(Above: Father Brian Lucas, left, Bishop Anthony Fisher, Fr Paul Stenhouse, and Cardinal George Pell and Cardinal Edward Cassidy celebrating the 75th Annual Red Mass, found here).So what's the Red Mass about, you ask, apart from a chance for men to wear nice red frocks?
Let the Catholic Weekly set the scene:
The Pope called on the highest judicial officers in the land, their fellow lawyers and law officers to “defend the inviolable dignity and rights of every human being” at the 75th Annual Red Mass in St Mary’s Cathedral.
The Pope said these rights applied from “conception until natural death”.
The Pope said these rights applied from “conception until natural death”.
Not necessarily including batteries, sexual exploitation, molestation, pedophilia or other crimes that might conveniently be swept under the carpet.
The pond has been given the Sydney Anglicans a Sunday pounding for weeks, so how about we pay the Catholics their due? Cardinal Pell has maintained his veil of silence at the Sunday Terror for eons, but he still turns up elsewhere:
"A couple of basics should be restated," Cardinal Pell said. "All church procedures have to be carried out within the law, respecting and following the provisions of the law ...
"I will continue to encourage victims of sexual abuse to contact the police", Cardinal Pell said. "Where victims are unable or too traumatised to do so or require assistance, the Church's Professional Standards Office can help by contacting the police on their behalf.
"The Archdiocese of Sydney cooperates fully with police investigations and I confirm that the Archdiocese will cooperate with any police investigation of the ex-priest F." (direct link to pdf here, story here).
Now that seems like an unconditional, unlimited offer to help the coppers.
Hey nonny no on we go:
Hah, you didn't read the conditional fine print.
The Catholic church has used this ruse for years, roughly akin to the Islamic device of not having a central leader or spokesperson or structure, which has turned out extremely handy when it comes to legal actions and plausible deniability.
Of course, says Cardinal Pell, Sydney co-operates fully, bring me a bowl of water, so I can wash my hands of any other diocese. As for Archbishop Wilson? Well his impression of a silent gargoyle mounted on a cathedral wall is most impressive.
Wilson's response to the press in recent days?
Wilson bravely turning up to assist the police?
The archbishop has also declined to be interviewed by NSW police. Detectives have several "waiver" documents produced by the church, and are preparing a brief of evidence for the state Director of Public Prosecutions. (more on Wilson, and the matters on which he's been evasive here).
The stench just won't go away, and here's hoping that the authorities at last have the strength and the will to see certain sordid matters through to a conclusion.
One of three people of interest in Strike Force Lantle is the general secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, Father Brian Lucas, who is alleged to have been aware of the actions of the paedophile priest Denis McAlinden as far back as 1993 but failed to report him to police.
The pond remembers Lucas when he was a bright-eyed bushy tailed 'go get 'em' possum in the church, always ready to front the media and routinely turning up in the Catholic Weekly as a columnist (here).
It's not as if he doesn't have any worldly knowledge in relation to legal matters - his CV includes a bachelor of laws from Sydney University, a stint as a solicitor, a Masters in Law, and he was admitted to practise as a barrister in 1980.
...there was some comment this week on Obama's 2006 statement that America was not a Christian nation. The exact quote was "Whatever we once were, we are no longer a Christian nation – at least, not just. We are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, and a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.” (here)
Andrew was "outrageously offended" at the "thongs and boardies" the teens were wearing when he first went to the youth group at St Paul's, Carlingford.
Yet it was on one of these Friday nights that the penny of salvation by grace dropped. "That was the first time I really realised "I've been flogging my guts out trying to make God happy, but that's not what God is going to accept me for, but only through what Jesus has done'." One by one and in different ways, Andrew's parents and siblings also became Christians.
Today, the desire for Mormons to experience the same "moment of truth' is spurring him on through his second year of full-time study at Moore College.
A spokeswoman for Mr Garrett said the Commonwealth was satisfied that Commonwealth funds had been used for legitimate purposes.
