{"id":2628,"date":"2013-05-31T06:57:21","date_gmt":"2013-05-31T06:57:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/?p=2628"},"modified":"2013-05-30T15:21:49","modified_gmt":"2013-05-30T15:21:49","slug":"cardinal-abortion-is-bigger-sin-than-priest-abuse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/2013\/05\/31\/cardinal-abortion-is-bigger-sin-than-priest-abuse\/","title":{"rendered":"Cardinal: Abortion is bigger sin than priest abuse"},"content":{"rendered":"

This ‘classic’ is from Salon<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Advice for Cardinal Pell: When you\u2019re talking about coverups of child rape, it\u2019s best to stick with apologizing<\/h3>\n

BY\u00a0MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Cardinal:
Cardinal George Pell of Australia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

George Pell says, \u201cI have always been on the side of the victims.\u201d But the archbishop of Sydney has a funny way of expressing his support.<\/p>\n

During an inquiry this week into what the Herald Sun describes as \u201crampant\u201d child sexual abuse by priests going back decades, Pell admitted, \u201cWe\u2019ve been slow to address the anguish of the victims and dealt with it very imperfectly.\u201d He acknowledged that his predecessor, Sir Frank Little, \u201cdid cover up\u201d sex abuse and that former Ballarat Bishop Ronald Mulkearns knew of accusations and destroyed documents and moved suspects to other parishes, actions that were\u00a0\u201cfollowed by disastrous consequences.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0The Victorian parliament has already assessed that roughly 620 children were sexually abused by clergy in Australia from the 1930s to the present. It was abuse that was not just perpetrated but concealed by the nation\u2019s hierarchy. \u201cThe primary motivation would have been to respect the reputation of the church,\u201d Pell admitted.\u00a0\u201cThere was a fear of scandal.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

In his remarks, Pell was apologetic and specific in his acknowledgment of wrongdoing. \u201cI don\u2019t think many, if any, persons in the leadership of the Catholic Church knew what a horrendous widespread mess we were sitting on. There\u2019s no doubt about it that lives have been blighted,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s no doubt about it that these crimes have contributed to too many suicides.\u201d<\/p>\n

But though Pell says he never directly covered up abuse and that he is \u201ccommitted to working to make improvements,\u201d Pell\u2019s track record tells a different story. Twenty years ago,\u00a0Pell appeared in court with his colleague Father Gerald Francis Ridsdale<\/a>\u00a0while Ridsdale\u00a0was on trial for sexual abuse. Ridsdale was eventually convicted of molesting and\u00a0raping 40 children<\/a>\u00a0over a 26-year period. At the inquiry this week, Cardinal Pell defended his support for Ridsdale, saying, \u201cAt that stage nobody knew \u2014 well, I certainly didn\u2019t \u2014 what proved to be the full extent of his infamous career. I did know that there was a very significant number of charges but I had no idea about all the other things that would unfold.\u201d During the same period, Pell continued to authorize payment of\u00a0a \u201cfrugal\u201d allowance to Father Ronald Pickering<\/a>\u00a0after Pickering fled to England in the wake of sex abuse allegations and refused to cooperate with authorities. It was Pell\u2019s successor who stopped the payments and launched an investigation.<\/p>\n

\n

That\u2019s not where Pell\u2019s ignorance ends, though. Eleven years ago, Pell told a group of World Youth Day delegates that \u201cabortion is a worse moral scandal than priests sexually abusing young people\u201d<\/a>\u00a0because abortion \u201cis always a destruction of human life.\u201d<\/p>\n

And although, when he spoke on Monday, Pell said, \u201cI am fully apologetic and absolutely sorry,\u201d his degree of not-getting-it is still pretty staggering. Pell insisted,\u00a0\u201cI don\u2019t believe we have a moral obligation\u201d<\/a>\u00a0to increase the settlement amounts for sex abuse victims. And in an epic case of poor timing, he railed against \u201c25 years of hostility from the press\u201d and noted that the Australian government \u201cwas not active earlier\u201d in pursuing sexual abuse cases. He also, outrageously, declared,\u00a0\u201dI\u2019ve sometimes said, if we\u2019d been gossips \u2013 which we weren\u2019t \u2013 and we had talked to one another about the problems that were there we would have realised earlier just how widespread this awful business was.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a hint: When you\u2019re talking about systematic coverups of child rape, it\u2019s best to stick with apologizing. It\u2019s good to remember that you can admit you\u2019ve made mistakes without making the ludicrous, easily refuted claim that you\u2019ve always been on the side of the victims, or humble bragging that the real problem is that you weren\u2019t \u201cgossips.\u201d Doing the morally and legally responsible thing of acting when someone is abusing children is not, by the way, \u201cgossip.\u201d And you want to consider, while you\u2019re explaining yourself to the world, that you still have much soul searching yet to do. Because right now, Pell remains a harrowing example of the evil of complacency.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most telling moment of Pell\u2019s appearance wasn\u2019t anything he said about the crimes on his colleagues or the litigation of victims. Instead it was when, on Monday, the deputy chairman of the committee, Frank McGuire, asked Pell point-blank, \u201cWere you guilty of willful blindness?\u201d And the man of God answered him confidently, \u201cI certainly wasn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

George Pell says, \u201cI have always been on the side of the victims.\u201d But the archbishop of Sydney has a funny way of expressing his support.<\/p>\n

During an inquiry this week into what the Herald Sun describes as \u201crampant\u201d child sexual abuse by priests going back decades, Pell admitted, \u201cWe\u2019ve been slow to address the anguish of the victims and dealt with it very imperfectly.\u201d He acknowledged that his predecessor, Sir Frank Little, \u201cdid cover up\u201d sex abuse and that former Ballarat Bishop Ronald Mulkearns knew of accusations and destroyed documents and moved suspects to other parishes, actions that were\u201cfollowed by disastrous consequences.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[304,14,362],"tags":[710,300,709],"class_list":["post-2628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church","category-morality","category-religion-and-society","tag-catholic","tag-catholicism","tag-child-abuse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2628\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}