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POISONED POWER AT TOP OF RC CHURCH…….. PELL TAKEN TO PRISON.

BREAKING NEWS – PELL TAKEN INTO CUSTODY

Cardinal Pell: Poisoned power at the top of the Church
By Martin Bashir Religion editor BBC 26 February 2019

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Last weekend’s unprecedented Vatican summit on child sexual abuse was closed with a Sunday homily by Australian Mark Coleridge, the Archbishop of Brisbane.
“In sexual abuse,” Archbishop Coleridge said, “the powerful lay hands on the Lord’s… weakest and most vulnerable.”
He could have been describing his fellow countryman, Cardinal George Pell, for there are few as powerful to have fallen from grace within the Roman Catholic Church.
Pell is certainly the most senior churchman to have been convicted of offences against children.
‘Cardinal Rambo’
Pell was appointed by the Pope as Prefect of the Secretariat of the Economy, which effectively runs the Vatican’s voluminous finances.
Following his appointment, he relocated to Rome from Australia, where he had been the Archbishop of Sydney since 2001.
Pell, who began a five-year term in 2014 with offices on the first floor of the Apostolic Palace, quickly set about introducing new accounting standards, established the Holy See’s financial watchdog to deal with suspicious transactions, and ensured that the Vatican Bank’s accounts were independently audited.
A bullish figure who faced plenty of obstruction, he was known among some officials as “Cardinal Rambo”. But that was more a term of endearment – because Pell was having a positive impact on the church’s finances.
News of his conviction for child sexual abuse is a grave blow not just to the church, but also to Pope Francis personally.
He was one of the Pope’s closest aides.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGES Image caption Pell was appointed to oversee the Vatican’s finances in 2014
He was not only leading the crucial reform of the church’s sprawling finances, but was also appointed by Francis to his nine-member Council of Cardinal Advisors, known as the C9. It was the C9 that encouraged Pope Francis to host this first-ever summit on child sexual abuse.
But that was just one of many Vatican departments in which Pell played a significant role.
Poison from top to bottom
Cardinal Pell was a member of the Congregation of Bishops, the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, the Congregation for the Institutes of the Consecrated Life and the Societies of Apostolic Life, and the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelisation.
His conviction confirms that the poison of sexual abuse has infected every level of the Roman Catholic Church

Back in 2012, then Prime Minister Julia Gillard established a Royal Commission to inquire into institutional responses to child abuse in Australia.

It found that 7% of priests in Australia had abused children.
The charges against Pell emerged from Australia’s rigorous inquiry into every institution that had access to children.
The state began a process that the church itself seemed incapable of managing – and now this 77-year-old ambitious Cardinal will swap the Apostolic Palace for a jail cell.
And in a final turn of providence, or coincidence, it won’t even be necessary for Pope Francis to fire Cardinal Pell from office.
His five-year term as Prefect of the Secretariat of the Economy expired on 24 February.

PAT SAYS

Cardinal Pell has been convicted of sexually abusing minors.

He will be sentenced this week.

He is the highest ranking cleric in the RC to be convicted of such crimes.

He still has an appeal in the system. That appeal will cement or overturn his conviction.

I imagine an overturn is highly unlikely – but not impossible.

I watched an original tv programme that interviewed the victims. I was impressed with what they had to say and how they conducted themselves. I believed they were telling the truth.

Sadly one of them died recently and never got to know the outcome.

Pope Francis is now left with another McCarrick decision – to dismiss Pell from the College of Cardinals and to remove him from the clerical state.

He will probably wait for the outcome of the appeal to do that?

We had Cardinal Keith O’Brien in Scotland; Cardinal Groer in Austria; McCarrick in the USA and now Pell in Australia. There are others out there who have not yet been exposed.

It shows how widespread and universal the problem is.

The Roman Catholic Church is in melt down.

“How the mighty have fallen”.

