Cardinal Pell, Prince of the Church, was replying to the endless stream of gotcha question from Gail Furness, SC, Counsel Assisting the Royal Commission into the Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. This question was about Father Peter Searson, the sadistic pederast priest and erstwhile bird murderer, who allegedly stabbed a bird with a screwdriver in front of some Victorian school children.
“Does it really matter whether the bird was dead?” replied the (clearly exasperated) learned counsel.
I wonder if time really does stand still at great moments in history? Perhaps it did for these two – Pell and Furness. For if one ever finds oneself in Rome, being asked by video-link from Australia about a priest stabbing a bird with a screwdriver, puzzling over whether the bird was, in fact, dead before the said stabbing – there can be but one explanation. One is in hell, and condemned to read aloud, and for all time, the libretto from some execrable Tim-Minchin (black eye-liner and long hair is still so shocking on a man) comic-opera. Pell must have tweaked to his role, but it was too late. He was about to become famous.
This isn’t as shocking as it sounds. Other eminent Australians have had their best moments set to music. Remember this magnum opus: Gillard’s famous Mizzojunoy (‘Misogyny’) speech set to music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpavaM62Fgo
“Not now. Not Ever”
“I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by that man…not now…not ever…la la doo wop didee laa” and on it goes. Lovely stuff this.
And Rudd’s (Rudd 1 – his juvenile “Kevin 07” period) Apology speech. Would you believe this is entirely based on a one second sound grab?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dg5GdR-gzkg
Genius. Just like a didgeridoo or something! Listen to the explanation.
Now think what maestro Minchin will do with Pell’s one-liners from the RC.
There are two standout lines and I’ve taken the liberty of starting Minchin off. Here we go:
Verse 1
Perhaps the bird was already dead (repeat)
A screwdriver through its head (repeat)
Does it really matter she said
Which one he did take to his bed (Not the bird. Not the bird)
Verse 2
It was just another sad story…(story yeah – repeat)
Really gory, Morning glory (Morning glory – repeat)
And it didn’t interest me
Sorta rhymes with incest, you see
A bit rough I know but Minchin will polish it up.
Now Pell’s no-one’s fool and he’ll have the last laugh. After all, he is a well-read man with an eye to history. Those who have been following the Commission closely will have noticed that the bird and the screwdriver story is a barely disguised reference to Oscar Wilde’s (they read him all the time in the seminary) “The Nightingale and the Rose” and, better yet, to Colleen McCullough’s “The Thorn Birds”. Pell’s no Christopher Plummer but see what he does here:
The thorn bird with the thorn in its breast, it follows an immutable law; it is driven but it knows only to impale itself and die singing. At the very instant the thorn enters there is no awareness in it of the dying to come; it simply sings and sings until there is not the life left to utter another note. But we, when we put the thorns in our breasts, we know. We understand. And still we do it. Still we do it…”
Cardinal George Pell seems to be very much a man of his time. The most obvious criticism of his persona is his manifest lack of warmth, in public at least. It is hard, for instance, to believe that children would find him approachable. That’s very un-Jesus like. He is an educated man and is accused of being pompous with his use of language. He doesn’t cry, tilt his head, speak softly and pause for effect. He uses a normal speaking voice and tries to be precise. He doesn’t appear to be all that interested in soliciting the affections of his interlocutors. He appears to prefer his opinions and recollections to the fuelling of his ego from the admiration of his audience. That makes him either cold, or a man of integrity, or perhaps both.
The survivors who travelled to Rome must hate him. He looks hateable. But, in fairness to Pell, there’s nothing he can do to change that. The dynamic is charged. The survivors look daggers at him, waiting for a slip of the tongue to reveal something they must already know. Pell, for his part, appears to be in a perpetual state of withholding – words, kindness, confessions of guilt and contrition. Yet he’s said these things before, many times, and in the only way they are ever going to get. They want things he can’t give them. There are no easy words for this dilemma – so we get this sort of thing:
(tweeted) Abuse survivor Phil Nagle says Ballarat group will turn backs on George Pell leaving Hearing room “just like he has turned his back on us”.
And this:
“We are getting a bit tired of hearing what George is saying on the stand. We want to hear from someone who cares about us. George is giving us nothing. He doesn’t care, he is turning his back on us, we don’t want to meet with George at all”.
Someone who cares about them? Pell? You must be joking. Unless he’s as psychopathic as the paedophile priests, he must hate them too, or at best feel sorry for them. That’s very un-Christian but very human. Pell said that the hardest thing about the RC was reading the harrowing accounts of the victims. There’s nothing particularly special about his feelings nor, I suspect, the accounts he’s referring to. They are just harrowing. That’s all. Should he cry and blubber? For how long? What about falling to the ground?
