For all the controversy I’ve gotten into with Twitter, I’ve never received an email from their legal department. Until two weeks ago. Attached to the email was correspondence alerting me the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney’s lawyers were threatening to sue them (and me) for a meme I had tweeted from my account. I’ve removed the offending tweet, but you can read the letters the Archdiocese’s lawyer’s sent Twitter here.

I have no proof Cardinal George Pell is a pedophile. I there is no proof Cardinal George Pell has raped children. I never intended to suggest to others he has.

I apologise unreservedly for any hurt Cardinal Pell may have suffered from me retweeting a meme, (that I didn’t make and didn’t tweet originally)  on April 10 that used his image and five words he said on Q&A the night. Here is the offending meme for your shock and awe.

Clearly it was significant enough hurt and embarrassment caused for him to lawyer up and spend the Catholic Church’s money to pursue defamation action against Twitter and me. There must have been deep deliberation over the decision to spend thousands of dollars of parishioners’ money on legal fees. Spending money that could have been spent feeding the poor, sheltering the homeless or alleviating suffering of the thousands of children raped by priests protected and supported by the wealthy powerful 2000 year old international child sex ring that trades under the business name Roman Catholic Church. Money that could have been spent burying nuns, in the same way as priests in private crypts instead of the mass graves they are currently buried in at Melbourne Cemetary. Instead of  spending it on defamation litigation, clearly illustrates how serious the breach I allegedly committed was in the eyes of Cardinal Pell. 

I assume I’m just one of the many people the Archdiocese’s legal team pursued. There must be many more, considering hundreds of people distributed the meme. I’m certain they would not have decided to commit to potentially lengthy and expensive legal fees pursuing Twitter and only me. My tweet could not have hurt more than others. No one, least of all a high ranking Catholic and follower of the teaching of Jesus Christ would have selectively chosen to attempt to silence one person. A person previously banned from speaking in a basketball court owned by the Catholic Church for International Women’s Day 2010. Such a decision would fly in the face of a Church that promotes their girls’ schools as places that foster ‘pursuit of excellence in a spirit of freedom, justice and sincerity’ and ‘nurture well-informed, articulate and independent young women who respond to the challenge of the real world with spirit and compassion.’

No one will ever see the offending material I tweeted, (unless they do a Google search), but I’d like to comment on what led to my alleged transgression and occasioned this response. It started during the Archbishop’s discussion with Richard Dawkins on Q&A, when the Archbishop was interrupted by laughter when he used the expression “we were preparing young English boys … for Holy Communion”.  The Archbishop hadn’t gotten “Holy Communion” out of his mouth when members of the audience burst into laughter, forcing Cardinal Pell to pause as the laughter grew.

No comedians were needed, because if anyone, be they a comic or cleric, were to say the words that Archbishop Pell said, the way he said them, the part of the brain responsible for the fight or flight response is triggered. This part of the brain is not conscious, it is ancient and is the place were we store our fear of snakes and other things that we think may hurt us. Like priests.

Some would accuse those instructing and pursuing legal processings of vanity, pride, narcissism and being more preoccupied with self-perception than heartfelt concern for the victims of the abuse. I wouldn’t. Though one could argue the name George Pell is so integral to the Catholic faith that the Cardinal’s reputation is indistinguishable from the church itself, he is just a man. And therefore entitled to his reputation – and again, his reputation does not involve sex with boys. The Church’s reputation does.

I’m calling on Archbishop Pell to forgive me as I have forgiven others for alleged damage to his reputation or damage likely to occur as a result of material published. I have been legally advised any reasonable person viewing my tweet could conclude I was suggesting the Archbishop was a pedophile.

Could, not would.

I accept this. But it is one thing to question my words another entirely to assume my intent. I was truly surprised. The humor I found was the type of the gallows. Not a personal attack on the Cardinal but an association created by a response to the large amount of sexual abuse inflicted by priests. A healing response.

Laughter is medicine. And what I do, while offensive to men who oversee the church, is a salve to others. Others who have suffered at the hands of Catholic priests.

I won’t lie, I’ve made the occasional joke that exploits the fact the Catholic Church’s brand has become so linked in people’s minds with child rape, the public doesn’t even need to hear the punch line to get the joke. The situation has been so worked over that comedians have to work very hard to get a laugh, if you don’t believe me, watch how far Lewis CK has to take this to be funny. The reason Louis CK didn’t get a letter from the church’s lawyers for doing this is because, the church isn’t a person.  One of the freedoms people have more or less recently obtained is the freedom to tell jokes about religion and about churches.  As long as no actual clergyman is named, telling jokes about priests raping children is perfectly acceptable. Or even singing songs. 

The Bishop’s words were fed into LOL speak, photoshopped and forwarded via the inter-tubes where I tweeted it – and in so doing I allegedly became complicit in the defamation of Cardinal George Pell.  

