Defending the indefensible

[angra]

Henderson gets stuck into ABC reporting of the Royal Commission and child abuse. He claims reports are 'unbalanced' and only present the point of view of the victims.

Blot applauds Henderson. More evidence that this is just a leftist witch-hunt. "Gerard Henderson analyses three consecutive days of uniformly hostile coverage of the Catholic Church by the ABC’s 7.30."

So maybe the ABC and others (See Mike Carlton in this morning's SMH) should dig up a few peado's to interview, to give their side of the story?

Or maybe the Catholic Church will voluntarily offer it's secret sex files as evidence to the media? "Catholic Church's secret sex files" SMH.

As someone remarked last week (on The Drum I think) damning a Royal Commission before it even starts, and finding every excuse possible for praising the Catholic Church and vilifying it's critics, is tantamount to supporting the abusers.

[angra]

Blot's outdoing himself. Four articles in two days about "the great anti-Catholic witch hunt". Another one's just popped up.

As has been pointed out before, would he be so ready to defend Islam if a few thousand Imam's were accused of peadophilia?

[chookmustard]

I don't get it. Sure, there are people wh make vexatious claims. The examples he gives are not involved in this RC, the thing has not started yet but one of his latest posts suggests it already has victims who have reputations destroyed.

Seems odd.

I know on Monday the 12th on 2gb with Price he reiterated over and over again how worried he was about the downsides of this Royal Commission. I can only surmise that in Andrews mind the possibility that victims of abuse from 10,20,30 years ago getting some sort of recognition and justice is a waste of time.

The risk of vexatious claims and the cost ($) outweighs the benefits to victims and at the same time providing a big stick for seclarists to beat up on his political allies.

Does the thought of Labor using the RC in the run up,to a future election campaign as positive news so alarming?

[angra]

"They easily cheat, tell lies, forget promises, they are dishonest and tell bad words, steal, fight and turn to violence and commit sex crimes,"

Priests?

No, meat-eaters, according to an Indian school text book.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-20354669

[Matthew Of Canberra]

"... damning a Royal Commission before it even starts, and finding every excuse possible for praising the Catholic Church and vilifying it's critics, is tantamount to supporting the abusers"

It isn't "tantamount" ... I'd use a stronger word than that. It's exactly the same "hands off, the institution is too important" argument that created the problem in the first place.

Does really think that the arguments being put forward by bolt now are any different to the ones that would have been foremost back in the 60's and 70's?

I remember bolt sitting on QandA and declaring that the world youth conference event wasn't the appropriate time to be bringing up the worst crimes of the church. Now it seems that perhaps it's NEVER the right time. He must be right, though - because andrew bolt is "morally serious", and we aren't.

However, I tend to agree with bolt that the church probably isn't the worst offender now. We are (probably) going to hear discussion about long-gone crimes. If the inquiry doesn't come up with anything really new, then the conclusions are going to be "they did bad, they seem to have their stuff together now". If what Pell is saying about procedures is correct, I don't think the church has much to be worried about.

I wonder where the real bombshells are going to land. I think there are potentially better reasons to be looking than for what we might find out about problems already identified. I wonder who's really quaking in their shoes.

There are two fundamental issues that "the left" has with the catholic church. It's NOT that they preach against fun (or whatever it was he claimed a couple of days ago). The first is its pseudo-moral, pre-enlightenment stand against any kind of effective family planning or contraception, and the other is the fact that it got away with covering up child abuse.

They've already lost the argument on the first one, at least in australia. That just leaves the second .... the very subject of the inquiry being proposed. I don't think "the left doesn't like the church because it covered up child abuse" is much of an argument against a royal commission into child abuse.

I don't, for example, get to protest against being investigated for a crime because the police don't like people committing crimes.

Give it up, andrew. It's inexcusable to be running interference against an inquiry into child abuse because one institution likely to be on the stand is one whose politics you agree with, and because it might embarrass important people. Look to where similar inquiries have already taken place elsewhere and I doubt you'll find average catholics complaining that those inquiries were ever held. I doubt if jane sixpack catholic-on-the-street in boston or dublin would be advising our government not to do this.

You really on the wrong side of this argument. You're clearly putting a lot of effort into convincing people otherwise, but you can't actually distort reality.

[angra]

MoC - the other fundamental issue I and many others have with the Catholic Church, is that in developing countries they actively campaign against the use of condoms as a form of AIDS prevention. Thus their contribution to the misery of overpopulation is far exceeded in evil by allowing AIDS to reach epidemic proportions by condemning condoms. Here's an example from PNG (where HIV/AIDS is predominately heterosexual and the infection rate is one of the worst outside Africa)...

The PNG Education Department's new HIV/AIDS policy calls for condoms to be supplied to fight a high rate of infection among students.

But the Secretary for Education with the Catholic Bishops Conference of PNG and Solomon Islands, says the new requirement clashes with Catholic teaching on sexuality, and the church will not obey it.

The head of the Vanimo Catholic diocese, Bishop Cesare Bonivento, has said the use of condoms is like “a gun that instead of killing the enemy, very often exploded in the hands of the one who wanted to use it for personal defence.” He said in reality the condom was not protection but a killer.

Bishop Paul Marx of the Diocese of Kerema insists that an Australian National AIDS Council campaign "is sending out the wrong message that promiscuity is the normal, ordinary way of life.… By distributing condoms all over the place it will facilitate even further that promiscuity, which is the main breeding ground of HIV/AIDS."

Then there was the laughable argument promoted by a senior Catholic official of the Department of Health a few years ago that condoms have holes which actually promote the spread of the HIV/AIDS virus - which received prominent attention in the national media, and misled thousands.

[Matthew Of Canberra]

The Smearing Of Leigh Sales

I could cut and paste it, but ...

blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/the_smearing_of_cardinal_pell/

I'm going to assume that bolta's quoting of henderson is accurate. Probably a mistake, but it doesn't matter a great deal - one of them is being highly selective in their rebuttal of tuesday night's 7.30.

I read hendo's criticism, then watched the segment in question. I got the feeling that gerard was prepared to skip over a few things. Things which didn't suit his case, that is.

I'm not going to go point by point. Just watch it yourselves. Suffice it to say that in order to accuse the ABC of bias, it seems to be necessary to be a bit selective about what one chooses to mention: one first needs to leave out any reasons for a critic's position - merely describing it as a "view" - then leave out the parts when the ABC does, in fact, tell the other side, or simply not quote the bits where the ABC gives interviewee the opportunity to say the very things that hendo then gives the reader the impression weren't ever said or reported. There's a word for that sort of coverage, but I'll let others figure that out for themselves. Possibly less actionable is to simply call it "crap".

www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2012/s3632078.htm

Tuesday night's 7:30 was far more balanced and forthright than hendo's coverage of it (or possibly anything else). If I'm to believe bolta's version, anyway. I can't bring myself to read gerard's bloody horrible HTML. Life's too short.

[chookmustard]

Considering that Andrew has a blog post called 'Leigh Sales Hates Tony Abbott' in the recent past, it shouldn't be a surprise that she gets a hammering. I would be interested to know how many of Bolts readers watch 730 at all. They seem to enjoy getting the ABC filtered through Bolt or other New$ Ltd or Henderson.

Anyone who describes Hendersons 'blog' 'informative' needs to look that word up to get an understanding of what it means in reality.

Sales I reckon is a competent interviewer, so she is an automatic target.

It's quite frustrating that Andrew and his ilk frame everything in 'us and them' context.