There seems to be an effort by this author to emotionally manipulate his readers for his own purposes.

Why does he speak of scandal reporting rather than reporting? Why does he feel the need to try and justify it? There is no need to justify the act or reporting the facts – everyone can accept that reporting the facts is a reasonable thing to do. The aim of reporting is not to cast judgement but to present the issues so that the consumers of media can make their own judgements. The word scandal is a judgement. It immediately says that the acts reported are scandalous and that is a derogative word meaning acts which the reporter believes are bad acts and should be punished. It is for the justice system to make those decisions and not for reporters. No matter what anyone thinks about the acts or any subsequent cover-ups they have to be treated with the same caution and equity as any other facts about any behaviour which breaks the law.

Child abuse and the miss-handling of it are not special cases outside our justice system and any accused person must be assumed innocent until proven otherwise. That is one of the fundamental values of our society and it is more important than achieving justice for victims of abuse or cover-ups. Any victim who does not hold to those values does himself no favours by trying to usurp those values. By all means seek justice but only within the confines of the justice system.

Similarly the phrase ‘moral panic’ is equally emotional. Something done in a panic is usually not done very well and there is more risk of injustice because of that. Every issue before the justice system should be attended to with due diligence. Everyone has the right to be heard – that too is a fundamental cornerstone of our civilisation.

Trying to manipulate the justice system by words which are irrelevant to that system shows a serious lack of priorities.

I think the real problem are people with power giving mere lip service to a belief system they clearly don't share?

Were that not the case, most of these offenders would have been handed over for the punishment their crime or crime deserved?

Deliver unto God what is God's and unto Caesar what is caesar's.

And suffer little children to come unto me.

Meaning that the church and those who purport to serve her, have ironclad duty to protect the most vulnerable.

And make good a much as they can and as possible where they have failed little children!

The man was well enough to fly to rome!

Enough with the excuses and cover ups already, front up Mr Pell and do your claimed Christian duty.

Anything less, would be a Cardinal sin?
Rhrosty.

I wouldn't pay any attention to what Amanda Vanstone has to say in defence of Cardinal Pell. After all, isn't she just defending someone of her own class? And isn't that all that really matters to her? Pell could have been a paedophile himself and she would claim that he is the greatest thing to happen since Jesus Christ. The world now knows that Pell was covering up child sex abuse in the Church and now Vanstone is covering up Pell not to protect the man but to protect her own class. I suppose that's the problem with evil: it permeates all classes in society.

Rhosty:

“Meaning that the church and those who purport to serve her, have ironclad duty to protect the most vulnerable.”

The church does not have any duty to anyone. Just because they claim that duty does not mean it is theirs. Who gives out such duties? The church has no power unless it is freely given to them by those who are its members. If you give up your freedom to an institution then you have to take responsibility for what befalls you since no one made you give up your freedom.

You cannot blame an institution for not living up to its own values which you do not have to accept but you can blame individuals for abusing vulnerable children and those individuals should be subject to the same law which any other non-church person is. What has happened to many children is reprehensible but it is no worse because the institution is a self-styled moral guardian. To the children they were simply adults who harmed them. Child abuse does the same damage no matter who the perpetrator is.

If there is blame to be laid at anyone other than the individual abusers it may well be at the hands of some parents who turned a blind eye to the abuse because of their own emotional dependence on the church. Many denied such abuse of their own children because they could not allow themselves to accept that the clergy had human failings.

A lot of the anger that abused children feel is not really in relation to the church and their abusers but towards their parents who did nothing even when the abuse was reported to them by their kids. It is ‘emotionally safer’ for many adults who were victims to focus on what the abuser did than on what their parents failed to do and they did have a duty of care.

I agree with the comment that Ms Vanstone is defending Pell because of his class. Many people seem to believe that elite members of society are somehow immune from prosecution. My own case, where the abuser has an OBE, has never resulted in more than a cursory investigation by the police. Even when it was mentioned in an independent report, one of the report's authors, who is a senior legal figure closely associated with the Melbourne Response, warned me not to contact the family of the only other victim brave enough to report the same abuser to the Diocese involved. So much for the independence of the judiciary.

Amanda Vanstone completely fails to recognise that the reasons for the disquiet among the community with respect to George Pell, or perhaps she does know it, but is trying a "look at that over there!" tactic.

