Tag Archives: Gerard Henderson

Catholic Church, Culture, Law, Media, Religion

The Pell lynch mob – undeterred and unbowed

The main point that emerges from Ross Fitzgerald’s review of Gerard Henderson’s book, Cardinal Pell, the Media Pile-on and Collective Guilt, is that the cardinal’s antagonists remain immovable in their belief that he is guilty as charged. It does not matter what has been said, how detailed and coherent the analysis of the ‘choirboy’s’ absurd story, the 7-0 verdict of the High Court, and the international consternation at the failure of Australia’s legal system, they remain impervious. You only have to follow Louise Milligan’s twitter account to witness the mob’s delusion and unrestrained hatred of Cardinal Pell. Indeed, I have described Milligan as delusional, but I wonder. Is it delusion or is it pure malice? Is she mad or bad? Gerard Henderson’s highly recommended book provides evidence for one or the other – or perhaps both.

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Cardinal George Pell: a man of sorrows

Ross Fitzgerald, The Australian, 8 December 2021

The case of George Pell revealed deep fault lines in Australian society. Some people were convinced of his innocence, but many others wanted him to be guilty.

The trial, retrial, and conviction in December 2018 of Cardinal Pell for historical child sexual abuse of two choirboys at Melbourne’s St Patrick’s Cathedral that allegedly occurred in the mid-1990s, gained international attention.

Sensationally, in April 2020, all seven judges of the High Court of Australia quashed Pell’s conviction.

On April 7, 2020 at 10am, Chief Justice Susan Kiefel quoted from the unanimous judgment: “It is evident that there is a possibility that an innocent person has been convicted because the evidence did not establish guilt to the requisite standard of proof.” That Tuesday morning, as a high-profile convicted pedophile, Cardinal Pell was in solitary confinement at the maximum security Barwon Prison, near Geelong. He had been incarcerated in various prisons for 405 days.

As Gerard Henderson documents in this scrupulously researched book, the High Court’s decision had huge reverberations. Even though the evidence against him was weak, most of Pell’s opponents, in Australia and overseas, retain their unambiguously entrenched positions.

Henderson argues, convincingly, that the Cardinal’s many antagonists continue to deny him the presumption of innocence.

Read the rest here …

Australia, Books, Catholic Church, Media, Political correctness, The Left

The BIGOTED SCRIBBLINGS of the ABC’s Louise Milligan

One must be continually reminded of the appalling standard of Louise Milligan’s book CARDINAL which has filled the pig’s trough of anti-
Catholic literature. This is the standard of thinking of Australia’s left.

Reviewed by Gerard Henderson

Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell 
By Louise Milligan,

– With a memoir piece from John Clifton who attended St Francis Xavier private school – the Ballarat school George Pell ministered to in the 1970s.

According to Melbourne University Press, Cardinal uncovers “uncomfortable truths about a culture of sexual entitlement, abuse of trust and how ambition can silence evil” in the Catholic Church.  In an email forwarded to me on 30 May 2017, MUP chief executive Louise Adler wrote that Cardinal is an “important contribution to the community’s understanding of the Catholic Church’s response to child abuse”.  Ms Adler was defending Louise Milligan’s refusal to answer questions about Cardinal – despite the fact that her journalistic career has been built on asking questions of others.

In fact, Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell is neither of the above.  Cardinal  does not uncover “uncomfortable truths” about the Catholic Church.  The scandal of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church has been known for decades.  Nor is the book a contribution to “the community’s understanding of the Catholic Church’s response to child sexual abuse”. As the author acknowledged when interviewed on the ABC TV News Breakfast program on 17 May 2017, Cardinal was written “from the complainants’ point of view”.

So Cardinal is not an objective analysis of either the Catholic Church or Cardinal George Pell.  Rather, it is the case for the prosecution – primarily researched by ABC journalist Louise Milligan while working for the taxpayer funded public broadcaster.

Read the rest here…

Australia, Catholic Church, Law, Media, The Left

The Royal commission – no justice for Cdl Pell

Gerard Henderson of the Sydney Institute has been at the forefront of the sustained criticism of the royal commission into clerical child sexual abuse and the legal fiasco of Cardinal Pell’s trials. He has taken apart the arguments condemning the cardinal. In particular, he destroyed the case run by Louise Milligan, leaving that deluded ABC flunkey nothing to say other than that Henderson defends paedophiles. That’s her stock reply to criticisms she cannot answer.

In his latest article about Cardinal Pell and the royal commission, Henderson is no less compelling in his criticism after the release of the redacted pages, the last great hope of the Pell-haters. His irresistible conclusion is that the Cardinal was denied justice.

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Royal commission denies George Pell legal justice

Gerard Henderson

The Sydney Institute, MAY 17, 2020

The ignorance of some journalists never seems to surprise. Take, for example, the release last week of the non-redacted report of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse covering its case studies in the Catholic diocese of Ballarat and archdiocese of Melbourne.

Sections of both reports had been delayed pending the result of the outcome of the charges laid against Cardinal George Pell for historical child sexual abuse when he was archbishop of Melbourne in 1996 and 1997. On April 7, in a unanimous decision, the High Court quashed Pell’s conviction.

