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Dear Yuyutsu ;

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You wrote :

1. « Only a saint is completely devoid of narcissism »

The term “saint” (from the Latin sanctus: sacred) is a person declared as such by the Christian faith. As canonisation takes place postmortem – usually many years, if not many centuries after his or her death – it is impossible to determine whether the person in question was ever “completely devoid of narcissism” during his or her lifetime or not.

If what you write is what Christians (and whoever else is willing to do so) are held to believe, then perhaps it’s because, like baptism, canonisation is considered to have the magic power of “wiping their sins” (narcissism) away.
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2. « … when one realises that all is God and all distinctions are an illusion, then one is enlightened and finally free from the vicious cycle of birth and death »

As I consider that “God” is a figment of the imagination, happily, I am able to distinguish between imagination, illusion and reality. I sympathise with those who are not so enlightened but take consolation in the fact that, at least, in their minds, they think they are free. Freedom of thought is a precious redeeming factor, that I sincerely wish for everyone – including so-called "conservatives".
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3. « … vicious cycle of birth and death »

Vicious, why vicious – from the Latin vitiosus, from vitium “vice” (immoral or wicked behaviour) ? As I see it, the cycle of birth and death is a natural process whereby life is relayed from one generation to the next. There is no morality in nature – just whatever is most efficient for its conservation and continuation in a long process of trial and error or “chance and necessity” as Jacques Monod, the 1965 Nobel Prize biologist, termed it, where chance is a “random variable” and necessity an “inevitable event”.
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Perhaps you (and others) might like the following article on psychogenic narcissism by the American psychotherapist, Elinor Greenberg, which I, personally, find well written and quite interesting :

http://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/understanding-narcissism/201708/the-truth-about-narcissistic-personality-disorder

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Going back to consertivism. I would argue that there is a base understanding of how the world should work, and part of that understanding is on the legal system running the right way instead of going on a witch hunt or using emotion as a proof instead of holding innocent until proven guilty.

Liberalism goes in the opposite direction. Sees an error (or thinks it sees an error) and is willing to fix that error at any cost. "What the rules won't fix, I'll fix on my own," kind of thinking.

Now put into both ideals the sitution of pedophiia. In the case of pedophilia the crime is rarely able to be proven and is often an ongoing problem that doesn't go away. Or at least that's the modern impression we get from the media. (Probabley right, but worth a small dose of caution when considering breaking down the laws and rules put in place to protect people). For the left pedophiia can be easily turned into a witch hunt, much like the metoo movement has turned emotional pleas into a weapon to ruin another's life.

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With that in mind there are the accounts that the police advertised for anyone who had a case against the Catholic Church. Then there turn up a case to charge Pell on pedophilia. There isn't much to go on, but if you don't care about the rules and the law (innocent until proven guilty), then you can go ahead and let the guilty verdict fall so to appease the want to fix a crime (that wasn't proven) regardless of what the rules would say to do.

Conservatives see pedophilia as a sick crime as much as leftists, but they also see this case for what it is from beginning to end. An experiment of manipulating people and avoiding justice, in order to harm a specific target. Was the target Pell because of politics and his influence? Or was it an attack on the Catholic Church, and Pell was just a victim that could be caught in the trap? This was from the beginning a weapon and it was used to charge a man regardless of innocence or guilt. That as far as I can tell is why people are against the charges against Pell.

It's not narcissism, it's not birds of a feather (because some who are against the charges aren't affiliated with the church or with Christianity). What it is, is disgust at justice being broken. Enough of the charges to justify it,man the searching for excuses. If Pell is a saint or a narcissist what does that prove to his case? All it does is add an excuse to justify finding him guilty instead of seeing the errrors done from the beginning of the case till the end of the verdict. What good do these excuses do expect usurp justice, and fill you with justification while doing so.

Dear Banjo,

1. I referred to one's actual sainthood rather than to institutional titles: not every saint was declared a Saint, nor every Saint was in fact a saint!

2. «I am able to distinguish between imagination, illusion and reality.»

However, there are more than these 3 categories.

Take a clay pot: its appearance is of a pot, but the reality of it is clay. When the pot breaks, and one day or another it surely will, there will no longer be a pot, but the clay will remain.

Take a golden necklace: its appearance is of a necklace, but the reality of it is gold. If the necklace is melted, there will be necklace no more, but gold will remain.

Take a wave in the ocean: once the wind subsides there will no longer be a wave, but water will remain.

The pot, the necklace and the wave are neither imaginary nor an illusion, but they are not the reality either, only relative reality.

I made a bad mistake when stating that "all distinctions are an illusion". Sorry, I should have said "relative reality" or something to that effect rather than 'illusion' because there is no equivalent word in English to what I was trying to convey. In Sanskrit, the word is 'mithyaa':
http://www.advaita.org.uk/discourses/definitions/mithyA.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3r4fGfQKeQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHYTkzoaiKU

Though God is commonly and conveniently for practical purposes thought of as a deity, S/He/It is not, because deities too (assuming they exist) are still mithyaa whereas God is not.

God can only be described negatively:
Suppose everything breaks down and disappears/dissipates - all matter, energy, thought, memory, intelligence, even space, time, the universe, existence and the laws of physics, logic and mathematics: what remains is God.

3. Vicious, because it causes suffering. Every time we are born and every time we die, we suffer. I could go deeper into the connection of this cycle with vices, but I think this is enough to digest for one day.