THERE WAS NO SHAME IN VISIT, ONLY MERCY
YES, there was indeed something shameful about Tony Abbott this week visiting convicted paedophile Cardinal George Pell in prison.
But what was shameful was not the visit.
Not at all. Here was Abbott, the former prime minister, visiting someone who’s been a friend for decades and is now in the deepest need.
He was visiting a man who Abbott – like me – is convinced is innocent, and who he hopes will win his appeal to the High Court against his conviction for abusing two choirboys, one of whom actually denied being abused.
And at the risk of being mocked by the mob in these anti-Christian times, let me point out something else that’s important – even to an agnostic like me.
Abbott was visiting a prisoner just as his saviour Christ commanded in the Gospels in a Parable of the Talents that’s inspired countless other Christians to acts of mercy, even to the greatest sinners.
Abbott’s pitiless critics would be so much more civilised had they heard those words – or not learned to despise them: “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.”
How can it be “shameful” when a private citizen like Abbott matches his deeds to such an exhortation, praised for centuries as a call to goodness.
But God is dead and the Twitter mob knows no charity, only the joy of hate.
And remember a key point: Abbott did his best to keep his visit to Pell low-key.
There was no press. No announcement. No fuss. No interviews.
So now let me tell you what was truly shameful about his visit. Let me tell you of the kind of selfish, spiteful, vindictive, hypocritical and merciless behaviour that so defines our time – and condemns it.
What was shameful was that some anonymous person – some coward in the dark – tipped off Channel 7’s state political reporter Brendan Donohoe that Abbott was seeing Pell.
Donohoe managed to get to the prison in time to film Abbott leaving, thus making a private visit very public indeed.
Who breached the privacy of Abbott and of Pell, and why? Who sought to shame Abbott and further isolate Pell, and make both the targets of more abuse?
Was it someone in the prison system, settling a score or peddling a favour? Or did someone in the Victorian Labor Government tip off the political reporter, thus managing to briefly deflect media attention away from the embarrassing news that Premier Dan Andrews has met and taken a donation from a property developer at the centre of a corruption inquiry?
Speaking of Andrews, who was more shameful than the Premier himself, who seized this opportunity to extravagantly damn Abbott for his act of friendship and charity. “Shameful, absolutely shameful,” he declared to the media.
Then Andrews said this, which shamed him more and laid bare some hypocrisy: “I apologise, if he won’t, to every victim who would have been traumatised to see the former prime minister of our country visiting a convicted child-sex offender.”
In how many ways was that statement shameful?
Must no convicted childsex offender – even one appealing that conviction – ever get a visitor?
Must we be so merciless? Then why are visits allowed, even to murderers?
And is Andrews saying that no private citizen may ever visit Pell on the grounds that victims of other paedophiles – not Pell himself – would be angry?
What kind of collective justice is that? Hasn’t Andrews underlined – again – the suspicion of many that Pell was convicted for the crimes of his church, and not for his own?
More shame: hasn’t
Andrews, a Premier whose courts jailed Pell, publicly prejudiced Pell’s appeal to the High Court?
All that’s shameful. Then there’s the hypocrisy.
If Andrews really is so concerned for “every victim who would have been traumatised” to see Abbott visiting Pell, then why doesn’t he order a hunt for the leaker who tipped off Channel 7?
No victim would ever have been “traumatised” by Abbott’s visit had that leaker not made his private visit public, with the help of Channel 7.
No leak, no news, no trauma. So will Andrews now demand the head of that leaker on a stick?
Or would that be too embarrassing? Too shamefully close to his Labor Government and its minions?