WEBVTT

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<v 0>This session of the 2013 Adelaide festival of ideas was recorded by</v>

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Radio Adelaide through the support of the bast mid library,

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University of Adelaide,

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the University of South Australia Library and Flinders university library.

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.

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<v 1>Welcome to the Adelaide festival of ideas to the mock ecclesiastic Bonython Hall</v>

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where the subject would be matters arising from George Pell.

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And my guest is David Marr.

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David bears a heavy burden because he's my favorite Australian

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journalist. As I freak, as I frequently tweet.

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David is an extraordinary writer.

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He also is absurdly courageous and he

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rather than retreating from fights, he likes to stop them

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for me. Prior to his quarterly essays,

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David's triumph was the book with Marian Wilkinson dark

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victory on the on the Howard election when based

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on a beaten up refugee crisis,

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a book and an issue of course,

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which continues to resonate as he's not

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simply, he doesn't write quarterly essays.

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He writes a drawn and quarterly essay

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from which no victim escapes. And in the past,

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of course,

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he's focused on pretty ordinary earthbound creatures like Kevin Rudd

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and Tony Abbot. But on this occasion, on this occasion,

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he lifted his eyes to the heavens and has taken on a prince of the

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church. The issue, of course is child abuse,

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but the ramifications of the pell era extend

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far beyond that as I hope we should tease out in what happens. Now, David,

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it seems to me fair,

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given that we're going to be looking into theologies and perhaps

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pathologies of George Pell and his religious Felice to

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ask about yours.

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You recently wrote very movingly about the death of your parents.

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So I'm not entirely invading privacy.

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<v 2>I, my,</v>

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my mother's and my father's families were both Presbyterian,

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but my mother and my father had both been to Anglican schools,

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which had begun a sort of a slow drift into Anglicanism.

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And I was confirmed as an Anglican when I was 12 or 13.

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I went to an Anglican school in Sydney.

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And at about the age of 14,

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I went to one of those Anglican summer camps and and

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committed my life to Christ.

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I had an intense period of four or five years of

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religiosity.

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I was intensely a devout and

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I read a great deal of history and, and theology.

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It was the time God blesses of a book called honest to

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God. By, by the bishop of

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Suffolk Robinson,

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somebody the other days hit it's the 50th anniversary of the publication than

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book. But I lost my favorite university. The,

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the fault was the philosophy department one day without any warning,

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whatever. We were asked to sit and write a brief essay

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in light of present world conditions to try to square the propositions

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that God was both all powerful and all good and I couldn't do

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it. I just could not do it.

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And that was the start of the end.

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Later when I acknowledged my sexuality,

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that was the end of the end.

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<v 1>The sexual abuse by all of young children,</v>

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by parish priests employed to take them into their pastoral care.

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You will recall it was the on willingness of members of the Victorian.

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Please do continue to stand back.

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That unleashed the the ticking bomb followed soon after by New South Wales

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police who Victorian police linked 40 suicides in the state to

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abuse by half a dozen priest and brothers alone.

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Now very shortly the report of the Victorian parliamentary inquiry into the

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handling of child abuse by religious and other organizations is due to be

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tabled.

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And following that the royal commission created by a former prime minister Gilad

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will continue its work. Now David's quarterly, I'm sorry,

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drawn and quarterly.

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So the prince faith abuse and George Pell has been walking off

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the chills in stores, but the,

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the carnal himself has been strangely unresponsive.

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It's almost as though you are having a one side of controversy.

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<v 2>The cardinal has responded briefly with a statement</v>

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in which he said that my problem was that I had no idea what it was to be a

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believing Christian.

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I'm not sure how that answers any of the problems that are raised in my essay.

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He also deliciously lives in an intellectual firmament where he still

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believes that GK Chesterton can deliver the knockout blur and

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he quotes chest it and saying that the hero,

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that a good novel is the portrait of its hero.

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A porn novel is the portrait of its author.

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There are a couple of problems with that of course,

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which is that this is not a novel.

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And the other is that my understanding of my studies of English

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literature is that both good and bad novels are very good

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portraits of their offers.

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He also said that it was regurgitated and and familiar and

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predictable stuff. So he has in fact responded,

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but his followers and his defenders have been essentially

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absolutely silence. Jared Henderson. Well,

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Jared Henderson is in an interesting position.

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Jared Henderson is a Sydney commentator who is an

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alumnus of Ba Santa Maria.

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Now I found myself having dealt with Ba Santa Maria has

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influence in my Tony Abbott Essay back in the world of VA Santa Maria with the

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pell essay.

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I hadn't really realized that pell is another one of those people whose

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whole lives have been shaped by an adolescent

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confrontation with the, with Ba Santa Maria.

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And as with Tony Abbott George Pell in Ballarat in the middle of the

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1950s,

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just before the split at the height of the Cold War

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went to a meeting that Ba Sams Maria was addressing and was

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swept away by the heroic mission that Santa Maria was

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offering two young men of faith to save civilization

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by,

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by being warriors for the faith inside society.

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And for some of them,

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not for some of them to commit themselves to becoming priests.

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This was a completely formative experience. It's very strange thing,

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of course, is that the political party that Ba Santa Maria formed the DLP

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collapsed and burned in the middle of the 1970s out of short of sheer

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irrelevance and nastiness. And many people thought, well,

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that's it, that's over. But in fact,

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the influence of this dynamically interesting figure in our

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recent history is still very much with us,

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partly through commentary because people like people like

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Jared Hinson and Greg Sheridan in the, in the Australian.

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There are still there are still Santa Maria writes who are at the very heights

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of public commentary and we have deliciously unexpectedly at this

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late time because a situation where our prime minister is a,

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is a Santa Maria arrive and the head of the Catholic church is a Santa Maria,

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right? All at the one time.

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It's a heavenly constellation of of stars and

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is going to have a very interesting impact on our, on our political life.

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But Jared Henderson is the only one of the,

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he's more an attacker of me than a defender of pell, frankly, to be,

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to be fair to him. He's the one who's spoken.

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Everybody else has been absolutely quiet.

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It would seem that the verdict has been that it is better not

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for,

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is not to make matters worse for pill by attempting to defend him.

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It's interesting, isn't it?

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That certainly religion is center stage again in Australian politics in a way.

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It hasn't been quite a while. Well,

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I've been writing about religion and politics for 20 or so years and,

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and what I always urge people to understand is that it

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is a subtle interplay of what is desired by the religious and what is

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possible in a society like ours.

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And the fact that the prime minister in the cardinal are close to one another at

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times the prime minister has called the cardinal.

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His spiritual advisor does not mean that Tony Abbott is this

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man's puppet.

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It does not indeed dictate the political agenda of somebody

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like Abbot will ever, to his credit,

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didn't back pills opposition to the Guillard royal commission. That's right.

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One of the themes of my essay,

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and perhaps it's what makes me angry,

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iest almost angriest of all about the response of the Catholic Church

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to, to the child abuse crisis as it evolved,

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is that the church has never shown any curiosity to know

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how bad things have actually been in their own ranks.

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There has never been a systematic investigation of the extent of the problem by

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any Catholic diocese or any Catholic order.

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They have not wanted to know.

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The strategy has been to respond to complaints,

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to respond to the appeals of victims.

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And in some ways the response to victims has been very fine in other ways,

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very poor. But there has never been,

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never been a wish to know exactly what's gone on and

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what's more pell led opposition to any

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move that to be a secular inquiry into what has gone on

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either in the Catholic Church or the other churches or indeed other

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institutions.

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And for over a decade he was always on hand to

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beat back demands for royal commissions as they were being repeatedly

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made. They began in the early Howard years.

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Howard always backed pell, always on on this issue,

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always said, no, no, we won't have a royal commission.

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And even as terrible things like the findings of the

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inquiries in Ireland were being published and come on.

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Ireland is Australia. We are provinces of one other one and others countries.

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The Irish church and the Australian church are indistinguishable.

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This was not a strange institute. This was not the church in Belgium.

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This was the church in Ireland.

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And the findings of those series of inquiries in Ireland were

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appalling, devastating. They've changed.

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They have changed. How the Irish, how the Irish worship,

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they have changed how the Irish behave. They,

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they were very dramatic and they immediately provoked calls in

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Australia for a royal commission here. And Pelz reply was,

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Australia is not Ireland, we don't need it.

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And in the week before,

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Gilad announced her royal commission in the days before,

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in fact, pell gave an interview condemning the notion of a royal commission.

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He preached against the Royal Commission.

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He wrote one of his Sunday columns against the notion of a royal commission.

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And the following day he had to welcome the prime ministers

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Royal Commission. But even in the face of all of that advocacy of he is,

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even him tried to block it all in the hours before Gilad

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announced the Royal Commission.

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Tony Abbott put out a very fine statement saying,

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so long as it's not just an inquiry into the Catholic church,

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we will support it.

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So Abbott is not this man's puppet. They're,

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the interaction of the two is going to be interesting to watch. He is,

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he's middle as for science as well, there is mean,

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well

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it is said unkindly of George Powell that nothing the

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pope supports will be opposed by him.

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And while that's true,

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kind of 98% of the time he didn't agree with Pope John Paul the

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second or with Pope Benedict on the issue of global warming.

