The Catholic Weekly 12 April 2020

catholicweekly.com.au 13 12, April, 2020 terion, no evidence of an ac- tual crime was required, nor was any corroboration of the charges; what counted was that the complainant seemed sincere. But this was not serious ju- dicial reasoning according to centuries of the common law tradition. It was an exercise in sen- timent, even sentimentality, and it had no business being the decisive factor in convict- ing a man of a vile crime and depriving him of his reputa- tion and his freedom. (Had the High Court up- held a conviction on these grounds, there would have been the most serious doubt that any Catholic cleric, or indeed anyone, charged with sexual abuse by a “credible” complainant could receive a fair trial in Australia. For by this credibility criterion, any defendant is prima facie con- demned as guilty.) As Justice Weinberg’s ex- traordinary, 200-plus page dissent was digested by ju- rists and veteran legal prac- titioners in Australia, and as the lifting of a press blackout on coverage of the Pell trial exposed the thinness of the prosecution case, a rising tide of concern among thought- ful people, convinced that a grave injustice had been done, could be felt —even at a distance of thousands of kilo- metres fromMelbourne. That concern may have been reflected in the decision by the High Court, Australia’s supreme judicial body, to ac- cept a further appeal (which need not have been granted). Similar concerns were ev- ident in the sharp grilling of the Crown’s chief prosecutor when the High Court heard the cardinal’s appeal inMarch 2020. That two-day exercise made it plain, again, that the Crown had no case that would meet the standard of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt; that the jury in the cardinal’s second trial (held because of a hung jury at his first trial) returned an unsafe and in- deed insupportable verdict; and that the two judges of the Victoria Supreme Court who upheld the conviction (one of whom had no criminal law experience whatsoever) made grave errors of the sort that their colleague, Justice Wein- berg, identified in his dissent. The High Court’s decision to acquit Cardinal Pell and free him is thus both just and welcome. The question of how any of this could have happened in the first place remains to be adjudicated, however. And it is imperative for the future of the Australian crim- inal justice system, and in- deed for the future of Austral- ian democracy, that a serious examination of conscience followed by a serious public reckoning take place. As I have written before, the vicious public atmosphere surrounding Cardinal Pell, es- pecially in his native State of Victoria, was analogous to the poisonous atmosphere that surrounded the Dreyfus Af- fair in late-nineteenth century France. In 1894, raw politics and ancient score-settling, corrupt officials, a rabid media, and gross religious prejudice com- bined to cashier an innocent French army officer of Jewish heritage, Captain Alfred Drey- fus, for treason, after which he was condemned to the hell of Devil’s Island. The Melbourne Assess- ment Prison and Her Majes- ty’s Prison Barwon, the two facilities in which George Pell has been incarcerated, are not Devil’s Island, to be sure. But many of the same fac- tors that led to the false con- viction of Alfred Dreyfus were at play in the putrid public atmosphere of the State of Victoria during the past four years of the Pell witchhunt. The Victoria police, already under scrutiny for incompe- tence and corruption, con- ducted a fishing expedition that sought “evidence” for crimes that no one had pre- viously alleged to have been committed; and by some ac- counts, the police saw the persecution of George Pell as a useful way to deflect atten- tion from their own (to put it gently) problems. With a few honourable exceptions, the local and national press bayed for Cardinal Pell’s blood. Someone paid for the pro- fessionally printed anti-Pell placards carried by the mob that surrounded the court- house where the trials were conducted. And the Australian Broad- casting Corporation — a tax- payer-funded public institu- tion — engaged in the crudest anti-Catholic propaganda and broadcast a stream of defamations of Cardinal Pell’s character (most recently in a series coinciding with the de- liberations of the High Court). To imagine that an unbi- ased jury could have been empanelled in these fevered circumstances is to imagine a great deal — and perhaps to imagine the impossible. Yet the present law in the State of Victoria did not al- low the cardinal to request a bench trial by a judge alone. So what might have been imagined to be a sober legal proceeding came to bear the hallmarks of a slow-motion political assassination by ju- dicial means. And it does not strain credulity to imagine that that was, all