CARDINAL PELL’S APPEAL VERDICT TO BE BROADCAST LIVE ON AUGUST 21 ST.

Why should he not say mass?
He is a priest forever, same as Pat Buckley.

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I thought there was speculation at one time that Amy has got Rory a house (presumably in London [my God, how much will that cost!]) and is giving him £25,000 a year to live on. Sounds like a nice little earner to me.

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I hold no candle for Pell and I’m pretty sure that if I had met him I would not have found him ‘simpatico’, and probably found myself at odds with his authoritarian churchmanship.

However, I have been very disquieted about the case against him and the verdict, and I expect that there will be a degree of exoneration / not guilty etc.

The problem of Pell will not rest there if that happens. The Pope will have to decide what to do about him. With the level of accusations that have been leveled against him, even if he is found technically and criminally not guilty as I expect him to be, there is still the issue of whether the Pope can have confidence in him and reinstate him to his various responsibilities. It will be a big headache for the Pope. In fact, the easiest route would be for him to be found guilty and do his prison term and then be laicised. At least that is a clear route to bringing the problem of Pell to a conclusion. Anything else (again, I think he will be found not guilty) presents other problems for Pell and for the Church and Pope.

Justice must be done and seen to be done in all these matters, for the victims most certainly, but we must also not forget justice for those who may be wrongly accused, of which there will inevitably be a number. Imagine being accused but not being guilty of the accusation ? I note recently in the USA that dioceses have been publishing lists going back decades from their diocesan records, in the interest apparently of transparency, of priests who have been ‘credibly’ accused of some transgression, misbehaviour, crossing boundaries, inappropriateness, abuse etc. I sense that it is often done with little filtering, and little nuance, so that a rather minor indiscretion is lumped together with serious abuse. But, if your name is on the list, then you tend to get lumped together with the very worst cases. Sometimes, priests may not even know that their name has been on such a list because of some report / accusation from decades ago, was never informed, and the matter just let lie because by the standards of the time little could or would be done about it. I know of a priest who is suing his bishop in the courts for publishing his name because of some minor matter that now has been included in the list of ‘credibly accused’ priests of the diocese, and such action has seen the priest now without job, ministry, livelihood, reputation etc. And, he does not know the full detail of it, and is bemused. Of course, some would say that he would be bemused, but I simply put it forward as an example of what can happen if these matters are just dealt with as if they were all one and of the same seriousness, without any critical filtering and nuanced judgement. Some would say that the odd innocent body along the way is a small price to pay for being seen to be open and transparent and to put the interests of victims to the fore in all circumstances. I’m just glad that I’m not the poor bugger who is the innocent body along the way !

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