97 replies on “POISONED POWER AT TOP OF RC CHURCH…….. PELL TAKEN TO PRISON.”

Can I just point out that +Keith wasn’t interfering with children. He was having consensual sex with adults. Yes, he had power over some of them and it was wrong, but touching up children is on a different scale.

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8.19 A come on hi. Wake up and smell the holy water hi. Scales me aunt Fanny’s porridge pot. Using Church and associated environs to promote th cause of blessed William D’Testicle is a sad dangerous and damaging fantasy hi

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10:11
Hello fly, hi, begorra fly hi i think yer onto somin fly hi, blessed William D,Testicle is patron saint to be of the Order of the Golden Willies hi fly, sex addicks the lotta of em fly hi and a splash or dippin the holy water wouldn’t go astray at al at al at alll hi , bye 😇

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Dear Father Denis: “touching up”: please don’t use euphimism to describe abusive sexual behaviour. It can seem like minimization. From what you said Ì don’t think that was your intention. But just be careful
MMM

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Heartening news from Oz: Paedo Pell to spend time before sentencing on March 13 IN CUSTODY. Which means the dirty old priest-pervert will not enjoy the luxury of home detention.
Look over your shoulder Francie boy: your day is coming for what you alkedgedly did and didn’t do (but should have done) while you were Cardinal Archbishop of Buenos Aires

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Cardinal George Pell has been remanded in custody.
George Pell bowed towards the judge and leaned on his walking stick, before officers took him down from the courtroom and into custody.
Earlier, he’d arrived to face a crowd of angry campaigners waving placards – many had come to see the moment he lost his liberty.
Though an appeal looms, Pell will return to court in two weeks to learn his sentence.
But is doesn’t say if he’s in jail or a house detention.

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I see that Pell has been taken in to custody. The judge’s remarks during the custody hearing were pretty forthright, and I think that the cards are now stacked against Pell. He still has the right of appeal and we shall wait to see what happens there, but in the meantime he has lost his freedom and is in custody awaiting final sentencing. And then an appeal. I still feel myself that there is much that does not stack up in this case, and in particular a febrile atmosphere in Australia that appears to be determined to find him guilty come what may. We will see if his appeal will come to a final resolution for all in this case. I think it fair for the Vatican to have suspended his faculties to exercise a public ministry; if and when he is finally and definitely found guilty at appeal, that would be the time for them go further and remove his red hat and probably laicise him. McCarrick was only laicised after his Vatican investigation / trial was completed. I must say that this morning I feel that things do look dark for Pell.

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Febrile atmosphere? A determination to find Pell guilty of something or other? You really have a penchant for avoiding reality, don’t you, while paying heed to the surreality of your ‘febrile’ imagination?
Paedo Pell was found guilty by a lawfully constituted court, by unananimous jury verdict, in accordance with the Law. Nothing ‘febrile’ here. No determination to find him guilty of anything…beyond what evidence proves beyond reasonable doubt he did.

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Just like McCarrick and O’Brien before him, Pell would have been defiling young seminarians at will, but they would be too scared to report it or even speak out now.

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Pell will have plenty of time (years in fact) to mull over it with pal Gerald Riddsdale, another paedo-priest serving time for unholy acts.

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Let’s hope some of them now come forward. But might they not be a bit long in the tooth for Pell’s perverted taste?. He seems to have preferred them really young.

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I read amongst other things yesterday that Gerald Riddsdale is due for release. It is so ironic, he’s getting out at the same time Pell is getting banged up.

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As I have said before, Bp Pat, I still believe his “appointment” was just a con by the Vatican to get him out of Australia because they knew the authorities were on to him. Just like they did with Bernie Law.

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What would your face tell us about you @ 9.02am? Never read such bullshit in all my years. Maybe your face makes you look like a dirty old perv.

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There are others who have argued the rationale for his trial in the opposite direction. That is, that the Italian Mafia was responsible for Pell’s case coming before the Australian courts to get him out of Rome where he was beginning to clean up the finances.
Speculation will never cease.

