Conrad Black, the once and future Canadian, is about to face trial in Chicago on a variety of fraud charges related to the governance of Hollinger International. Jury selection begins Wednesday.
Crossposted at The Next Agenda
There's plenty of opinion to go around but one of the most disturbing pieces was published in the National Post Lessons from the prosecution of Lord Black by Father Raymond de Souza.
On the subject of Lord Black of Crossharbour, I am not neutral. Like many Canadians who love newspapers, and have better ones to read because of him, my hope that he is acquitted in Chicago arises in part from a debt of gratitude, one which those of us who write for his quotidian progeny feel all the more intensely. Yet this past week's wall-to-wall coverage of the dismembering of his companies and the attempt to send him to prison for the rest of his life have highlighted another reason why I hope for his acquittal - as a rebuke to the misuse of state power in the criminal justice system.
He goes on to conclude:
The reason it takes a wealthy and powerful man to draw our attention to the potential abuses of the criminal justice system is that all other defendants not so bountifully endowed simply shuffle through the system unnoticed. Lord Black does not pass unnoticed. The attention given to his trial will provide a public lesson in how the criminal justice system operates, for good and for ill.?For his sake, and the sake of many others who face the prosecutorial branch of the state much less well defended, I hope the jury returns, some months from now, an acquittal.
Let's review: I like Conrad Black because I write for the National Post. I think the justice system might need to be reformed, especially if Con's guilty. This is from a Roman Catholic priest? (Psssst! Thou Shalt Not Steal, Father)
In Peter C. Newman's biography of Conrad Black "The Establishment Man: A Portrait of Power" (McClelland and Stewart 1982) Conrad Black's early relationship (circa 1966) with Roman Catholic Paul-Emile Cardinal Leger " ...at least in its early stages, was a case of unremitting hero-worship". According to Brian McKenna, a Montreal TV journalist (page 56):
... "late one evening a few of us were in Conrad's apartment,"... "when he jumped up and said, `Listen to this!' He put on a recording of a long sermon by Leger, his mouth moving to the Cardinal's words. Then he shut it off and gave the whole text back, using its exact intonation - it was no coincidence that Black became such a close confidant of Leger's. Basically, I think of Conrad as the reincarnation of an eighteenth-century cardinal. The red hat would have suited him perfectly."
Nick Auf der Maur said (page 56):
"I always felt that Conrad intended to be his campaign manager for the papacy - he would have liked nothing better than to have access to the Pope. He was endlessly fascinated by how a guy such as Leger could reach the bearing and natural grace of aristocracy without having been born to it," Auf der Maur says. " But when the Cardinal gave up his post to become an ordinary parish priest and then went to look after lepers in Africa, Conrad felt he'd blown his chance for the Holy See and got quite exasperated. He saw his whole entrée to the Vatican was going down the drain. He kept complaining that Leger wasn't being consistent, and that nobody was going to take him seriously any more. As the whole thing disintegrated, Conrad got increasingly short-tempered, and whereas he'd once spoken in total awe of Leger, he would mutter about the Cardinal having become a bit eccentric and how he'd better clean up his act"
In 1973 Black wrote a 31 page document nominating Cardinal Leger for the Nobel Peace Prize and described Leger's work with the lepers in glowing terms.
Black later moved to Toronto and regularly enjoyed the company of G. Emmett Cardinal Carter.
Father de Souza is Canada's foremost conservative Catholic writer. He's taken time to write about government overstepping its bounds to outlaw smoking in public places. Curiously, for a man who has the Kingston penitentiaries within easy distance of his home parish, he hasn't spoken out against the excesses of the Anti-Terrorism Act and the creation of Guantanamo North right in his own backyard. Instead, he's right in line with the neo-con agenda, picking the belly-button lint from his navel rather than expressing concern about the indefinite detention of prisoners who have not even been charged with a crime. And this guy ministers to the students of Queen's University at the Newman Centre?
In 2003 Pope John Paul II condemned the Bush government's invasion of Iraq and the principle of pre-emptive war. The Iraq war was similarly condemned by Cardinal Ratzinger ( now Pope Benedict). Lightweight thinker de Souza took the time to share his thoughts then with the Catholic Register. First he quoted John Paul II's having learned that war was about "humiliation at the hands of evil" (secondary link, original is broken): via Jerry Pournelle
Rising up from Flanders Fields
...
FACING IRAQ?
All of this is important to understand the deep divisions that exist over war in Iraq.
It would be a mistake to dismiss Europe's dark memories as the irrelevant fears of "Old Europe." Europe is old enough to have learned some important lessons in thinking about war and peace, the first of which is that war is often just that: humiliating, shameful, degrading and evil.
But Europe also needs to recover the North American sense that evil can be fought, that it is shameful to appease aggressors and that wars can be won with pride and decency.
Both are necessary elements in the Christian moral tradition on war and peace.
In the light of the current war, the lessons of the past do not determine current political positions, but they do give a sense of how the debate is framed.
The Canadian government opted not to join its historical allies -- Britain, United States and Australia -- for the first time, but the leading opposition party is in favor of the war, and the premier of the largest province has endorsed it in defiance of the national government. Canada is perhaps the only antiwar country where leading voices are criticizing the government for not joining the Coalition. The arguments one hears emphasize duty, loyalty to allies and the demands of a just cause -- not unlike the themes of In Flanders Fields.
Here in Italy the opposite is the case. The government has joined the Coalition, but public opinion is against it. The ordinary Italians I speak to seem completely convinced that only base motives exist for this war -- money, power, oil. The torch of Flanders Fields does not figure in the public imagination -- the hands of war grasp only after gain.
So the Iraq war has produced an odd situation. President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair are men of deep Christian faith, explicitly motivated by the morality of their policy and committed to the role of religion in public life. Yet the Holy See has opposed them every step of the way.
Should things not go well for Conrad Black he might be found guilty and sentenced to spend most of the rest of his life in jail. It would be inevitable that Black would attempt to reclaim Canadian citizenship so he could return and serve his sentence at home, as would be his right.
Imagine Black arriving back in Canada and shortly after surveying his cell being informed that the chaplain, Father de Souza, would like to pay a visit. Conrad's note might read:
"I am on the record as having said journalists are ignorant, lazy opinionated, intellectually dishonest and inadequately supervised hacks. And I don't need a dictionary to know the meaning of syncophant. You sir, are a self-seeking, servile flatterer, a fawning parasite. A toady, a yes man. Flunky, fawner, flatterer.
I should know. I hired you."
Nothing less than an archbishop will do!