"However, the examination did reveal a number of transactions that did not appear to represent value for money to the school," she said.
"While the use of public funds are not implicated in these transactions, it has raised some concerns about the governance of the school." (here)
Yes there was a fine flurry of blather, and the sure knowledge that the Commonwealth will do its level best to bury the matter out the back, somewhere near the dunny, and do nothing to alienate key electorates.
MacDonald, who rose to become prime minister, was the bastard son of a maid servant. Michael Redgrave, in his MacDonald role, plays a working-class boy whose fierce proletarian anger is fuelled by his grandfather’s tales of the 1819 Peterloo Massacre when government cavalry rode down and slaughtered a peaceful crowd in a Manchester field gathered for parliamentary reform.
In a somber ritual, the grandfather passes on to Redgrave a sword from Peterloo that the dragoons used to cut down women and children, a reminder to the grandson to keep the dissident flame alive. When he is poor Redgrave fights for the poor; when seduced by fame and a peerage – and by ladies of the upper class – he turns his back on his own people. It’s a gripping story with tremendous resonance today.
There’s a wonderful scene in ‘Fame Is The Spur’ where Redgrave, now a Member of Parliament and laden with honors, is addressing a mass meeting when a small group of suffragettes bursts in to heckle him, “Votes for Women!” One of the suffragettes is his own wife, a principled bluestocking who supported his career from a mining pit to Westminister. The police beat up the suffragettes, and Redgrave is mute and passive as his wife is dragged out of the hall. His soul dies but he’s too far gone in surrender to know it.
I’ve often wanted to rewrite that scene so that now Redgrave leaps from the podium, punches the brutal cop and joins the protestors thus ruining his career. But that wasn’t the way of Ramsay MacDonald or of most political pros. (here)
(Below: at least Michael Redgrave is polite in a British way while the business of empire and gouging the planet goes on).
Enough already of the Catholics, mired in their ongoing, never-ending cover up.
Over at the Sydney Anglicans, Russell Powell sees righteous Christians standing in line with Obama to denounce a nation gone to Satan or at least the dogs:
Indeed. And the pond looks forward to the Sydney Anglicans taking a strong stand against Mitt Romney, seeing as how he's the member of a dangerous heretical cult.
The Sydney Anglicans are strong in their conviction that Mormons aren't Christian.
Why not read the heartwarming story of a teenager who left deviant Mormonism to become a genuine Christian thanks to the evangelical powers of Sydney Anglicanism (Help! I doorknocked a Mormon).
Andrew was "outrageously offended" at the "thongs and boardies" the teens were wearing when he first went to the youth group at St Paul's, Carlingford.
Yet it was on one of these Friday nights that the penny of salvation by grace dropped. "That was the first time I really realised "I've been flogging my guts out trying to make God happy, but that's not what God is going to accept me for, but only through what Jesus has done'." One by one and in different ways, Andrew's parents and siblings also became Christians.
Today, the desire for Mormons to experience the same "moment of truth' is spurring him on through his second year of full-time study at Moore College.
Watch out Mitt. What the United States is a god-fearing Sydney Anglican to explain the Christian truth to you. Soon enough you'll be at Moore College, transformed.
Meanwhile, Powell is wildly excited at the news that there might be archaeological evidence to support the story of Samson, as outlined here, and here (paywall blocked but clearly Powell loves his Haaretz).
The pond is also excited. After all, where's the harm in a story about a mass murderer, reputed to have knocked off a thousand Philistines while bedding Philistine women (wiki him here if you want a synopsis of the bible).
Samson of course was just doing the work of a pathological homicidal god who wanted to kill all the polytheist Philistines (she was pretty mean to lions too and keen on riddles).
Talk about a role model for Sydney Anglicans! Now if only they could find proof of Noah and his ark, and so confirm that god was truly a genocidal megalomaniac ...