The law is the law, and we are all equal before it. Just as priests must be held to the same standards as the laity, so must comics.  It is not OK to call someone a child rapist, unless they are a child rapist, and I’ve made clear I do not believe Cardinal Pell is a child rapist. And I never intended to insinuate it. It is however a fact that that people might quickly wonder if he is a child rapist if he does not choose his words carefully. This is not because there are comedians like me. This is because of what priests have done and what inquires like the Ryan Commission have made it impossible to deny or the response to it by survivors.  As the Q&A footage shows – it doesn’t take a comedian to make the joke work.   

I don’t attack people, I attack ideas. I may prick pomposity, but I don’t tell jokes to tear others down. I’d like to offer a bit of wisdom to the Church’s legal team monitoring my twitter feed. Because while child rape is unquestionably wrong, much of the anger that makes people laugh at Archbishops on national TV, without the aid of my tweets, is from anger at the fact the church appears to many to be more concerned for the reputation of priests and the church rather than the welfare of rape victims.  

We may be all equal before the law but we are not all equal before the banks. Most people can’t afford lawyers to protect their reputations or guard against trespass with the method ‘kill one scare a thousand’. For those people there is laughter.  

I extend the hand of friendship and forgiveness to you Cardinal Pell and suggest we work together to raise money to help heal the pain of the thousands of Australian victims of sexual abuse at the hands of the clergy and the rehabilitation of the pedophile priests.  We could do this by appearing together in a speaking engagement. We could come from a place of love and healing to discuss shame, grief, reputation and forgiveness. We could give all the money to Broken Rites, a grassroots organization that supports victims of sexual abuse at the hands of clergy. Or to raise money for a campaign to call for a Royal Commission into child abuse in religious and other non-government organizations.

Together, let’s change the immediate association with the words ‘Catholic Church’ from ‘child abuse’ to ‘healing’.

I would love to donate some money to help pay the legal costs but unfortunately I am a bit broke right now. If it’s any conciliation generations of my family have donated millions to your institution over centuries.

And Cardinal, if you want to discuss the speaking engagement, do give me a call. I’d be thrilled to hear from you and please, call me Catherine.

Peace be with you.

Catherine

UPDATE

The day I put this response up, that evening I performed in a debate with QC Julain Burnside.

Before we went on stage he offered to represent me pro bono. I tweeted out the news at 6.30pm. By the time we got off stage Cardinal George Pell had caved and called off the defamation litigation.

Want some more Deveny/Pell action?  OF COURSE YOU DO! Some good reads CRIKEY, the hilarious LETTER to George Pell’s lawyers and CARDINAL PELL SINGS STREISAND’S GREATEST HITS. Deliver us from evil …..

The Age Lawyer Judy Courtin speaks on sexual abuse by Catholic clergy here.

Four Corners ‘Unholy Silence’ here

Four Corners ‘Cardinal Pell Guilty’ here

My response to a Catholic school asking me donate to their fete.

Gunnas Writing Masterclass Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney, Bendigo, Ballarat, Yackandandah, Brisbane, Perth, Apollo Bay, Mildura etc. Also coming up Gunnas Stand Up Comedy with Nelly Thomas and Gunnas Journalism with Michael Lallo. 

 

 

Go Back

THE People’s Republic of Moreland is pretty trendy these days. I know this because we now have junkies and Pilates. All we need is a juice bar and we’ll be completely up ourselves. Oh, that’s right: we do, and we are.

Right now, we’re excited too. It’s hard rubbish collection season or, as I prefer to call it, the Tightarse Festival. I’ll tell you something for free: if you want to get 60-year-old men walking four times a day, put on a hard rubbish collection. They’re gagging for a shuffle around the block when there’s a possibility they may find a replacement catcher for their mower, a piece of cyclone fencing to store in their shed and never use, or a broken carpet sweeper they can put out out for next year’s collection. (I can only imagine the look on the face of the wife as one of these men drags another air-conditioning unit the size of a Torana up the driveway, explaining: “Before you say anything, love, it’s for parts.”)

Come dusk, every man and his Crocs are out. Pushers, walking frames, scooters and even attractive people with glasses of wine are doing the hard rubbish shuffle. The participants in this Carnival of the Once Loved but Now Unwanted stroll by in a trance. Having a squiz, poking stuff with a foot and, after careful assessment, selecting only the best to proudly lug home. There’s an element of addiction about it, too. “Just one more street,” you hear people saying. “I hear Campbell Avenue has lifted its game this year.”

 

And there’s no shyness about it. Bold as brass. “Look at this,” said a man to me as he pried a smoked-glass coffee table with ornate brass legs from under a piece of corrugated iron. “Why would anyone get rid of this?” I don’t know, maybe because they don’t spend evenings listening to Neil Diamond, snorting cocaine and sharing crack-addicted hookers with David Hasselhoff.

