Somebody named Clarence Darrow once said, 'I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.' This is often attributed to Mark Twain.
It's that odd feeling you get when a pariah dies.
As a good ex-Methodist, I don't like to speak ill of the dead - it's how I was raised, but as a human being with eyes and ears and a heart, I can't and won't mourn George Pell. There's too much to put him in the band of people you can't mourn. Not that I would have any reason to give it extra thought. I'm not a practicing Roman Catholic. I didn't grow up in the Catholic Church in the seventies and eighties. I truly believe the church should be paying tax on their assets in some form - actually, I think unless they can prove what they're spending on alms to help the community, everything else should be taxed.
I remember an old colleague told me that they'd been baptised by George Pell. Their family knew him as the local priest at the time. Part of me wanted to ask them what they thought of this, what their parents thought of what was going on as at the time, all of the details were coming out about the institutionalised child abuse in the media - this was in the mid-noughties. They had no problem with him, but would then speak no further. You don't ask more questions.
Another old colleague related how he'd gone to a school reunion at a Catholic Boys school in rural Victoria. They were a boarder at one of the schools where one of the better-known paedophile priests was located. A number of their classmates had attempted suicide over the years. A number had succeeded in taking their lives. According to this friend, who had not been subjected to any abuse, the schoolmates gathered around those who had abuse inflicted on them and supplied what support they could. What sort if support can you give to people who've ostensibly had their lives taken away from them?
It's interesting watching the media commentary on the matter. The press is trying, and failing to be balanced., There is an interesting article in The Age, the first paragraph reading, "Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has called George Pell’s overturned child sex conviction a “modern-day political persecution”, saying the Andrews government should reflect on how Victoria’s legal institutions gave rise to the former cardinal’s 404-day imprisonment." Other than you wonder why they are giving Peter Dutton oxygen, you have to dislike the man more for making all of this a political beat up. The full article can be found here.
He's always been a polarising figure. When his prison sentence was overturned, the doors of the Melbourne's St Patrick's Cathedral were vandalised. At the time of his trial, the Cathedral and many churches around Australia were bedecked with green and yellow ribbons. His name rarely invokes joy.
For me, it's pretty cut and dry. A man who was supposed to be in charge of one of the biggest churches in to flat out deny that he didn't know about the institutionalised abuse and refusing to do anything other than to move the offenders to other parishes - well, it doesn't hold water for me. That his Melbourne protocols which capped any financial payouts to victims - this from one of the richest organisations in Australia.
George Pell worked to protect the Catholic Church - nothing else.
I have no reason to mourn him. I'm hoping he won't be afforded a state funeral, although we know there will be fanfare at the Cathedrals of Australia over the next week. And my heart goes out to those who have been affected by his actions. With his death, may you find peace.
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