The real problem is that child sexual abuse within the church has been covered up for far too long. The same goes for the Anglican Church as Vanstone mentions, but the difference with the Catholic Church is the obvious suspicion that the cover up of pedophile priests went right to the top. So far Pell has failed to dispel the view that he was involved in covering up pedophile priests and protecting them from prosecution. He may well be too ill to travel to Australia, he is after all an elderly man. However, this will look to many like Pell once again trying to evade responsibility.

Perhaps the most amazing revelation out of the Royal Commission so far is how everything that happened was always someone else's fault and no one who is currently alive in the Church had sufficient knowledge or ability to alert the authorities to what was happening. It is truly unbelievable.

An excellent article - and a timely one, given the obviously orchestrated campaign by Pell's mates to put pressure on his critics and on the Royal Commission itself. Amanda Vanstone's puerile defence of Pell was matched by an equally puerile - and manifestly inaccurate - essay by Gerard Henderson in The Australian ('George Pell Should be Given a Fair Go at the Royal Commission', 5/12/15). Notice too, that against the Catholic Church's policy in Australia not to cross-examine victim or survivors, Pell instructed his barrister to go in hard on David Ridsdale,a key witness providing testimony against Pell. Not by coincidence, The Australian then ran a snide attack on David Ridsdale which was clearly designed to throw doubt on to his credibility.

This letter to The Age from CLAN is a powerful rebuttal of Vanstone's wild idea that it's all about getting George Pell:

"I write this letter on behalf of a support and advocacy network for individuals who were raised in Australian orphanages, children's homes, foster care and other institutions. On behalf of our members, CLAN would like to clarify that care leavers are not looking for the blood of Cardinal Pell, as Amanda Vanstone has stated ("In defence of George Pell", smh.com.au, December 21). Care leavers are simply seeking the truth. They deserve, after all these years, clarity of the lack of action taken by all institutions; they deserve to see certain individuals made accountable for their lack of action or revolting actions. Most importantly, care leavers want and deserve justice.
"Vanstone states that Pell is a man who fights for what he believes, well so do all the individuals who have suffered from the lack of action taken by the Church to deal with these perpetrators. We hope Cardinal Pell recovers from his illness and can tell his side of the story at the royal commission in February; he has been silent for far too long and the Australian people deserve the truth.
Leonie Sheedy Georges Hall"

personally I don't know whether Pell is guilty or not. I do suspect though his politics of opposing the perverting of marriage and calling out the gw hoax has got up the nose of the regressives. They tend to go very hard on those who speak truth and refuse to cave into regressive dogma.

Looks like Pell felt safe fronting the Royal Commission while Abbott was PM.

Now Pell feels less safe and continues to work each day as the Vatican equivalent of "Finance Minister".

see Radio Vatican's December 12, 2015 report:

"On Friday, the Council heard two reports on the reform of the economic structures of the Vatican, which were given by Cardinal Reinhard Marx, President of the Council of Economy, and Cardinal George Pell, Prefect for the Secretariat of Economy.

The two Cardinals reported on the activities and achievements of the two institutions."
http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2015/12/12/council_of_cardinals_conclude_twelfth_meeting/1193924

If Pell can maintain his high workload at the Vatican, why can't he fly First Class as is usual. Someone in his high position could be serviced by a doctor as he flies to Australia.

He's a dead horse and getting flogged for it. Yes we all know the grubby facts about grubs. And.......

The author panics because, rare as it may be, their beloved state and its punitive apparatus (including the media) are not in full control, their authority somewhat undermined!

Cardinal Pell is not accused of personally molesting children, not even of liking or supporting that behaviour, not even of not trying to prevent it (in his own way, regardless how successful or otherwise he was) - but of not bowing down to the dictates of the state to involuntarily act as their policeman in betraying his friends and colleagues.

So much outcry about the coercion of children - but what about the ongoing coercion of the state, specifically its threatening demand for primary loyalty ahead of all other loyalties?

Good on you, Cardinal Pell!

*Runner*

How come you feel the need to be whinging and talking like that at this time? Another time , for sure .. But why now?

Are you so hardened that there is no sense of this time for you anymore?

Don't you have something more warm and fuzzy for us, "regressives" and all, at this time that is ushered in in advance of the Christ Mass?