For the rest, it's quiet times at the Sydney Anglicans. We must wait patiently for the sixth part of Michael Jensen's epic exegesis on the sins of Sydney.
Which leaves the pond a moment to note the fine on-going efforts of the Islamic community as reported in Islamic school ordered to repay $9m funding.
Questions in relation to the nine million arose as a result of a federal audit, but it was the NSW government that decided to press for action.
What did the team of that fierce guardian of the federal public purse, Minister for Education, Peter Garrett, contribute to the conversation?
"However, the examination did reveal a number of transactions that did not appear to represent value for money to the school," she said.
"While the use of public funds are not implicated in these transactions, it has raised some concerns about the governance of the school." (here)
Yes there was a fine flurry of blather, and the sure knowledge that the Commonwealth will do its level best to bury the matter out the back, somewhere near the dunny, and do nothing to alienate key electorates.
Is there ever any thought amongst Federal Labor that the funding of private religiously-based schools is now out of control and they should do something about it? Or do something about the Gonski report?
In your rapidly dissolving dreams ...
Long in the tooth readers of the pond will recall talk of a Boulting Brothers' film Fame is the Spur, starring Michael Redgrave and loosely based on the life of Ramsay McDonald:
In a somber ritual, the grandfather passes on to Redgrave a sword from Peterloo that the dragoons used to cut down women and children, a reminder to the grandson to keep the dissident flame alive. When he is poor Redgrave fights for the poor; when seduced by fame and a peerage – and by ladies of the upper class – he turns his back on his own people. It’s a gripping story with tremendous resonance today.
The final gag is that when he's old and doddery, Redgrave tries to get down the sword and draw it from its scabbard, but it's rusted tight inside the sheath. But there are other scenes that make a similar point:
There’s a wonderful scene in ‘Fame Is The Spur’ where Redgrave, now a Member of Parliament and laden with honors, is addressing a mass meeting when a small group of suffragettes bursts in to heckle him, “Votes for Women!” One of the suffragettes is his own wife, a principled bluestocking who supported his career from a mining pit to Westminister. The police beat up the suffragettes, and Redgrave is mute and passive as his wife is dragged out of the hall. His soul dies but he’s too far gone in surrender to know it.
I’ve often wanted to rewrite that scene so that now Redgrave leaps from the podium, punches the brutal cop and joins the protestors thus ruining his career. But that wasn’t the way of Ramsay MacDonald or of most political pros. (here)
Or Peter Garrett, or the men - oh yes it's always men - who run the mainstream religions in Australia. There's only distant memories of Christ leading a riot in the temples ...
And that's the Sunday meditation done and dusted, which is just as well, because next thing you know the pond might start brooding about Elmer Gantry for the millionth time ...
Instead let's end by celebrating AACo (once the glory of Goonoo Goonoo) CEO David Farley comparing Julia Gillard to an old cow.
In keeping with the Farley spirit, the pond hails the fat bovine* old bull boofhead for elevating the tone of political discourse to a new level.
(*Strangely the figurative sense for 'bovine' of 'dull, inert, stupid. sluggish and stolid' only dates from 1855, which puts it just about right for Farley's Victorian sexist mindset).
Time to give the old bull a snip of the shears and send him out to the back paddock to graze? We keed, we keed, Farley style ...
Update: it turns out that the pond was wrong in thinking that Cardinal Pell was maintaining his silence at the Sunday Terror, as the splendid Italy a mysterious package of soccer and salad days shows. Pell broods about soccer, postal bureaucrats and iceberg lettuces, proving that the church is in touch with the common man and issues that torture souls at the deepest levels, before mysteriously concluding You cannot judge fruit by its cover. You cannot expect coherence from a Pellist, but equating strawberries and tomatoes (it seems Italian ones look most unattractive) to books is the sort of stirring insight we've been deprived of for way too long. Suffer little children, and let's not judge the Catholic church by the strange fruit it covers ...
(Below: at least Michael Redgrave is polite in a British way while the business of empire and gouging the planet goes on).
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