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Crikey Says
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The Catholic Church seems to have found itself caught between worlds through the unfolding week of World Youth Day (caught between time references too), an event dominated theologically by doctrinaire and conservative hardliners, but one working hard to adapt the aura, energy and communications tools of youth to its cause. Pilgrims have shopped for merchandise, rocked out to White Metal and Godly rap and linked together through the web 2.0 nattiness of xt3.com. But then there’s the corrosive little stain of clerical s-x abuse (one invisible to the normally penetrating gaze of the News Ltd press), the unfortunate remarks of certain senior clergy and the lingering issue of whether the pope will apologise to victims, merely make an acknowledgment of their suffering or ignore the whole business. His Holiness has already shown a readiness to engage you on their own terms with the now fabled Pope txt of Monday. Time to flex the thumb one more time. How hard can it be?
That’d be a start. |
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17 Comments
Dave, your reply and prior comment demonstrates prejudice in you rather than a “company” mentality in Pell and Fisher
JamesK, apologies from the catholic church about priest abuse, while few and far between today, were unheard of a decade ago. I am arguing that protests of the type seen at WYD have been probably the most significant factor in bringing them about. I am at a loss to understand what you think has brought about this change in the church if not protest. It’s certainly hasn’t come from their lawyers (who are of the ‘admit nothing’ attitude). You are quite right to state that editorials such as this one in Crikey won’t prevent abuse, but that’s because neither abusive priests nor likely victims read Crikey. If editorials like this appeared in main-stream media, on the other hand, then there is every chance they could cause likely victims or their parents to reconsider their total faith in priests not to breach a family’s trust, and thus reduce abuse.
JamesK, I’d agree with you IF the church had been in any way pro-active on this issue. Justice for victims has necessitated action of the type Bolt and Henderson have criticised. Your arguement is based on facts which are limited to the last month, but this issue is decades old and the church only has itself to blame for that. Other aspects of the WYD protests I supported related to the ‘thou shalt not annoy’ laws, which were shown to be of themselves unlawful and were simply ludicrous, although I hold the NSW Government to have been more responsible for these than the church. I have no probs with Catholics holding festivals, but the combination of Government support for the event putting this in the public realm and the church’s own actions on a bunch of issues means that any hope of ‘untainted celebration for Catholics’ was well and truly forfeited.
No Dave ! My original post was about this slimey and intellectually bereft Crikey editorial and not about your: “original issue raised by JamesK which was about Bolt’s quote” .
No need for you to stand on a soap box and lecture us on your views on catholicism in general and on its role in sex abuse in particular. We have heard it repeated by you on many occasions in the past. You have not engaged in a discussion here. We have just witnessed a series of rants from you.
You comment : “I’m sure there’s nothing I can say which will convince you that the Catholic Church has been anything other than wonderful in responding to sexual abuse of vulnerable people by priests” personally offensive. You are dishonest Dave Liberts and at least partially, knowingly so.
I disagree that justice for victims is as a result of anything that Bolt or Henderson have criticised. I do not even know how that could be reasonably inferred.
Conversely an ‘editorial’ such as the one above has done absolutely nothing for victims of child sex abuse by the clergy or more importantly to prevent it happening again.
The Victorian Government hands out $60 million to Bernie Ecclestone each year and Rudd/ Brumby has handed out $70million to Toyota shareholders. Rudd/ Brumby have justifiably been criticised and Toyota/Bernie Ecclestone have not been ‘slimed’ as a result.
Funny that…..
Oh I get it JamesK, you’re defending the indefensible and suggesting that Pell and Fisher are meeting the ‘what would Jesus do’ test - I thought you were just calling me prejudiced. I’m sure there’s nothing I can say which will convince you that the Catholic Church has been anything other than wonderful in responding to sexual abuse of vulnerable people by priests, but I’m happy to let anyone else reading this page make their own mind up about that. Pell and Fisher are part of the same Catholic tradition which appalled Martin Luther all those centuries ago, and their words of regret are certainly not matched by their lawyers at ten paces actions in response to victims of priest abuse. Anyone googling ‘Cardinal Pell abuse legal advice’ will find a heap of quotes about how this company man is serving his company very well, and victims very poorly.