I thought Yuyutsu might be interested in - perhaps dismayed by - this revelation by Cardinal Pell to the Victorian Parliament in 2013. He was repeating what he told a Catholic gathering in Cork, Ireland:

"I was also summoned by the Premier at the time [Jeff Kennett] who made it clear that if we did not clean the church up, then he would, and so we made a determined effort to do so. Incidentally, the Premier was a deeply irreligious man… So we did clean it up; we set up an independent commission, we set up a panel to provide counselling and a system to pay compensation — and please God the worst of it is behind us. (Parliament of Victoria, Family and Community Development Committee, Transcript, 27/5/2013)

Of course, the motivation was wrong-headed so the"cleaning up" didn't work.

Yuyutsu "Cardinal Pell is not accused of personally molesting children, not even of liking or supporting that behaviour, not even of not trying to prevent it (in his own way, regardless how successful or otherwise he was) - but of not bowing down to the dictates of the state to involuntarily act as their policeman in betraying his friends and colleagues."

Are you for real?
Do you really think that Pell's actions in not reporting his alleged knowledge of sexual abuse of children by his paedophile mates and colleagues was justified because your dreaded 'state' has laws that say we must report such crimes?

You can't be saying that his alleged non-action in reporting these criminals, which led to them being shuffled on to other parishes and other victims, was justified?

These victims were children. They have all without doubt gone on to suffer a lifetime of mental health problems because supposedly trusted churchy leaders had sex with them as children. How is that ok that these paedophiles got away with it for so long?
That is simply dreadful!

Amanda Vanstone is a disgrace as both a woman and a politician.
Moral support for someone without morals himself. Pell needs to man up and face his accusers.

Dear Frank,

Yes, I am dismayed at the necessity for Pell's walk to Canossa.

Why did he have to visit his enemy, the premier, in the first place?
Why should he now again bow to a secular authority?

Understandably, one would not be overly-motivated to work and do a good job under the dictates and threats of a tyrant - just imagine you were ordered to build Pharaoh's pyramids... or even just work-for-the-dole... how more so when ordered to act and betray your friends and brothers-in-Christ against your conscience!

A Bedouin would give their life to protect even an anonymous guest who has come under their shelter, including from authorities - I would not expect less from a clergyman.

---

Dear Suse,

Essentially my answer to you is contained in my response to Frank.

Some cases of child-abuse were prevented - them we will never know about, others were not - which we know of. Tragically it is more difficult to try and help the children without betraying your colleagues to secular authorities. Had they not been in the way, Pell would have had more options - who knows, perhaps chopping off the offenders' balls? well perhaps he even so did, but this he won't tell, nor the ones who lost them, so we will never know, nor need we: the safety of children is one thing - satisfying your curiosity and secular concept of justice are another.

No Yuyutsu, safety of children comes before secular, religious or any other concern...especially any really misguided notion that you should protect others from from the law even if there is a possibility they may be active paedophiles.

In fact, that is a quite disturbing notion.

Dear Suse,

<<safety of children comes before secular, religious or any other concern...>>

I hope that you are awake right now, if you have children: their safety comes before your concern to get a sleep, or use the toilet, so you should be constantly watching them to ensure that their safety is not compromised. In fact, both parents should be watching in case one accidentally falls asleep. In fact, the neighbours too must be made to watch them and when you take them to school there must be a convoy of cars ahead and behind the car they are driven in to prevent any accident and their own car must of course have a 30-metre-thick concrete roof to prevent a meteorite falling on them. They should be attended by a team of surgeons constantly on standby and obviously they should never be allowed to swim, play in the street, ride a bicycle or have access to nylon bags or batteries (which could be swollen). You may not have electricity at home because they could get electrocuted and you must taste every bit of food before it goes into their mouth. There should be no garden around the house since it may invite snakes and spiders. Actually, there should be constant patrols outside your home, with strong flash-lights at night to guard against any such dangerous creatures entering. No germs of course - your home where your children live should be equipped with the most sterile and full-proof air-filter so they can't come in. Finally, your children should never be allowed to grow: being and adult is dangerous and always ends in death!

If you have the misguided notion that you can demand others to serve you as involuntary policemen, then it follows that you can also demand them to serve you in any other role you like, be is as babysitters, cooks, gardeners, cleaners, doctors, engineers or those who build this 30-metre-thick concrete roof on your car.

