Greg Craven: All my life, I have joined in the chorus that our justice system is the best in the world. With the case of Cardinal George Pell, I am not singing quite so loud.

Miranda Devine: How hard it must have been to find 12 impartial souls after the campaign of vilification against Pell over the past two decades and the carefully orchestrated drip feed of lurid allegations by Victoria police to selected media against the backdrop of shocking revelations of child sexual abuse by clergy around the world...

quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/02/catholics-sex-and-cardinal-pell/

Peter Wales (excerpts).One of George Pell’s first actions on becoming Archbishop of Melbourne was to set up clear processes for dealing with complaints of sexual abuse. This was not in response to media alarm about child abuse. The Boston scandal, for example, was five years in the future. Nor was it an attempt to protect the reputation of the Church. Pell was one of the first in any organisation anywhere in the world to put protocols in place which protected victims, supported them through whatever processes they wanted to follow — including police action where appropriate — required any accused person to stand down during independent investigation, and which instituted a ‘one strike you’re out policy’.

It is hard to think of anyone in Australia who has done more to prevent child sexual abuse, to bring those responsible to justice, and to support victims and simplify processes for them.

However, it did not take long for The Guardian and the ABC to identify Archbishop, later Cardinal Pell, as an enemy, a prime target. He is on friendly terms with John Howard and Tony Abbott. He has publicly dismissed climate alarmism as a scam which, if policies based on it and urged by the UN and various celebrities were instituted, would cause serious harm to the world’s poorest people. He publicly described abortion as the worst possible child abuse. He declined to be sorry when some Catholic teachings, on the nature of marriage, for example, or the sinfulness of homosexual activity, were claimed to be offensive. He believes that Western culture is worth preserving, and that immigrants to Australia should enter the country legally, and apart from a carefully measured number of refugees, should be people who are willing and able to make a contribution.

Harm has been done. Firstly to Archbishop Wilson and Cardinal Pell, both faithful servants of the Church and the wider community. Secondly to the Church, which despite having lower rates of abuse than other bodies, has been, with a few appalling exceptions, open, forthright and pro-active in acknowledging abuse where it occurred, and putting processes in place to support victims. Many other institutions face a far larger public reckoning; there is filth lurking in places yet undreamed of. Thirdly to Wilson and Pell’s friends and families, who, like many other friends or family of alleged child abusers, have been subject to irrational hatred and slander, as well as unnecessary pain and doubt and confusion. Fourthly to genuine victims of child abuse, who, seeing these trials and their politically-driven outcomes, will wonder how they can rely on those whose duty it is to listen to them and protect them.

And finally, following these debacles, harm has been done to Australia’s courts and police, whose credibility and independence is rightly open to question.

The Herald Sun‘s Shannon Deery lists the defence’s ten key arguments which failed to persuade jurors

quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/02/catholics-sex-and-cardinal-pell/

March 1st: new link

www.catholicworldreport.com/2019/02/27/the-case-against-cardinal-pell-what-are-they-saying/