Why is the para carbon in Benzaldehyde NMR more deshielded than the ortho and meta carbons?
Resonance effects come into play along with the inductive effects.  I've drawn a few of the resonance structures for benzaldehyde below, notice how resonance effects place some positive charge on carbons 2, 3 and 5 which results in their deshielding.  I might have guessed that the combination of resonance and inductive effects would place C2 below C3, but that's not the case.  At least C5 is at lowest field and C2 and C3 are close and both are below C1. The interplay of inductive and resonance effects is complex and estimating the magnitudes of these effects can get tricky.