From David Marr

Hardly a voice was raised in George Pell’s defence. The guns of News Limited were silent. His biographer had nothing to say. Anonymous bloggers raged, of course. They always do. Out in the world of religious websites, commentators, some of them priests, wrote of a kinder, gentler Pell. His own reply was witty but perfunctory. Such was their silence that it might have seemed Pell’s friends had deserted him. But I understand they saw themselves doing His Eminence a service by not feeding the flames. Perhaps they were right. Gerard Henderson was the only supporter who couldn’t help himself. Apart from his column in the Sydney Morning Herald and a series of attacks on his Sydney Institute website, the response to The Prince was remarkably civilised.

I am not a Catholic. Here and there the suggestion was made that only a Cath olic could understand that what seemed cruel or negligent or self-serving to an outsider was mandated by history, by heaven or by Rome. I am not persuaded. Pell went further by claiming only a “believing Christian” could make sense of his role in the scandal. That doesn’t persuade me either. If being a believing Christian makes sense of his dealings with Searson and Pickering, it’s a poor advertisement for Christianity.

The Prince is an essay with a purpose. Henderson complained: “Marr has chosen to depict Pell almost solely with reference to the sex abuse scandal.” But, Gerard, that was the whole point of the exercise. It goes without saying that there is much, much more to be written about the man and the institution. There were those who regretted me not bringing a little sunlight to the text by giving some good news about the Catholic Church. This puzzles me. How can it be germane to the task at hand to record, say, the good work of St Vincent de Paul? Those who accuse me of writing a brief for the prosecution underestimate my ambition: I set out to deliver a judgment.

- David Marr

http://www.themonthly.com.au/blog/david-marr/2013/11/27/1385530029/david-marr-and-george-pell-correspondence-following-quarterly-

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Prime Minister Tony Abbott's support for Cardinal George Pell over child sex abuse is inappropriate and factually wrong, victims say.

This new controversy came as the Speaker of the Victorian Parliament, Ken Smith, accused the former Melbourne vicar-general, Gerald Cudmore, of committing perjury in evidence he gave to a parliamentary inquiry in 1993. Mr Smith said highly placed Catholics stifled his inquiry's report.

Mr Abbott told Fairfax Radio that Cardinal Pell, a former Catholic archbishop of Melbourne, was the first senior cleric to take sexual abuse by clergy seriously.

Asked whether Cardinal Pell, now Archbishop of Sydney, carried any responsibility for the failures described by the report of the Victorian inquiry into the church's handling of child sexual abuse, Mr Abbott said he hadn't read it.

''As is pretty well known, I have a lot of time for George Pell … my understanding is that the first senior cleric who took this issue very seriously was in fact Cardinal Pell.''

The report, Betrayal of Trust, said the cardinal was reluctant to acknowledge and accept responsibility for the church's failings on criminal child abuse. It also strongly condemned the current Catholic leadership, saying it trivialised and minimised abuse, treated it as ''a short-term embarrassment'', and betrayed the church's purported values.

Advocate Chrissie Foster said Mr Abbott's friendship with the cardinal coloured his thinking. Mrs Foster, two of whose daughters' lives were ruined by paedophile priest Kevin O'Donnell, said after Mr Abbott was elected, she watched him on the platform with his wife and ''three beautiful daughters. I thought of my beautiful daughters and what became of them. The only difference is that my children went to a different Catholic primary school''.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/abbotts-response-to-child-sexual-abuse-by-clergy-angers-victims-20131114-2xjpo.html#ixzz2kx600Yb9

From The Monthly —December/January Editor's Note

ByJOHN VAN TIGGELEN

Sunday, 1st December 2013

One of this magazine’s most popular contributors, someone not known for subscribing to partisan opinion, demurred when asked to comment on the current government for this issue. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a cabinet of creeps,” he said. “I can’t bear to take them seriously yet.”

Fair call. Let’s be charitable and hope it’s all vaudeville. They’ve not been in government three months, so there’s a chance they may yet prove halfway competent. After all, how to take seriously Joe Hockey, who bleated incessantly pre-election about a budget emergency but now wants to borrow by the hundred billion? What of Christopher Pyne, whose reversal of support for the Gonski education reforms was delivered last week with trademark up-yours smugness? Meanwhile, we have a prime minister who continues to sledge “Electricity Bill” Shorten as if he were in Opposition, an immigration minister who makes Philip Ruddock look warm-hearted, an environment minister who thinks global warming and bushfire risk are unrelated, an attorney-general who thinks it’s OK for taxpayers to fund his trips to attend the weddings of shock jocks, and a Liberal Party strategist who tweeted that the already perilously offended Indonesian foreign minister resembles a “Pilipino” porn star. (Ah, he’s Asian – of course he does.) And we have yet to hear from Peter Dutton how he plans to cruel the public health system. Against this lot, Barnaby Joyce and Clive Palmer can claim gravitas.

The government’s only evident agenda so far is an “undo” agenda. Undo Gonski. Undo the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Undo the carbon tax. Undo the ABC. Undo the mining resources rent tax. Undo the national curriculum. Undo Kyoto. Undo sound foreign relations. Undo the National Broadband Network. Undo World Heritage Area protections. Undo anything that gets between them and their onanistic reverence for John Howard.

It’s an altogether unsavoury tableau, this frat party of Young Liberals who refuse to grow up. With or without the Filipino porn nights, this is as close to an undergraduate government as this country has had: one that enjoys ministerial dress-ups and playing “culture war” games with its cheerleaders in the Murdoch press in lieu of having anything to offer. The lot of them may as well be running through Parliament House shouting, “To-ga, to-ga, to-ga!” Somewhere in the wings, keeping himself nice and, one expects, averting his gaze, is Malcolm Turnbull. What must he be thinking?

http://www.themonthly.com.au/blog/john-van-tiggelen/2013/12/01/1385863833/decemberjanuary-editors-note

Anger is rising within the Abbott government over Malcolm Turnbull's advocacy for gay marriage, with the Communications Minister publicly criticised by two backbench colleagues.

South Australian Senator Cory Bernardi has urged Mr Turnbull to either resign from the frontbench or stop commenting on "fringe issues outside party policy". And West Australian Liberal MP Dennis Jensen said Mr Turnbull's comments on gay marriage were "unhelpful" and not befitting a cabinet minister.

Mr Turnbull frustrated some of his more conservative colleagues when he told an interviewer on Sunday that Australia was getting out of step with similar countries on gay marriage.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/liberal-colleagues-cory-bernardi-and-dennis-jensen-criticise-malcolm-turnbull-over-gay-marriage-comments-20131216-2zghl.html#ixzz2ndGqvehO