Essays in Idleness

The news this week, or at least the news I noticed, included the sudden death of Cardinal Pell; an excellent Australian exemplar of Christian “white martyrdom.” (Look it up.) He was one of the few living bishops of the Church in whom I could repose complete confidence. Like many before him, he was imprisoned on false charges, and in a black moment of Australian history he was denied even a memorial this week, on the ground that his many imaginative non-victims might suffer hurt feelings. They, of course, would have preferred to see him executed; and indeed his impeccable honesty had made him violent political enemies among the perverse and corrupt, in the state of Victoria as around the Vatican. Now, may he rest in peace.

I had just read the late Cardinal’s magnificent piece of journalism, published in this week’s Spectator. He condemned the moral toxicity and incoherence of the Vatican’s planned “Synod on Synodality.” The official booklet presenting this, by a bureaucracy sworn to papal obedience, is “full of Marxist jargon,” is “hostile to the apostolic tradition,” and “ignores such fundamental Christian tenets as belief in divine judgment, heaven and hell.” It is such a rare thing, when a major prelate under the present Franciscan regime in the Church, tells the truth.

Fr Gerald Murray, writing in today’s Catholic Thing, surveys the late Cardinal’s worth, and frequently heroic deeds. I don’t do links (any more); go read that instead of this.

The year has not started well, and I choose silence for the moment, neglecting to take on the many phantasms that have been insinuated into the Church, and around the world, from the desire not to be too dark at our funerals. For George Pell, like Papa Ratzinger, would remind us that God is ultimately in charge. We must endure these minor privations, with Christian fortitude, until Our Lord shall come again. They, our examples, were not wimps. And now they are in a better position to pray for us.