Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Guest Author Uncategorized

When I read Jennifer Wilson’s exceptionally fine piece at No Place for Sheep on Friday evening, I decided to republish it at The Pub because her analysis of George Pell is one of the best I have ever read – and I also agree that Yeats’s poem “The Second Coming” is a brilliant, and ominous, work. Thank you, Jennifer, for permitting The Pub to provide yet another platform for your amazing writing.

In my experience one of the more dangerous types of human is the man or woman with an intense and unshakeable conviction that he or she is a “good” person, doing the “right” thing.

The danger is that such a person will see everything they think, say and do through the prism of perceived good and rightness, and this vision inevitably blinds them to the damage they are, like every other human being, capable of inflicting. Because they are unable to see they are incapable of taking responsibility, let alone making atonement or working towards change. So they continue on their blundering path, leaving havoc in their wake, entirely unable to acknowledge they’ve had any part in its production.

Or as Yeats puts it: The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.

(Actually, that poem, The Second Coming, is worth a read: it seems eerily appropriate for these times. Decades before Jacques Derrida’s Structure, Sign and Play…, Irish poet William Butler Yeats noted that “the centre cannot hold.” I find this strangely reassuring. That the poets got to it before the post structuralists, I mean. But I digress…)

The Cardinal George Pell is one such human. Indeed, the most powerful conviction I can see in Pell is his conviction that he is always innocent, always good, and always right, and he clings to these self-perceptions with all the passionate intensity of a man clinging to the lid of an esky in a turbulent sea into which he has been unceremoniously pitched from a sinking vessel. The Catholic church is not holding its centre: The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned…

Serious allegations of bribery and cover-up have yet again been made against George Pell at the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sex Abuse. The Cardinal, strategically parachuted into a leading role in the Vatican’s finance department when things got a little hot for him here in Australia, responded with a written denial, fully supported by his good friend and failed priest Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Abbott, who has a moral point of view on everything, is strangely reluctant to offer one on this matter, saying only that it is up to Pell whether or not he returns to face the Commission’s questioning.

I cannot recall a conversation I had forty years ago, declared the Cardinal, however, for those who were traumatised by such conversations they remain unforgettable. The Cardinal has the luxury of forgetting what continues to haunt and torment victims to this day. For this alone one would expect him to express some gratitude.

It is difficult to imagine that a conversation in a swimming pool change room in which Royal Commission witness Timothy Green informed the then Father Pell that boys were being sexually molested by pedophile Brother Dowlan could have been invented by Mr Green forty years later, in an effort to further discredit George Pell.

It would perhaps be fitting for Pell to emulate the crucified Christ, who died in agony for the sins of the world even though according to the mythology he committed very few if any of them himself. Of course I’m not suggesting a literal crucifixion for the Cardinal, rather a metaphorical sacrifice of self on the altar of the Royal Commission. A written statement from his luxury accommodations in Rome does not, contrary to Prime Minister Abbott’s view, seem nearly sufficient. George Pell needs to front up, and not simply for himself, but for the victims and for the Catholic church, if he wishes that institution to retain any last shred of credibility.

The extent of the sexual abuse of children in institutions, and in the family, is almost beyond comprehension. The frequency with which it is and was committed, and is and was covered up by people who consider themselves “good,” reveals an epidemic of psycho-sexual dysfunction that has been repressed and suppressed to a degree that is also incomprehensible. This denial has occurred at the centre: the centre of institutions, the centre of families, the very centre of our culture and our society. The reality of the margins is confronting the fantasy of the centre, and the centre is no longer holding.

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

453 thoughts on “Slouching Towards Bethlehem”

  3. This little black duck

    Imagine the legions of happy lawyers ……….. on both sides. Four years and counting , come on down years of appeals.

  6. Political Animal,

    Happy Birthday buddy!

    I have had a couple of glasses of wine in celebration of this special day, on your behalf, of course!

    No beer in the house. Give me a bit of warning & I’ll get in some Coopers in time to drink to your good health! 😉

    Enjoy the rest of your 68th. Next year is one that you might have to be careful of, 69! 😉

  8. kaffeeklatscher,

    Imagine the legions of happy lawyers

    These parasites on society are always happy! They cannot lose. If they are representing either the plaintiff or the defendant, they still get paid!

    Not too many professions that this applies to!

    No offense meant to the beautiful Fiona! 😉

  9. Scorps,

    . . . they still get paid!

    Theoretically, yes. Actually, no.

    A friend of mine who died way too young calculated a year or so before his demise that he was owed over $1.5 million by a whole range of clients who couldn’t / wouldn’t pay him. The couldn’t pay were well in the minority, both in terms of actual number and in terms of the quantum unpaid.

    He was a good barrister, too.

  10. Fiona

    He was a good barrister, too.

    The Chambers Clerks are notoriously inefficient.

  11. CTar,

    Back in “my” day the instructing solicitor/s was/were always responsible for paying the barrister, even if the client hadn’t advanced the funds. In NSW, at least, that rule changed some time during the 1990s – very much to the detriment of the profession overall, in my opinion.

