This week past there has been pretty much only one story in the news. It is, of course, the passing of George Cardinal Pell, Australia’s globally known and mostly respected titan of the Rome Church. Perhaps appropriately, he died in the Eternal City, (I suspect) his favourite place.
A couple of personal experiences since Pell’s death provide a little flavour of the nature and intensity of the reactions his death occasioned. The first was the sister of a friend, who, out of nowhere in the middle of a conversation, randomly offered – “oh, isn’t it great that that Pell is dead!” The second is the wife of another friend, who, when she asked me if I thought Pell had “done it”, and when I said “God no”, she simply stared at me in disbelief, speechless. But … but … “Why would someone [the complainant] go through all that if it weren’t true?” Funny how these two vignettes just about sum up all of the bile that has been visited upon the Cardinal since that dismal day in 2017 when VicPol finally came out and said Pell was being charged with the heinous offences with which, by now, every Australian must be familiar. (I wonder if the graffiti in the gents toilet at Burleigh Heads Beach was removed after the High Court’s complete exoneration of Pell in April 2020).
Even, or perhaps especially, in death, George Pell seems destined to ignite white hot emotions. I had always hoped that he would lead a longish, post-prison life of peace, freedom, quiet reflection and robust scholarship, if only to put some space between the peak years of active Pell hatred and his final passing. This might, just might, have silenced his enemies who had, mercifully, gone silent since the timely intervention of Justice Mark Weinberg and then the wisdom of the seven High Court judges who freed Pell.
It was not to be. The Pell wars have resumed.
Tony Abbott, not unexpectedly and irrepressibly, has described the late Cardinal as “a saint for our times”, in an encomium that will only cement Abbott’s own reputation as Australia’s second most hated man. But perhaps there is another category of Christian sainthood that George Pell might equally fit. One question raised by his life of being hated for his faith, is George Pell Australia’s primary candidate for “white martyrdom”? What is a “white martyr”? According to Faith Magazine:
While we may never be asked to undergo torture and death for the sake of our Christian faith, we can still be martyrs.
When the early church persecutions waned in the fourth century, some Christians began to find other ways to live out the spirit of martyrdom. They called it “white martyrdom” – in contrast to bloody martyrdom – and they embraced the ascetical practices of fasting, praying and almsgiving, as well as more rigorous and unusual forms of penance.
Some lived on pillars and stayed until their deaths. Their austerity was in contrast to the decadence of the culture surrounding them. Most of us have a hard time imagining or even understanding this kind of practice.
https://faithmag.com/white-martyrdom
Another definition of “white martyr” (from Mr Wiki) goes like this:
A believer was bestowed the title of red martyr due to either torture or violent death by religious persecution. The term "white martyrdom" was used by the Church Father Jerome, "for those such as desert hermits who aspired to the condition of martyrdom through strict asceticism".
A third account states:
An ancient homily from Ireland, written around the end of the 7th century, gives a perfect summary of the three types of martyrdom.
Now there are three kinds of martyrdom, which are accounted as a cross to a man, to wit: white martyrdom, green and red martyrdom. White martyrdom consists in a man’s abandoning everything he loves for God’s sake, though he suffer fasting or labor thereat. Green martyrdom consists in this, that by means of fasting and labor he frees himself from his evil desires, or suffers toil in penance and repentance.
From this account, as well as other writings, white martyrdom is typically defined as being persecuted for the faith, but never shedding any blood. It consists of living a life boldly for Christ, yet never being asked to die for it.
https://aleteia.org/2017/10/31/3-types-of-martyrdom-that-lead-to-a-heavenly-reward/
The fit seems very tight. Like two famous Red martyrs – those who gave their blood – with whom George Pell might best be compared, Jesus Christ himself and Thomas More, the Cardinal spoke truth to power, challenged inconvenient propaganda, corrected error and confounded the expectation that he would roll over and bow before the secular state. None did.
Whether or not George Pell knew what was coming when he eschewed Richmond football club for the Son of God, he placed himself in the line of fire. As fearless truth-tellers do. And didn’t the fire come! He wasn’t entirely ascetic, of course. He enjoyed the regular benefits of a good red and a social life of plenty, having, as he did, a gift for friendship, despite his undeserved reputation for prickliness.
