Showing posts with label Dreyfus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dreyfus. Show all posts

Friday, March 22, 2019

Ex-Communist Sees Another Dreyfus Case in Cardinal Pell

Giuliano Ferrara defends Cardinal Pell against a "scandalous" conviction.

(Rome) By historical comparison, a journalistic and intellectual heavyweight is taking sides with Cardinal George Pell, convicted in Australia at first instance. Giuliano Ferrara, publisher of the daily Il Foglio, sees behind the condemnation of the cardinal an anti-Catholic campaign disguised as anti-abuse. It's about an operation that is of far greater dimension and importance. The keyword "sexual abuse" is in the concrete a particularly useful cloak for the media, in order to emotionalize public opinion.

On February 28, Ferrara wrote an editorial for the newspaper he edited:

"The case of Pell is the new case Dreyfus. The shame lies with those who now turn away. "

The allusion points to the Dreyfus affair in France at the end of the 19th century. In 1894, the French captain Alfred Dreyfus was convicted of treason. He was falsely accused of having spied for the German Reich, the archenemy of the French then. The captain was sentenced in 1894 to life-long deportation to Devil's Island, a convict colony off the coast of French Guiana.

Dreyfus' dwelling on Devil's Island

The affair was highly charged with emotions because Dreyfus, a Jew born in Alsace, was loaded up with the pent-up anti-Semitism. The conflict sparked over the entire French public. In the Dreyfus figure some circles sought to combat  Judaism. The case became the biggest political scandal of the Third Republic. Emile Zola's "J'accuse ...!" (I object ...!) Became famous in the defense of Dreyfus. His intervention slowly changed public opinion. In 1899 the captain's sentence was reduced to ten years. In 1906 his acquittal and rehabilitation took place.

For Giuliano Ferrara, the case of Pell is of the same dimensions. The conviction in Australia was a new Dreyfus case. In addition, the outright sedition of public opinion in Australia has to be remembered in an anti-Catholic sense, which accompanied the Pell case from the beginning. The well-known intellectual writes:

The Pell case "is an anti-Catholic campaign disguised as a fight against abuse.”

This is not a shame for Cardinal Pell, but those who now turn away in a hurry, change the side of the street and keep quiet about the new case Dreyfus.

"Today hell broke out against Cardinal George Pell, and he runs the risk of ending up in hell [like Dreyfus on Devil's Island] because the prevailing unity of thought about him wants to bring the Catholic Church and its morality to its knees as the last obstacle or potential opposition to global unification in a new, de-Christianized gender and reproduction credo. "

Giuliano Ferrara comes from a liberal family tradition. His parents joined the Communist Party and the Partisan movement under the influence of the fascist dictatorship and the Second World War of 1942. His father became editor-in-chief of the Communist party newspaper L'Unità after the war, Communist Senator of the Italian Republic and head of Lazio Region. The mother was for many years personal secretary of Palmiro Togliatti, the Stalinist leader of the Communist Party of Italy (1927-1934 and 1939-1964). Ferrara himself was at the forefront of the 68 riots and then became a full-time party official of the Italian Communist Party and fraction spokesman in the municipal council of the communist city of Turin. In the 80s, however, he increasingly distanced himself from communism, switched to the socialists and finally in the 90s to Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia. During this time, he also made an approach to the Catholic Church under Pope John Paul II, for which he found a special veneration and solidarity for Pope Benedict XVI.

In 2008, Ferrara initiated an initiative for an international abortion moratorium, but it remained unheard of by the dominance of the abortion lobby.

The condemnation of Cardinal Pell, on which Ferrara is to make an example, sees him as part of a gigantic, anti-Christian cultural struggle. In detail, in his editorial he dissects the allegations against the cardinal and his "scandalous" conviction for a "secret abuse victim." That is a modern "witch hunt".

As early as February 27, Ferrara had criticized the Vatican's reaction to the conviction of Cardinal Pell. He accused Pope Francis of having "capitulated" and already "preemptively" condemning those in "future" in anticipatory obedience. This is an unacceptable approach in a time of increasing undermining of the rule of law, which deserves this name and is not just the product of the powerful right now.

Text: Giuseppe Nardi
Image: Il Foglio (screenshot)
Trans: Tancred vekron99@hotmail.com
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