So off to the Pope they go. Again, why? Another big daddy who doesn’t care for them? Have they learned nothing about real caring from this calamity? I hope they get their chance to see the Pope. But what could he possibly say? I hope, for their sakes, he’s nice and says “sorry” and clasps their hands or something like that. That seems to soothe religious folk. But I’m fairly certain he will never think of them again. I wonder if they’d be surprised by that? They want recognition that it’s a worldwide problem. It is. They want it to never happen again. It will. But probably not nearly as often. That’s as good as it gets. And it is good.
Perhaps they’re really looking for the Julia Gillard or Kevin Rudd sort of caring. I gather Ms Gillard is most proud of her NDIS reform and Mr Rudd of his “Apology Speech”. Pell wont do that sort of thing.
“Risdale’s offending was a sad story but it wasn’t of much interest to me,” is the most revealing quote from the RC and will forever hang like the proverbial albatross around Pell’s neck – for all the wrong reasons. Unlike the kind of hypocrisy and posturing we’re used to in public life, Pell was being honest. It’s a shame he tried to retract it later. He’s an old man and was obviously exhausted. Gillard and Rudd wouldn’t have made the same mistake. Not in a million years.
Here’s another news grab that illustrates the messiness of this sad state of affairs:
“Clergy abuse survivors, feeling increasingly angry at Cardinal Pell’s evidence, spent the day at his ‘’home’’ church, the Domus Australia and tying ribbons on the window railings.” Survivor Phil Nagle said outside the church: “If Cardinal Pell had any honour he’ll make sure these ribbons stay here and he’ll show us the courtesy of not coming here and tying one himself.”
It seems an extraordinarily mean sentiment to question the maturity of the performance-art ceremonies of ribbon tying. Because, in a sad way, these devotional acts are inescapably redolent of the arcane rituals of the Catholic Church, an organisation they must hate more than anything.
Pell shares some of the faults of his fellow clergy, at least those who were not paedophiles themselves: misplaced loyalty; complacency; ignorance, wilful or otherwise of the depths of human depravity; and delusional faith in the twin nonsenses of the redemptive power of religion and the usefulness of the talking cures.
But his greatest sin, was the belief that his responsibilities were circumscribed by vocation, hierarchy, geography, even time itself. He did not know, and in all likelihood still does not know, that once child mistreatment is mentioned, the penumbra of guilt gobbles up pretty much everybody. I think by now he must have intuited the secret formula at work. It is a part of our primitive collective unconscious, that always balances the casualties of the righteous purge against the perceived villainy of the offender. It has always been thus and there are absolutely no excuses! Except, it seems, for almost everyone else.
For instance, I think the layman is entitled to be puzzled that Counsel Assisting the RC had amassed land-fill-size volumes of meticulously researched evidence to prove, to her mind at least, that every parent, parishioner and police officer, not to mention the local Catholic Education Office knew what the local paedophile priest was up to – therefore the Cardinal must have known more than he was letting on.
But just what on earth were these tens or hundreds of good townsfolk doing about it? Why, they proudly “ran him out of town” we were told. To another parish no less, where a whole new set of parents and canny villagers could quickly wise up and do nothing. Thank God for the wisdom of the simple folk, eh.
The basic culpability of the unmentionable ‘other’ citizens, who must surely have some role in the protection of children, is clearly too upsetting and not voter-friendly enough for the masterminds behind the RC. The fact that the terms of reference of the RC mimic the gutless defences of its institutional quarry are never mentioned either. Sure, we can listen to paginated volumes of filth in the sacristy but don’t ask why it was “common knowledge” and mums and dads did nothing. The RC isn’t interested. This is a ‘case study’. It’s just not their job. Sound familiar?
This is not really a criticism of decent people doing their jobs, it’s more a reminder that there is something perverse about wig-wearing lawyers (actually no wigs, and lounge suits only, please, for the gentlemen of this Commission – because survivors of institutional sexual abuse are self-evidently frightened of uniforms) interviewing a Cardinal in his robes, bowing to one another (I’ve seen no ring kissing) and pretending that chronicling the most egregious cases of psychopathic paedophilia isn’t the equivalent of trying to learn something about crime by studying serial killers. It’s about extraordinary people like m’learned friends (the goodies) examining other extraordinary people like Pell, (the baddies) to find a scapegoat for the victims. A truly monstrous scapegoat would do nicely and, for so many Australians, Pell and the men of his generation neatly fit the bill.
murpsych 