Cardinal sins? Or sins against a Cardinal? One last chance for George Pell

George Cardinal Pell, 78, is a convicted sex offender. He is also, as his name indicates, a prelate of the Roman Catholic church. The trouble is that he seems to have been convicted based on no particular evidence but the accusations of two former choirboys.

He is being given one last chance to clear his name.

Some advocates for sexual abuse victims will, of course, argue that the accusation itself ought to be enough. Their position is as understandable as their position is untenable. Coming forward is always difficult for any victim of sexual abuse, and that's especially true, because of cultural attitudes, for male victims. It is not something done lightly by anyone, and especially by boys and men.

On the other hand, in neither the United States nor in Australia, where the Pell case took place, does the legal system look favorably upon the conviction of anyone for any crime without convincing evidence of guilt, and the fact is that despite the subjective considerations which understandably lend a certain amount of automatic credibility to any claim of having been sexually abused (including the extreme difficulty of establishing guilt in most such cases), a fundamental principle of law is at stake here. It is taken as axiomatic in Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence that, as the saying goes, "better that a hundred guilty people should go free than that a single innocent person should wrongly be convicted."

Conservatives down through the decades have complained in the States about decisions by the courts which seem to be overly solicitous of the rights of the accused and perhaps insufficiently concerned with "the rights of the victims-" as if the victims were served any better than the falsely convicted when the wrong person is punished for a crime. In that case, too, the guilty party goes free. Still, questions are inevitably raised when clearly guilty parties are set free on legal technicalities, and the outrage felt by every reasonable person in such cases is fully justified.

The Pell case, however, raises another issue, and one which I suspect we'll be seeing more of as society becomes not only more secular but more hostile toward religion. There has been a long-standing suspicion among Australian Catholics and others that the most damning piece of "evidence" against Cardinal Pell may actually have been that he is a Roman Catholic priest accused of sexually abusing children, and the Roman Catholic church has been notorious for protecting such people and even endangering other potential victims by merely reassigning those accused of such crimes without actually dealing with the accusations.

As true as those things are, they don't prove that George Pell is guilty. Whether he is or not, and regardless of the Australian High Court's ultimate decision in the matter, at this point, nobody will be satisfied. The elderly Pell's life and reputations are in irredeemable shambles, and if he is freed the outcry of injustice will come from the other side.

One can only hope- and pray- that justice is done, whatever it may be, and that the evil in our hearts which causes people out for prosecution or maltreatment on the basis of race or gender or sexual orientation or being Catholic priests or conservative Christians or otherwise suspected of "thought crime" to abate.