This federal action is associated with pre-existing criminal complaints, so I don’t think it has the potential to go any further.
They almost got Mahony years ago, but he did some sort of legal dodge that basically prevented any one from examining his personal actions in these cases. (He is known to have been virtually complicit in some of them, helping the offenders to hide and escape.) I can’t remember how he got around it, but basically, he offered up the money of his diocese in a settlement that was designed to protect him personally.
I hope they nail him this time around.
As a practicing Catholic, I hope they nail him, too.
It is sort of a delicious thought, though - pursuing criminal charges against my former pastor for “depriving me of the intangible right of honest services” for yelling at us during the consecration at Mass to stand up and not kneel, and for publicly advocating for giving family benefits for the sex partners of homosexual employees, and for allowing a planned parenthood clinic director to serve as a lector, and for teaching false doctrines in catechism class.
Alas: “justice is Mine, says the Lord.”