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One of the missions of pells life is to is to deal with

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the warming alarmists. And he is of the view.

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It's not completely clear what he's anyway,

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he certainly thinks that global warming alarm is, is rubbish.

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But then to my mind,

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the f the fundamental problem here is a

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problem of science is a problem of fact.

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The traditional Christian conception of sexuality is as

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wrong about human beings as the notion that the sun

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revolves around the earth. And what we're dealing with here,

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I hope of the last ugly decades of a collision

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between the very ordinary facts of human life

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and an ethical conception of how we should behave sexually,

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that is just not applicable.

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And in a trying to apply it simply, infinitely cruel.

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<v 1>LNL coming to you from the Adelaide festival of ideas.</v>

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The venue is the an and hall.

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My guest is David Marr and we're talking about matters arising from cardinal

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pell. The great thing about Australian public life,

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which makes it possible for all sorts of people to survive all sorts of

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scandals is the media has the attention span

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of an earthworm. You know, we forget,

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we constantly forget and have to be reminded by works like

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yours. I lived through all the things you,

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you're describing all the controversies,

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but I'd forgotten the details and you bring them

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roaring back into into public,

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into public site. If,

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if in fact it was a novel that is looked briefly at the central

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character of Cardinal Pell. Tell me about his background,

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his origins. Well.

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<v 2>This is not fiction. This is my attempt to understand what actually happened.</v>

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Pells father is Protestant, his mother is a Catholic, was a Catholic,

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and they came from Ballarat.

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And this is one of those stories where the town matters deeply in the character,

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in the career of the central figure because Ballarat in the 50s was

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was a community where Catholicism really

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worked. It really did its work.

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There were good schools for Catholic kids.

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00:16:38.660 --> 00:16:43.490
The church was working to move kids out of out of poverty or

250
00:16:43.491 --> 00:16:46.410
out of, you know menial,

251
00:16:47.320 --> 00:16:51.800
menial existence into the professions and was doing it well.

252
00:16:51.980 --> 00:16:52.820
And what's more,

253
00:16:52.821 --> 00:16:57.050
the loyalty of that community of Ballarat means that kids might go away to

254
00:16:57.051 --> 00:17:01.340
Melbourne University to become doctors or lawyers or become accountants.

255
00:17:01.341 --> 00:17:04.220
But they came home again. So that Ballarat,

256
00:17:04.380 --> 00:17:08.930
that the Catholic community of Ballarat was strong, prosperous, confident,

257
00:17:09.320 --> 00:17:11.600
very Irish, very rule-bound,

258
00:17:11.601 --> 00:17:14.450
very conservative and,

259
00:17:14.480 --> 00:17:19.250
and very and it was a town of great division between the Catholic,

260
00:17:19.520 --> 00:17:22.940
the Catholic, Ballarat, and the Protestant. Ballarat was deeply divided,

261
00:17:22.941 --> 00:17:27.410
but everything about it suggested to a bright Catholic kid with real

262
00:17:27.411 --> 00:17:32.240
leadership potential growing up in that town that Catholicism worked.

263
00:17:32.690 --> 00:17:34.370
It really, really worked.

264
00:17:34.371 --> 00:17:39.320
He had his meeting with Santa Maria dedicating his life to the notion of the,

265
00:17:39.390 --> 00:17:41.870
you know, the, the heroic defense of Catholicism.

266
00:17:42.620 --> 00:17:47.090
And at the age of 18, he went into the seminary at Werribee.

267
00:17:47.420 --> 00:17:50.850
Do you remember that? That magnificent house, Werribee.

268
00:17:50.851 --> 00:17:54.780
You've seen pictures of it. And the Chirnside mansion.

269
00:17:55.500 --> 00:18:00.090
And at that time the seminaries were bursting with people

270
00:18:00.240 --> 00:18:03.060
bursting. It was the high tide of Catholicism.

271
00:18:03.360 --> 00:18:08.280
And George Pell has been fated to spend his entire career in the church watching

272
00:18:08.281 --> 00:18:12.180
the tide go out. But he is a person who has,

273
00:18:12.450 --> 00:18:15.660
as Tom Keneally told me for the essay, Tom put it as,

274
00:18:15.990 --> 00:18:19.140
he has a holding on mentality. He has,

275
00:18:19.530 --> 00:18:21.720
he's not a person to leave.

276
00:18:22.140 --> 00:18:27.120
And Tom Conneely compared the kind of sticking with it mentality

277
00:18:27.121 --> 00:18:31.500
of a pell to the sticking with it mentality of those old coms.

278
00:18:31.770 --> 00:18:35.580
And it didn't matter what, it didn't matter what the Communist Party did,

279
00:18:35.820 --> 00:18:39.090
they never left. You know, it didn't matter about Hungary,

280
00:18:39.091 --> 00:18:43.830
it didn't matter about the velvet bears and, but,

281
00:18:43.890 --> 00:18:47.160
and pell has, pell has survived as a, you know,

282
00:18:47.220 --> 00:18:52.110
as a rock inside this church. Always hanging on. And,

283
00:18:52.460 --> 00:18:56.880
and I think it goes back to a childhood where, you know,

284
00:18:56.881 --> 00:18:58.200
he saw it work.

285
00:18:58.590 --> 00:19:02.310
Is there a conflict between what month mark described as the

286
00:19:02.550 --> 00:19:06.870
muscularity of his Christianity and his

287
00:19:07.490 --> 00:19:11.830
and his sexual beliefs and it's,

288
00:19:12.480 --> 00:19:13.313
it

289
00:19:14.940 --> 00:19:19.140
he is an absolute defender of clerical celibacy,

290
00:19:19.560 --> 00:19:20.910
an absolute defender of it.

291
00:19:22.050 --> 00:19:26.430
And when I come back to this issue of child

292
00:19:26.431 --> 00:19:30.870
abuse and how it has flourished in particular

293
00:19:31.860 --> 00:19:33.360
inside the Catholic church,

294
00:19:33.960 --> 00:19:37.050
it seems to me that it,

295
00:19:37.090 --> 00:19:41.970
celibacy does not make men pedophiles. Most pedophiles are married men. Most,

296
00:19:42.270 --> 00:19:47.010
most child abuse occurs within families. But in the,

297
00:19:47.040 --> 00:19:51.810
in terms of religious institutions have that authority on the Catholic Church.

298
00:19:52.200 --> 00:19:57.000
Professor Patrick Parkinson from Sydney University who for many years until he

299
00:19:57.001 --> 00:19:57.631
broke with them,

300
00:19:57.631 --> 00:20:02.250
recently advised the Catholic Church on its handling of child abuse problems.

301
00:20:02.760 --> 00:20:07.620
He says that the Catholic Church presents six times as many

302
00:20:07.621 --> 00:20:11.400
victims as all of the other churches combined.

303
00:20:12.180 --> 00:20:15.150
And I think the issue is that

304
00:20:16.800 --> 00:20:20.460
the defensive clerical celibacy meant

305
00:20:20.760 --> 00:20:25.170
that the church provided a safe haven for

306
00:20:25.171 --> 00:20:28.980
pedophiles because the church knows that celibacy doesn't work.

307
00:20:29.010 --> 00:20:30.210
I mean it doesn't work.

308
00:20:31.380 --> 00:20:35.400
With the work of Richard Sipe in particular in the United States,

309
00:20:35.670 --> 00:20:40.500
a former monk and now a psychotherapist, I think who was,

310
00:20:40.530 --> 00:20:44.550
who was drawn on a number of surveys of what priests actually do.

311
00:20:45.090 --> 00:20:48.570
And his conclusion is that most priests have sex lives.

312
00:20:49.350 --> 00:20:54.000
And there was recently another study in Spain of the sex lives of priests.

313
00:20:54.450 --> 00:20:59.250
And in Spain the findings were something over 60% of priests had sex lives.

314
00:21:00.000 --> 00:21:04.260
So the celibacy and the enormous weight of

315
00:21:04.261 --> 00:21:08.580
prestige that is placed on celibacy by the church

316
00:21:10.290 --> 00:21:13.940
I don't, it's not a fraud, it's a kind of, it's a fake, it's a, it's,

317
00:21:14.020 --> 00:21:15.540
it's not real.

318
00:21:16.560 --> 00:21:19.320
And therefore the church has had to do two things.

319
00:21:19.920 --> 00:21:24.600
It has had to forgive a great deal of sexual behavior in its

320
00:21:24.601 --> 00:21:29.160
priests and for a very long time that included sexual

321
00:21:29.161 --> 00:21:30.480
encounters with children.

322
00:21:31.140 --> 00:21:35.730
And at the same time it had to pretend that everybody who is a priest and

323
00:21:35.731 --> 00:21:40.530
brother was celibate. And that was a perfect safe haven for crew,

324
00:21:41.060 --> 00:21:43.710
for, for pedophiles. And plus of course,

325
00:21:43.890 --> 00:21:48.840
the church gave them endless access to children as a part of our collective

326
00:21:48.841 --> 00:21:49.674
amnesia.

327
00:21:50.400 --> 00:21:55.140
We have forgotten that Pella himself was subject to accusations.

