in the eyes of law without forensic evidence or corroborating witnesses? Who else will be imprisoned because he fails to conform to fashionable opinion? Me, perhaps. Or you. Mark my words: if the third-most senior prelate in the Roman Catholic Church isn’t safe, we don’t stand a chance. This, in my opinion, is a fight for Australians’ basic civil liberties. I personally believe that, if Cardinal Pell’s conviction isn’t overturned, we’ve already lost."