You of course do not owe them anything because you are the state, or as Napoleon Bonaparte coined it, "the state is I!".

Yuyutsu
What images have you you got on you pc? Tell the cops to %$&^ off?

Suseonline:

“These victims were children. They have all without doubt gone on to suffer a lifetime of mental health problems because supposedly trusted churchy leaders had sex with them as children.”

Do you have any evidence to support this or are you just dramatising the issue for your own personal agenda? It is not necessary to point out that child abuse has serious effects on children – everyone knows this but no one knows that everyone who has been abused is still suffering because of that abuse. If you don’t know then don’t act like you do know and that you know without doubt.

If it is just an opinion which cannot be supported by the facts then I would say it is based on a rather jaundiced view of the human spirit. I think that from what I have seen of the human spirit that human beings are capable of remarkable recoveries from all manner of childhood abuse.

Suggesting to victims that their experience must by its very nature enslave them to a lifetime of mental health problems is not very helpful or caring. Keeping others down so you can keep yourself up is not an attitude to bring to this problem in society.

Thanks for that, Yuyutsu. That last response of yours was a perfect example of the Reductio ad absurdum fallacy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum

Phantom, I am not doing research on child abuse victims just to prove an already well known point.....those victims ARE affected for the rest of their lives.
I wasn't suggesting they all do badly for the rest of their lives, but rather they will always suffer in some ways because of it.

I have worked in the health industry all my adult life and I have seen the mental health diagnoses of countless adults who were victims of child abuse, both in their own homes and in health care facilities. How about you?

Do you know something about child abuse that I don't? Please do enlighten us with your knowledge...

Suseonline:

Just because I have not had your experience working with child abuse victims does not mean I am not entitled to voice an opinion no matter how bad it may seem to some. Good opinions can come from any direction not only from those who have had experience in the field. The truth can emerge from anywhere and if that is what you truly seek you will listen to the opinion and not to the person’s credentials. If you only want the truth to come from people like yourself then you will not want to listen to opinions from anyone else. You will see them as a threat to your own ego.

Many untruths and mistakes have come from people with outstanding qualifications so it is never a guarantee that they are right.

I spoke of the human capacity to overcome terrible childhood experiences. I believe it is possible and I have seen it happen. Perhaps it would happen a lot more often if health professionals were not so dependent on creating a ‘market’ for themselves or creating a sense of dependence which appeases their own need to be ‘saviours’.

Present you argument why child abuse must without a doubt lead to a lifetime of ill-effects and stop relying on your ‘experience’ to justify your position. Appealing to authority is the last resort of those who do not have a valid argument.

Some people survive having a metal object lodged in the brain.
Here's the truth from the horses' mouth:
Many in the church did not understand just what damage was being done to the victims. We understand that better now.
He admitted that lives had been ruined as a result of the cover-ups and that they had allowed pedophile priests to prey on children.
I would have to say there is significant truth in that, Cardinal Pell said.
I don’t think many, if any, persons in the leadership of the Catholic Church knew what a horrendous widespread mess we were sitting on.

Cardinal Pell agreed that placing pedophiles above the law and moving them to other parishes resulted in more heinous crimes being committed.
There's no doubt about it that lives have been blighted.
There’s no about it that these crimes have contributed to too many suicides. ( Pell quote).

Merry Christmas Phanto.
Cheers, Suse.

It is not going to be an easy task to get a
high-ranking official of a powerful institution
to admit that mistakes were made in the way it
handled child-abuse cases. And of course denial
of the harm that was inflicted on innocent
people does not help matters. Neither does
defending those responsible.

The Church must squarely accept the challenges before
it. It can no longer attempt to sweep things under
the rug if it wants to maintain its credibility.
The Vatican realises this - hence sending Cardinal Pell
back to this country to answer questions is something
that the current Pope seems to feel is necessary.

It shall be interesting to see - what (if anything) results
from all of this.

When Pell was a boy he was taught that missing Mass of Obligation without good reason sends people to hellfire. So a bit of rape and sodomy by comparison doesn't seem all that bad.

Suseonline:

"Merry Christmas Phanto.
Cheers, Suse."

Why do you feel the need to hide behind Christmas?

