Cardinal Pell, the Australian Dreyfuss’ funeral is being held today or tomorrow depending on your time zone. Pell died unexpectedly at 81, a couple of hours after having seemingly recovered from a minor hip operation. An inside source alleged possible foul play (murder). Though Pell didn’t die before completely and utterly destroying Francis’ synod on synodality in his final article however. In fact, he was extremely blessed not dying just two weeks earlier. He also got to attend Pope Benedict XVI’s funeral, meeting with fellow martyr Cardinal Zen and to further co-ordinate efforts to fight attacks on the Catholic faith hand ensure an orthodox successor to Francis.
Now gay rights activists want to protest his funeral because off his history off defending Catholic teachings on sexual matters. Will similar protests take place at the funerals of imams or orthodox rabbis opposed to gay marriage? Probably not.
Protesting a funeral, unless we’re talking about a murder or abuser, is completely and utterly detestable. Moreover, it’s extremely childish. The need to have the last word. Simply because he preached Conservative views, those who felt he opposed expansion of their rights must now mock him in death.
This is not even a matter of don’t speak ill of the dead. It’s simply, don’t harass people attending a funeral at a church. It’s intimidation. Pure and simple.
It’s even more tasteless in the case of Cardinal Pell. He was targeted by the corrupt Victoria Police,[1] falsely accused, unjustly convicted and suffered more than a year in prison for crimes he didn’t commit. He was also targeted by the state-controlled ABC[2] (who themselves have a nasty history involving pedophilia).[3] Finally, even though the Victoria parliamentary inquiry and the Royal Commission had refuted false claims that he had covered up abuse as archbishop or helped his predecessor cover up abuse as auxiliary bishop and had even been forced to acknowledge that the Melbourne, the Royal Commission STILL smeared Pell by simply assuming he had known about but failed act against Gerald Ridsdale’s abuse as a priest simply based, on the fact that they assumed to that bishop Mulkeans must have told him.[4] His proven record of reporting abusers since 1996 mattered less than the unproven assumptions that he probably knew about abuse many, many decades ago.
They called his sworn testimony implausible but not false. No charge of perjury was recommended against him. His sworn denial back up by other sworn testimonies was not subjected to a fair trial. The Commission avoided that by deeming his testimony ‘implausible’. An opinion of the commissioners not subjected to any kind of judicial review or appeal.
This was used by anti-Catholic haters as some form of vindication. Even though all the accusations against him had been refuted in court, they tried to turn the opinions of government appointed officials into a pseudo-verdict indicating pseudo-guilt. Opinions by government officials that suggest guilt but that cannot be tested in a court of law. An end-run around the justice system. Civil rights and the rule of law be damned I guess.
The man has suffered so much, so many good deeds that did not go unpunished, now hateful bigots need to attack him even in death.
The witch-hunt against Pell can form a whole series of articles about the importance of due process or the problems with the rule of law in Victoria, jury trials and parliamentary inquiries, but for now, I am starting to wonder whether hate speech laws should be sharpened to be used more fairly to protect Catholics, since anti-Catholicism appears to be the last acceptable prejudice. Or maybe there should simply be laws that protect funerals from disruptive attacks.
Regardless, real victims have stood up defending Pell for his fighting against sexual abuse within the Church.
Notes:
[2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-14/cardinal-george-pell-andrew-bolt-sky-news-interview/12146594
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7M1M2kdCWs
[5] https://mercatornet.com/cardinal-pell-a-sensitive-servant-of-sex-abuse-survivors/82596/
John Logan