My friend\nGeorge Pell was freed from prison today, after Australia\u2019s High Count\nunanimously quashed his convictions for sexually assaulting two altar boys\ntwenty-five years ago while he was Archbishop of Melbourne. The Court ruled\nthat there was \u201ca significant possibility that an innocent person has been\nconvicted because the evidence did not establish guilt to the requisite\nstandard of proof.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Indeed! The evidence was so scanty and the charges so physically and temporally implausible, that only a fierce hatred toward Cardinal Pell among certain Melbourne police officials and prosecutors can account for his coming to trial at all. Similarly, his conviction by a jury came as the product of media frenzy, where\u2014as in Jerusalem two thousand years before– the mob demanded the brutalization of a righteous man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I first met George Pell in 1994, when he was the Roman Catholic Auxiliary Bishop of Melbourne. I had come to give several talks for a conference of the Australian Family Association. Bishop Pell was an imposing man: tall and muscular, in a physical sense still very much the professional Australian Rules Football player that he had once been. He was most personable and engaging, with a delightful sense of humor. And he was intelligent, presenting in his own talk a remarkably compelling and Christian account of the natural family\u2026 its strength and gifts, and the enemies that it now faced. We met again at a regional World Congress of Families event in 1999, and two years later he arranged for me to give the keynote address for the inaugural conference of the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family–Melbourne. On my subsequent visits down under, we always got together\u2026. Including his participation in the grand World Congress of Families VII, held 2013 in Sydney.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I mention these matters to explain, in part, the animosity shown by Australian officialdom and \u201cthe street\u201d toward this holy and good man. The sexual left is prominent in Australia and found with particular strength in the LGBTQ \u201ccommunities\u201d of Sydney and Melbourne. Because <\/em>of his effective witness to the truths of Christian marriage and family, George Pell became their primary enemy: he must be stopped. In 2002, allegations emerged over reputed actions in a Catholic youth camp, forty years before. On scrutiny, they disappeared. And now, another set of allegations have been exposed as, at best, hallucinations; most probably, as deliberate lies. Already, though, his enemies are hopeful that \u201cfurther allegations against Cardinal Pell\u201d will come to light and \u201cthat he ultimately would come to trial again\u201d [The New York Times<\/em>]. His burdens here may not yet be over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All advocates for the procreative natural family should take heed. At the last possible stage, Australia\u2019s High Court just managed to salvage some small element of fairness and justice for Cardinal Pell, but even then only after his reputation was smeared and he had spent 400 days in prison. In many other lands, the sexual left is also corrupting the legal process, turning the courts into weapons against marriage, babies, and family bonds and jailing good parents and church leaders. The need for courageous and coordinated defense of the natural family has never been greater.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The evidence was so scanty and the charges so physically and temporally implausible, that only a fierce hatred toward Cardinal Pell can account for his coming to trial at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":13713,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[],"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"subtitle":"The evidence was so scanty and the charges so physically and temporally implausible, that only a fierce hatred toward Cardinal Pell can account for his coming to trial at all.","format":"standard","video":"","gallery":"","source_name":"","source_url":"","via_name":"","via_url":"","override":[{"single_blog_custom":"","sidebar":"","second_sidebar":"","share_position":"","share_float_style":"","post_date_format":"","post_date_format_custom":"","post_reading_time_wpm":"","zoom_button_out_step":"1","zoom_button_in_step":"1","number_popup_post":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"","single_post_gallery_size":""}],"trending_post_position":"","trending_post_label":""},"jnews_primary_category":{"id":"511"},"jnews_social_meta":{"fb_title":"","fb_description":"","fb_image":"","twitter_title":"","twitter_description":"","twitter_image":""},"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[804,511,805],"tags":[912,426,720,825],"class_list":["post-13712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-culture","category-foreground","tag-anti-christian-hatred","tag-australia","tag-catholic-church","tag-court-cases"],"yoast_head":"\n