IN a letter published today (Saturday) in The Australian Cardinal George Pell, 78, released this week from jail, says the Catholic Church has “cut out a moral cancer” by facing down child sex abuse.
His Easter message letter comes after the country’s High Court on Tuesday quashed five counts against Pell of sexually abusing two 13-year-old choirboys in the 1990s, ending the most high-profile paedophilia case faced by the Catholic Church.
Writing for the UK’s National Secular Society earlier this week, Keith Porteous Wood said:
But the court didn’t find Pell ‘innocent’, or say his accuser was lying. It only found that the jury should have entertained reasonable doubt over his guilt. Academics Ben Mathews and Mark Nicholas Bernard Thomas have made the case that Pell won ‘on a legal technicality. And it is not necessarily plain sailing from here for the cardinal.
According to The Tablet, he now faces a Vatican inquiry into allegations of sexually assaulting children. Then there is the prospect of civil proceedings. The burden of proof for civil claims is less onerous, so their success is more likely.
In his message, titled: “In the suffering, we find redemption”, Pell labels his initial conviction “a disappointment” but says he will turn the experience behind bars into spiritual energy.
I have just spent 13 months in jail for a crime I didn’t commit … The sexual abuse crisis damaged thousands of victims. From many points of view the crisis is also bad for the Catholic Church, but we have painfully cut out a moral cancer and this is good.
Following Pell’s release, one of his accusers – who cannot be named for legal reasons – said he accepted the verdict but urged survivors of child sex abuse to keep coming forward.
According to The Australian report (paywall) – headed “Back in robes, cloaked in faith … Pell’s light is undimmed” – Pell also used his Easter message to attack atheists.
The atheists today believe that the universe, including us, is the product of blind chance, that no transcendent Intelligence exists to help explain our DNA sequence, the 10,000 nerves connected to an eye, the genius of Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Beethoven and Albert Einstein.
Another option is a radical agnosticism. We don’t know and perhaps we don’t want to know. Here the agnostics can battle against fate with a Stoic dignity or turn furious, journey into the night ‘raging against the light.’
Turning to the Coronavirus pandemic he said:
Some would see COVID-19 as a bad time for those who claim to believe in a good and rational God, the Supreme Love and Intelligence, the Creator of the universe. And it is a mystery; all suffering, but especially the massive number of deaths through plagues and wars. But Christians can cope with suffering better than the atheists can explain the beauty and happiness of life.