Seeking the Divine Spark

Dear Readers: — Little more than a year ago, my good friend and man in Mel­bourne, Mr Ger­ard Charles Wil­son, asked me to proof-​read and review the first draft of a novel which had been born out of our col­lab­o­ra­tive effort to defend His Emi­nence, George Car­di­nal Pell, A.C., D. Phil. Oxon., in the wake of accu­sa­tions that he had with­held infor­ma­tion cru­cial to a court case sur­round­ing alleged sex­ual abuse by a priest in the Arch­dio­cese of Syd­ney twenty-​five years ago.

When I first read the report in Sydney’s Daily Tele­graph, that ‘…Pell has stood by a deci­sion to dis­miss a sex abuse com­plaint against a priest who claimed the encounter was con­sen­sual — despite the Catholic Church pos­sess­ing proof to the con­trary,’ I was sorely dis­ap­pointed with a man whom I had pre­vi­ously lauded for his con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal opin­ion, strong intel­lect, respect for rev­er­ent litur­gi­cal cel­e­bra­tions, &c. Vexed, I began read­ing into the mat­ter fur­ther and incon­sis­ten­cies quickly sur­faced. Within only a few hours I had essen­tially iso­lated myself from the world, print­ing off and com­par­ing and doc­u­ment­ing points of con­tra­dic­tion and out­right — and often — spe­cious con­jec­ture. I quickly reformed my opin­ion of the good car­di­nal and set about the task of clear­ing his name, hum­ble though that effort and its result may be.

After pub­lish­ing the first draft­ing of L’Affaire De Pell¹, I came under the radar of sev­eral per­sons of sim­i­lar inter­est, includ­ing Mr Wil­son, who com­pli­mented both this jour­nal and my defense of the cardinal saying,

Catholics need to come for­ward and not be afraid of stand­ing up to the lies and slan­der chan­nelled (know­ingly by some, unknow­ingly by oth­ers) through the media. It is all the more to your credit that in doing so, you are doing it from the other side of the world.

I decided after a brief exchange to write an even more exhaus­tive piece draw­ing from pri­mary sources, rather than the sec­ondary sources on which my first draft was depen­dent. An elab­o­rate out­line was drawn and I began that gru­el­ing task — still unfor­tu­nately incom­plete²— encom­pass­ing the broader prob­lem of media bias toward the so-​called ‘sex­ual abuse cri­sis’ in Aus­tralia and around the world. Mr Wil­son and myself closely col­lab­o­rated, his assis­tance and dogged deter­mi­na­tion pro­vid­ing me with lim­it­less resources. I soon found myself refer­ring to him as, ‘my man in Mel­bourne,’ since his ‘inside’ per­spec­tive influ­enced my ulti­mate con­clu­sions about the case. I also drew from his opus which had exten­sively exposed the machi­na­tions of Bro­ken Rites, a key player in the whole sordid affair.

It was thus with fevered antic­i­pa­tion that I received the news that my new­found friend — forty years my senior — had been inspired to write a loosely-​inspired satire of the media deba­cle in the style of mutu­ally appre­ci­ated Eve­lyn Waugh, enti­tled, Seek­ing the Divine Spark. Though he kept me informed through­out the writ­ing process, send­ing me the first sev­eral chap­ters, in Octo­ber he and his wife moved house whilst I was bus­ied with a new job and our cor­re­spon­dence was halted for a time. In Decem­ber I believe I sent him a brief note alert­ing him to the fact that I had not for­got­ten him entirely and would still review his book when time per­mit­ted. In Jan­u­ary I was stricken ill and only less than a month ago did I reëstab­lish con­nex­ion with him, after he sent me a let­ter in which he wrote,

I under­stand that read­ing some­one else’s scrib­bling is not always invit­ing if one has some­thing else to do. I blush with embar­rass­ment because I have lying on my shelf a man­u­script of a friend who has been very gen­er­ous in read­ing my work. I sim­ply can’t find the time to have a look at it. If you haven’t had the chance to have a look at my book, then I would say don’t. The copy you have has been superseded. Although I said in my last email that I didn’t think I could improve it, I have since been through another four revi­sions, mak­ing some impor­tant changes and additions, and gen­er­ally refin­ing the writing.