328
00:21:56.100 --> 00:21:59.940
When shortly after pell became archbishop of Sydney,

329
00:22:00.890 --> 00:22:01.723
a Mat,

330
00:22:02.030 --> 00:22:06.780
a Melbourne man emerged to lay a complaint that

331
00:22:06.781 --> 00:22:11.550
pell had interfered with him when he was an altar boy and

332
00:22:11.551 --> 00:22:15.540
pell was a seminarian in the early 1960s,

333
00:22:16.170 --> 00:22:20.850
one summer on Phillip Island pells to the side as archbishop of

334
00:22:20.851 --> 00:22:24.780
Sydney and a retired judge or splendid man called

335
00:22:25.960 --> 00:22:26.250
Alex South Fall,

336
00:22:26.250 --> 00:22:31.200
was hired by the church to examine the issue because the complainant did

337
00:22:31.201 --> 00:22:33.150
not wish to go to the police.

338
00:22:34.380 --> 00:22:38.940
It emerged instantly that the complainant having put

339
00:22:38.941 --> 00:22:41.880
behind him, the saintly life of a

340
00:22:43.980 --> 00:22:46.860
alter boy had gone onto a significant life of crime

341
00:22:48.480 --> 00:22:51.330
that was sprayed instantly. A number of,

342
00:22:51.390 --> 00:22:54.390
a number of a number of conservative

343
00:22:56.130 --> 00:23:00.960
commentators in the press had all the details of that within hours.

344
00:23:01.020 --> 00:23:04.020
All of it was supposed to be secret. They had it within hours.

345
00:23:06.330 --> 00:23:10.530
As the inquiry found that the complaint against pell was not

346
00:23:10.531 --> 00:23:11.364
established.

347
00:23:12.000 --> 00:23:16.800
But the inquiry also found that the complainant had every appearance of speaking

348
00:23:16.801 --> 00:23:21.240
the truth. So it was not established,

349
00:23:21.540 --> 00:23:25.920
but it was not quite the complete exoneration that Pella always claimed,

350
00:23:25.921 --> 00:23:29.880
since it was a devastating,

351
00:23:30.030 --> 00:23:34.050
a devastating time for him as Archbishop of Sydney.

352
00:23:34.710 --> 00:23:37.800
And he and when it was all over,

353
00:23:38.040 --> 00:23:39.840
he returned to,

354
00:23:39.870 --> 00:23:44.070
he returned to public life and not long after was made a cardinal.

355
00:23:44.790 --> 00:23:45.570
David,

356
00:23:45.570 --> 00:23:49.950
let's get to the big question of the the

357
00:23:49.951 --> 00:23:52.860
oppression suppression of,

358
00:23:53.370 --> 00:23:57.750
by the Church of the mounting ever escalating

359
00:23:57.751 --> 00:23:59.910
charges. What was going on

360
00:24:02.670 --> 00:24:06.780
first, we have to understand that this is not something that began in 1971.

361
00:24:06.781 --> 00:24:09.250
This has been going on forever. What,

362
00:24:09.260 --> 00:24:13.650
what happened in the 1970s and 1980s is the two

363
00:24:13.651 --> 00:24:16.560
forces ceased to have such strength.

364
00:24:16.920 --> 00:24:21.330
One was absolute respect for the priesthood and the other one was

365
00:24:21.331 --> 00:24:25.380
shame about coming forward to the police to say what had happened.

366
00:24:26.400 --> 00:24:27.630
It began, of course,

367
00:24:28.180 --> 00:24:31.530
the scandal began to unravel.

368
00:24:31.560 --> 00:24:36.000
Of course as these things do first in America and in the early

369
00:24:36.001 --> 00:24:38.250
1980s in Louisiana,

370
00:24:39.090 --> 00:24:43.950
angry Catholic parents and angry Catholic lawyers sued a

371
00:24:43.951 --> 00:24:47.760
priest, Father Gutter in Louisiana.

372
00:24:48.120 --> 00:24:49.110
And in the end,

373
00:24:49.260 --> 00:24:53.220
that priest in that little corner of Louisiana would cause the church to make

374
00:24:53.221 --> 00:24:57.420
payouts of over $20 million. And the,

375
00:24:57.690 --> 00:25:02.370
and that team of parents and lawyers were suing not just on

376
00:25:02.371 --> 00:25:05.250
behalf of the victims, but as they made clear at the time,

377
00:25:05.610 --> 00:25:09.810
they wanted to send a message to the American bishops that they were not running

378
00:25:09.840 --> 00:25:11.550
a clean house.

379
00:25:12.690 --> 00:25:17.220
And in Australia in the late 1980s,

380
00:25:17.250 --> 00:25:22.170
the bishops got together a rather or willy and committee called the [inaudible]

381
00:25:22.270 --> 00:25:26.250
the special interests or something. I've forgotten for the moment.

382
00:25:26.490 --> 00:25:30.170
The Spanish inquisition. No, no, no, no. Phillip,

383
00:25:30.171 --> 00:25:34.920
you must understand there is no inquisition. There is no investigation,

384
00:25:35.220 --> 00:25:36.180
none of that.

385
00:25:37.440 --> 00:25:42.060
And they got together a committee which was simply to work out how to defend the

386
00:25:42.480 --> 00:25:45.330
as assets in case anybody sued in Australia.

387
00:25:45.870 --> 00:25:47.940
But how it unraveled in Australia,

388
00:25:48.180 --> 00:25:52.560
the shifts in public opinion and the crucial, as you mentioned earlier,

389
00:25:53.280 --> 00:25:57.930
crucial shifts in the opinion of the police as in Ireland.

390
00:25:57.931 --> 00:26:02.520
It is now clear that the police in Australia would pick up,

391
00:26:02.850 --> 00:26:05.400
priests, would hear of Aaron priests,

392
00:26:05.430 --> 00:26:09.240
and they would leave them to the churches to deal with. And in,

393
00:26:09.300 --> 00:26:13.830
and certainly in the 1970s and well into the 1980s in both

394
00:26:13.860 --> 00:26:16.200
orders and dioceses in Australia,

395
00:26:16.500 --> 00:26:21.420
priests who had been raping children were withdrawn from service for a while.

396
00:26:21.660 --> 00:26:24.540
Perhaps they were made a chaplain in a hospital.

397
00:26:24.690 --> 00:26:27.540
Always interesting to look on the CV of a priest.

398
00:26:27.541 --> 00:26:29.760
Was he a chaplain in a hospital? Briefly?

399
00:26:30.780 --> 00:26:35.730
Was there a brief academic excursion to the United States to do

400
00:26:35.731 --> 00:26:39.420
a little Postgrad degree? Was there a trip too?

401
00:26:39.590 --> 00:26:44.240
In the most serious cases was the trip to the order of the Platte

402
00:26:44.250 --> 00:26:46.530
Para cleat in New Mexico,

403
00:26:46.800 --> 00:26:51.420
which offered to cure pedophiles through prayer and religious

404
00:26:51.421 --> 00:26:52.470
exercises.

405
00:26:53.820 --> 00:26:57.360
And then they were brought back and then they will put back into another parish.

406
00:26:57.720 --> 00:26:57.901
Now.

407
00:26:57.901 --> 00:27:02.760
Don't believe for a moment that why they were being shifted around was

408
00:27:02.820 --> 00:27:05.490
unknown to the parishes where they arrived.

409
00:27:05.910 --> 00:27:10.890
Priests know everything. They are phenomenally efficient. Gossips.

410
00:27:10.891 --> 00:27:13.440
What else has got to do with their time?

411
00:27:14.550 --> 00:27:18.390
That's a little cruel David and I withdraw it but, but

412
00:27:20.190 --> 00:27:23.400
if somebody suddenly leaves a parish and, and the Bishop says, you know,

413
00:27:23.401 --> 00:27:26.160
suddenly it's turning up in your parish. They get on the phone,

414
00:27:26.550 --> 00:27:30.420
they know exactly the reason, but they're not allowed of course,

415
00:27:30.421 --> 00:27:31.800
to tell their parishioners.

416
00:27:32.100 --> 00:27:37.020
So priests were still being moved around very occasionally,

417
00:27:37.710 --> 00:27:42.660
very occasionally from the late 1970s there was the odd prosecution

418
00:27:42.661 --> 00:27:43.620
of a priest,

419
00:27:44.370 --> 00:27:48.810
but it was not really until the early 1990s in Australia

420
00:27:49.200 --> 00:27:53.580
that the police attitudes changed sufficiently for them to begin

421
00:27:53.610 --> 00:27:58.530
generally to take seriously complaints of pedophilia by priests and

422
00:27:58.930 --> 00:27:59.763
religious.