Many of Pell’s media critics, who were disappointed with his acquittal, looked forward to the release of the royal commission’s findings, which they expected to be hostile to Pell. They were not disappointed. Nor should they have expected to be, in view of the hostile reception Pell faced during his appearances before the royal commission comprising close to 20 hours — especially from counsel assisting Gail Furness SC.

Immediately after its release, Nine Entertainment’s Peter FitzSimons, a leading Pell antagonist, referred to the report as “a judgment”. No, it wasn’t. A royal commission is not a court of law. Moreover, in this instance, half of its members did not have legal qualifications.

Royal commissions make findings, not judgments. And their burden of proof is far lower than guilt beyond reasonable doubt. It’s closer to the balance of probabilities that prevails in civil cases.

Read the rest here…

Catholic Church, Law, Media, Political correctness

Review of Milligan’s Cardinal

Gerard Henderson reviews Louise Milligan’s CARDINAL: THE RISE AND FALL OF GEORGE PELL.

According to Melbourne University Press, Cardinal uncovers “uncomfortable truths about a culture of sexual entitlement, abuse of trust and how ambition can silence evil” in the Catholic Church.  In an email forwarded to me on 30 May 2017, MUP chief executive Louise Adler wrote that Cardinal is an “important contribution to the community’s understanding of the Catholic Church’s response to child abuse”.  Ms Adler was defending Louise Milligan’s refusal to answer questions about Cardinal – despite the fact that her journalistic career has been built on asking questions of others.

In fact, Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell is neither of the above.  Cardinal  does not uncover “uncomfortable truths” about the Catholic Church.  The scandal of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church has been known for decades.  Nor is the book a contribution to “the community’s understanding of the Catholic Church’s response to child sexual abuse”. As the author acknowledged when interviewed on the ABC TV News Breakfast program on 17 May 2017, Cardinal was written “from the complainants’ point of view”.

So Cardinal is not an objective analysis of either the Catholic Church or Cardinal George Pell.  Rather, it is the case for the prosecution – primarily researched by ABC journalist Louise Milligan while working for the taxpayer funded public broadcaster.

Read on…

Books, Catholic Church, Catholicism, Political correctness, Religion

David Marr: The left’s purveyor of calumny par excellence

David Marr’s Quarterly Essays on Tony Abbott and Cardinal George Pell have been among the most politically damaging of any writing that has come from the left. They have been damaging not because Marr mounts irresistible argument backed by unassailable evidence. No, they were damaging  because of Marr’s considerable talent as a writer  – a postmodernist writer with the creative power of a skilled novelist. Marr is a writer of ‘faction’ – fiction that is presented as fact. I make my case for Marr’s status as a postmodernist writer of ‘faction’ in chapter 13 of my just released ebook TONY ABBOTT AND THE TIMES OF REVOLUTION (paperback due February 2019).

Nobody has been more scathing of David Marr’s ‘political analysis’ than Gerard Henderson of the Sydney Institute. Below is his devastating critique in Media Watchdog No. 343 of Marr’s essay on Cardinal Pell. 

Continue reading David Marr: The left’s purveyor of calumny par excellence →
Catholic Church, Politics

Can Catholics ever trust the ABC?

The following appeared in Gerard Henderson’s popular Media Watch Dog No. 435, 7 December 2018.

HOW THE DRUM REPORTED FR. PHILLIP WILSON’S CONVICTION BUT IGNORED HIS ACQUITTAL

Fr Philip Wilson, the former Catholic Archbishop of Adelaide, was found guilty by Magistrate Robert Stone in Newcastle Local Court on 3 July 2018 of failing to report a child sex abuse allegation.  The prosecution maintained that Fr Wilson had been told that a Catholic priest was a child sex abuser in the mid-1970s and that he had failed to report this matter to NSW Police between April 2004 and January 2006 – as required by Section 316A of the NSW Crimes Act.

That night Julia Baird presented The Drum on ABC TV with a panel that comprised Dee Madigan, Stephen O’Doherty, Megan Motto and Karen Middleton.   It was a total pile-on against Fr Wilson. So much so that even Dr Baird declared “there seems to be a consensus on the panel here” – having previously bagged the Catholic Church herself for what she described as “obstructive clericalism”.

The pile-on occurred despite the fact that neither the panellists nor the presenter had read Magistrate Stone’s judgment. Indeed, the judgment is still not readily available –as Fr Frank Brennan documents in his article titled “Philip Wilson’s dead letter day” in today’s edition of Eureka Street.

Yesterday in the Newcastle District Court, Judge Roy Ellis overturned Magistrate Stone’s decision. He found that Fr Wilson should not have been convicted beyond reasonable doubt.  Judge Ellis, while believing that the complainant in this case was an honest witness, said that he was not satisfied with the accuracy of some of the complainant’s recollections.  He found that Fr Wilson was an honest and forthright witness. Judge Ellis also held that it was possible for entirely honest individuals like the complainant to have false memories.

So what did The Drum do last night with respect to Judge Ellis’ decision?  Nothing. Absolutely nothing.  The case was covered by ABC TV News but ignored by The Drum and 7.30.

When Fr Wilson was convicted by Magistrate Stone, the ABC reported that this was a finding of international significance and discussed the case at length.  However, when Fr Wilson was acquitted by Judge Ellis, the matter was not covered by The Drum or 7.30.

The decision in R v Phillip Edward Wilson has been released with certain names redacted.