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1. Greg Sheridan never retreats from his mission to prove that black is white: he and the rest of us must have been watching different programs!
   Cardinal Pell was indeed floored by Professor Dawkins, whose intellectual prowess and formidable scientism and logic are well-known and globally admired, even among those who do not share his agnosticism.
   To witness the inspiring, forensic and meticulous BBC discussion between him and Archbishop Williams in the Sheldonian, as interlocuted by Sir Anthony Kenny of Balliol, is to appreciate how unsuited Q & A's format was to a forum in which both discussants operated out of different premises.
   However, where the Archbishop surpassed Dawkins was surely in his faithfulness to the Christian message, showing, and in a sense, witnessing to the triumph of life over the death - a humble and even stumbling performance, as might suit, and hardly for the first time, a no-nonsense Catholic pastor (in an ABC context dominated by the chatterati).
   In this sense, the Cardinal was simple and patient in his delivery, despite the considerable challenge of trying to connect with an audience, some of it baying for blood, and blissfully ignorant in a post-Christian era of the story of Jesus's impossible sacrifice for us all.
   For a large group of conference-attending scholars, including several Catholics, brought up on a 'method' of scepticism, and in whose company I watched the 'debate', Cardinal Pell seized the opportunity to show that he was not the unalloyed conservative that people such as Sheridan portray him to be.
   
   

   Posted By: Dr Michael Furtado

2. I agree with Dr Michael Furtado that Greg Sheridan must have been watching a different program.
   I am an atheist yet I couldn't help but feel sorry for Cardinal Pell. If the Church is going to send someone up against the likes of Dawkins they might want to pick a candidate a couple of levels up the hierarchy. It was simply sad to watch.

   Posted By: M. O'Connor

3. What was disappointing about what I watched of this was that the Cardinal seems to have forgotten all his apologetics - the answers he gave could have been much stronger.
   Though to be fair, the Cardinal had just finished the hardest part of the year - all the Holy Week ceremonies - so I expect he was exhausted.

   Posted By: Peter in Canberra

4. Simply to clarify: for me a 'couple of levels up the hierarchy' would not necessarily displace our cardinal, who is just about the seniormost member of the Australian Catholic Hierarchy and who has a D. Phil from Oxford - no mean feat for a Catholic clergyman and Church administrator.
   However, there are quite a few Australian women and men, both within institutional Catholicism and beyond, who might have been better suited to discourse with Professor Dawkins.
   I personally know of several Jesuits and others, including laypersons, better equipped to play the role that Archbishop Rowan Williams discharged so well at the prior Oxford event, e.g. the much admired Anglican Bishop Tom Frame.
   Having said that, braininess does not necessarily make a better believer , and I was humbled as well as delighted by Dr Pell's refusal to be drawn by Tony Jones into conforming to the fundamentalist reactionary that he is often portrayed as being.
   Indeed, 'The Australian' attached headline importance to the fact that he described the Genesis Story (not the Creation Story, for there are two) as allegorical, which has evidently greatly confused and upset some calvinists.
   Of particular concern, is the extent to which the twitterati have gone to interpret the Cardinal's references to Jesus as a Jew as anti-semitic, whereas it was palpable that he said that theologically-literate Christians believe that God chose the Jews because of their terribly oppressed situation and God's special love, first and foremost, for the poor.
   God love and keep you, George!

   Posted By: Michael Furtado

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