423
00:28:00.210 --> 00:28:04.950
And it was then from the early 1990s onwards that

424
00:28:04.951 --> 00:28:07.770
both the prosecutions and the attempts,

425
00:28:07.800 --> 00:28:11.010
fruitless attempts to sue the church again

426
00:28:12.930 --> 00:28:13.763
and we,

427
00:28:14.490 --> 00:28:18.570
and let's now factor in pill's contribution to this

428
00:28:18.870 --> 00:28:20.880
crisis. Well, just by chance,

429
00:28:21.180 --> 00:28:24.750
pell became a bishop for the first time in 1987,

430
00:28:25.020 --> 00:28:28.860
which was just as the Australian church was beginning to get worried about the

431
00:28:28.861 --> 00:28:32.970
repercussions of all of this out here. And I can't tell you,

432
00:28:33.660 --> 00:28:38.490
you'll have to read the essay to find out how appalling the bishop's

433
00:28:38.491 --> 00:28:42.120
first attempt to deal with it was in the protocol of 1992.

434
00:28:42.720 --> 00:28:46.410
Never admit a thing. No sympathy to the victims.

435
00:28:46.980 --> 00:28:51.360
Just absolutely stonewall the victims. Brutal,

436
00:28:51.420 --> 00:28:56.220
brutal. It was supposed to be a secret a secret document.

437
00:28:56.610 --> 00:28:59.700
It was immediately leaked again by angry Catholics.

438
00:28:59.850 --> 00:29:04.170
This whole story is driven by angry,

439
00:29:04.200 --> 00:29:05.820
faithful Catholics.

440
00:29:06.150 --> 00:29:09.570
They leaked that document and immediately the bishops went into a huddle.

441
00:29:09.750 --> 00:29:12.870
They got better people to try and come up with a better solution.

442
00:29:14.370 --> 00:29:17.670
Pell was, it was the auxiliary bishop of Melbourne from 1987.

443
00:29:17.671 --> 00:29:21.830
He took no path in any of the, in any of the drafting of the,

444
00:29:21.831 --> 00:29:23.160
the early protocols.

445
00:29:23.460 --> 00:29:27.330
But he was responsible in Melbourne for parishes,

446
00:29:27.390 --> 00:29:32.160
which had a number of terrible priests and in

447
00:29:32.161 --> 00:29:36.780
particular he was responsible for the parish of Doveton working class

448
00:29:36.781 --> 00:29:40.800
parish in Melbourne, which had father Peter that see a son,

449
00:29:41.480 --> 00:29:46.280
a man so low, lived in his own parish and feared in the,

450
00:29:46.460 --> 00:29:51.380
in the primary school of the parish that the teachers would, would do all,

451
00:29:51.381 --> 00:29:55.010
they could never to allow a child to be alone in his presence.

452
00:29:55.340 --> 00:29:59.510
Children ran screaming from confessional a lot of the time he carried a gun.

453
00:29:59.750 --> 00:30:02.120
He had a delusion. He had a,

454
00:30:02.150 --> 00:30:06.230
he had a delusion that he was leftenant colonel in the military.

455
00:30:06.650 --> 00:30:10.130
He used to wear a khaki kind of bib with his, with his collar.

456
00:30:10.460 --> 00:30:14.150
He was visibly nuts,

457
00:30:14.390 --> 00:30:17.910
nuts and dive. Don't hold back. No,

458
00:30:19.390 --> 00:30:21.770
he was nuts and,

459
00:30:21.830 --> 00:30:24.620
and fine man.

460
00:30:24.740 --> 00:30:29.090
Fine man called Graham Sleeman who was the headmaster of this little school,

461
00:30:29.270 --> 00:30:33.770
said to the church, he has got to go. You've got to get this man out of here.

462
00:30:34.550 --> 00:30:38.630
If you don't, I will go. The church sided with the priest.

463
00:30:39.110 --> 00:30:43.070
Then as as auxiliary bishop pell received two

464
00:30:43.100 --> 00:30:47.720
delegations from parents and teachers telling him about

465
00:30:48.200 --> 00:30:51.410
CSM. We don't know how much he was told about season,

466
00:30:52.040 --> 00:30:57.020
but on both occasions he declined to take action other than have a

467
00:30:57.021 --> 00:31:01.880
conversation with season which he afterwards undescribed as a really

468
00:31:01.881 --> 00:31:03.410
awful experience for him.

469
00:31:03.860 --> 00:31:08.840
Cs in remained in that parish for further six years until finally

470
00:31:08.990 --> 00:31:13.700
one of the parents went to the police after CSUN had bashed their

471
00:31:13.701 --> 00:31:18.230
son for allegedly giggling during mass

472
00:31:18.680 --> 00:31:20.690
and it was the complaint to the police.

473
00:31:20.691 --> 00:31:25.230
That was the end of season and at that time, at that time,

474
00:31:25.280 --> 00:31:30.260
the archdiocese of Melbourne was run by Archbishop Frank Little at that time it

475
00:31:30.261 --> 00:31:35.030
appeared that you had to actually have an active complaint to the

476
00:31:35.031 --> 00:31:39.740
police before the Church would act to protect the children of the parishes and

477
00:31:39.741 --> 00:31:43.670
that was wild. Pell was an auxiliary bishop of one section of the,

478
00:31:43.940 --> 00:31:45.110
of the archdiocese.

479
00:31:45.410 --> 00:31:49.400
He was blind to what was going on when he was a priest in Ballarat and Ballarat

480
00:31:49.401 --> 00:31:52.910
was one of the worst places in Australia for a Catholic child to grow up.

481
00:31:52.940 --> 00:31:56.540
He admits this. He talks about himself being wet behind the ears.

482
00:31:56.541 --> 00:31:58.340
He talks about that kind of thing,

483
00:31:58.341 --> 00:32:03.320
not being his responsibility and he can't remember the incident when he was a

484
00:32:03.321 --> 00:32:05.450
young priest. When a boy,

485
00:32:06.410 --> 00:32:10.310
Tim Green with amazing courage said to him one day, father,

486
00:32:10.311 --> 00:32:13.550
you've got to do something about brother down at St Patrick's.

487
00:32:13.551 --> 00:32:17.900
He's abusing the boys now. Pella has no memory of that conversation.

488
00:32:18.290 --> 00:32:22.550
Tim Green Remembers Pelz saying, don't be ridiculous. And leaving the room,

489
00:32:23.070 --> 00:32:27.530
brother dial and went on to abuse children for another 20 years until he was

490
00:32:27.531 --> 00:32:31.850
finally imprisoned and he was not imprisoned until the Christian brothers had

491
00:32:31.851 --> 00:32:34.820
spent many millions of dollars on his defense.

492
00:32:35.060 --> 00:32:39.050
So that was Pale as Pale as a priest admits he was blind pell as

493
00:32:40.590 --> 00:32:44.640
did not remove citizen on becoming archbishop.

494
00:32:44.641 --> 00:32:49.530
He moved extremely rapidly and he has to be given credit for moving extremely

495
00:32:49.531 --> 00:32:53.850
rapidly to put in place what's known as the Melbourne response,

496
00:32:54.030 --> 00:32:58.470
which was a way of giving meager compensation

497
00:32:58.830 --> 00:33:03.690
and quite generous pastoral care to the victims

498
00:33:03.750 --> 00:33:08.550
of of pedophilia. That was just, it was just in Melbourne.

499
00:33:08.580 --> 00:33:13.530
The rest of Australia had and has a protocol called

500
00:33:13.531 --> 00:33:15.840
towards healing, but pell moved quickly.

501
00:33:16.350 --> 00:33:21.180
One of the outcomes of pill moving quickly and both of towards healing and of

502
00:33:21.181 --> 00:33:25.350
the Melbourne response is victims paid very, very,

503
00:33:25.380 --> 00:33:28.020
very little compensation for what's happened to them.

504
00:33:28.560 --> 00:33:31.860
Before I open this to questions from the audience, David,

505
00:33:32.610 --> 00:33:37.590
what would the writing instructions being issued to bishops and cardinals

506
00:33:37.591 --> 00:33:39.060
around the world by the Vatican?

507
00:33:39.660 --> 00:33:44.610
You can't understand the situation in Australia and unless you understand how

508
00:33:44.611 --> 00:33:49.260
the Vatican was responding, particularly to the wish,

509
00:33:49.261 --> 00:33:53.460
the deep wish of the American bishops, firstly,

510
00:33:53.461 --> 00:33:57.540
simply to be able to sack pedophile priests. Now,

511
00:33:57.541 --> 00:34:02.460
John Paul the second had his weaknesses and one of them was that he was

512
00:34:02.461 --> 00:34:06.010
really bad on this issue. Really bad. He,

513
00:34:06.060 --> 00:34:08.220
he refused to,

514
00:34:08.430 --> 00:34:12.930
he refuse to deal with some very prominent Catholics who had been caught

515
00:34:13.080 --> 00:34:15.510
abusing children on a vast scale.

516
00:34:16.770 --> 00:34:21.360
And he refused to cede to the bishops the right

517
00:34:21.510 --> 00:34:25.590
to just simply sack the priests. That was a,

518
00:34:25.620 --> 00:34:27.360
that was a roll for Ron.

519
00:34:28.560 --> 00:34:33.300
And until almost the very last years of John Paul, the second's reign,

520
00:34:34.140 --> 00:34:38.550
you couldn't defrock a priest unless the priest was willing to be defrocked.

521
00:34:38.970 --> 00:34:41.940
It was as bad as that. And,

522
00:34:42.030 --> 00:34:46.360
and there were orders for the greatest secrecy in all it,

523
00:34:46.370 --> 00:34:50.640
all dealings with pedophile, pedophile priests and brothers.

