I think we need to consider why Cardinal Mahony was allowed to remain as bishop for so long when he

I have a 3 x 5 card for every victim las vegas airport car rental I met with on the altar of my small chapel. I pray for them every single day, retired Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony said after the court-ordered release of personnel files detailing his elaborate efforts to hide abusers from the police. How comforted the victims must feel knowing their names appear on his 3 x 5 cards. How big of him to entrust the victims of his pedophile-shuffling las vegas airport car rental to the efficacy of his prayers.
Such acts of chutzpah come naturally to the cardinal. At the height of the abuse scandal, even as he retained an army of lawyers and publicists to conceal his own complicity in it, he had the gall to join the media in calling for Boston Cardinal Bernard Law s resignation. Referring to Law, Cardinal Mahony piously told the press that he would find it difficult to walk down an aisle in church if he had been guilty of gross negligence."
Meanwhile, Cardinal Mahony was unleashing his attack dogs on anyone who probed las vegas airport car rental his staggering negligence. Until the media furor of 2001, he had been planning on making a pedophile long known to him and residing in his living quarters, Father Carl Sutphin (with whom he had gone to seminary), associate pastor of the archdiocesan cathedral. I can t believe a cardinal keeps a pedophile on staff, said one of Sutphin s victims.
Long before Leon Panetta joined the Obama administration as CIA director, he had scented out Cardinal Mahony s misdeeds. las vegas airport car rental He has done tremendous damage to his reputation and the archdiocese, said Panetta after his spell as a member of the National Review Board, a watchdog group formed in the wake of the scandal. Panetta recalled a meeting at which Cardinal Mahony turned up with more lawyers in the room than I ve ever seen.
After Cardinal Mahony helped orchestrate the ousting of former Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating from the chairmanship of the National Review Board, Keating complained to the press that the cardinal had kneecapped him, likening his vicious behavior las vegas airport car rental to that of La Cosa Nostra.
Throughout the abuse scandal, las vegas airport car rental Cardinal Mahony las vegas airport car rental has cast himself as a naïve waif, guilty not of a cover-up but of mere cluelessness. The recently released files explode that claim. He knew perfectly well that he was hiding criminals. I believe that if Monsignor [Peter] Garcia were to reappear here within the archdiocese we might very well have some type of legal action filed in both the criminal and civil sectors, he wrote to the director las vegas airport car rental of a New Mexico treatment center, asking him to keep the fugitive from justice holed up there.
Together with one of his auxiliary bishops, las vegas airport car rental Thomas Curry (who remains in that position to this day), Mahony plotted to keep pedophile priests from going to therapists who might report las vegas airport car rental them to the police as the law required. The Los Angeles Times captured the scheming:
In a letter about Father Michael Wempe, who had acknowledged using a 12-year-old parishioner as what a church official called his sex partner, Curry recounted extensive conversations with the priest about potential criminal prosecution. He is afraid records will be sought by the courts at some time and that they could convict him, Curry wrote to Mahony. He is very aware that what he did comes within the scope of criminal law.
Curry proposed Wempe could go to an out-of-state diocese if need be. He called it surprising that a church-paid counselor las vegas airport car rental hadn t reported Wempe to police and wrote that he and Wempe agreed it would be better las vegas airport car rental if Mike did not return to him.
Even when priests wanted to turn themselves in to the police, Cardinal Mahony blocked it. Fr. Michael Baker, a convicted abuser, has previously recounted las vegas airport car rental to the press a meeting with the cardinal in which Mahony said no, no, no to the suggestion of calling the police. For the next fourteen years Baker was shuffled from parish to parish. According to these new documents, Curry told Mahony that they should keep Baker away from therapists who might report him. Cardinal Mahony s response: Sounds good-please proceed!!
These documents explain why Mahony in 2007 agreed to the largest Catholic Church settlement ($660 milion) in American history rather than go through the sustained las vegas airport car rental exposure of a civil trial. He agreed to the settlement just days before he was scheduled to appear las vegas airport car rental as the trial s first witness. As the Times notes, one of his alibis has been that in the 1990s therapists, not bishops, were required to report las vegas airport car rental abuse. Now it is clear that he took steps to ensure that molesting priests didn t go to them unless the therapist doubled as a lawyer.
On Cardinal Mahony s 3 x 5 note cards, he says that I also list in parenthesis the name of the clergy las vegas airport car rental perpetrator lest I forget that real priests created this appalling harm in the lives of innocent people. las vegas airport car rental Noticeably absent from his cards is the name of the real cardinal who abetted that harm.
