One of the great Confessors of the Faith has gone to his reward. Cardinal Pell was the equal of every bishop persecuted short of martyrdom. The criticisms that are being slipped into reports of his death are either outright lies, or they are beams the size of the Sydney Harbour Bridge by comparison with any mote in his eye.
The Church's record on the sexual abuse of adolescent males during what might be called the long 1970s was not exactly glowing, but She has never been in favour of such behaviour in principle, and the natural transition to a clerical body formed by and under Saint John Paul II and Benedict XVI means that the practice is now marginal.
Neither of those things may be said of the circles inhabited by the Australian, American and British liberal media, no matter what party label they may adopt for purely commercial purposes, thereby giving themselves considerable control over that party.
It matters not a jot whether the Church supports child abuse in principle since he and others supported it in practice. As noted today, “ a landmark inquiry found that Cardinal Pell knew of child sexual abuse by priests in Australia as early as the 1970s but failed to take action.””
ReplyDelete"A landmark inquiry" by whom? At the very end of the 1970s, he was a 38-year-old suburban parish priest. And what was anyone supposed to have done in those days? The Church stood alone, as is Her wont, in not regarding such acts as in principle normal, natural, healthy and beneficial.
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