Or is it rock spiders that hide behind it?

Posted by nicknamenick, Friday, 25 December 2015 7:36:04 PM

" ... Or is it rock spiders that hide behind it? ... "

Rock Spiders and Rock Spider friends, criminals aiding and albeiting criminals.

The Royal Commission needs to be expanded to include the Legislature and the Judiciary to make sure that they get them all.

In fact if you defined Rock Spider and Rock Spider Friend in Law with full retrospective powers, liquidated and imprisoned the lot of them, I should think that that would go to make a not insignificant contribution to improving the budget.

One wonders whether there has ever been a time when the Genocidal Crown and its ill begotten spawn haven't been abusing someone's children?

Dear Phanto,

Your posts appear to be deliberately designed to
provoke an angry response. These kind of tactics
are rarely productive.

Foxy,
If they are rarely productive then why bother responding to them?

Dear Phanto,

I suppose I am naïve enough to think that
perhaps I can make you look in other directions.

Hello *Foxy* I am so sorry to hear that you've busted yourself up.

..

I don't think that it is being naïve at all visa vi your last comment. At the very least, you've given the other person/people the "opportunity" to think (even if but momentarily) about what you've written, regardless of whether or not you've also gained their whole or partial acceptance.

..

In my opinion *Foxy* the crimes of certain individuals within the church (if it can even be called that any longer) are so great that under no circumstances whatsoever ought they be given another opportunity.

And as they refuse to purge themselves then they need to be coerced with extreme prejudice as required.

Can you imagine these vile and foul little individuals standing over traumatised and abused victims hissing and sneering and threatening in an attempt to illicit silence.

They deserve to be made to suffer.

We had one of them in hear at one time, under a handle something like BJMP. A group of us chased him out after his attempts to stifle conversation.

Foxy:
What is wrong with the directions I have been looking in? All you have said is that they seem to be meant to provoke anger? What kind of baseless statement is that?

If people do not agree then they are free to ignore what I say or show what is wrong with it. It is a meaningless statement to say my opinions seem to be meant to provoke anger. Anger is a response to injustice so what injustice have I been guilty of simply by expressing my opinions? Don't I have a right to express an opinion?

My opinions might make people feel uncomfortable but if you come onto a forum where people are seeking the truth then you have to be prepared to hear things which make you feel uncomfortable.

I am not here to ensure everyone has a nice time but to contribute to the debate about how to deal with the issues and if I think that dramatising your own responses to events or mis-interpreting them is unhelpful in dealing with the issue then I have every right to say so.

There is no injustice is expressing opinions.

Dear DreamOn,

Thank You for your kind words.

There's no question that the Church has not
handled the matter of child abuse within its
ranks well. Many victims and their families
are still suffering today. However as I said
earlier - it will be interesting to see what
happens when Cardinal Pell is forced to answer
questions from the Royal Commission - and how it
faces future challenges.

Yes, poor *Foxy* I imagine that it is terribly painful and know that these days that the hospitals are extremely concerned to ensure that you do not get hooked on analgaesics to the extent that they expect people to put up with an uncomfortable amount of pain at times.

..

It is not a question of the church handling the situation badly, but rather than they knowingly and deliberately conspired to hide, cover up, harbour, aid and albeit extremely dangerous pedophile criminals.

Pell probably owes his current position to his betrayal of the Australian people and if he knows that he has already purgered himself, the likelihood that he is going to return here voluntarily to go to prison is extremely remote I reckon.

It is a shame that they didn't take the passports of all concerned in advance.

..

And of course, it begs the question does it not, why would they do such a thing?

Dear DreamOn,

Thank You for your opinion.

There's a book worth a read (if you haven't already
read it) by Paul Collins - "Believers: Does Australian
Catholicism have a future?" with a foreword by
Geraldine Doogue.

Paul Collins is one of Australia's
most controversial and respected commentators on the
Catholic church. A graduate of Harvard Divinity
School and the Australian National University.

He's a former priest and a historian and broadcaster.
Dr Collins is also a former specialist
editor of religion for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation..
He's published many books on the subject.

Dr Collins points out that - "No one is denying that
sexual abuse of children is horrendous and intolerable and that
the failure of the Church to deal with it effectively has
done immeasurable damage to victims."

