Pell convicted

Cardinal George Pell has been convicted of sexually abusing children.

Cardinal George Pell has joined the ranks of other shamed Catholic priests who betrayed the trust of children who believed they were men of God.

The Vatican treasurer, now a convicted pedophile, was a close adviser to the Pope, personally appointed by Francis as the Vatican’s minister of Economy and, until October, was a member of the Pope’s Council of nine advisers.

As a victim of sex abuse, his accuser can’t be named under Australian law, but his testimony will be felt at the very heart of the Vatican, which for decades has been accused of ignoring, covering up and denying sex abuse was committed within its ranks.

Meantime

A top Catholic cardinal admitted Saturday that Church files on priests who sexually abused children were destroyed or never even drawn up, a move which allowed pedophiles to prey on others.

“Files that could have documented the terrible deeds and named those responsible were destroyed, or not even created,” German Cardinal Reinhard Marx said in a speech to a landmark Vatican summit on tackling pedophilia in the clergy.

“Instead of the perpetrators, the victims were regulated and silence imposed on them. The stipulated procedures and processes for the prosecution of offenses were deliberately not complied with, but instead cancelled or overridden,” he said.

Saint Peter Damian wrote a letter to the Pope in the 11th-Century that is now known as The Book of Gomorrah, in which he railed, futilely, against clerical sexual abuse of children; this is nothing new.

What has changed is that the accusers can no longer be silenced — and that is all. The clergy are not a somehow ‘better’ class of men who have access to special cosmic knowledge that is unavailable to the rest of us; many, in fact, are deeply troubled and took the collar as a form of self-therapy, expecting to overcome their nature or, at least, be in an environment where their sexual interests could not be indulged. Proportionally, there are undoubtedly more troubled men standing behind the pulpit than there are sitting in the pews.

According to Christian teaching, The Invisible Wizard is totally capable of finding you and giving you instruction when you’re sitting on a park bench. So take the spouse and kids and dog to the park Sunday morning instead of listening to some red-faced moron howl and bellow about SIN-SIN-SIN, and trust Him to let you know if He has something that concerns you on His mind.

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