Pell Is Opting for the Moral Low Road in Comparing the Church to Trucking

By David Marr
The Guardian
August 22, 2014

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/22/pell-opting-for-moral-low-road-comparing-church-to-trucking

George Pell began his testimony with an apology. Photograph: Mark Baker/AP

Rome has been good to Cardinal Pell. Soft folds of skin fall to his chin. He looks a little older, more comfortable and a very long way away. Hopes of a glimpse of St Peter’s were dashed. He sat in front of the plainest possible curtain for his two-and-a-half-hour grilling by the royal commission.

Surely it was one of his life’s mistakes to compare the church to a trucking company? It opened the cardinal to scorn on all sides. Did he have in mind truckies interfering with hitchhikers? Yes. Did the church have no more integrity than a trucking company?

“The church is not always of the highest integrity,” he said with regret. “It existed for 2,000 years and there is a long history of sin and crime within the church, and one of the functions of the leadership of the church is to control and eradicate this.”

He was against sin and crime; for victims; and full of apologies. He began his testimony from Rome with an apology. He recalled the apology he gave when he became the Archbishop of Melbourne. He apologised once more to Chrissie and Anthony Foster, the parents of the two little girls raped by Father Kevin O’Donnell. He so regretted things were not better between them and the church.

Years ago he offered the Fosters a little money and warned them any attempt to sue the church would be “strenuously” defended. The cardinal faced more questions about this word than anything else in his interrogation. He explained: “We did not encourage people across the board to seek compensation through the courts.”

Particularly blunt was Tim Seccull who has been the Fosters’ barrister for a decade or more: “What does the use of the adverb ‘strenuously’ add other than menace?”

“I wouldn’t use the word menace,” replied Pell. “It’s an unfortunate use of the word. It is explaining the church will not abandon the defences available at common law.” And if Pell has his way, it never will. “I have a strong view that all similar organisations should be treated similarly.”

At times this man speaks like a cardinal in the church of Christ Litigator. “What from a Christian point of view we might decide is inappropriate probably is totally appropriate in a legal sense,” he told the commission. The church has dropped the “strenuous” threat but he still defends its respectability. “I gather this term continues to be used widely.”

There were glitches. “Is the line broken?” asked the commissioner, Peter McClellan. “The cardinal is unmoving on the screen which suggests it has,” replied counsel assisting Gail Furness SC, with McClelland, observing mournfully: “The line has failed in Rome.”

Pell has not been the royal commissioner’s man in the Holy See. In July this year the Vatican refused to provide documents concerning the internal handling of sex abuse allegations against Australian priests. Pell claimed to have been “generally and strongly” supportive of the request. But only up to a point.

“They will not provide,” he said to groans from the Melbourne audience, “the internal working documents of another sovereign state.”

Pell was two-and-a-half days in the witness box in Sydney and Furness left him a much-reduced figure. These two-and-a-half hours were gentle by comparison. He was not there for long. He doesn’t look like one of us any more. There are no plans at this point to have him back.