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10:55
Ah…don’t be so mean.!.Why would you hope such, on little old me?
What have I done, rattle your cage! 👼

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If I understand correctly, Pell’s QC has dramatically shifted from denying the attacks could have happened at all to claiming they were just “vanilla sex”! Meanwhile Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp is claiming Pell’s innocence. Yet again the truth is incidental to politics and a culture war.

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Yes, Richter the fool scored an own goal with that disgraceful remark, an insult to sexually abused children to play down such crimes.

It shows what little understanding and regard Richter has for this crime.

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Abuse survivors and advocates present in the court gasped as Richter made his arguments for a lower-end sentence. He said at one point that if Pell’s victims were “truly distressed” after being abused, they would have returned to their homes exhibiting that distress.

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Richter seems to be an idiot despite his reputation. The case was his to lose, and he lost it.

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Always beware the ‘holy’ men, like Pell. They were as dodgy in Jesus’ time as they are now.
The safest thing a parent can do now is assume every priest a pervert until he proves otherwise.

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10.59: An utterly outrageous comment to make. It’s an invitation to lynch mob mentality. Any person who commits the heinous crime if sexual abuse deserves the full rigour of the law. Any person. It is so unjust to “assume” that all priests are perverts. This is hatred. What about the hundreds of children who are abused by parents or members of families – are we to “assume” all parents cannot be trusted? ALL ABUSE IS MORALLY DESPICABLE irrespective of the status of the perpetrator. It is a poisonous untruth to spout that all priests are potential abusers. Just so wrong.

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We should according to your warped logic @10.59am treat all parents then as paedophiles too. After all the vast majority of it happens within families and the home. I hope you realise what a bloody stupid and dangerous fool you sound with that argument.

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Oh, dear 12:32! Did I strike a nerve, Father.

Trouble is there does seem such a high proportion of pervs in such a relatively small number of priests worldwide. Didn’t the John Jay report find that the incidence of abuse concerned mostly, young, post pubescent males? These priest-pervs preferred very young flesh, then.
It may not make them paedos (barely), but it does make them ephebophiles. In all cases, it makes them extremely dangerous.

Yes, parents should err on the side of caution THEIRS AND THEIR CHILDRENS when dealing with priests.

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6:23
I’m happy you find my “agenda” clear, because I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Yes, the safeguarding of children from paedophile priests is of paramount importance to me as I hope it is to you.
Whoever you are.

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At 6.42
You can start by making your own home one such place of safety – and remember that the majority of sexual abuse of children comes from someone close to them – father, elder brother, uncle, cousin, grandfather. That’ll keep you busy for quite some time.

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Canon law as it stands seems farcical. If a priest attempts marriage, that’s so serious it’s grounds for automatic dismissal. However, if another priest regularly and promiscuously violates his celibacy with men or women, then that just seems like a private issue for the confessional, even if he leaves behind a horrible legacy of emotional and psychological abuse. If he fathers a child and abandons that child and refuses to support that child, there are no penalties in canon law. Even pedophiles or rapists who are priests and commit terrible crimes get no mention of sanctions in canon law. I stand corrected, but it doesn’t seem to add up.

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FYI
Church Militant the vortex is premiering’ Pope Francis guilty of cover up ‘ starts on YouTube in awhile.

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If Church Militant is the source of your ‘knowledge’ and more likely your entertainment, it’s a good insight into the background of weirdos who populate this site. Nothing to do all day except indulge your lower nature?

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I doubt if the weirdos on or watching church militant are responsible for the Rc institutional church mess .There’s more to life and the church than the gay agenda of a lot of clergy. Covering up is what will bring down the Pope.

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Sounds like Papa Francisco days as pontiff are numbered. That’s according to Church Militant.
Media are on Papa Francisco’s heels after the summit.