524
00:34:51.210 --> 00:34:54.510
And that was a crucial part of the orders from Rome as well.

525
00:34:54.960 --> 00:34:58.860
Benedict was much better than John Paul. The second on this issue,

526
00:34:59.160 --> 00:35:02.910
he had a much clearer understanding of the need for Rome to have proper

527
00:35:02.911 --> 00:35:06.420
tribunals and to deal with Aaron priests.

528
00:35:06.780 --> 00:35:11.100
Things became better under him. But nevertheless,

529
00:35:11.280 --> 00:35:15.030
it is still the case that you will be excommunicated

530
00:35:15.870 --> 00:35:17.970
for arguing,

531
00:35:18.000 --> 00:35:21.270
say for women priests or married clergy,

532
00:35:21.300 --> 00:35:23.430
you will be ex-communicated swiftly.

533
00:35:23.880 --> 00:35:28.620
You still really basically won't be ex-communicated for raping children.

534
00:35:30.810 --> 00:35:34.040
David Mark Festival of ideas and this is an LNL coming to you from the Veneto

535
00:35:34.290 --> 00:35:35.040
and hall.

536
00:35:35.040 --> 00:35:39.810
I would now like to invite audience to the one microphone we have

537
00:35:40.680 --> 00:35:42.960
right smack back in the center.

538
00:35:43.620 --> 00:35:46.620
And thank you sir.

539
00:35:47.130 --> 00:35:50.790
<v 3>Yeah, thanks David. As someone outside the Catholic Church,</v>

540
00:35:50.791 --> 00:35:55.050
one of the things I learned from reading an article was how much does a cardinal

541
00:35:55.350 --> 00:35:57.390
pill's power depends on his links with Rome.

542
00:35:58.620 --> 00:36:03.390
The Catholics have a new pope now will this affect pill's

543
00:36:03.391 --> 00:36:08.100
power or is it the same old band that our guide to continue with the same

544
00:36:08.101 --> 00:36:08.934
policies?

545
00:36:10.830 --> 00:36:15.660
<v 2>One of the fascinating things for me after all of those studies of</v>

546
00:36:15.930 --> 00:36:20.850
politicians that I've done all through my career was to discover how very

547
00:36:20.851 --> 00:36:24.150
different power is in an organization like the Catholic Church. I mean,

548
00:36:24.151 --> 00:36:25.230
I always knew that,

549
00:36:25.680 --> 00:36:29.280
but it was fascinating to get down into it because somebody,

550
00:36:30.360 --> 00:36:34.440
an archbishop doesn't need anybody to like him.

551
00:36:34.860 --> 00:36:39.540
He's not answerable to a board of directors. He's not like a, he's not like a,

552
00:36:39.541 --> 00:36:42.150
an industrialist, he's not like a politician.

553
00:36:42.390 --> 00:36:44.880
He doesn't have to keep the local branch happy with his work.

554
00:36:44.881 --> 00:36:47.160
He doesn't have to keep a local party happy with these work.

555
00:36:47.400 --> 00:36:52.260
His power obviously all comes from Rome and pals powers considerable

556
00:36:52.261 --> 00:36:56.130
because he was very much a young,

557
00:36:56.910 --> 00:37:01.560
high-flying bishop at the time that he was not taking season off. You know,

558
00:37:01.561 --> 00:37:02.430
he's not, you know,

559
00:37:02.460 --> 00:37:06.420
dragging CEUs and out of Dufton he was sitting on the congregation for the

560
00:37:06.421 --> 00:37:08.250
doctrine of the faith in Rome,

561
00:37:08.490 --> 00:37:13.440
formulating new and horrific descriptions of homosexuals as

562
00:37:13.441 --> 00:37:16.740
you know, objectively disordered going to hell, etc.

563
00:37:16.860 --> 00:37:19.830
He was busy in Rome with some very important work.

564
00:37:21.120 --> 00:37:25.680
And that's, that's in fact where he, he, he and Benedick became friends.

565
00:37:25.681 --> 00:37:27.960
They were working together on, on there that he,

566
00:37:27.990 --> 00:37:32.520
so his power comes from Ron and he has been a times

567
00:37:33.360 --> 00:37:35.430
he has been at times you know,

568
00:37:35.460 --> 00:37:38.320
apparently on the brink of very high postings in Rome.

569
00:37:38.321 --> 00:37:42.150
They never quite come off all his career.

570
00:37:42.600 --> 00:37:46.590
He has been dedicated to the notion of obedience to the pope.

571
00:37:46.860 --> 00:37:51.720
His view of the Catholic church is that it cannot operate if people are

572
00:37:51.721 --> 00:37:54.120
allowed to rely on their own consciences,

573
00:37:54.360 --> 00:37:58.080
which is very much the message of Vatican to the Jesuit message.

574
00:37:59.190 --> 00:38:03.490
The have to obey the pope. That's why the rules of, of, you know,

575
00:38:03.930 --> 00:38:08.670
sex rules are so important is because they are about the machinery of the

576
00:38:08.671 --> 00:38:10.590
church operating properly.

577
00:38:11.520 --> 00:38:15.090
So now we have a fascinating situation where the pope is a Jesuit.

578
00:38:16.860 --> 00:38:21.390
And while not saying the SEC's rules will be changed is

579
00:38:21.391 --> 00:38:25.140
saying they don't matter all that much, you know,

580
00:38:25.360 --> 00:38:27.840
they're not absolutely crucial.

581
00:38:28.380 --> 00:38:32.670
If you keep banging on about the six rules the pope has said,

582
00:38:33.060 --> 00:38:37.730
then the whole house of is going to fall. I am, by the way,

583
00:38:37.731 --> 00:38:42.020
delighted by the notion of a pope referring to the Catholic church as a house of

584
00:38:42.810 --> 00:38:43.643
odds.

585
00:38:44.480 --> 00:38:47.930
So it will be interesting here to see whether pill

586
00:38:49.250 --> 00:38:53.540
how pill balance is a very different pope with his absolute dedication

587
00:38:54.170 --> 00:38:57.990
to obedience to the pope. But the last words of your question, sir,

588
00:38:58.190 --> 00:39:02.540
are the crucial ones will in fact it just keep on going as it always has.

589
00:39:03.130 --> 00:39:07.550
This pope seems to be determined doing something about the spirit

590
00:39:07.970 --> 00:39:11.210
in which the bureaucracy of Rome operates.

591
00:39:11.470 --> 00:39:14.600
And that's the key to that to that question.

592
00:39:15.650 --> 00:39:20.360
But pell of course is part of the eight cardinal committee which will be

593
00:39:20.361 --> 00:39:24.650
overseeing those reforms. So lot of interest ahead on that.

594
00:39:25.620 --> 00:39:28.630
<v 1>Well, the next person goes to the microphone,</v>

595
00:39:28.900 --> 00:39:32.880
the center of the stage and I'm handed an urgent memo.

596
00:39:33.960 --> 00:39:38.700
Thank you very much, Christine. One of my dominatrix is at,

597
00:39:38.770 --> 00:39:40.530
at like nightlife. Madam.

598
00:39:42.230 --> 00:39:46.070
<v 4>Thank you for your SSI and for keeping this very important issue in the public</v>

599
00:39:46.071 --> 00:39:50.540
light and for what it does to assist the people who suffered at the hands of the

600
00:39:50.541 --> 00:39:51.374
church.

601
00:39:52.160 --> 00:39:57.110
My question too is do you have any insight into what it was that

602
00:39:57.111 --> 00:40:00.950
finally turn the police around to act on this issue?

603
00:40:00.951 --> 00:40:05.870
Because that seems to have been the turning point when things really started to

604
00:40:05.871 --> 00:40:07.880
happen in the way that they should have happened.

605
00:40:07.881 --> 00:40:09.650
If it had been any other institution.

606
00:40:10.230 --> 00:40:13.350
<v 2>A new generation of, of police</v>

607
00:40:15.690 --> 00:40:16.230
with,

608
00:40:16.230 --> 00:40:21.120
with better education and the professionalizing of the police force of

609
00:40:21.121 --> 00:40:24.280
getting the police to stay in school to,

610
00:40:24.330 --> 00:40:26.190
to do post you know,

611
00:40:26.370 --> 00:40:31.140
post-school get post-school qualifications has transformed the police forces of

612
00:40:31.141 --> 00:40:36.000
Australia and it has a very important of a very important impact on,

613
00:40:36.060 --> 00:40:40.050
on society in Australia. And that was part of it.

614
00:40:40.350 --> 00:40:43.860
And it was so a new kind of police,

615
00:40:44.550 --> 00:40:46.980
also a new kind of journalist,

616
00:40:46.981 --> 00:40:51.150
particularly working on country town newspapers.

617
00:40:51.480 --> 00:40:55.950
A lot of this story is about country town newspapers

618
00:40:56.220 --> 00:41:00.600
dealing with visible scandals in their towns.

