AUSTRALIA
The Age

March 5, 2016

Martin Flanagan
Columnist for The Age

Two faces of Australian Catholicism were on display this week. One was Cardinal George Pell’s testimony before the royal commission on child sexual abuse.

Pell could have been discussing the internal workings of a department store. He had his job, others had theirs, he didn’t “indulge rumours” and had “no interest” in tracking those rumours down even though they concerned the welfare of the youngest and most vulnerable members of what once would have been called his flock. What his testimony lacked was moral imagination.

Patrick Dodson has moral imagination and courage to match.

I do not equate religion with spirituality, but it is genuinely spiritual people who make religion meaningful by investing it with humility and compassion. Without those qualities, religion is no more than a series of empty rituals encased, in the case of…