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Wishful thinking at 3:01. Sounds like you are not a fan of the Holy Father. May you be stuck with him for many a long year to come.

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F***k Church Militant. Load of swivel eyed weirdo loons. That’s not the real Church. They are like the Jacob Rees-Moggs of the Catholic Church. Francis is a Jesuit and will withstand any onslaught. Also, remember he lived through military juntas in Argentina. He knows how to manoeuvre and overcome. I’d put my money on him seeng off Church Military, Old Mother Burke, Adolf Mueller and the rest.

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3:45
JS, while I agree with what you say, it remains to be seen if Francis will withstand the media onslaught likely to desend on him, following the Synod. The Church is in totally uncharted waters. The media are likely to thoroughly trawl through Francis track record, and not go as soft on him, as has been the case, in my opinion. Pell, in my view, is sunk, whether or which, at this stage.

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Francis didn’t just live through the period of the junta, he supported it, even at the cost of his fellow Jesuits.

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I bet the Oxford Oratory and associated bits are glad about the Pell thing….gets the spotlight away from them and Daniel. Any news of the boy, yet ?

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You two at 3:46 and 3:48 are a pair of stirrers! You’ll set Mr Angry off again complaining about any posts relating to dear old England! Though speaking of Daniel, I happened to notice an interview he gave a few years ago in which he expressed his belief that the Church’s troubles were down to people not going to confession! John Cornwell’s excellent study “The Dark Box” actually demonstrated that confession far from being a solution was part of the problem. Cornwell demonstrated the tendency of abusive priests to absolve each other as if in the worst Protestant caricature of the confessional. He cited examples of priests even seeking each other out in the middle of the night to get absolution and then offending again: they were not addressing their problem/sin/crime. Until we start taking frankly, this nightmare will continue. And I’m afraid priests such as Daniel, no matter how personally kind, have themselves facilitated the cognitive dissonance which prevents so many religious people from dealing with reality. If Daniel has had a wake up call, then I am sure it’s a liberation for him. It would be better for all to know why he’s buggered off rather than being left to assume the worst. Thanks for reminding us, but wait for it!

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Wait until what unfolded in Galway the last few months gets out. Heads will roll when the proverbial hits the fan. The ‘gift’ Martin Drennan received from the Redemptorists will come back to bite them all.

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It’s been hinted at here before. A priest reported a safeguarding issue concerning another priest, a former Redemptorist, and was ostracised. The former Redemptorist has not been removed from ministry and indeed has even been covering in the cathedral. This in spite of the fact the investigation is still ongoing by the secular authorities. They tried to force the priest that reported it to cover it up. Two bishops and the diocesan secretary, apart from the accused priest, will be in serious trouble if it gets out.

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Both. The former Redemptorist and his housekeeper made up vicious rumours about the priest that was doing the right thing in reporting the issue. The Bishop apparently sided with the former Redemptorist because he comes from a wealthy and well-connected family. He has a sister a barrister. Also, the former Redemptorist is known for putting on a convincing show, complete with water works. He has caused hell in every parish he’s been in.

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I’m very shocked that this has not come out – surely safeguarding dictates that Any priest with an allegation stands down. How come this wealthy and connected ex Red isn’t dealt with by this standard ??

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That’s the absolute mystery. He’s good though, good at putting on a show. The sad thing is the church isn’t helping him by protecting him. Apart from his alleged peccadilloes, he needs serious psychological intervention. He is a fantasist and a narcissist.

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It is my opinion that Cardinal George Pell is a predatory paedophile and that the single allegation against him (abusing two 13-year-old boys in the sacristy of Melbourne cathedral) is entirely credible. However, I am concerned that Pell’s conviction came down, apparently to this alone. If this is true, then the conviction rests solely on a he said-he said basis, and that one party’s word (the complainant’s) was accepted, seemingly without any substantiation whatever.

