On a lighter note:

One devout Catholic to another:

"We'll never find anyone like Cardinal Pell!"

REPLY:

"That's the point!"

Dear Shadow Minister,

You write: "The outcome was far from extraordinary, what was extraordinary was that the trial judge failed in his duty to explain to the jury the basic rules of evidence."

You are doing it again mate, pulling things out of your arse. Please show me where either the dissenting appeals judge of the High Court said the trial judge had failed in his duty.

I repeat, the fact that an alleged incident can be described as ‘improbable’ does not mean that the evidence concerning that incident is untrue. And, of course, a conviction for an offence can be based solely upon the evidence of a witness who is sufficiently credible and reliable, even if that witness’ account is properly described as implausible.

That should have read;

"Please show me where either the dissenting appeals court judge or the High Court said the trial judge had failed in his duty.

SteeleRedux,

Haven't you worked it out? It has nothing to do with law and justice but everything to do with politics. The whole thing was orchestrated to get the Vatican off the hook.

'The whole thing was orchestrated to get the Vatican off the hook.'

come on Mr O the pope showed how he could be so foolish at easter by converting to the gw religion. Certaintly demonstrated clearly he is not infallible by preaching that earth worshipping nonsense.

"Come on" runner,

You know as well as everyone that there was a lot more at stake than Pell's 'good' name, especially given that he was the third ranking officer in the Vatican.

Getting Pell a shortened sentence was one thing; stopping the Vatican from getting tarnished by association was an even more important thing. You don't have to be an intellectual giant to work out that something was going on behind the scenes to get Pell back on the streets and the Vatican out of harm's way.

That's why I said leave it to the historians and sociologists to work out what unfolded.