I wrote to him apol­o­gis­ing and sor­row­fully admit­ting that I had not read more than the first cou­ple of chap­ters, but insisted on my enthu­si­asm to do so if he was will­ing. He sent me the first four chap­ters with the stip­u­la­tion that I con­tact him if I was inter­ested to read more, hav­ing read those. It was only a few days later that I was read­mit­ted to the hos­pi­tal and thus again unable to fol­low through with my promise. I am now happy to report that I have read the first four chap­ters and admit that they have impressed upon me the absur­dity, hypocrisy and grav­ity of the sit­u­a­tion in Aus­tralia, as well as the rest of the world. Mr Gerard’s astute obser­va­tion and abil­ity to draw ironic con­nex­ions is some­thing which deftly sheds light on an issue which is poorly realised by the pub­lic at large and even by those more acutely involved. But, lets not jump ahead of our­selves, this isn’t my show, it’s Gerard’s; and I should like to do jus­tice to his work through some critical review.

Up until this point, Mr Wil­son communicates, the…

…ver­dict has not been good. They range from dis­gust to deep dis­gust — though all found what they read well writ­ten. The reac­tion of dis­gust has not cast me into the depths of despair. I know my story is not the sort of story most of my review­ers would choose to read. But it is a satire deal­ing with sor­did issues. I feel I can­not escape deal­ing in some detail with behav­iour and actions that are repul­sive to the ordi­nary Catholic mind. Nev­er­the­less, I have taken their crit­i­cism into account and have care­fully revised those parts in the story they found dis­gust­ing, with­out caus­ing them to lose the impact that they were sup­posed to have.

I must say that after a sin­gle read through, I too was deeply dis­gusted by the sub­ject mat­ter, as any right minded per­son should be; but I also allow for such things pre­fer­ring a real­is­tic tone to an ide­al­is­tic one. I’m not the sort of per­son who draws much from moral­is­tic nar­ra­tives, with vis­i­bly holy char­ac­ters and pel­lu­cid themes. Virtue doesn’t have nearly the power or impe­tus with­out a clear and vio­lent con­trast with sin. Thus, I accept that good lit­er­a­ture often has foul and depraved ele­ments, which may or may not — I’m not one who insists on a happy end­ing — be coun­tered with the con­trast­ing virtue. I believe it was artist, Daniel Mit­sui, who wrote that he admires the dis­si­dent mediæ­val monk who wrote the lewd lyrics of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, because at least he took seri­ously the grav­ity of his sin. He knew the loss he had incurred and still he denied his God. Mr Mit­sui con­tin­ues along the lines that as a cul­ture we have dis­con­nected with the pro­found effect that our sin has upon us and when sin ceases to be abysmal, virtue ceases to be transcendent.

There­fore, I feel that even though the graphic depic­tions of Mr Wilson’s text are gen­er­ally offen­sive and while it depicts a peo­ple com­fort­able in their sin, there is some­thing beneath the sur­face which com­mu­ni­cates to the reader how very dis­or­dered the whole sequence of events is. It is in the absurd hypocrisy and the seem­ing inabil­ity of the var­i­ous char­ac­ters to con­nect the dots, as it were, between their own fail­ings and the sup­posed fail­ings of the Church that resounds with a mes­sage wholly at vari­ance with the gross abom­i­na­tions per­pe­trated within. And this is — I should think — the goal of satire, to ren­der absurd that which takes itself so very seriously.

Due to my seem­ing inabil­ity to read some­thing as long as this short novel in a dig­i­tal for­mat, I await the com­pleted edi­tion in print form as adver­tised above. Hope­fully I will be able to read and review it in record time, once I have a hard-​copy in my hand. I wish all suc­cesses to Mr Wil­son and his provoca­tive novel, thank you for expos­ing the estab­lished press for what it is a hyp­o­crit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion with a axe-​grinding agenda and a foul dis­po­si­tion toward any con­tra­dic­tion of their infal­li­ble dogmas.

Affec­tion­ately,
Adam Mitchell Bernard Bond