  13. To be a bit clearer, in the 1990s the legal profession rules were changed so that potential clients could engage barristers directly. I don’t think the consequences of that change were properly considered.

  14. Happy Birthday Political Animal. Have a great day on Sunday! Good food, good drinks and good company – perfect!

  15. Should be give George Brandis the nickname “Errol” after Errol Flynn who apparently f****d everything he touched?

  16. Fiona

    Back in “my” day the instructing solicitor/s was/were always responsible for paying the barrister, even if the client hadn’t advanced the funds.

    Yep. The Barristers ended up with a long debt chain while the Solicitors recovered the payment so they could then fund the payment of it.

  18. CTar,

    . . . so they could then fund the payment of it

    The firm I worked for had a rule that the firm would pay the barrister’s fee even if there weren’t sufficient funds in the client’s account to cover it. Of course, that probably didn’t apply to really large fees, like long court cases, but then the firm’s client base was predominantly wealthy corporates.

  19. I’m watching the replay of QT on APAC. What a schemozzle. So far I’ve seen Abbott called out on his coding answer yesterday – he ridiculed the idea at the time – and answer today that his party are already doing it and that Shorten should do his homework. I’ve seen Hockey blame Qld and Victoria state governments for the current bad economic data. And I’ve just seen Abbott begging the ALP to release Health policy – he didn’t even ask them to support his cuts, he just asked them to release policy positions. Right now Joyce is talking gibberish at a million miles an hour.

  20. BK (and Leone),

    The proposal has some attractions, but does brandeis show any propensity to swashbuckle? Can’t see it myself.

  24. The cloud isn’t quite the same shape; the land below is different. But these are the colours I saw in a huge cumulus bank above Kinglake as I drove to my friend’s house a bit after 5 this evening.

  25. Fiona

    that probably didn’t apply to really large fees

    Yes, that my experience.

    Often general disbursements the same. I was once asked why I was being difficult on Court filing Fees in a Lands Rights case – the number of applicants times the then $525 filing fee came to over $500,000.

    I wanted the money first from the client.

  26. 6Pack

    I think clients should be able to directly engage their legal representatives of choice .

    So do I, but Barristers depend very much on the solicitors involved.

    To have incompatible ones is a real problem.

  27. Rumpole of the Bailey showed up the barrister – solicitor situation well. Not to mention those within chambers who distributed the briefs.

  29. 7.5.

    The Vogon poetess “persuaded” PWC change their opinion.

    She “persuaded” Bananaby to go in to bat for her.

  30. Maybe ‘Errol’ isn’t such a good choice for Brandis. I like Errol’s movies, it would be an insult to him to give his name to Mr Toad.

  32. It wasn’t as much fun as I thought it would be. Mesma made an idiot of herself but she didn’t melt down or anything. Good lord she can get catty though.

  33. http://www.afr.com/news/gina-rinehart-its-time-for-total-war-20150528-ghbv3f

    http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/gallery/2015/may/28/feminisms-backstory-spare-rib-archive-goes-online

    http://www.brw.com.au/p/lists/rich-200/2015/down_but_gina_rinehart_remains_richest_fZ3yjmEP9pHo9KbKKqWEGN

    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/samesex-marriage-circuitbreaker-emerges-as-liberals-labor-mps-propose-compromise-20150528-ghbm8k.html

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/05/27/a-body-count-in-qatar-illustrates-the-consequences-of-fifa-corruption/

    https://redflag.org.au/article/newspoll-workers-respond-redundancy-news

    http://io9.com/i-fooled-millions-into-thinking-chocolate-helps-weight-1707251800

  35. Beer, wine, all good, no worries Skorps. 🙂

    This capex news is not good, not good at all. And no reason for it, all the shambles’ actions, Budgets, decisions, trash talking the economy caused it.

  37. Pol An

    Peter Martin’s article tonight not one to boost confidence.

    Capital investment: Economic outlook slips “from bleak to recessionary”

    UBS economist George Tharenou told clients the outlook had switched “from bleak to recessionary”.

    “The capital expenditure cliff has arrived early,” he said. “This data is so bad it would worry the Reserve Bank and raises the risk they will cut rates again ahead.”

    http://www.watoday.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/capital-investment-economic-outlook-slips-from-bleak-to-recessionary-20150528-ghbxls.html

  38. Kaffeeklatscher,

    Austerity here we come.

    *curtsies nicely*

    Thank you, messrs howard, costello, abbott, joho, cormann . . . AND a big cheer for the IPA, while I’m about it.

  39. Mr Hockey told Parliament the reaction to his budget had been “fantastic”.

    As in, bearing no relation whatsoever to reality.

  47. Good Lord! What IS she wearing! Mutton dressed as – well – I dunno really.

  49. Leone,

    Mutton dressed as stupid.

    A decent bra might help. Having a cleavage that didn’t reveal the sun-“touched” and non sun-“touched” might also help.

    Nah, what I said first.

Comments are closed.