Will Pell be defrocked?

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AlbMagno said:
How would “pedophile” be correct? How do you know he is a pedophile?
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A pedophile is someone who commits pedophilic acts, no? And Pell has been convicted of exactly that, no? Surely we can rightly call him “convicted of pedophilic acts” or “convicted pedophile”? Possibly the conviction is wrong, but even the law doesn’t assume that it is anything but correct - hence his sentence has already been imposed even though his appeal is pending.

What do we really know? We know the man went through two trials with two separate juries. The first didn’t find the evidence convincing by a margin of 10-2. The second found it convincing by 12-0.

It is interesting that people by and large are thinking the second jury is the only one of the two juries that possibly got it wrong. Surely it is equally possible that the it was the first. The first jury may have been stacked with devout Catholics improperly swayed by a desire to protect the Church and/or the Cardinal. The first jurors (or some of them) may have been bribed, coerced or otherwise improperly influenced in their findings in his favour. Maybe the first jurors got it wrong for other reasons.
 
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I was just asking to make the “guilty” side elaborate in their reasoning. I don’t know of Pell is guilty or innocent. Aside from that, very good point.
 
AlbMagno said:
I was just asking to make the “guilty” side elaborate in their reasoning. I don’t know of Pell is guilty or innocent. Aside from that, very good point.
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This brings up one of the anomolies of the case. The prosecution were trying to gather what’s called ‘propensity evidence’ and only were able to uncover 2 school friends who were non credible witnesses because of being career criminals, one having already tried to get money claiming he was beaten by a female teacher. They claimed Pell had touched them in a pool in the 1970’s, 40 years ago.

What makes the Pell case unique is that there is no other ‘propensity evidence’. That means that if he is guilty of the charges claimed by this one claimant, it was a single 6 minute incident in his whole life. What we normally call a pedophile is someone who has an intrinsic impulse to abuse children and a long history of behaviour. Just one of the things that makes the legal community astonished by the verdict.
 
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You are free to agree or disagree. This statement should never have been made, and was admonished by the judge. It is wrong on so many levels.

If a man is innocent and seeking appeal, an educated , experienced legal representative does not make a statement like this. It is not a duty to minimise a sentance by diminishing the severity of the trauma to the victims in this way.

Please leave your personal opinions of my threads out of your responses to me. You are being highly uncharitable.
 
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It comes as no surprise to me that most people dont believe the verdict. It sure is unfortunate but not surprising. I mean accusers are not believed like in Chile but here we went from accused to convicted and still the culture exists among the laity and the clergy. They just dont believe it. We just had a conviction where I live. And sure enough people dont believe it. More crimes will happen because of this. But not to my kids… nope.
 
Really stunned me too. The comments were not made to the judge, rather to the media outside the court. I am an Australian and saw the media interview of television.
 
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The reasons for people’s doubts have been thoroughly explained on this thread, but you refuse to acknowledge them. This case is an anomaly.

I think most people here who think that Pell may be innocent also quickly saw guilt in other cases (such as McCarrick). I know I did.
 
You must have information the Jury didn’t. Have you come forward with it?
 
This is what is being reported about this comment…

“Mr Richter’s comments were made to the judge in open court as part of the normal plea discussions in such cases, according to Professor Jeremy Gans from the Melbourne Law School.

I think it has to be understood that Mr Richter is not talking to a jury, he is not talking to the media, he is talking to a judge," he said.”
 
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Rubee said:
As things stand, no one here knows that Cardinal Pell is a pedophile.
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I will agree to that every day of the week. But he is, as the situation stands, someone who has been found guilty, by a jury of his peers, of raping a child.
 
Thank you.
I did a bit of research myself and I think you are correct and I incorrect - and my apologies. I think that my mistake was possibly due to the way media reported it here. I know I saw it on TV but I have been unable to find a video online and strongly suspect therefore that you are correct.
If the comments were made to the media then I think the media would have posted the video at every opportunity. It would be everywhere. A bit of a mystery to me as to what indeed it was I saw on TV.
 
And you don’t know that he isn’t. Why are you standing up for this man? He has been convicted in a court of law, so the preponderance of evidence says that he likes teen boys.
 
Can we believe the Vatican in light of their dropping the ball on McCarrick?
 
Bradskii said:
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Rubee:
As things stand, no one here knows that Cardinal Pell is a pedophile.
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I will agree to that every day of the week. But he is, as the situation stands, someone who has been found guilty, by a jury of his peers, of raping a child.
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In other words, as I said, “convicted of pedophilic acts” = “convicted of being a pedophile”, unless you are suggesting that someone can sexually assault two children without being a pedophile? Would you prefer “convicted child molester”? He certainly has been convicted of molesting children.

I understand that we were neither in the sacristy nor in the courtroom. By those standards few if any people could truly “know” what happened except Pell, the two accusers and God. By those standards few if any people could “know” a lot of things, really. I can’t help but feel that folks wouldn’t be quibbling in this fashion if he were convicted of, say, theft. Would you then be insisting that we couldn’t with a reasonable degree of certitude call him a “convicted thief”?
 
Celibacy in the Catholic Church means not marrying.

Chastity applies to both married and unmarried persons. It does not mean “not having sexual relations”.

Continence (also knows as abstinence) means not engaging in sexual relations.

People regularly confuse the three.
 
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