Crikey equates with puerile slime.
Andrew Bolt today says: “It hardly needs saying that I despise pedophiles and rapists. But even as a non-Christian, I smell bigotry. In fact, it seems much of the Left-wing media has tried furiously to make sure when we think of Catholicism, in this week of celebration of the faith, that we think not Saviour but slime.”
Easy to see why Bolt is so successful when the bottom-feeding left-wing media (Crikey probably the worst or best depending upon your view) revels in their very own depravity with … well pride apparently!
The Pope says he’ll express sorrow and regret to victims of priests who abused them en route to Australia. This is after Pell by all reasonable accounts does much to right wrongs.
The wingeing whining victim mentality left wing media cry foul. They cry that’s not enough and demand a formal apology.
The Pope gives a formal apology sympathetically and lovingly delivered with some victims at the mass.
Predictably this is not enough. The chorus of cries are now to apologise directly to the victims as he did in the USA.
The victims and their supporters joined the Pope for mass at St Mary’s Cathedral, before meeting with him for up to half an hour in an emotional last-minute addition to the 81-year-old’s itinerary.The Pope apologises directly to these representative victims.
Are you ready?…… You guessed it……. That’s not enough! …”what they’ve done is selected victims who have agreed with what the church’s policies are…” And so on ad nauseum.
All of this almost repulsive chastising and denigrating of the Church and Pell ( ooh don’t the left love sliming this man?) relentlessly starts 2 weeks before the Pontiff is due to arrive. Old cases come out of the woodwork championed predictably by Lateline and The Age. Very difficult to be unkind to ‘victims’ even if they have had their day in court, been apologised to and helped financially and with counselling.
I have no issue with genuine protest but suspect a mixture of committed anti-catholics, the loony left and the simply greedy are significant forces behind this ‘alternative welcoming committee’.
I thought it crass and vulgar and that it reflected poorly on australians and our idea of a ‘fair go’.
This was unfair and I suspect many other non catholics were also frankly ashamed by the treatment dished out at a time which should have one of untainted celebration for catholics. Thankfully the silent majority spoke with their feet and cheers.
Most child sex abuse occurs in the home and for it to occur most psychologists agree that there has to be an ‘enabler’ even if that enabler is not fully consciously aware of what is going on and the catastrophic consequences. Parents, particularly mothers, family and society are now finally and after eons of such human history, rightly saying enough! Paedophiles are not born evil. Our society made them that way but as individuals each and every one must take responsibility for our own actions and face the consequences. That is true for each of us who was or could have been in some way shape or form an enabler. That is practically everyone.
Lastly the ‘editorial’ (although it certainly does not deserve that moniker) was indeed overtly “slimy and intellectually bereft”. It says more about Crikey than it does Pell and the Church.
Not sure what your reference ” just ‘cranky’ ” refers to Dave. But no reasonable person could defend the editorial above. It is needlessly and flippantly offensive. Forget about the ‘right’ and ‘left’ filter just use common sense. It will probably astound you, but Gerard Henderson and Andrew Bolt have been known to be right in another sense of that word!.
Stuffed up there, the line was ‘any resemblance between Catholicism and Christianity is purely coincidental’, but I edited poorly.
Hmmm, thinking Saviour as Bolt suggests….would the Saviour’s opinion of a parent raising their daughter’s suicide after being raped by a priest be that dad was just ‘cranky’? Like Henderson, Bolt’s just using this to push his usual barrow of bitching about the Left. I’ve been saying it all week JamesK, if the Catholic Church stopped pretending it was so wonderful and without sin, then protesters would stop needing to point it out for them.
