Posted on 02/01/2013 7:10:16 AM PST by marshmallow
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Cardinal Roger Mahony, who retired with a tainted career after dodging criminal charges over how he handled pedophile priests, was stripped of duties by his successor as a judge ordered confidential church personnel files released.
The unprecedented move by Archbishop Jose Gomez came less than two weeks after other long-secret priest personnel records showed how Mahony worked with top aides to protect the Roman Catholic church from the engulfing scandal.
One of those aides, Monsignor Thomas Curry stepped down Thursday as auxiliary bishop in the Los Angeles archdiocese's Santa Barbara region. Gomez said Mahony, 76, would no longer have administrative or public duties in the diocese.
"I find these files to be brutal and painful reading," Gomez said in a statement, referring to 12,000 pages of files posted online by the church Thursday night just hours after a judge's order. "The behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil. There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children."
The fallout was highly unusual and marks a dramatic shift from the days when members of the church hierarchy emerged largely unscathed despite the roles they played in covering up clergy sex abuse, said the Rev. Thomas Reese, a Jesuit and senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University.
"It's quite extraordinary. I don't think anything like this has happened before," Reese said. "It's showing that there are consequences now to mismanaging the sex abuse crisis."
Several of the documents released late Thursday echo recurring themes that emerged over the past decade in dioceses nationwide, where church leaders moved problem priests between parishes and didn't call the police.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Even if Archbishop Gomez successfully petitioned to have Mahony laicized, the biretta is beyond his reach. (The last lay cardinal was sometime in the 19th century, but it is a possibility).
They're no different from the secular leftists in Big Media ... The Agenda (whatever it may be, in this case destroying "Rome") trumps all. Truth, completeness, context ... all are irrelevant. Even when they do accidentally publish something true, it is invariably a half truth or a distortion ... and one must always be on guard for outright falsehoods when reading any of their material.
thanks for posting this. Godspeed to Archbishop Gomez.
You got that right, people with agendas.
There's really very little to say, here.
Mahony should have been sacked a long time ago. He's a destroyer, and apparently a pervert. Or at least a pervert-enabler. And, once again, the unspeakable truth.
We had a sexual abuse problem because malfeasant bishops deliberately, knowingly admitted homosexual perverts to the seminaries and bishops deliberately, knowingly ordained homosexual perverts to the presbyterate. The malfeasant bishops who did this, did it in spite of clear direction from the Pope that homosexual perverts were to be excluded from the clergy.
ANY organization, particularly one that deals extensively with children, that admits homosexual perverts to its leadership will have serious problems.
Mahony should have been REMOVED years ago. Having said that, the focus should be on those who did or allowed those who attacked children, not attack the Church as a whole, but focus on removing those who either did or enabled.
I’ve read some speculation that Mahony would not have gone quietly into this good night, and keeping him on was a way of avoiding schism. Sending someone in after he has retired and does not have the energy or the remaining time to become a rallying point and having them unearth whatever was present to allow him to die with the reputation he deserves is arguably a better strategy. It isn’t the strategy that I would have used—but I’m not the Pope, and there is a reason for that.
I would have had him burnt at the stake some years ago, but that is just me.
So not the whole - just two-thirds.
Two-thirds at the time—but how many of those presently in place? To quote my bishop, there is a reason people die. Those going in will make their own mistakes, but are less likely to repeat the mistakes of their predecessors.
They're no different from the secular leftists in Big Media ... The Agenda (whatever it may be, in this case destroying "Rome") trumps all."They're one and the same thing which is obvious from the way the folks here attacking the Catholic Church always, without fail, pick up whatever "crisis" the fascist and leftist media are using to attack our rights with and try to weave that crisis into their attacks on the Church.
Look through a few posts at the thread in question and you'll see what I mean. They work here as little fry, if they do well and get noticed, they advance to being attack dogs in blogs that spread their name around and let them get known, then they advance to some low level paying propaganda spot and from there the it's onward and upward for them.
It's no accident that when the mainstream media are comparing those who defend the Second Amendment to Nazis that lies about the Catholic Church being tied to Nazis show up at exactly the same time. That's the meme of the month and so it's everywhere fifth columnists spew their lies. Next month, it'll be something else but the same comparison and the same sorts of lies will show up here in attacks on the Catholic Church at the same time they show up in democrat loving media about whoever else is the primary target for the fascists at that time.
Is that what you believe? I would never have accused even you of believing such a thing ... but if that's what you believe ...
well ...
Thanks for telling us.
I don't believe that they forget ... any more than the secular leftists in Big Media and Big Government 'forget' what the Second Amendment or First Amendment mean, or 'forget' that a 'fetus' is in fact a live human person, or ...
It's just that mentioning such inconvenient facts doesn't promote their agenda.
I'm not sure why some people want to provide top cover for militant homosexuals ...
But there it is.
Your opinion, not mine.
You hit it right on the nail, this is all agenda driven.
It seems that there is A LOT of Catholic bashing going on.
I don’t think so. You are making judgments that are leftist media like, aren’t you?
Father Z speculates on that in the thread (Catholic Caucus) that NYer posted.
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