A mate who grew up in Balwyn — beige one minute, beige the next — tells me the hard rubbish festival was very different in that biosphere. People thought of hard rubbish as, you won’t believe it, disgusting garbage! I know; they’re obviously sick. If you see offerings on your neighbour’s nature strip, she told me, or worse, bumped into neighbours putting it out, you avert your eyes and both pretend you haven’t seen a thing. What happens at the hard rubbish collection stays at the hard rubbish collection.

Lady Balwyn was once woken by her father at 1am and forced to liberate their neighbour’s unwanted dresser under the cover of darkness. The object in question was to be used as storage in his shed. She was allowed to go back to sleep only after helping her father paint it a different colour so that no one who dropped by to borrow a shifter would ever know. As he slung her $10, he muttered: “Don’t tell your mother.”

In the People’s Republic of Moreland, it’s a different ball game. For someone to adopt something from your hard rubbish is a great honour. If you appropriate something from someone else’s hard rubbish they are obliged, possibly legally bound, to liberate something from yours. If not, some serious loss of face can result.

“A filing cabinet from outside number 76? Sorry, son, three years back they turned their noses up at our disintegrated urine-soaked sofa, the split compost bin and the decapitated garden gnome after we’d given a good home to their dilapidated card table. We were humiliated. It killed your grandfather.”

When at a neighbour’s place it is custom to acknowledge any item of yours they have liberated. “Hey! There’s our buckled leopard-print toilet seat. It looks so much better here. Well spotted.”

A few years back we dragged to the nature strip a clapped-out stove covered in rancid sausage grease and full of mouse shit. When I arrived with the grill drawer a minute later there were three men with hacksaws going at it like the clappers.

And that’s why I love this place, , a suburb where old Aussies, young Lebanese families, student households, Italian nonnas, Greek yayas, Somalian youths, Indian cab drivers and latte-frothing lefties like me live side by side and covet each other’s rubbish. It’s United Colors of Benetton one day and an episode of Mind Your Language the next.

But maybe I’ve misjudged it, and this place is changing faster than I’d realised. When the wind blows in the right direction, you can smell the gentrification. Now I’m a little worried about the hard rubbish I’ve selected to release into the wild this year.

Every waking moment I’m perched at my front window hoping the rusted exercise bike, a three-legged plastic outdoor chair and a tangled beaded curtain will catch someone’s eye. So far, nothing. The citizens of the People’s Republic of Moreland must be up themselves. I blame the juice bar.

Go Back

NEW York. They say if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. Which explains why I’m still here and in the last week have done gigs in Fawkner, Scoresby and Eildon. And why I spent today in Canberra. For work. No one comes to Canberra for fun, just porn, firecrackers and to see if the serves of beef stroganoff in the Parliament House canteen are as stingy as reported. After a day in Canberra I’ll no longer die wondering what it would feel like to be bound, gagged and trapped in a toilet with Wayne Swan. Don’t ask.

The alarm went off at 6am. I didn’t know that 6am existed. The only reason anyone should be up at that hour is if they are coming home from a rave dressed as Tinky Winky, giving birth or dying. On the 7.05am flight to Canberra I’d never seen such a miserable bunch of grey-suited trolls in my life. No one watched the safety demonstration. Everyone was praying the plane would go down and we’d all die. Which you kind of do when you arrive. Canberra’s slogan should be “Save the Airfare. Just Kill Yourself”.

Canberra’s a giant office. No one lives here. People just work here. It’s so squeaky clean and Truman Show-esque I spent the day fighting the urge to make with a spray can and defile the place with dick and balls. People in Canberra don’t have a sense of humour. Well, the ones I caught the taxi from the airport with didn’t. A cabbie pulled up to the rank and said, “Parliament House.” I was one of three randoms to jump in. The driver said, “Does everyone know what multi-faring is?” The other two grunted. I said, “Is it like group sex with cab vouchers?” No one laughed.

After checking out the “night life” and deciding there’d obviously been a biological attack and I was the only survivor, I returned to my hotel room and flicked on the tube. Nothing to watch. Apart from commercials for Magnet Mart and an ad for a store called Bing Lee to the tune of I Like Chinese.

When there’s nothing to watch, I switch to Channel Nine, pour a glass of wine and feel superior. I was sucked into homeMADE by the trendy typography and the name Chontelle. I’d love to tell you it’s a new show but it’s just every makeover show you’ve ever seen but worse, with less money and people who don’t even annoy you enough to hate. homeMADE may as well be called We’ve Given Up. You’ll Obviously Watch Anything. Now It’s Just a Dare.

Two groups of “hot designers” provide renovation porn as they “do up” suburban homes. There are budget blow-outs, spats, feature walls, deadline panics and horrible, horrible makeovers. It’s a great opportunity to see what’s hot in Bacchus Marsh interior design. If someone did that to my place I’d have them sent to Canberra for the term of their natural lives.

Go Back