Is this right? Would I want to be convicted of a crime in this way? Simply because the other party came over more convincingly when giving his testimony? No, I should not.

Would any of us?

There is a saying in, I think, jurisprudence: nothing proves itself. In other words, ‘an allegation is not its own proof’.

Even though I do believe that Pell sexually assualted those two unfortunate boys in the way the complainant alleged, I do not believe that he should have been convicted on the complainant’s word alone.

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6:22

Yes, that’s correct. But Pell nevertheless maintains his innocence.

To an inexperienced judicial eye, the contradiction here must seem utterly bizarre, a clear admission of Pell’s guilt by his barrister and an acknowledgement by the latter that he knew of Pell’s guilt all along. Except that really it is neither, however bluntly this his may seem. Richter was not arguing on the basis of Pell’s actual guilt, but on the basis of a judicial verdict, which neither Pell nor Richter accept as just.

For Australians, there is a crucial legal principle at stake here: that an accuser must prove his allegation. Ignoring this (as appears to have happened in this case) removes a fundamental safeguard in the legal-justice system.

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One of your many good points, Magna. There is a danger that this conviction could undermine the whole legal process, and the fall-out actually undermine the torturous path of bringing abusers to justice. As it’s been reported, you don’t need to be a lawyer or expert to see that the verdict cannot stand. Pell may well be guilty, but has his guilt been proved beyond reasonable doubt? Even I, thick as I am ( as somebody on this blog recently pointed out rather unconvincingly ) can see this is shaky and there is the possibility that the jury with every good intention may have been swayed to deliver what they thought was the “right” rather than the “correct” verdict. Sorry, I am not able to express myself coherently.

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There is nothing wrong with how you expressed your point of view, except that you did so in a way which revealed an unnecessary lack of self-confidence. ☺

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Magna, I think you are right in part. Namely, being convicted on the word of the complainant alone is wrong. There needs to be credible corroborating evidence. Otherwise, anyone can say anything about anyone and it will be believed. It’s part of the culture of victimhood that has been encouraged in respect of abuse – we will believe you, whatever you say. An accusation is sufficient to establish guilt. It doesn’t happen with any other crime, I think.
However, I still think the Pell is incredibly unlikely to have done and got away with doing what it is said he had done, in that place, at that time, in that way. It does just sound pretty incredible. In spite of all the huffing and puffing, I think that cooler heads will prevail in the appeal court (with experienced, impartial, judges, not a jury that can be easily swayed by insubstantial, inconsequential but emotionally convincing but uncorroborated testimony), and Pell will be found not guilty. Just saying….

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Good point,a victims word alone is not enough to prove guilt,very often in these cases thats all the evidence a victim has,so the case goes nowhere and thats just tough.
I know of a civil case was recently settled in a abusers favour based on this fact

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@ 5.42
One of the accusers told his mother, while he was still alive, that he had NOT been abused. The allegations arose after a compensation scheme had been introduced by the Church. Both men were ” troubled”: which could lead you to believe they had been abused, or conversely, that money would have been a big incentive.

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5.42: Magna, I agree with some of your comment. If we read the media profiling around George Pell’s case it is clearly evident that he was singled out to be accused and convicted. It seems to be a case of the complainant’ s word alone being sufficient against all other factors. I do not know therefore what to think at the moment. Because of the climate of suspicion and judgment around all clerics almost any accusation is believable. I know and believe that all abuse is disgusting and morally unacceptable and that justice must be given to victims/survivors. If his appeal is not successful, then George Pell must face his justice. I cannot conclude conclusively on what I’ve read so far. There are many unanswered questions.

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That’s a different case. And wasn’t he found not guilty? I am not sure whether “not proven” exists in Australian law – as it does in the Scottish system. Again, there seems a strong possibility of thinking that he was allowed to get off on those charges, so we’ll nail him this time round. It’s understandable but not justice according to the law. If we think the law gets it wrong – which of course it does sometimes – then we are back to restorative justice and making it up as we go. Nobody wants that.