"The cover-ups, the protection of abusive clergy and the
refusal to admit egregious mistakes are unjustifiable."

Cardinal Pell is being called to account and explain.

According to Dr Collins, "Trust is going to have to be built
from the bottom up by bishops and priests before their
pronouncements on morality will be taken seriously again."

We shall have to wait and see whether the Cardinal will
set the example this time around.

"Trust is going to have to be built
from the bottom up by bishops and priests before their
pronouncements on morality will be taken seriously again."

Why would anyone take their pronouncements more seriously than anyone else’s in the first place? They only have moral authority because it is given to them by believers and some non-believers. If you give someone moral authority when you do not have to then you really cannot complain what they do with it.

Suggesting that the clergy are more responsible for their behaviour than any other person who has abused children is ridiculous. They should be tried and judged as human beings and not because they have taken some moral high ground which only applies to those who agree that they are entitled to such moral high ground.

The only ones who are outraged by the hypocrisy between what they say and what they do are those who have agreed to give them the moral authority that they claim for themselves. Those people have given up their own right to decide what is moral and what is not and handed it over to the Church. The abuse of children threatens them because it shows that clergy are only human and those who are emotionally dependent on the church do not want to have to deal with that – they want the church to be more than human because they do not trust their own capacity to discern what is right and wrong and need someone else to tell them.

Are the clergy the only people in the world who do not do what they say you should do? Politicians, business people and heads of state say one thing and do another. What is the difference except that the church has told people that it is in some way in contact with God? If you are gullible enough to believe that then your gullibility is the real problem.

People took the pronouncements of the clergy in
the past based on faith and trust. The church
represented spirituality, ethics and a meaningful
structure to guide their lives. The role of
the church and the clergy in the past was highly respected.

There is no doubt that the clerical profession has
taken a severe battering and that respect for the
priesthood is understandably at an all-time low.
Young people and their elders are rightly sceptical abo
everything the church says about sexuality. And this has
a flow-on effect with the church's entire message,
especially its challenging social justice message and
cultural critique. Trust is going to have to be
rebuilt. Whether Cardinal Pell will lead the way
remains to be seen.

*Foxy* we remain at diametrically opposed poles on this one I think.

" ... Dr Collins points out that - "No one is denying that
sexual abuse of children is horrendous and intolerable and that
the failure of the Church to deal with it effectively has
done immeasurable damage to victims."

" ... the failure of the Church to deal with it effectively ... "

I strongly object to this kind of language as it does to me represent an attempt to misdirect the focus and play things down.

Again, it is not a question of them not dealing with this effectively, but rather that they are criminals who sought, and continue to seek, to pervert the course of justice.

This is why RatSinger was going to be arrested in the UK (prosecutors included Geoffery Robertson QC )

Criminals do not get a second go *Foxy* The organisation should be black listed and their persons and their property should be seized.

And they are fakes *Foxy* and historically they were complicit in the genocidal atrocities committed in this country. Like a South African Church.

Is this what you mean by "respected?"

Dear DreamOn,

O am not an expert on the Catholic Church.
However Dr Paul Collins is.
He states that Catholicism has remarkable staying
power, an ability to survive unmatched by any
contemporary institution. Collins says that
"if you've been around for more than 2000 yea
will have learned a few tricks."

He goes on to explain that "Catholicism has survived
precisely because ultimately it is adaptable and
able to change. Often this change comes late in the
piece when everything seems to be in dire straits and
it may well emerge from the most unexpected source."

The other thing in the Church's favour is that the
Australian church is just the right size. Collins
tells us that it is "Not too small so that it becomes
incestuous or destroys itself in in-fighting, not too
large so that it becomes impossible to change.

Collins is optimistic that Catholicism in Australia will
survive, certainly with lesser numbers, but he feels
that it will have "more commitment and ministerial energy."
But to achieve that according to Collins - "Catholics
will require genuine local leadership and a willingness
to confront both the difficulties and opportunities that
the church faces." Dr Collins feel that we are uniquely
placed in Australia to be able to do precisely that.

Time will tell.

“He states that Catholicism has remarkable staying
power, an ability to survive unmatched by any
contemporary institution.”

