Pell-Pot... Beckett, you are not!

G'day Possums,

well, it seems that one of the last edifices of Australian civil society, the Catholic Church has been shown to be rotten from the top down, too. Joining the finance and banking sectors, treatment of the elderly in nursing homes,  endemic violence against women, the appalling conditions for incarcerated indigenous youth, the anti-environmental stupidities in the Murray-Darling. 

The Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse has claimed Cardinal George Pell, who has been convicted on 5 counts over two boys, as a paedophile and is awaiting sentencing.

"It's a sad story and it wasn't of much interest to me" said Pell-Pot (*2) when asked how much he knew of his priests paedophile activities, betraying his dismissive clerical arrogance and also, as parents of his victims have told "....his sociopathic lack of empathy" as he didn't seem fazed by the fact that 7% of his clergy were serial perpetrators.

 Le Thoronet

Shades of... “You do not, have the power to command bishops.”* railed Beckett to Henry 2 in 1162 as the king attempted to pull the clergy into judicial line on similar matters.

The enraged howls emanating from The Ugly American Murdoch's shills over his Pell's conviction had ex prime miniature, Little Johnny Howard in the lead, and Miranda The Mad, Devine followed by Blot-on-the-Landscape, Bolt both frothing at the mouth over this alleged miscarriage of justice..."...he's a good bloke", "...a witty conversationalist".. "...he couldn't have done it" claimed all three, not in possession of the facts of the case, but seeing perhaps truly for the first time, in this "...disgraceful decision.." (by 12 jurors) that one of their apparently unassailable conservative, nay, fascist pillars, had suddenly fallen, disgraced and more importantly, was forever impotent.

Silvacane

Did it occur to them that their political commentary and lying might now come under closer scrutiny and that Little Johnny who was so keen to kill Iraqi's on a hunch about WMD's and send troops into indigenous camps on falsified information, be racist to the very refugees whose plight he had helped cause were now exposed and didn't have the moral cover they once assumed through association?That they were justly being clearly seen as craven paedophile apologists and protectors?

Le Thoronet

Fractured is the glass of benign paternalism and the isolation of "truth" troublemakers that had worked for centuries as had, "You do not have the power to command bishops"... as when Bernard of Clairvaux did a family take-over of the Cistercian monasteries set up by a rather gentle Englishman, Stephen Harding (which was probably the last time the French saw anything gentle in the English), which became in the so-called, "Middle -Ages" a prototype multi-national organization, calls up the Crusades, castigates Richard the Lionheart's mum, Eleanor for being a little fiesty (and too fun loving) and then he helped set up the Templars who were a multi-national business (before Phillip IV tried a terminal take-over of his own a few years down the track)...and shooed the peasants off their land and out of their villages in the godly pursuit of larger profits and more land for their "Lay-brothers" (serfs) to work whilst they discussed how many angels could dance on the head of a pin!

The Forge, Fontenay

"Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest" said Denis Diderot, who is one man who would have heartily applauded Julia Gillard's setting up of this RC into child sex abuse. Who, as Prime Minister was so consistently and foully abused by those now singing the praises of a convicted paedophile cleric and who hypocritically think the law is what they say it is but doesn't apply to them.

End times? What a mess has been made of this country.

Hoo-roo petals,

Shane

Silvacane

* Ackroyd, History of England… Foundation. Macmillan 2011

*2Pell-Pot: the nickname given Pell by staff at the Catholic Education Office when he became Archbishop of Melbourne (when the convicted offences occurred) and halted all new appointments that had been made, particularly those of women.