LilyM:
With due respect, why is infalliblility necessary? We are commenting on someone’s adjudged behaviour, not their character or their immortal soul.
With due respect, it’s necessary if you’re going to state that someone is a pedophile or other horrible thing just because of “adjudication”. That’s essentially a 100% faith being placed on said "adjudication’ which is a silly position to take without divine guarantee of protection over said process.
Your other examples you’ve listed are irrelevant:
- They are not statements about a person’s character: They do not involve morality and the duty to be charitable in anyway. There’s no duty to be loving towards Math and to not falsely accuse Math of things we don’t know Math did.
- We must make those decisions in our lives. I still don’t know what duty you feel you have to claim Cardinal Pell is a pedophile. You are not a juror or a judge, your opinion on the matter is neither called for nor necessary; just a person reading a forum and feeling you know that this person you don’t know committed this horrendous thing that he and many who know him desperately protest his innocence in.
- I’d like to know who disputes 2+2=4 in the same way people are disputing what happened here and who between two people might be telling the truth.
Again, not relevant.
Slow down, you’re missing an incredibly important step in the logic here.
Look in any newspaper or turn on any news broadcast any day of the week you will likely encounter references to people who are described as ‘convicted murderer/arsonist/rapist/9-11 bomber’ or what have you. Some of it the vilest stuff.
Yet you don’t see any of the people so described suing those journalist. Not even the people whose convictions are later overturned.
Why not?
Because the word ‘convicted’ when placed in front of any of those other words literally indicates that ‘what follows is no more or less than what the courts have most recently - rightly or wrongly - said about this person.’ It is very different to saying that someone is an arsonist/9-11 bomber/pedophile without the qualifier ‘convicted’ in front.
And I stand by what I said upthread. I don’t believe that one
can commit multiple voluntary sexual assaults on children without being a pedophile. The behaviour is manifestation of the pathology. And the behaviour is what Pell has been convicted of. The pathology comes with.
To address your other points - I used to be a parishioner of Pell and met him briefly on one or two occasions. I have family members who, if he is released into the community, may possibly encounter him. People like us actually do need to think about these things and make decisions to guide us as to how we should behave if ever did meet him. Obviously if his conviction is overturned that will be new information and different decisions will likely be made.
And you, with respect, are trying to deny that being convicted of acts which are expressive of a pedophilic mindset somehow doesn’t make one a convicted pedophile. As if 2 when added to 2 somehow doesn’t equal 4.
