There is, as usual in NOChurch, plenty of bad ecclesiastical news to go around. I shall, however, start with what is unquestionably bad news, but one which has still divided opinion because of the secrecy and irregularities surrounding it. That news, is of course, the conviction of Cardinal Pell for sexual child abuse, down in Australia, which seem to be working extra hard to cement its association with kangaroos, this time with what seems clearly to be a kangaroo court.
The uncontested facts are as follows: The cardinal was charged with a crime dating from the 1990s. Before that he was in charge of financial reforms at the Vatican, during the course of which he is widely reported to have found irregularities and was blocked in his attempts at following these irregularities up. He was also opposed to the Bergoglian antics of the 2015 synod, famously shouting "the manipulatio of this synod must stop!" or some such thing. Not long afterwards the accusations against him picked up steam and he chose to go back to Australia to fight the charges rather than stay in Rome, which he could have done given that he had a Vatican passport - or so I have been led to believe.
Many obviously see the charges against him as part of a conspiracy to remove him from the Vatican so that he would not follow up the financial corruption he had uncovered. Others see Cardinal Pell's case as another example of a highly-placed Vatican official being a child molester. Those 2 stories are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Some see him as an ardent traditionalist, a charge false at best, while others see him as a conservative who is part of the problem, probably not entirely unfounded but far from telling the full picture.
In any case, Cdl. George Pell was found guilty by unanimous verdict, but even that is contestable as the trial was secret. The actual details about the case read like something from a bad fiction on Soviet times.
As has become popular in Anglo-Saxon countries, the details of the court case were kept under wraps and there is a gag order on reporting on it. Not only that, but they have also gone after foreign news outlets which dare to shed light on the case. The Remnant put it best with the title Cardinal Pell Convicted, Details Available On Need-to-know Basis (and you don't need to know). The cardinal can appeal, but he has already been convicted in the court of public opinion by a media which is hostile to him largely because he opposes the sexual deviancy that they have been promoting.
Some authentically Catholic outlets have chosen not to criticise the process and accept the conviction as proper. However, I find this odd because it does not seem to me that they can have any sort of insight into the case against him, and to judge a man based on largely unsubstantiated accounts is gravely unjust and an offence to justice. Others, most notably Gloria.tv, have labelled it a witch trial.
Not knowing all the facts, I cannot make much of a case in favour of or against the cardinal. For a good account of the irregularities surrounding the trial, I can do worse than point to an article titled The inexplicable conviction of Cardinal Pell, written by Phil Lawler., not exactly a reflexive defendant of NOChurch hierarchs. He makes the case that " in a proper legal system, not only is justice done, but justice is seen to be done" and there is nothing about a secret trial, held under a media gag order, in which irregularities in the timing seem not to be challenged, that can be considered just.
This case has eery similarities with that of Tommy Robinsion - a man I really have no affinity for and a zionist who I consider to be part of the controlled opposition - in which a secret trial reached a conclusion favouring a totalitarian mindset under the cover of a media gag order. Unlike that case, there does not seem to be any actual proof of any crime (although I hasten to add that the crime in that case was a made-up one), but rather conviction is handed down based on the witness of people who have dubious motives and characters, to say the least.
There is good reason to suspect that Cardinal Pell is innocent of these crimes, and good grounds for that comes also from Australia, where a Abp. Philip Wilson who had been convicted of covering up sexual abuse was later cleared. The accuser confessed to making the whole thing up.
I have previously warned that we must be very careful with the sexual abuse hysteria. Enemies of the Church, both within and without, will use it to attack the Church, both Her reputation and Her material wealth. They are hard at work at this, and given the potential financial rewards of accusing prelates or priests of sexual abuse, it is not surprising to see all and sundry coming up with accusations, and the media dutifully obliging in demonising the accused, with no evidence whatsoever. For that reason I am very pleased with the suspicious line that Gloria.tv has taken with regard to allegations of sexual abuse by priests, something from which Church Militant could learn a great deal. Watching Church Militant, it seems there is no accusation they are not willing to take as well-founded, even those coming without proof or those which have previously been dismissed. Perhaps it is because, after years of having gone after those who opposed Bergoglio and finally having to concede that those were right, but not having the integrity to admit it outright, they now find themselves having to jump on the bandwagon against anybody facing any sort of accusation of sexual misbehaviour, Whatever their reason, it is rather unsavoury, and not particularly charitable towards the truth.
Either way,...