619
00:41:00.960 --> 00:41:05.730
And that's partly the story of Ballarat and very much the story of baffle just

620
00:41:05.790 --> 00:41:09.180
in New South Wales where there were a series of scandals,

621
00:41:09.181 --> 00:41:12.510
which we can't talk about at the moment because there are trials going on.

622
00:41:13.860 --> 00:41:16.260
A new, a new kind of journalist,

623
00:41:16.320 --> 00:41:20.730
a new kind of police and UN and dying out in the police

624
00:41:20.731 --> 00:41:23.880
force of an old system that operated.

625
00:41:23.880 --> 00:41:28.320
I'm not sure whether it operated here in South Australia as much as it did in

626
00:41:28.321 --> 00:41:30.390
New South Wales. And in Victoria.

627
00:41:31.050 --> 00:41:34.370
We're certain we're certain of the force,

628
00:41:34.640 --> 00:41:39.440
we're Catholic and other squads where masonic or Protestant and that

629
00:41:39.441 --> 00:41:44.300
kind of as that kind of religious division died out in the general community.

630
00:41:44.800 --> 00:41:49.370
It died off in the police forces and it pref and it produced a profound

631
00:41:49.371 --> 00:41:53.930
change. Now when a complaint came, the came a point when a,

632
00:41:54.320 --> 00:41:58.580
when a complaint came to the police that a child was being interfered with or

633
00:41:58.581 --> 00:42:03.020
groomed or even raped, the police took it absolutely seriously.

634
00:42:03.290 --> 00:42:04.850
And that was an important moment.

635
00:42:05.420 --> 00:42:08.630
I'm glad that issue was raised while I wait someone else to go to the

636
00:42:08.631 --> 00:42:09.464
microphone.

637
00:42:09.890 --> 00:42:14.830
I grew up in literally within the shadow of aim, the, you know,

638
00:42:14.890 --> 00:42:16.580
the great Mannix temple.

639
00:42:17.120 --> 00:42:21.380
And I'd go to school every morning with my best friend Johnny Sinclair with part

640
00:42:21.381 --> 00:42:26.000
of the gates. He went left to the Catholic school. I went to the state school.

641
00:42:26.420 --> 00:42:30.950
We would chant Catholic dog stink like frogs jumping out of hollow logs.

642
00:42:31.340 --> 00:42:35.150
Their response was state, state full of hate, which was absolutely accurate.

643
00:42:35.630 --> 00:42:36.800
But David,

644
00:42:36.960 --> 00:42:41.330
you're right to point to the fact that the Victorian police was riven by the

645
00:42:41.331 --> 00:42:46.130
same religious divisions. So as New South Wales police, but you know,

646
00:42:46.910 --> 00:42:51.560
growing up as a protestant growing up as a Protestant one of the terrible

647
00:42:51.561 --> 00:42:55.010
things that we were taught when I was a kid is the problem with Catholics.

648
00:42:55.011 --> 00:42:58.730
We were told is their loyalty, what are they loyal to?

649
00:42:58.760 --> 00:43:03.110
Are they loyal to the church or are they loyal to Australia? And,

650
00:43:03.350 --> 00:43:07.970
and you can't trust Catholics. I was always told because you know,

651
00:43:08.180 --> 00:43:10.310
their real loyalty is to run.

652
00:43:10.760 --> 00:43:14.330
And I fought that view in myself.

653
00:43:14.331 --> 00:43:18.980
I fought it to obliteration and we were all helped in dealing with that

654
00:43:18.981 --> 00:43:22.700
view by the presidency of John F. Kennedy. It was,

655
00:43:23.080 --> 00:43:25.400
and that was a transformative moment in,

656
00:43:25.401 --> 00:43:29.480
in relations between Catholics and Protestants, even in this country.

657
00:43:30.170 --> 00:43:32.030
But you know, the story of this,

658
00:43:32.031 --> 00:43:36.890
the story of how the Church handled the child abuse is exactly the story that I

659
00:43:36.891 --> 00:43:40.190
was told by bigots when I was a child.

660
00:43:40.490 --> 00:43:43.520
It turns out to be true, or it turned out to be true.

661
00:43:44.060 --> 00:43:48.770
The church in Australia did everything it could in order not to let

662
00:43:48.830 --> 00:43:53.390
those who had committed these serious crimes be dealt with by the police and by

663
00:43:53.391 --> 00:43:58.130
the courts and to be dealt with instead by their own most forgiving

664
00:43:58.131 --> 00:44:00.050
machinery. Sir.

665
00:44:01.280 --> 00:44:01.891
<v 5>[Inaudible] forgive me,</v>

666
00:44:01.891 --> 00:44:05.970
I'm experiencing the senior's moment in that I can't remember the name of the

667
00:44:05.971 --> 00:44:09.810
former governor general who was an Archbishop Peter Hauling the book. Thank you.

668
00:44:10.950 --> 00:44:15.870
And I can't talk drawing parallels between the two, the same arrogance,

669
00:44:15.871 --> 00:44:17.940
the same ability to do with the media.

670
00:44:18.150 --> 00:44:21.390
Do you feel that Powell is destined for the same demise?

671
00:44:23.550 --> 00:44:24.383
<v 2>No.</v>

672
00:44:24.721 --> 00:44:29.400
I have no idea how Hill's career will turn out and

673
00:44:30.870 --> 00:44:32.400
and I,

674
00:44:33.120 --> 00:44:38.100
I reflect on those two men that has Hollingworth

675
00:44:38.101 --> 00:44:42.600
was facing terribly widespread public criticism

676
00:44:43.470 --> 00:44:47.490
because of his mishandling of pedophilia allegations.

677
00:44:47.850 --> 00:44:52.680
Pell was one of those people who publicly called on him to resign as governor

678
00:44:52.681 --> 00:44:57.240
general. I forgot. Yup, he did. He called on Hollingworth to resign

679
00:44:58.950 --> 00:45:02.370
in the aftermath of the Hollingworth crash.

680
00:45:03.690 --> 00:45:07.620
His successor in Brisbane, Phillip Aspinall Arch Anglican,

681
00:45:07.621 --> 00:45:12.210
archbishop of Brisbane called for what the Catholic Church has never done,

682
00:45:12.240 --> 00:45:16.890
which was an inquiry into how bad things were in the Anglican

683
00:45:16.891 --> 00:45:18.210
church in Queensland.

684
00:45:18.690 --> 00:45:23.580
And he begged for state help to conduct that inquiry because he knew that a

685
00:45:23.581 --> 00:45:27.510
church tribunal would not have the power to compel witnesses to answer

686
00:45:27.511 --> 00:45:31.800
questions, would not have the power to compel documents to be produced.

687
00:45:32.250 --> 00:45:37.170
And both Peter Beatty and John Howard declined to set up

688
00:45:37.200 --> 00:45:41.880
to assist him to set up a proper commission of inquiry into the

689
00:45:41.881 --> 00:45:46.500
problems within the Anglican church. That was a contrast.

690
00:45:46.740 --> 00:45:50.130
So there is both comparison there and there's contrast.

691
00:45:51.900 --> 00:45:56.400
Another question from the floor please. Thank you. David. Can I ask you to.

692
00:45:56.640 --> 00:46:01.020
<v 6>Right and we're on the Sau comment about cardinal</v>

693
00:46:01.021 --> 00:46:05.130
pills position in the Australian church. On the one hand,

694
00:46:05.131 --> 00:46:09.600
you mentioned once or twice that he's never been elected president of the

695
00:46:09.930 --> 00:46:11.190
Bishops Conference of Australia and that,

696
00:46:11.420 --> 00:46:14.550
that you imply that that was a conscious decision that he didn't have the

697
00:46:14.551 --> 00:46:17.430
support of his fellow bishops. And on the one hand,

698
00:46:18.250 --> 00:46:23.010
cardinal pill tries to represent himself as primary of Australia while

699
00:46:23.011 --> 00:46:27.690
never adopting the term. And on the other hand, at other occasions he says,

700
00:46:27.810 --> 00:46:31.620
I'm only archbishop of Sydney and he's not responsible for anything else.

701
00:46:34.480 --> 00:46:37.790
<v 2>You are, you, it's all, it's clear to all of you. Isn't it, that the,</v>

702
00:46:37.830 --> 00:46:41.850
the Catholic Church doesn't exist? Is that absolutely clear to you?

703
00:46:42.750 --> 00:46:45.960
It's very, very important that you understand that it doesn't exist.

704
00:46:47.340 --> 00:46:47.791
Yes,

705
00:46:47.791 --> 00:46:52.440
it has buildings and schools and hospitals and it's the indeed the largest

706
00:46:52.650 --> 00:46:54.600
non-government employer in Australia.

707
00:46:55.290 --> 00:46:58.200
And it has property holdings of untold billions of dollars,

708
00:46:58.201 --> 00:47:02.740
but it doesn't exist. In law, it's a voluntary organ. It's a, you know,

709
00:47:02.850 --> 00:47:04.380
it's a voluntary organization.

710
00:47:04.560 --> 00:47:07.890
If any of you are members say of a Monday night book club or something like

711
00:47:07.891 --> 00:47:09.750
that, meet occasionally and discuss books.

712
00:47:09.990 --> 00:47:13.680
You've got exactly the same corporate structure as the Catholic Church.

