AUSTRALIA
Scoop
By Binoy Kampmark
Cardinal George Pell is a terrier of the wrong sort. Combative for the Catholic church, he does the Pope’s bidding down under with a loud bark and occasional bite. Much of it has proven disastrous for the Church’s reputation in Australia and elsewhere. That particular institution is very much in the spotlight of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Sexual Child Abuse, and things are not going well. Before Victorian parliamentarians, Pell demonstrated, as he has done for so long, that he shows a distinct “sociopathic lack of empathy” for his victims.
Certainly, for Pell, a degree of blamelessness has been cultivated. This might well be his own interior justification. The abusive, institutional mechanism that so typified the church institutions might well have been a cultural monstrosity – but Pell was immune to it. Or at least, that’s the impression he gives. Governance, and action, are not necessarily the same thing in the Pell book of revelations.
His response, for example, to questioning about why the former Melbourne archbishop Frank Little did conceal instances of abuse is suggestive of that. “Yes, archbishop Little did cover up but he inherited a situation where there were no protocols and no procedures and, for some strange reason, he never spoke to anybody about it” (The Australian, May 28). The suggestion is specious, if for no other reason that the Catholic church remains one of the most protocol driven institutions on the planet, a hybrid creature of legal sophistication. Errors and heresies are noted; behaviour punished, when required. When necessary, bad behaviour has been concealed.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.