JamesK, you’re right that I took a cheap shot, but your criticism of a ‘slimy and intellectually bereft’ editorial ignores the reality that, left to its own devices, the Catholic Church would continue to bury these cases and run away from its responsibilities. Like various protestors and non-commercial media, the editorial makes the simple point that the Catholic Church could do a lot to improve its handling of priest abuse, and that this would be beneficial for the church as much as victims. Without this ‘bigotry’ (as Bolt calls it), abuse would still be going on. I can’t see how you can oppose the protest while claiming to oppose abuse, because the Church has had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the twenty first century on this issue. I don’t genuinely believe you support abuse, but can you explain what factors other than loud protests have made the church change its tune since the seventies (when simply shifting priests on was de riguer) and continues to change it today (when apologies actually happen from time to time) and will hopefully change it into the future (when victims won’t have to jump massive legal hurdles to get anywhere at all)? There aren’t any.
Dave Liberts found your previous post the day before and now realise to what you were referring. I posted a response to that which I repost here:
Dave, I could find no recording of what Bishop Fisher has said but found this from the Herald Sun:
Bishop Fisher told 2UE radio today he had not seen the broadcast due to WYD celebrations, and could only speak based on the newspaper reports he had seen this morning.
“Happily, I think most of Australia was enjoying and delighting in the beauty and goodness of these young people,” said Bishop Fisher, “and the hope for us doing these sorts of things better in the future, as we saw last night, rather than dwelling crankily, as a few people are doing, on old wounds.
“(Cardinal Pell) has led, in the church and this country, in trying to put in better and better processes to deal with these things so that we get it right.
“I am convinced that (Cardinal Pell) has done all he can and will continue to receive, as I hear today that was suggested on Lateline, some ways that we might improve processes for the future.
“We are happy to hear any constructive advice on how we can do this better in the future and in the meantime to do all we can to prevent this happening again and to bring healing and justice to the victims of these terrible cases.”
So tell me how exactly “Bishop Fisher’s comments, clearly made on behalf of the church and not simply his own opinion, reveal a great deal about the reality of the church’s response to this issue”.
I might also add that this was obviously an interview on the fly and Fisher who apparently admitted that he had not seen the Lateline programme which was what he was asked to respond to. It’s more than a bit rich of you Dave Liberts to comment “clearly made on behalf of the church and not simply his own opinion” Not that it is particularly relevant.
I understand that this case was settled and I further understand that Pell apologised before legal action and he was not party to the legal action that the family took
JamesK, I’m happy to stand by my comments. The fact is that Bishop Fisher and Cardinal Pell are company men through and through. They are defending their company in legalistic terms against, in many cases, proven accusations of terrible wrongdoing. Your quote of Bolt emphasises that this religion (and its detractors) should be focussed on the works and words of ‘The Saviour’, by whom he’s presumably referring to a long-haired anti-authoritarian who lived in Israel 2000 years ago. The contrast between the church’s legalism, confirmed once more by Bishop Fisher (or are you actually suggesting that he genuinely has no idea how the church could handle these cases better, to which I can only reply Bullshit?) and the gear I learnt during my religious education couldn’t be starker. The Catholic Church will do whatever it takes to protect its assets. It didn’t become one of the wealthiest organisations on the planet any other way. Anyone who saw the footage of Bishop Fisher making his statement could clearly see he was the spokesman for the church in a press conference, and your attack on me for making this clear shows a bit of desperation to win an arguement with debating technique rather than fact.
No Dave. When I said that your original comment and your subsequent reply to mine demonstrates prejudice in you rather some legalistic “company” mentality in Pell and Fisher that was plain english.
JamesK, if agreeing with Phil Adams’ conclusion that any resemblance between Catholicism and Christianity makes me prejudiced, then I agree I am prejudiced. I actually thought Phil was being a bit harsh until WYD came to town and proved me wrong.
Actually, to get back to the original issue raised by JamesK which was about Bolt’s quote, I’d just add that it’s only been through protest and media reportage (“bigotry” according to Bolt) that victims of priest abuse have gotten anywhere at all. It looks like bigotry if the observer starts with the assumption that both sides must have some validity in their positions. That’s clearly not the case when it comes to priest abuse - decades of coverups by the extremely wealthy and powerful church are well documented, whilst victims have had to fight every step of the way. My earlier-referred-to Google search terms reveal references to many such tales. If the church was more honest about its failings, then perhaps we would indeed be looking at bigotry. But when the church leaves victims in the lurch, as has happened so many times, it’s not bigotry to point out that this is a pattern of behaviour.