Sarah

“The Chair [Justice Peter McClellan, former Chair of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse] seemed to see where he was going with this. 'Cardinal, you keep referencing back to authority and structural responsibility, but it is the case, isn't it, that within the Church you would expect and indeed might I suggest the community would expect - that each priest would act responsibly, regardless of their position?"
He was met again with some vintage obfuscation, capped off with a familiar Pell trope: you people just don't understand my Church. 'To understand the Catholic Church's structure and who has authority, you go to Church law, and according to the canon law of the Church, you can there identify the different levels of responsibility - it might be a jurisdictional responsibility; it might be a moral responsibility at different levels. But it's from the canon law that you decide what the situation is within the Church.'
And here the Chair got to the nub of Pell's true thinking on this, the bubble he finds himself in, where the ordinary rules of morality, decency and even criminal responsibility are leavened to varying degrees by byzantine Church structures. (p.203)”
― Louise Milligan, Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell

“When the issue came to light, I naively expected that the Church would care about the discontentment of many of the school parents,' [St. Patrick's Mentone school parent Andrea] Wilkins said. 'That they would listen and help us. It didn't take long to realise that they'd rather all of the "disruptive" parents and their children just left the schools rather than doing the right thing. How dare we challenge them? The whole experience made it loud and clear that their priority is with themselves and not the children we entrust to them.' (p.269)”
― Louise Milligan, Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell

“Pell is unable to project a convincing sense of compassion, reform and healing. ... Pell looms as a huge liability in the institutional crisis ow facing the Catholic Church in Australia. (The Australian journalist Paul Kelly, quoted on p.125)”
― Louise Milligan, Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell

“People would think that clergy would plead guilty and would do all they could to minimise the stress and pain for the victim. But the Church will hire the best lawyers, barristers and even QCs to defend the abusers ... The victims are cross-examined as if they are on trial. The victims have to recount every detail of the abuse, and then are called liars.' (Sexual Abuse survivor Andrew Collins quoted on p.364)”
― Louise Milligan, Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell