Cardinal Pell blames the media

Fuckin hell, is this guy for real? He can't be serious. 

On Tuesday a defiant Cardinal Pell welcomed the announcement of a national royal commission into abuse and said he believed it would help decipher real claims from ''significant exaggeration''.

''We'll answer for what we've done,'' Cardinal Pell said, adding that he expected to be called to give evidence. ''We're not trying to defend the indefensible.''

But he hit out at what he described as a ''campaign'' by the media and ''general smears'' against the Catholic Church. Read more

He sounds like some whinging politician who ignored his constituents for years and facing bad polling because of it, then blames the media for the polls. It's one of the oldest cop outs in the book. Honestly for someone to come out with that, I don't consider at all that he actually believes it, but rather it's simply a strategy to blunt the criticism against the Catholic church. And in using such a strategy he's treating the general public such as I with derision and contempt; assuming that we're all dumb fuckin sheep. Politicians use that line all the time when they're having a bad run.

It's also treating those people who have been sexually abused by his church worse even than he's treating the general public. I can't imagine how I'd feel if I was a victim of abuse by the Catholic Church, only to have the Cardinal of Australia go on the telly and claim it didn't happen as it's a media beat up. Any victims who may be reading this, you certainly have my sympathies here.

I'm not a Catholic (just in case anyone hadn't realised that by now!) so I don't take much heed in anything they've said over the years. I mean the whole bloody church is stuck in the Middle Ages as far as I'm concerned and entirely irrelevant to modern life. One particular thing in the church that needs an overhaul is what's been in the firing line of late here. This is what the law in NSW says if someone tells you they've been fucking around with kids. 

Under the NSW Crimes Act, a person must disclose knowledge of a sexual assault or risk being charged with concealing a serious indictable offence, but priests are one of a small class of occupations that cannot be prosecuted unless the Attorney-General consents. Read more

Why the hell are priests virtually immune from prosecution? The law needs changing. IMO you can't have a religion practising here that has a system in place that breaks the law. It's simply using church dogma to hide abuse. Since when does being in a religion make it OK to break the law, and such a serious law as well? NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell, himself a Catholic, made this comment in State parliament yesterday:

''But I struggle to understand … that if a priest confesses to another priest that he's been involved in paedophile activities, that that information should not be brought to police,'' he said. Read more

So anyway, let us pray ....  look what the real story is, from people who've spent years investigation sexual abuse within religious organisations here. "Broken Rites" has been in the news a bit last couple of days. I've never heard of them. So looked them up.And who do I find in a picture right smack dab in the middle of the home page? None other than Cardinal Pell himself, in his younger days though, before he became a Cardinal.

In the photo, Catholic priest Gerald Ridsdale (left) walks to court, accompanied by his support person (Bishop George Pell, then an auxiliary bishop in Melbourne), when Father Ridsdale was pleading guilty to his first batch of criminal charges in May 1993. But no bishop accompanied the victims, who felt deserted by the church hierarchy. Therefore, Broken Rites quickly became Australia's main support group for church-abuse victims. more

Oh look, there's that bloody media again, making all this up and demonising the Catholic church unfairly...  Looks like Pell has a bit of a name for himself with these abuse victims.

So what does this Broken Rites organisation have to say specifically in regards to the Catholic church? What of Pell's assertion that there has been "significant exaggeration", "general smears", and a media "campaign" against his beloved church? Broken Rites, who have been in existence since 1992, say this on their home page:

Broken Rites has supported victims (male or female) from the Catholic Church, the Anglican Church and the Uniting Church, as well as from smaller denominations. 

About 90 per cent of the men and women who have contacted Broken Rites Australia have been from a Catholic background. more