The Catholic Weekly 12 April 2020

catholicweekly.com.au 21 12, April, 2020 E ditorial & letters Dorin’s World Send your letters to: [email protected] By the post: The Editor, Level 13, 133 Liverpool St, Sydney NSW 2000 AUSTRALIA Televised Cathedral Good Friday service was great T hank you so very much for the opportunity to watch the Good Friday Service from Sydney’s St Mary’s Cathedral. It was a moving, simple and caring service and I am sure that thousands of people are grateful for the chance to pray, somehow, together. God bless. Victoria Torres Petersham NSW Will apology be extended to Cardinal by police? N ow that the bottom has dropped out of the case against Cardinal Pell, can we expect an apology from the Victorian Police for Operation Tethering, where Keystone’s Finest searched door to door trying to generate complaints against an innocent man? Richard Stokes Stanthorpe NSW Heartbreaking isolation of the elderly in care W e are all in this pandemic together except when we are separated from our precious aged and demented in full time care. The Government have denied us a weekly visit and my heart is breaking because for the past 10 years I have cared for my dearest friend, Max, who is in his 93rd year, and I am no longer able to see him and assure him that I have not abandoned him. The highlight of his week and mine was to take him for lunch and little drives just to escape the daily grind of the fa- cility. He would light up like a Christmas tree when he sawme. I fear he may forget who I am by the time we are allowed to visit them again. It seems like a human right to have your family and next of kin, be there for you, no matter what the circumstance. I think if the risk is there to bring in the staff who care for them, then surely for their emotional support, a visit from their dear ones should be of the highest pri- ority. With each passing day, I am feeling more and more depressed and sad that I cannot see my friend in the final chapter of his life. Helen Hadlow Goulburn NSW Protesters actions aimed at the wrong targets T he decision of the High Court in Pell vs the Queen will divide so- ciety down the middle. Whatever side of the debate you are on we need to remember that we are part of a civilised democratic society. But the vandalising of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral following the High Court’s ac- quittal of His Eminence with red paint is unacceptable. Likewise I noticed some people put ribbons and a child’s bike on the gates of the monastery where Cardinal Pell resid- ed briefly after his release. These actions were carried out by those who regard themselves as advocates for the victims of sexual abuse. However the Carmelite Nuns have no part in this argument. They offered Christian hospitality to an innocent man who needed solace and time to plan his future. Both actions were inappropriate. Stephen Early North Richmond New NSW New ‘viral utilitarianism’ is ageist and worrying I ’m desperately upset to see a number of business and conservative com- mentators push the argument that some Australians should lose their lives so that the economy can be restarted. What has been particularly offensive is the suggestion that older Australians are somehow expendable. These arguments are being put by a number of commentators, particularly in the conservative press both in Austra- lia and internationally. An example was John Roscoe’s column this week in the Australian Financial Review . It was headlined: ‘Lives matter but at what cost?’ The subheading read: ‘It is legitimate to ask if policymakers should prioritise people of all ages equally.’ The Church can’t be inconsistent on this. We can’t stand up for the lives of the unborn or infirm in resisting abortion and euthanasia but then stand idle when this assault on the right to life is being made so brazenly. Tim Stephens Sydney NSW Inquiries not optional – they’re essential B oth the Victorian Police and the ABC have been totally discredited by this week’s events. There is no other way to say it. But in the wake of the High Court decision vindicating Cardinal George Pell two things have become transparently clear: nothing less than a full official inquiry such as a Royal Commission is now needed, a searching scrutiny of how the Victoria Po- lice conducted their investigation of Cardinal Pell, charg- ing, prosecuting and succeeding (against the most funda- mental principles of criminal justice and police practice) in convicting and jailing an innocent man without, in the pro- cess, having produced any actual evidence. A second and separate high-level inquiry is also no lon- ger desirable but has now become essential: an inquiry into the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s low, tawdry - and also completely discredited - role in the whole affair, many elements of which clearly did everything they could in their power to prime and frame the case against Cardinal Pell. This occurred again within the last fortnight with the screening of elements of the Revelation TV series into sex- ual abuse carried out by clergy. The pattern is decades long and the High Court’s decision has exposed it. Any investigations should also make it a priority to un- cover the incestuous relationship between the relevant ABC journalists and fellow staff with elements of the Victorian Police to uncover andmake public the degree of collabora- tion between them in attempting to frame an innocent man. If a Royal Commission has been found necessary - as it has - into allegations of Victoria Police’s corruption of defense lawyers as secret police informers against their clients, a sec- ond Royal Commission or high level inquiry is needed to fill out the picture of what went rotten regarding Cardinal Pell. Something is seriously wrong in the Victorian police force. Meanwhile, one moment in the week spoke volumes about the ABC’s pseudo-intellectual sense of its own supe- riority. In an at-times fiery interview, clearly flustered ABC presenter Karina Carvalho asked ACU’s Professor Greg Cra- ven after the news of Cardinal Pell’s vindication and release the following question: “Do you have sympathy for the ac- cuser and other victims of sexual abuse by clergy who are disappointed by today’s decision?” It was remarkable. The rhetorical question was designed to frame Prof Craven, a critic of the legally unsubstantive case brought against Cardinal Pell. But it was also a clum- sy attempt to try and wrong-foot a leading academic legal expert into saying he had no sympathy for victims of sexual abuse, the sort of thing only a brute would say. Ms Carval- ho might as well have asked Prof Craven if he had sympathy for victims of the Holocaust or the Rwandan and Cambodi- an genocides. It was vapid, but it clearly illuminated a major aspect of the current problem: the creation of false dichoto- mies in an attempt to discredit those of whom the ABC dis- approves. Thankfully, the video has gone viral. The ABC uses this approach to make one or more abus- ers somehow representative of the whole institution. The same logic has seen it pursue the Church while, compara- tively, ignoring the other pandemic that it rarely reports: the pandemic of sexual abuse in Australian society among fam- ilies, which is also a global phenomenon. This pandemic was set out in 2006 by the United Nations Study on Violence Against Children, which still makes shocking reading and which includes chapters on sexual violence against children and quotes multi-country studies of the problem. Produced by Paolo Sergio Pinheiro, the issue is still annually revisited in UN reports and the office of the UN Special Representa- tive of the Secretary-General on Violence Against Children is a permanent secretariat. Similar reports are issued annu- ally by Australia’s social welfare agencies. But where is the ABC outrage? Where is its reporting? The deeper problem is relatively easy to diagnose: ABC journalists and producers who are largely products of Aus- tralian tertiary schools of humanities and media studies in which ideologies antithetical to the positive aspects of ci- vilised societies - feminist paradigms, gay paradigms, marx- ist paradigms, environmental paradigms, indigenous para- digms, as they are referred to - dominate. Despite their own internal ideological contradictions all share one common enemy: white middle-aged Christian males who are at the root cause of every imagined injustice in history. The ABC is off the rails and has been for a long time. Its consistent practice of staff using taxpayer dollars to perse- cute its ideological enemies – to the extent of encouraging legal efforts to bring them down – is out of control and be- yond rationality. It needs to be shut down or reformed and neither is impossible. LETTERS Got something to say? Send a letter to the Editor! [email protected]