Cardinal George Pell: High Court quashes abuse convictions

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Emeraldlady said:
Some in Vic police and the ABC would find the High Courts decision like a red flag to a bull.
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It’s how they did it last time. Keep announcing there’d be charges years before the charges were laid. So predictable.
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Exactly.

I just wonder why their own audiences don’t get fed up with it, even if they have no particular sympathy for Cdl Pell. I know I would be thinking “Just let up on it. Isn’t it over now?”.

Or like the boy who cried “wolf”. Here we go again… Not!
 
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Paddy1989 said:
If someone who has limited information claims to know more that those professionals in the judicial system then yes i would however Cardinal Pell was entitled to appeal his conviction. If he was found to be guilty then we would have to accept that
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I don’t think we do have to accept that. I mean, two lower courts found Pell guilty. The people who stuck by him then ended up being right in the end though.

I think the mindset that “the experts always know best” is a very dangerous one to fall into. We are all capable of thinking and reasoning, and when our own rationality tells us something is off we should be prepared to dig deeper and think it through, and come to our own conclusions. No matter what any legal professional said, the case against Pell was nonsense from the start, and I’d still be saying that if his appeal had failed.

It’s like people who never question doctors because “doctors know best”. Sometimes a doctor can be wrong about a course of treatment or a solution to something.

I remember going to a dental surgeon at one point to have a wisdom tooth extracted. I had one wisdom tooth causing me trouble. His solution was to remove all four wisdom teeth under general anesthesia in a hospital. This would have cost me €500 as it wasn’t fully covered by my insurance. I questioned as to whether I could have him remove my one wisdom tooth in his surgery, as a day case. He was reluctant but he said that was possible. So I did that. Fully covered by my insurance. And I’ve never had another issue with the other wisdom teeth.

The point is, question everything. Just because someone is an expert doesn’t make them impervious to error.
 
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Yes, a very good first response. The interviewer Andrew Bolt is a well known right wing agitator and widely listened to so he is in a position to keep up the pressure to investigate both Vic Police and the ABC.

One of the things Cardinal Pell is is trusting and socially naive despite his intellect. I thought that was demonstrated by his believing that one of his fellow inmate, a convicted murderer, is actually innocent. I don’t know the case but it doesn’t surprise me the the Cdl would lean towards believing that sort of thing.

The next thing to watch for will be the releasing of all the information that was withheld pending the end of this case.
 
I found two of Mr Bolt’s comments objectionable:
  1. His saying that ‘Pope Francis is a leftist’.
  2. His asking how Cardinal Pell managed to ‘not kill himself’. I thought that comment was quite rude considering that His Eminence is a Christian. His Eminence was clearly offended at Mr Bolt’s question.
Other than that it was a good interview. Praise God that Cardinal Pell is free.
 
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Good points. I am watching for what Victoria police come up with for their ‘new case’ .

I like how Cardinal Pell said the ABC was partly funded by the Catholic Church, in the face of its agenda.
 
Andrew Bolt said he is not even a Christian, so his comments really should be taken from that stance. Cardinal Pell explained what Christians think, in reply 🙏🐣
 
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catholic03 said:
I found two of Mr Bolt’s comments objectionable:
  1. His saying that ‘Pope Francis is a leftist’.
  2. His asking how Cardinal Pell managed to ‘not kill himself’. I thought that comment was quite rude considering that His Eminence is a Christian. His Eminence was clearly offended at Mr Bolt’s question.
Other than that it was a good interview. Praise God that Cardinal Pell is free.
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Andrew Bolt is not a favourite of mine for the sort of reasons you state. However his perspective has merit for not having any religious or personal bias. He like so many in the judiciary and public life, know the history of “get Pell” and the pathological blind hate for the Church and the Cdl that motivated the whole Tethering operation.
 
You mean, I think, that he has no personal bias TOWARD the religious view. But I don’t think he is quite, say, neutral, as in “I accept that people might believe in God but I personally do not have a view one way or the other myself”.

He might not be quite so ‘in your face’ but I do see some real anti-religious bias there. Maybe not to the really palpable, “You religious people are cray cray”, but more a subtle, “You mean after all this evidence that your religious views are fantasy you still cling to them” type.

Still the important thing is Cardinal Pell;s release, praise God.
 
Clearly witness J appeared to many people to be telling the truth and no one suggests he is intentionally lying. The police, his own lawyer, the DPP, the jury, the appeals court judges all accepted his story. But yet the logistical difficulties of the events he described escaped them all and the evidence of defence witnesses was not given proper legal weight.

Of all these actors, it is the 2 appeals court judges who failed most spectacularly. They failed to follow the lead of their colleague Justice Weinberg - recognized as the preeminent criminal law judge in the country - and were subsequently “slapped down” by 7 unanimous high court judges who needed to remind their lower court colleagues about where the burden of proof lies.

And regrettably, we are no closer to understanding what befell Witness J, when, where and by whom.
 
The issue here is NOT Cardinal Pell. The issue is the evident corruption in Australia that forced the Cardinal to spend 400 days in jail, as George Weigel wisely stated on Raymond Arroyo’s “The World Over.”
 
1cthlctrth said:
The issue is the evident corruption in Australia
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I don’t think corruption is quite the right characterization. Neither the jury nor the appeals court judges were pursuing personal gain. The jury felt they should believe a seemingly genuine complainant. And 2 of 3 appeals court judges reasoned incorrectly (and no doubt are still smarting after the lesson handed out by the high court judges).

The media and the population at large can certainly be accused of a loss of objectivity.

And the Catholic Church of course assumes some blame too - not for the failings I list, but for the decades of mistakes and coverups which so damaged its reputation as to lead ordinary people to assume the worst…
 
The other huge factor was the media, cashing in on the public’s willingness to condemn Pell.
 
It is going to be illuminating to watch the direction the Royal Commission into Lawyer X heads.
 
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