Will Pell be defrocked?

[Rau]

That assists us to see your reasoning Hoosier.

 

[Atreju]

Is it your assertion that one must be a first-hand witness of sexual assault in order to take action against someone convicted of it in a court of law, in order to be justified in wanting them not to have access to children?

What exactly is the standard that must be met before action would be justifiably taken?

“You don’t know” is not a meaningful statement or standard here. I don’t “know” whether Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK in the sense that I wasn’t there, but I have plenty good reason to believe he did, and would have not put him in charge of anything giving him an air of moral authority, nor would I make it a point to harangue people for citing him as the killer of JFK despite them not personally witnessing it.

 

[Morgan20]

I believe he is guilty and i also believe he will be defrocked

 

[Greenfields]

Quite a few priests ,lay people ,non Catholics that I know of believe him innocent along with myself .People who live in the Ballarat diocese and know him and know of him .There is a great unease at this present time with what has unfolded.
I will ask for prayers for my diocese,our Catholic Church and for Australians please.

 

[Rubee]

I am entirely ok with persons, on hearing of the verdict in this case, taking it as a given that the man did the deed. Equally, given some familiarity with the evidence actually considered, I am entirely comfortable with persons forming a view that there is a very fair chance the verdict is unsafe.

Since we can never know what happened, I think it’s always better to err on the side of "I don’t know" where one is not put in the position where their opinion actually matters. Then one is never guilty of blaming innocent people wrongly.

But I agree with your approach too. At the end of the day, he-said/she-said (or he said/he-said) situations will never justifiably give other unconcerned people the right to say the person accused did horrible things. Even if 12 people believe they did it.

It’s quite a different situation where you have multiple witnesses, physical evidence, video footage and so on. Something a tad more than "I believe this person more than I believe this one." . . . I mean, it’s not like jurors and judges come equipped with St. Padre Pio’s or St. John Vianney’s charism of heart-reading.