But for God he did humbly offer up any chance at popularity, as serious Christians in the public square now, seemingly, must. The Cardinal almost seemed to go out of his way to court public and official hatred, without remotely trying to. He ended up giving his reputation, his freedom – infamously, for 404 (or was it 405?) days – his health and possibly his life, to his God. He constantly ran the gauntlet of confrontation with his opponents, by speaking truth to earthly powers and dominions. And he seemed to attract vicious enemies more than just about anyone who wasn’t a serial killer or a Nazi right-wing, anti vaxxer, conspiracy theorist.
When considering the life of Cardinal George Pell, it sometimes seems that two different people are being spoken of. I cannot think of anyone else in my lifetime about whom this could be so easily said. Reading the Catholic and (thankfully) the Murdoch media, we find dispassionate accounts of a great Australian, a holy man of God, a man of conviction who stood up for his beliefs, one who acted on his core beliefs with firmness and resolve, a plain-speaking man, a towering Churchman, a highly intelligent and widely published scholar/writer, a mover-and-shaker (a player), a man with the common touch whose personal warmth and charity were apparent to all who knew him at all. Those cheering most loudly at his release from prison were fellow inmates.
Reading and hearing from the leftist media and politicians, we find a child molester and a protector of priest-paedophiles. End of. The Saturday Paper has chosen to mark the Cardinal’s death with a rehash of the “crimes” for which he wasn’t tried. Written, inevitably, by Australia’s Pell-hater-in-chief, who has, no doubt, been itching since April 2020 to get the last word against a man who now is beyond his capacity to retort. And who has built her reputation, such that it is, for journalism, namely Louise Milligan, who, as co-founder with lawyer Vivian Waller of the Fembot business model, remembered the “victims” and “survivors”, presumably the victims and survivors of George. Oh, to be able to sustain and project such contorted, spittle-flecked, feminist, bitter-ex-Catholic anger. It is a gift.
(I haven’t bothered to consult The Age, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation or the twitterverse).
The now all-powerful Premier of MelDanistan pointedly refused a State funeral without being asked for one. Ahead of the curve.
There is, though, a third category of observers of George Pell. These people are the saddest of all. They are the insipid fence-sitters who care about the reputations they have with their enemies. See under Archbishop Tim Costelloe of the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference, an insipid a group of men as could be imagined.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/01/were-archbishop-costelloes-comments-on-cardinal-pell-unjust/
Mostly, the Australian Catholic hierarchy, or at least their bureaucratic-managerial arm, have a long history of Pell scepticism. Some, no doubt, are paid-up Pell deniers. Much of it may be entirely personal and borne of jealousy, I suspect. Why did this guy get to be the successor of Daniel Mannix as Australia’s premier churchman, for God’s sake?
They are getting on with their Francis-man positioning while continuing their obsequious genuflection before the secular powers with whom they endlessly hope to court favour. They pursue their ludicrous and neo-Marxist “synods on synodality”, about which George still had things to say, seemingly from beyond the grave.
Perhaps, in the shadow of his evisceration of Pope Francis under the pseudonym Demos, or in The Spectator under his own name, the Cardinal was called home by One who had an interest in drawing maximum attention to the evil wrongs now going on in His Church, and to what Pell termed a “catastrophic” pontificate. Like good detectives, perhaps God doesn’t do coincidences.
https://wdtprs.com/2023/01/the-demos-memo-written-by-the-late-card-pell/
Those who still doubt his innocence and essential goodness, might profit from a read of his Prison Diaries, as many souls already have. There is no way that those convinced of his evil values and deeds will ever do so, of course. Especially for those whose day jobs require fixated Pell hatred. You know who you are. The Cardinal’s goodness, guilt or innocence is not an issue of priority for those for whom Pell will always remain the evil gift that keeps on giving, even after his passing.
A white martyr of almost textbook proportions has gone to his eternal reward. It caught us all by surprise, and we will mourn his passing, despite knowing – to the extent that we can know these things – that he has gone to a far, far better place. They don’t get the ABC in Heaven.
Paul Collits
16 January 2023
The Pell haters are getting it in while they can. They probably assumed he had a few years left too, and now he's so suddenly gone they feel... cheated.
By chance, I had a conversation with an 85 year old man, no idea how the conversation began but we were talking about the Protestant/ Catholic enmity in our youth. Out of the blue he raised the issue of Cardinal Pell and said he never believed from day one that this man was guilty of what he had been accused of. I’m sure there are probably many more committed Christians out there who also believe in his innocence .