Curious Thoughts on Catholics, Lawsuits, Cardinals, and Supposedly "Conservative" Bloggers

Hello Everyone,

Today while cruising "home base", the Society of Canadian Catholic Bloggers website, this shows up in the feed, with a hat - tip to Fr. Tim Moyle of "When the Rubber Hits the Road":

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2015/06/01/cardinal-pell-consults-lawyers-after-vatican-adviser-calls-him-almost-sociopathic/#.VWw9Y8lA49w.twitter

Summary: There's a whole lotta infighting at the Vatican. A priest abuse survivor, Peter Saunders, a layman elected to the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, launched a series of public slanderings and calumnies against known Conservative Cardinal George Pell, currently the Prefect of the Vatican Secretariat for the Economy. The worst claims are that ++Pell bribed someone to shut up about priest abuse the victim received, and that +Pell is "almost sociopathic."

Worse, Saunders threw away any credibility he had as a representative for the Vatican including his Pontifical Commission, by taking it to public air on the Australian television news program, 60 minutes. This may or may not be directly related to the American version. No surprise, this stuff is for ratings.

Because of this public defacement, the Catholic Herald states that "“In the circumstances, the cardinal is left no alternative but to consult with his legal advisers.”

Hmmmm .... This got me thinking.

Recently, Certain Basilian and Jesuit priests have been threatening laypeople including bloggers with lawsuits. These people of course, used their blogs to fight back against the liberal, wayward priests, or had their lawyers use their wonderful legal skills to "smack down" said priests before the lawsuits left the ground running.

Not to mention, a certain prelate by the name of Cardinal Burke also weighed in on the matter of Catholics suing other Catholics, and basically put on South Park's "Don't Sue" panda costume. What does that panda advocate? "Don't sue."

Also, said bloggers and right-winged people of all strokes on the Catholic side of the blogosphere, have used a certain scripture passage (1 Corinthians 6-11 by the way,) to silence those with the Word of God as further weapons not to sue people and prove them right.

So clearly it's has been decreed wrong for liberal priests to sue Catholic bloggers and laity.

However, here's a "Traditional"/Benedict XVI/Conservative Cardinal" who is being unjustly attacked by someone who's also Catholic, and he is a victim of sexual assault from a priest. And yet, here is the conservative, supposedly spotless Cardinal, consulting his lawyers for legal advice .... of which one can rightly assume that a true and proper option would be to sue for defamation of character and/or libel.

So it seems, we have an interesting predicament here do we not????? Should Cardinal Pell sue?

If he does, he violates the Scripture thrown against Catholics to tell them not to sue, and he clearly is ignoring the advice of ++Burke and the other bastions of Catholic Truth, that right-wing Blog-o-sphere, that we shouldn't sue other Catholics. Clearly there is a hypocrisy, even if the lawsuit is just, that this Catholic is suing other Catholics for the right reasons.

This begs another question: If the right wingers/Radical Catholic Reactionaries/Conservative Cardinals were quick to condemn those liberal priests for their threat of lawsuit against other Catholics, will they do the same for Cardinal Pell, despite proper self-defense? Or will they remain silent in order to uphold their screed they have placed in public across the Catholic Blog-o-sphere? Or, will the blog-o-sphere become magically hypocritical save one of "their own" and rationalize their once "doctrinal" stance on lawsuits and Catholics? I suppose they might hide the turnabout in some sort of "clarification" or rationalization.

Now, should Cardinal Pell NOT sue, then yes, he clearly has upheld what ++Burke and company have said, and good for him .... or is it? They say that silence is assent, and that might actually make the world believe that Saunders and his emotionally/psychologically-fueled tirade is actually true, when clearly, right now there is no evidence proving his story is true. Therefore, as it stands, Saunders' story is false and a lie. It is further proven a lie as Sauders and ++Pell have never crossed paths, either in Australia, nor in their workings in the Vatican. If Saunders takes this further, and actually somehow gets validity to his story, placing Cardinal Pell under judgement, legal or clerical  .....

then a new question arises. Will Pell's "conservative" blogging and clerical "allies" (I mean that loosely. It's more that they are not liberals in the Church but defend each other, blindly and without considering ALL angles to a case or story...) decry the injustice, and perhaps realize that there are just cases when a man should actually have a legal defense, and that just might .... gasp .... mean that a lawsuit is a valid legal defense for a truly calumnied man? Especially in this case, whereby it so happens it is a Catholic defending himself against another Catholic? Or will silence be the answer, just for the sake of upholding what is in the Catholic Blogopshere?

A quandary indeed ..... Hope you enjoyed my thoughts for today.

Pax, Julian.