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Like it or not, we are going to have to see what happens. Elsie’s caravan and the doings of Daniel would be light relief. Elsie must be furious that she is being made to look mildly ridiculous. Somebody is going to cop it. By the way do we not have any correspondent in the north of England? We get info re Ireland, Scotland, Westminster and Brum, but Liverpool, Middlesborough, Newcastle … ? Things may change when Bishop Byrne proceeds north in all his pomp and glory. You can be damned sure he knows the full story re Daniel – and indeed the goings on in the other Oratories.

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There was always somebody wanting to give Michael Byrne and Sean Jones a break. Or give the lads at Maynooth “a break”. Nobody has it in for any of these men, but they all represent aspects of clerical entitlement by which a man puts on a priest’s collar and in that aspect of his life preaches nonsense and lives a lie. The fall-out is all around us viz KOB and Pell thundering against homosexuality and yet …. Can we not sweep scandal after scandal under the hearthrug, whether it be at Maynooth or the unmentionable Oxford Oratory, and tackle these massive issues in a spirit of honesty as well as charity? I for one am sick of cover up, and living in a dysfunctional family aka the Catholic Church, where, like wedding anniversaries in an otherwise toxic marriage, some fiasco is staged every now and then to convince the world we’re okay. I have in mind last year’s family fiasco in Dublin and last weekend’s embarrassingly hopeless Synod in Rome.

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And who are you at 7:27 ? Mr Angry again, or one of Daniel’s ex confreres at the OO? Let me see, we have Jerome and Dominic and Nicholas and Oliver – so which one are you?

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There is only two things that Catholic priests and lay-brothers. who live together in a community bound together by no formal vows, like and that is: (1) Men, and (2) Cats.

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Of course, Pushkin at the Birmingham Oratory who was introduced to the Pope Emeritus: one old pussy cat meets another.

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As a matter of interest, is Michael Byrne now considered a Permanent Deacon along with all the old gits and married busy-bodies, or is he a Transitional Deacon still with hopes of higher things? And more pertinently, is he under the discipline of celibacy? I won’t even ask if he has any intention of keeping it. Just asking – obsessively!

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8:14
You’re a great addition to the human community. In a few lines you manage to denigrate the entire human race, yourself excluded – for obvious reasons – First you disparage the married. Then you attack the celibate.

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Thank you, Mr Angry, but, if you contain your bile and re-read my question, I was neither denigrating the entire human race nor disparaging the married, nor indeed the celibate. I was drawing a distinction between Permanent Deacons, who may be married, and Transitional Deacons, who may not. I confess to a mild dig at Permanent Deacons, but that has been oft repeated on this blog, and scarcely constitutes hatred of humankind. My question concerning celibacy was simply whether it is observed or not. For that, you appear to wish I might be wiped from the face of the earth. Are you a Catholic, by any chance?

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Anyone remember Father Ted’s caravan holiday when Father Noel Furlong turned up with his Youth Group? Just wondering how that compares with Elsie’s holiday home?

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I was raised RC and have learnt one truth about RC’s- they are not to be believed under any circumstances. Theologically I refer to them as functional atheists. Saying that they are mightily interested in Church as business and as political power play- your site demonstrates this point admirably.
It is a predatory group of people who for far too long have covered for their clerical leadership corps
As for Pell will be sprung from prison in the next few days – bailed while waiting for the outcome of the appeal.
I am confident the appeal will overturn the conviction and the matter when presented before a jury at another trial will fail to reach a unanimous verdict either way,
Will the Australian state attempt a 4th trial?
Question is did Francis know of the impending criminal investigation into Pell and removed him to Rome in the hope that it would keep him out of reach from Australian criminal investigation? Similar to what happened to Cardinal Law when the sainted Polak rescued him from Boston MA
Of course lets not forget Co. Antrim Cardinal Keith O’Brien……

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