along, the intention of some of those in- volved in the persecution of George Pell. Democratic politics is a contact sport, and nowhere more so than in Australia. The frenzied public mad- ness surrounding George Pell did not bespeak a robust de- mocracy sustained by a vital public moral culture, how- ever; it bespoke something more primitive and far more dangerous. Thus the High Court struck a blow for democratic decen- cy and democratic renewal, as well as for justice, by allow- ing Cardinal Pell’s appeal and entering a verdict of acquittal into the record. The High Court’s decision will not change the minds of the pathological Pell-haters, whose name is legion. And it is a safe bet that fur- ther attacks on the cardinal’s character will be forthcoming. Perhaps, though, the High Court decision will embold- en the Australian parliament to take another step toward democratic renewal Down Under and look into the con- dition of the police and the criminal justice system in the State of Victoria—and to con- duct an inquiry into why the country’s government-owned public broadcasting system is permitted to engage in def- amation of character on the taxpayers’ dollar. Throughout this ordeal, Cardinal George Pell has been a model of patience, and in- deed a model of priestly char- acter. Knowing that he is inno- cent, he was free even when incarcerated. And he put that time to good use — “an ex- tended retreat,” as he called it — cheering his many friends throughout the world and in- tensifying an already-vigorous life of prayer, study, and writ- ing. Now that he can, at last, celebrate the Mass again, I’ve no doubt that he will make, among his intentions, the conversion of his persecutors and the renewal of justice in the country he loves. As a citizen of Vatican City, Cardinal Pell did not have to abandon his work in Rome to return to Australia for trial. The thought of appealing to his diplomatic immunity nev- er occurred to him, though. For he was determined to defend his honour and that of the Australian Church, which he had led in addressing the crimes and sins of sexual abuse (and in many other ways) for years. George Pell placed his bet on the essential fairness of his countrymen.The High Court’s decision has vindicated that wager, finally. The reception of the court’s decision will tell a lot about whether the Australian me- dia and the Australian people have learned anything from all of this. George Weigel is the Dis- tinguished Senior Fellow and William Simon Chair in Catholic Studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Centre in Washington Perhaps the High Court decision will embolden the Australian Parliament ... to conduct an inquiry into why the ... government-owned public broadcasting system is permitted to engage in defamation of character on the taxpayer’s dollar.” NSW Police talk with Cardinal George Pell as he arrives at the Seminary of the Good Shepherd on 8 April. PHOTO: CNS, BIANCA DE MARCHI,AAP IMAGES VIA REUTERS Justice MarkWeiberg of the Victorian Court of Appeal. His dissenting judgement intellectually demol- ished the reasoning of the majority in 2019. PHOTO:AAP, SUPREME COURT OF VICTORIA In brief Christian families miss food Wahlberg palm Bishops petitioned PAKISTANI CHRISTIAN families seeking out food aid were told by a cleric at a local mosque that the food was only being dis- tributed to Muslim fami- lies, according to a report from Religious persecu- tion watchdog Interna- tional Christian Concern. On 5 April, more than 100 Christian families from Sandha Kalan vil- lage, located in the Kasur district of Pakistan’s Pun- jab province, were exclud- ed from a distribution of food aid. Shahakeel Ahmed, a local Muslim and human rights defender, said that Sheikh Abdul HaleemHa- mid decided that the food aid would be distributed to only Muslim families. HOLLYWOOD ACTION star Mark Wahlberg took to Instagram on Palm Sunday to wish his 15mil- lion followers a very holy Palm Sunday. “It’s been a long long time since I’ve missed mass, but luckily every year on Palm Sunday I save my Palm,” saidWahl- berg, showing fans his palm from 2018 bound together to make a cross. “I keep it in my prayer book for the year until I can replace it. It’s a little bitter and dry but it’s go- ing to have to last anoth- er year. Thinking about everybody during this Holy Week, praying for all of you, God bless you. Stay strong and keep the faith.” A CATHOLIC group in the US called ‘We are an Easter People’, have filed a petition to bishops asking them to make commun- ion available to the faith- ful during the COVID-19 crisis. “Bishops, we your faithful flock, implore you to do everything you can to make the sacraments more available to us dur- ing this crisis,” the peti- tion reads. At the time of writing the petition had 24,576 signatures. CARDINAL PELL ACQUITTED