What about the Mafia? Just because an institution can survive does not mean it is a valuable institution. Institutions can survive because they are able to bully and intimidate its members and hold them by fear. If you are told as a child that you would go to hell and suffer eternal punishment if you failed to turn up to church on Sunday you would believe it because you had no good reason not to trust the adults in your life. It makes good sense to remain in the institution if the fires of hell are the alternative. There are millions of otherwise rational adults who still believe this today.

The church has staying power not because it is an institution that has values worth embracing but because it taps into the fears and insecurities of human beings and promises a solution. It survives like the drug trade survives because it is a quick fix for human problems

“The other thing in the Church's favour is that the
Australian church is just the right size.”

How can a church be the right size? Surely if what you belief is crucial for your life then how can it be optional for everyone else? Religion is not a ‘boutique accessory’ it is fundamental to all human behaviour according to those who adhere to it. Does God have a lifestyle preference? “Common Muslims a billion adherents is enough now you risk going out of style”.

Geraldine Doogue tells us that:

Dr Paul Collins' central challenge is not to
the broader society but to Catholics.
His suggestion is that maybe our version
should be about hope. That 21st century
Catholics should hope and be revived. His message
regarding his Church is to encourage Catholics to
act as though there is more to life than meets the
eye. This is the call that many of us can hardly
bear to hear. We can but live in the hope that some
of us do.

*Foxy* I am starting to sense that you would prefer not to be shown certain images? I had this sense a little while ago on another matter which kind of surprised me initially actually. OK then, how about this?

Would you prefer, say, more like FIFA? A problem of an entrenched and corrupt leadership which gives rise to a challenge for the membership to purge, purify and renew?

..

I have not read any of his books *Foxy* but I have seen him on Geraldine's show more than once. But as said, he loses me when he does anything other than name a heinous crime for what it is.

..

So many terrible atrocities in Australia, including in my life time with nuns stealing babies (and I was a little bastard from the word go with my biological father's name only appearing after I was more than 3 years old) and yet no one truly responsible ever seems to get charged.

That needs to change *Foxy*

Dear DreamOn,

Nobody is denying the fact that the Church must
be held to account. As Dr Collins points out -
The Church has made some dreadful mistakes.
Sexual abuse of children is horrendous and
intolerable and the failure of the Church to deal
with it effectively has done immeasurable damage
to victims. The cover-ups, the protection of
abusive clergy and the refusal to admit egregious
mistakes are unjustifiable.

I fully agree this cannot continue.

We have not yet even begun to calculate the damage
these crimes have done to people's trust and to the
reputation of the Church.

Law had simply moved demonstrably abusive priests from
parish to parish, thus giving them access to new
victims.

There is no doubt that the clerical profession has
taken a severe battering and that respect for the
priesthood is, understandably at an all time low.

The Church must now be willing to confront both
the difficulties and opportunities that it now faces.
This is something that Dr Collins also points out.

However - whether this happens with Cardinal Pell's
visit - well I won't be holding my breath.
The man has been in denial all along.
I doubt whether he'll surprise any of us.
As I stated at the beginning of this discussion - I
have my doubts about anyone being able to challenge
any powerful institution or those whose job it is to
protect it. However I would be happy to be proven
wrong.

There are a number of issues that come under the topic titled: "The scandal of defending George Pell: Amanda Vanstone's moral support".

Personally, I couldn't go through all of them. There are a lot of simplistic assumptions in this discussion topic, and if taken seriously would have serious public implications. These include:

1. The author of the article could or would (deny) people in principle the right to be defended;

2. The author could or would deny (in this case Amanda Vanstone), the right to free speech;

3. The author could or would use an important issue, (like serious child abuse) and not highlight (abuse in principle), to not offend others (due to say their actions in terms of abuse).

As a person who had serious false allegations made against myself, I was left to defend myself, put a strong argument to the police and yet I still had to go through a strong process with the police force.

Basic principles seem to have been thrown in the bin, by simplistic individuals, authors and some who are very hateful towards religion (like a Christian Church) for example.

A lot of other forms of violence (in the community) is therefore not looked at (in depth) as a result.

u r right Nathan. I would imagine the same press that goes hard at Pell would of been the same to defend Henson taking naked shots of young girls and the Rotherham scandal. Usually for the left it is all about sides not the victims they hide behind. Abbott received ten times more press about punching air 40 years ago than Shorten did on his rape case. Thats our balanced abc.