Quarterly Essay 51 The Prince: Faith, Abuse and George
Pell



as controversial as QEs should be

 

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Marr's
chronicling of pertinent events is as complete, candid and frank as the essay
format allows. He reacts to evidence to test its validity and seeks to analyse
rather than nit-pick. As he pieces together George Pell's life, he paints a
recognisable portrait that few readers would challenge. However no writer can
enter the mind of the subject to completely reveal the unabashed truth and
motives so critical to finish the story. Pell would not be interviewed, but
reading between the lines in Marr's essay makes it clear that this would be
unlikely to offer the epiphany this essay seeks. So the reader is left details
from decades, in fact generations, of all but proven crimes to society's
vulnerable. The role of `the Prince' in detecting, resolving and accounting for
the crimes of others is made fairly clear, but his inner thoughts require
greater conjecture. Marr offers the reader his now characteristic summation in
the final pages of this essay, and these are neither flattering nor optimistic
for the Prince or his institution in its current form in Australia, or perhaps
even globally. The directions chosen by the new Pope would seem to confirm
this.

This
essay is a tour de force encapsulating a charismatic subject. It will leave the
reader a little queasy when weighing up one life, from publican's son to Oxford
don and through the timeless, vertiginous and dizzying landscape of Vatican
lore, against thousands of other lives irredeemably changed by the hubris of the
few.