713
00:47:14.610 --> 00:47:15.960
And therefore you are,

714
00:47:16.020 --> 00:47:19.710
you are unsuitable as an organization.

715
00:47:19.770 --> 00:47:24.330
And nobody is a leader and nobody has authority over anybody

716
00:47:24.331 --> 00:47:28.050
else. And that's the situation of the church in Australia.

717
00:47:28.051 --> 00:47:32.530
It's a vast archipelago of absolutely independent

718
00:47:32.531 --> 00:47:35.860
fragments that has no corporate structure.

719
00:47:36.130 --> 00:47:39.700
And therefore George Pell is at some time

720
00:47:40.300 --> 00:47:42.730
simply the archbishop of Sydney,

721
00:47:42.731 --> 00:47:46.600
which is a actually remarkably small and not particularly rich diocese compared

722
00:47:46.601 --> 00:47:47.320
to Melbourne,

723
00:47:47.320 --> 00:47:50.890
but he had to leave Melbourne to go to Sydney to become a cardinal. And,

724
00:47:50.920 --> 00:47:55.840
and at times he's clearly the voice of the church in Australia and we,

725
00:47:55.841 --> 00:48:00.700
the press have always dealt with him as the most forceful and

726
00:48:01.780 --> 00:48:03.400
the most forceful and the most

727
00:48:05.590 --> 00:48:07.540
the bravest sort of commentator.

728
00:48:07.570 --> 00:48:10.840
And we have made him a leader in that way.

729
00:48:12.340 --> 00:48:17.230
But he chooses which identity suits him at the time

730
00:48:17.710 --> 00:48:22.000
and when the church is under attack in this way for its

731
00:48:22.001 --> 00:48:25.660
failure or is being called to account rather than under attack,

732
00:48:25.900 --> 00:48:30.430
when it is being called to account for its failures to deal with this scandal,

733
00:48:30.910 --> 00:48:35.170
he suddenly has no power, whatever. But he is not,

734
00:48:35.320 --> 00:48:36.940
he does not represent,

735
00:48:37.120 --> 00:48:40.450
he has never represented mainstream Australian Catholicism.

736
00:48:41.110 --> 00:48:45.400
He represents of course an important party within Australian Catholicism,

737
00:48:45.610 --> 00:48:49.000
the extremely conservative wing of the church.

738
00:48:49.480 --> 00:48:54.070
He has only ever had the support of a handful of bishops among the bishops

739
00:48:54.400 --> 00:48:59.350
and the decision not to elect him president of the Australian bishop's

740
00:48:59.351 --> 00:49:03.490
conference is absolutely deliberate marked and

741
00:49:03.491 --> 00:49:08.050
emphasized by all of those senior Catholics who deplore the

742
00:49:08.051 --> 00:49:12.850
kinds of policies and the kind of faith that he has while still

743
00:49:12.851 --> 00:49:16.930
respecting him a good deal as the figure that he is.

744
00:49:17.560 --> 00:49:19.990
I must say there's another similarity. Therefore,

745
00:49:19.991 --> 00:49:24.790
between he and the Hollingworth who wanted to be the big

746
00:49:24.791 --> 00:49:26.440
cheese and the Anglicans,

747
00:49:26.980 --> 00:49:31.570
but in the election he got one vote which was believed to be his

748
00:49:31.571 --> 00:49:35.920
own. Another question from the floor please. Thank you,

749
00:49:38.320 --> 00:49:38.860
David.

750
00:49:38.860 --> 00:49:43.530
Why do you think that the church position was the idea of celibacy is they,

751
00:49:43.750 --> 00:49:47.650
does it give some sort of spiritual advantage to them as opposed to us?

752
00:49:48.910 --> 00:49:53.170
There is an argument that it's supposed to be about making sure the priests

753
00:49:53.171 --> 00:49:55.570
don't get away with church property. I think that,

754
00:49:55.810 --> 00:49:57.490
I don't understand that argument.

755
00:49:58.570 --> 00:50:03.520
What is always clear about about us,

756
00:50:03.700 --> 00:50:08.170
our species is that we advertise our virtue by

757
00:50:08.171 --> 00:50:11.050
indicating that we can give up things that we have,

758
00:50:11.230 --> 00:50:15.760
that we have self control that we can give up.

759
00:50:15.820 --> 00:50:17.740
Meat on Friday was a,

760
00:50:17.770 --> 00:50:22.270
was a significant act of virtue for Jews that you never eat

761
00:50:22.271 --> 00:50:27.070
shellfish or pork. That's, these are dietary rules, but they're also acts of

762
00:50:28.990 --> 00:50:33.310
to, to give up, to give up possessions, a great act of virtue. And we,

763
00:50:33.340 --> 00:50:37.930
we recognize that as an act of virtue to give up.

764
00:50:37.931 --> 00:50:42.820
Sex is the greatest imaginable act of virtue

765
00:50:42.821 --> 00:50:44.020
for a human being.

766
00:50:44.860 --> 00:50:48.700
If you look at it through that prism and therefore it brings

767
00:50:49.630 --> 00:50:54.190
profound spiritual authority to the person who does it

768
00:50:54.490 --> 00:50:57.070
and the institution that demands that happen.

769
00:50:58.300 --> 00:51:00.520
On the other hand, it's just,

770
00:51:00.550 --> 00:51:05.290
you could say that this is a ridiculous negation of an ordinary way to

771
00:51:05.291 --> 00:51:09.430
live. Demonizes human sexuality puts,

772
00:51:09.460 --> 00:51:14.200
puts the people who attempt celibacy through torture and

773
00:51:14.740 --> 00:51:18.340
produces perverse forms of human behavior. It depends how you look at it.

774
00:51:18.370 --> 00:51:22.300
You know which scrim that you look at it through while acknowledging at all

775
00:51:22.301 --> 00:51:24.080
times that, that,

776
00:51:24.400 --> 00:51:28.930
that celibacy is for some priests perfectly natural and

777
00:51:28.931 --> 00:51:32.950
livable and if they wished to be celibate, that's fine.

778
00:51:33.460 --> 00:51:34.840
But as a rule,

779
00:51:35.020 --> 00:51:39.760
as an imposed rule and why it has been defended so solidly,

780
00:51:40.060 --> 00:51:42.190
it's about spiritual prestige.

781
00:51:43.840 --> 00:51:47.200
I think it's wonderful that you've said this in this audience because I have a

782
00:51:47.201 --> 00:51:52.090
sense that everyone here will leave this building and have a life of

783
00:51:52.091 --> 00:51:52.924
celibacy.

784
00:51:55.600 --> 00:51:58.960
Another question plays from someone, hopefully Sullivan.

785
00:52:02.150 --> 00:52:06.640
Hi. How do you see the future for the Catholic Church here in Australia?

786
00:52:10.750 --> 00:52:15.310
We too easily simply by counting attendance at mass

787
00:52:15.610 --> 00:52:18.940
conclude that the church is a failing institution.

788
00:52:19.600 --> 00:52:22.420
And it certainly, you know, in terms of attendance,

789
00:52:22.630 --> 00:52:26.050
if it was the Hoyts cinema chain, you'd be worried.

790
00:52:27.670 --> 00:52:29.020
But the reality is,

791
00:52:29.021 --> 00:52:33.880
and pell has a good deal to do with this reality because he has been an

792
00:52:33.881 --> 00:52:38.140
astonishingly effective lobbyist on behalf of his church.

793
00:52:40.420 --> 00:52:45.400
The fact is that the church in institutional terms has never been

794
00:52:45.401 --> 00:52:48.370
as remotely strong as it is today.

795
00:52:48.790 --> 00:52:51.310
Enormous sums of money.

796
00:52:51.340 --> 00:52:56.260
Government money now flow through the church in order that it fulfill

797
00:52:56.261 --> 00:52:59.140
the welfare obligations that it's willingly taken up.

798
00:52:59.410 --> 00:53:02.680
And as far as I know, it,

799
00:53:02.870 --> 00:53:06.790
it fulfills those welfare obligations pretty damn well.

800
00:53:06.910 --> 00:53:09.040
It's never educated so many children.

801
00:53:09.040 --> 00:53:13.930
It has never treated so many so many sick people. And it's,

802
00:53:14.130 --> 00:53:17.620
and it deals with welfare and charity on a broad front.

803
00:53:17.680 --> 00:53:20.230
Institutionally it's strong. I mean,

804
00:53:20.320 --> 00:53:23.260
imagine in the late 20th century,

805
00:53:23.350 --> 00:53:28.250
partly because of George Pelz are lobbying the church set up in

806
00:53:28.251 --> 00:53:32.930
Australia with public money, its own university system.

807
00:53:33.620 --> 00:53:37.610
Now that is not a failing institution that can do something about kind.

808
00:53:38.090 --> 00:53:41.120
So the future of the church is very strong.

809
00:53:41.540 --> 00:53:46.460
The need of many of us to have a faith and to worship

810
00:53:46.760 --> 00:53:51.050
is a very, very strong human need. And that's not going to go away.

