Where Has Cardinal Pell's Case Brought Us in the Australian Church?

Abstract

Where Has Cardinal Pell’s Case Brought Us in the Australian Church? Frank Brennan SJ Pope John Paul II’s biographer George Weigel, writing the Introduction to Cardinal Pell’s Prison Journal, describes this writer as one who ‘had previously held no brief for Cardinal Pell’ and as ‘one who was a severe critic’.1 I plead guilty to both charges. Nevertheless, having attended parts of his two criminal trials and having studied all the publicly available transcript, I am convinced of Pell’s innocence of the criminal charges he faced, and I am further convinced that the Australian Royal Commission failed to accord him natural justice in their pursuit of a necessary big scalp for media delectation. Pell is a culture warrior inside and outside the church. In this role, he has triumphed; and in this role, he has suffered. I am a Jesuit who has adopted positions at odds with him inside and outside the church, and I probably will again. I am happy to respond to the question from the editor of Studies: ‘Where has Cardinal Pell’s case brought us in the Australian church?’ The Australian church, whether this means Pell supporters or Pell critics within it, is trying to move on from the trauma and publicity of trials and media titillation about all but impossible criminal sexual activity in a cathedral sacristy immediately after solemn Mass. The trauma and titillation have been fuelled by incompetent policing, improper prosecution, shoddy journalism, judicial failure and nefarious Vatican financial transactions. Since the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, there have been some necessary reforms. Laws have been enacted making it easier for complainants to bring civil proceedings claiming damages against the church for child sexual abuse by clergy and church personnel. The civil law now guarantees that a plaintiff has access to an entity capable of being sued. The usual limitation period of six years after attainment of adulthood has been removed. And deeds of release from liability can be overridden if a court thinks it just and reasonable to do so. These are welcome legal reforms. Victims not wanting to sue can access a government-administered national redress scheme similar to those set up Studies • volume 110 • number 437 36 by the church in the last thirty years, but with no church involvement in the administration or determination of claims. The Royal Commission trumpeted this reform, but victims are finding government bureaucrats no better than church bureaucrats in processing their claims. Since the Royal Commission and Pell trials, the church has lost most of its public standing and credibility when agitating for justice and the common good. Thus church leaders tend to confine their advocacy to matters relevant only to the church’s own self-interest over against the state. Secularists welcome this development, but it probably means reduced advocacy for the poorest and most marginalised members of society. There are times when a church voice can help. Or at least it did in the past. Pell faced criminal trials that were conducted under suppression orders. This meant the public was not able to follow the evidence in the trials day by day. The public was simply presented with a final verdict followed by an internationally-televised, live public sentencing, at which the trial judge had to operate on the basis that the jury had made the right decision. Once the suppression orders were lifted, three books with popular appeal were published, all critical of Pell and the church.2 Only now are books more attentive to the evidence and therefore supportive of Pell starting to appear.3 Pell has published his Prison Journal and conducted an international media campaign aimed at restoring his standing, particularly with the more conservative Catholics in the USA and the UK. Cardinal Pell: some background Cardinal Pell is the Australian who has been most highly promoted in the Catholic church. We Australians are noted for our egalitarianism and our irreverence towards those in authority. It’s known as the ‘tall poppy syndrome’. Any poppy that grows too tall is cut down to the size of others in the field. Pell has long been a divisive figure in the...