George Neumayr is a contributing editor to The American Spectator , and a weekly columnist for Crisis Magazine . He is also co-author las vegas airport car rental (with Phyllis Schlafly) of No Higher Power: Obama's War on Religious Freedom .
I think we need to consider why Cardinal Mahony was allowed to remain as bishop for so long when he consistently exhibited open hostility to Catholic las vegas airport car rental orthodoxy. His acceptance of sexual immorality among his priest, and his hypocrisy in statements las vegas airport car rental about Cardinal Law are, I suspect, the tip of the iceberg in this man s moral mess.
No, the principal source of the crisis was that the majority of the Bishops in the US embraced the idolatrous belief that the welfare of one priest is far more important las vegas airport car rental than the welfare of who-knows-how-many kids. According to the JJ Study, the majority of american bishops, when confronted with this situation, chose a campaign las vegas airport car rental of lies, distortions and obstruction las vegas airport car rental of justice. The prayers of the victims went unanswered; their welfare was considered irrelevant.
Was not Mahony one of John Paul s 2 s first appointments maybe the first? It s nagging to me, that he got away with so much when, obviously, so many knew (even outside the cave of privilege). There were secretaries, administrative assistants, fellow bishops, housekeepers that persons(s) his house guest talked to. And, above all, the delicious, fertile gossip swamp of the gay community. Regarding the latter, what s rarely discussed is the sexual adventures abusing priests had outside the confines of parishes and parishioners; as if the only accessible victims las vegas airport car rental were catholic las vegas airport car rental families. Of course, more often than not, but there is a lot of anonymity for a pedophile to venture outside.
John Paul was however how often informed of his cardinal s misdeeds and M.O. of resolving archdiocesan problems. He must have been. For many years this as disturbed me; revents me from asking for his intercession; found it difficult to rejoice with his admission to the altar as a blessed, and saint no doubt. John Paul s illness was no excuse.
Also, when JPII and Ratzinger were trying to crack down on Hunthausen in Seattle, Mahony, Weakland co. sent a letter to the Vatican threatening schism if the Vatican ever removed a US bishop from office. JPII chewed Mahony out on the Mother las vegas airport car rental Angelica controversy in 1998, and his fury at the US cardinals upon learning of how bad the situation really was in 2002 has been well-documented.
Allan, an excellent question that nobody cares to answer. WHY did Cardinal Mahony stay in his position for all that time? The same could be asked of Archbishop Rembert Weakland and so many others. WHO in Rome was protecting these people? Why are they still protected? Do they have no shame?
Because, Nick, the Holy Father never took any decisive actions against him when he had every opportunity to do so. Our recent Popes, all the way back to Pius XII, somehow feel reluctant to use their God-given power. I don t know why.
Perhaps because he does not want to be perceived as an authoritarian old man in an ivory tower by the secular world? Or he does not wish to pull up the wheat with the weeds? Just because someone has power doesn t mean he ought to use it whenever you think he should.
If a Pope is afraid of what the world thinks of him, or does not want to be perceived as an authoritarian , then we would have a Pope who is afraid of governing and that would mean disaster for the Church.
las vegas airport car rental But we Catholics can learn much from our history, particularly the history of our Popes, many of whom used their authority courageously las vegas airport car rental and decisively in the face of powerful enemies. They knew when it was necessary to use that power and they went ahead and used it and were not terribly interested if the world thought them authoritarian or not.
Most Catholics alive today have no experience of a strong Pope, so the notion of a pope hurling clear condemnations and applying strong government is foreign to them. We have become used to the timid, ambiguous, overly kind attitude of our recent Papacies. But as we look around us we must see that the Mr Nice Guy approach has utterly failed to restore peace in the Church. Quite the contrary.
Lastly, las vegas airport car rental please don t worry over my discomfiture regarding when I think a Pope should use the power God gives him (and gives him for a reason). He knows when to use it; I am merely trying to gently prod him into acting. Like many I recognize the good things that, say, Benedict XVI has done and is doing. las vegas airport car rental But unlike some I will not allow that to blind me to the man s less than helpful words and actions.
An excellent question. As one who suffered through the fiefdom of Rembert Weakland I believe I can offer a clue as to the answering of these good questions. I believe that Weakland knew, as they say, where all the bodies las vegas airport car rental were buried. They didn t discipline him because they were afraid of what he knew.
What else can explain it? What explained Dolan s keeping Weakland around when he succeeded him in Milwaukee even after he was exposed as a homosexual pervert? Indeed, what explains Cardinal Dolan s allowing to this day homosexual masses in a New York City parish? What ex