811
00:53:51.620 --> 00:53:56.360
The question is whether or not the organization is going to be

812
00:53:56.361 --> 00:54:01.160
able to become fully transparent and accountable for these

813
00:54:01.161 --> 00:54:04.370
terrible failings in the protection of children.

814
00:54:05.000 --> 00:54:09.440
And if it can be, then I've no reason to see the future of that,

815
00:54:09.710 --> 00:54:13.130
of that faith as anything, but very, very strong.

816
00:54:14.480 --> 00:54:17.650
The next question comes from someone I met this morning and her,

817
00:54:17.750 --> 00:54:22.280
I can identify as one of perhaps three marks as soon South

818
00:54:22.281 --> 00:54:23.114
Australia.

819
00:54:26.670 --> 00:54:29.380
<v 5>Phillip. What I'm interested in,</v>

820
00:54:29.381 --> 00:54:34.060
David is your portrait of you very valuable insight into Ba

821
00:54:34.061 --> 00:54:36.040
Santa Maria as a pivotal,

822
00:54:36.280 --> 00:54:39.850
influential figure on Tony Abbott and on George Pell.

823
00:54:40.180 --> 00:54:43.240
And what I'm interested in is do you see any,

824
00:54:43.270 --> 00:54:47.470
I'm interested in the influence the international influence has perhaps on Santa

825
00:54:47.470 --> 00:54:50.980
Maria of perhaps Franco is fascism

826
00:54:52.000 --> 00:54:54.130
and the work of Opus Dei.

827
00:54:54.131 --> 00:54:58.240
I'm just interested if you see any connections there and therefore any

828
00:54:58.241 --> 00:55:01.750
inheritance into are the two current figures you're talking about.

829
00:55:01.910 --> 00:55:06.620
<v 2>I don't know enough about Ba Santa Maria to actually make a</v>

830
00:55:06.621 --> 00:55:08.630
useful comparison of that kind.

831
00:55:09.230 --> 00:55:13.700
But certainly it's true that Santa Maria and pell both

832
00:55:13.730 --> 00:55:17.360
argue about moral necessity in,

833
00:55:17.720 --> 00:55:22.310
in in politics in a way that they

834
00:55:22.311 --> 00:55:26.420
see as a countervailing force to simply popular opinion

835
00:55:27.020 --> 00:55:29.240
and moral leadership.

836
00:55:29.270 --> 00:55:33.830
Vigorous moral leadership was certainly one of the great

837
00:55:34.450 --> 00:55:38.270
appeals of, of, of fascism. But I'm not saying for a moment that pels a fascist.

838
00:55:38.271 --> 00:55:42.110
I'm not saying that, that, that Ba Santa Maria was,

839
00:55:42.111 --> 00:55:46.070
but what the point about the Santa Maria

840
00:55:46.071 --> 00:55:49.550
influence is there's a tactical point,

841
00:55:49.551 --> 00:55:53.420
which is they fight nasty. They fight ad homonym,

842
00:55:53.780 --> 00:55:56.240
they attack, they attack people.

843
00:55:57.650 --> 00:56:02.330
But they have exaggerated notions of evil

844
00:56:03.480 --> 00:56:08.060
lawyer lingering behind really ordinary aspects of modern

845
00:56:08.061 --> 00:56:09.080
life. I mean,

846
00:56:09.081 --> 00:56:13.880
there was a time when Santa Maria simply raged about the evil of television

847
00:56:14.480 --> 00:56:17.150
and his followers raged about the evil of television.

848
00:56:17.270 --> 00:56:21.080
And yet he was a great exponents of television. And,

849
00:56:21.110 --> 00:56:25.380
and of course the pill raging about a raging, about you know,

850
00:56:25.381 --> 00:56:26.490
sexual immorality,

851
00:56:26.640 --> 00:56:30.900
raging about having sexuality raging about all of these evils. And,

852
00:56:30.960 --> 00:56:35.010
and when communism was contained, when, when the Berlin Wall fell,

853
00:56:35.220 --> 00:56:38.510
they moved seamlessly into raging about, you know,

854
00:56:38.910 --> 00:56:40.890
the ordinary beliefs of the left.

855
00:56:40.891 --> 00:56:45.000
And now they rage as pell rages about secularism.

856
00:56:45.450 --> 00:56:48.150
There's this thing called secularism.

857
00:56:48.630 --> 00:56:52.200
And the reason Pelz says that we must never have a bill of rights in Australia

858
00:56:52.440 --> 00:56:56.490
is that it will allow profound issues to be settled according to the secular

859
00:56:56.670 --> 00:57:00.720
agenda. Now this is a world that I have very little sympathy with.

860
00:57:00.721 --> 00:57:02.870
I'm very interested in trying to work at all hours,

861
00:57:03.270 --> 00:57:07.290
but it's certainly not in any straightforward way a democratic world.

862
00:57:08.220 --> 00:57:10.020
A final question. Thank you.

863
00:57:11.650 --> 00:57:11.820
<v 7>Yeah.</v>

864
00:57:11.820 --> 00:57:16.010
But do you think it's time that the Catholic church as well as other religious

865
00:57:16.011 --> 00:57:19.400
institutions in Australia became legal entities, subjects.

866
00:57:19.430 --> 00:57:21.050
<v 2>To the law and page.</v>

867
00:57:21.140 --> 00:57:22.090
<v 8>Texas</v>

868
00:57:27.970 --> 00:57:28.100
[inaudible].

869
00:57:28.100 --> 00:57:29.570
<v 2>Of course, of course.</v>

870
00:57:30.060 --> 00:57:34.400
I mean you cannot understand this story unless you understand that the

871
00:57:34.401 --> 00:57:36.710
Australia, that the Catholic church in Australia,

872
00:57:36.890 --> 00:57:41.060
partly because as I was explaining before that it doesn't exist but partly

873
00:57:41.061 --> 00:57:43.850
because it quarantines all of its property

874
00:57:45.380 --> 00:57:48.320
interests which have nothing to do with the hiring and the supervision of

875
00:57:48.321 --> 00:57:49.190
priests.

876
00:57:49.430 --> 00:57:54.380
So the law in Australia has so far at least always said

877
00:57:54.650 --> 00:57:58.520
that you can't go to the trusts for compensation for what a priest did to you.

878
00:57:58.640 --> 00:58:00.470
I mean it's just ridiculous.

879
00:58:00.740 --> 00:58:05.660
And because the church and the church defends itself ferociously.

880
00:58:06.110 --> 00:58:10.190
Its lawyers are for Roche's. And as far as we know,

881
00:58:10.550 --> 00:58:15.350
there has been no court award of damages to any

882
00:58:15.351 --> 00:58:19.140
victim of child abuse by a priest because of the,

883
00:58:19.400 --> 00:58:24.140
because what happens is that there is an impenetrable wall

884
00:58:24.141 --> 00:58:26.390
surrounding the church in its assets.

885
00:58:26.930 --> 00:58:31.610
And you either settle with the

886
00:58:31.611 --> 00:58:36.180
church after paying your lawyers roughly twice what you would pay them if you

887
00:58:36.410 --> 00:58:38.150
were suing the Anglican Church.

888
00:58:38.360 --> 00:58:43.100
The Anglican church is perfectly suitable or you go to towards

889
00:58:43.101 --> 00:58:46.310
healing or the Melbourne response and you take money,

890
00:58:46.311 --> 00:58:48.650
which they don't even call compensation.

891
00:58:49.130 --> 00:58:52.400
And the lawyers involved in that tell me that,

892
00:58:52.430 --> 00:58:56.960
that victims who go through that process paid 10 cents in the

893
00:58:56.961 --> 00:59:01.520
dollar of what they would be paid if they had been abused by an Anglican

894
00:59:01.521 --> 00:59:04.100
priest in a Sewell though institution.

895
00:59:05.000 --> 00:59:09.950
I do not believe that the, at the end of this Royal Commission,

896
00:59:10.070 --> 00:59:12.110
God knows how far off that's going to be.

897
00:59:12.560 --> 00:59:17.510
I do not believe that that US tarnishing privilege

898
00:59:17.900 --> 00:59:22.350
of having your assets untouchable will continue.

899
00:59:22.710 --> 00:59:27.270
I just don't believe it can survive. It's not the case in America.

900
00:59:27.450 --> 00:59:30.180
It's not the case in Britain. It's not the case in Canada.

901
00:59:30.210 --> 00:59:34.190
It is the case in Australia. I just don't believe that can in DUI,

902
00:59:34.860 --> 00:59:38.820
the highest award that a late night live combust stow opponent

903
00:59:40.120 --> 00:59:44.950
against is the coldest stamp. Hi here by give you a cold,

904
00:59:46.290 --> 00:59:49.450
David. Thank you very much for your time.

905
00:59:55.820 --> 00:59:56.653
<v 8>[Inaudible].</v>

906
01:00:03.460 --> 01:00:08.150
<v 0>This session of the 2013 Adelaide festival of ideas was recorded by</v>

907
01:00:08.151 --> 01:00:11.480
Radio Adelaide through the support of the fast mid library,

908
01:00:11.570 --> 01:00:15.140
University of Adelaide, the University of South Australia Library,

909
01:00:15.380 --> 01:00:17.090
Flinders university library.