Posted on 02/02/2013 7:40:34 PM PST by Alex Murphy
The horror, the sordidness of the awful abuse of children by figures of spiritual authority is not much assuaged by current Archbishop Jose Gomez relieving Cardinal Mahony of "all public duties" after mounting evidence showed he shielded pedophile priests from law enforcement.
So Mahony won't be overseeing the Sacrament of Confirmation at Our Lady of the Angels anytime soon. But he is not only still a priest who can perform Mass - he is still one of the 120 cardinals who form the leadership of a church with more than 1.1 billion adherents worldwide, in a line going back to St. Peter.
Given what we now know about Mahony's active efforts to protect known and suspected sexual abusers in clerical collars, this removal of him from public life is not only not enough - it's no punishment at all.
And this crime deserves punishment. That was made clear by the heartbreaking letters that were made public last week.
Go to any one of over 100 of them posted last week at la-archdiocese.org. The very first one in this alphabetical order was written by a anonymous parishioner molested as a child at a Colorado Roman Catholic Church summer camp by the Rev. Leonard Abercrombie, who later worked in Los Angeles.
Dated July 18, 2003, it begins quite simply:
"Pope John Paul II, The Holy See, Vatican City, Rome, Italy.
"Dear Pope: In July 1993 I wrote a letter to you ..."
That long letter detailing the writer's sexual abuse as a child of 7 by Abercrombie was never answered over the decade, though it was copied to other bishops and to princes of the church, including Los Angeles' own Cardinal Roger Mahony, who oversaw Abercrombie's later pastoral career.
"I informed each of you that the Denver diocese of the Roman Catholic Church had covered up Abercrombie's predation of children making it possible for him to molest me and others that I knew of when I wrote to you. ..."
"I informed each of you that this horror was systemic in your church, and to you, dear pope, I wrote, `Your bishops have known about it and they have been covering it up as a matter of course. Apparently, they haven't informed you of their criminal complicity.' So I did.
"In the ten years that have passed I have never heard a word of apology from any of you" with the exception of a bishop who happened to be a family friend, who said: "I am sure the Holy Father will respond to your letter." He never did.
Joelle Casteix, western regional director of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said the action to remove Mahony from some duties is simply "too little too late."
Most cardinals leave the college in just two ways: by death or by election to the papacy.
Though highly unusual, it is possible to resign. The last to do so was French Cardinal S.J. Louis Billot in 1927. The rub is that the pope has to accept such a resignation, so it's not known if any cardinal has tried to step down during these decades of the church's sexual-abuse scandals or at any other time during the last 85 years.
But, as a small gesture toward acknowledging these enormous crimes against over 500 Angeleno parishioners, Mahony ought to offer his resignation.
And Pope Benedict XVI ought to accept it.
Too often, problem teachers are allowed to leave quietly. That can mean future abuse for another student and another school district.It’s a dynamic so common it has its own nicknames—“passing the trash” or the “mobile molester.”
Amen, brother. And I'd add that no decent person should be publicly associated with any RCC clergy. Let's face it: being a Catholic priest is about the most disreputable thing one can be nowadays. I'd rather be called a drug dealer than a Catholic priest. Being a drug dealer at least implies a certain entrepreneurial panache. But the Roman collar implies only sexual perversion, the worst kind of child sex abuse, and complete unaccountability at all levels. No decent person should be associated with it. After all, St. Paul warns us gravely of scandal and its effects. Being associated with any Catholic clergy can only lend one's good name to scandalizing the innocent.
Hierarchy IS the problem.
You support changing the statute of limitations as to the Catholic Church only?
Yep, the Church is organized and the largest target for anti-Christian, anti-religion, anti-God attacks.
I’m very grateful for Archbishop Gomez and Pope Benedict.
Oh, please, such hyperbole.
Should I respond that "Preacher" only implies con-man, faith healing, prostitute-hiring, philandering crooks?
No, there are many good and excellent priests and preachers. We shouldn't join the real enemy.
Your #22 demonstrates beyond question the appropriateness and accuracy of your screen name.
Don't know how common it is, but there are at least several cases right now in NY where Hasidic Jews excommunicate members who take legal action against other Hasids who abused them. Or who they claim did.
I'm not a huge fan of the RCC, but such activity is endemic whenever an organization starts to think the protection of the organization or group is more important than the truth or the protection of actual people. See Penn State, the French Army in the Dreyfuss Case, etc.
This falls prey to a common logical flaw.
That this person was molested is not a fact, it is a claim. While there is extremely good evidence that the RCC had a coverup of much such abuse over the years, any individual claim can still be true or untrue. It is not at all unlikely that some of the claims are invented or delusional.
Innocent till proven guilty applies even to child molesters, conspirators and cardinals. Or should.
You wrote:
“And any sane person should never give another dime to the RCC.”
Nonsense. I’m perfectly sane and my parish is fantastic; my diocese is also very good. I will continue to support them both and do so gladly.
“You should follow Christ instead”
The Church, i.e., one, true, Holy Church, is the body of Christ, and that Church is the Catholic Church, the only
faith in the world that lives by the world of God, not a show of hands. The only church started by Jesus Christ himself, the rest started by men. The Bible was written by Catholics.
“The Gospels came from the Catholic Church, not the Church from the Gospels” ~ Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen
Wow, a real live, breathing example of the fallacy of false generalization! Reality: the number of priests accused of molestation is well less than 5% (less if you count only priests in active ministry). Do you think 5% of Republicans are racists? I do. Do you think 5% of Republicans cheat on their taxes? I do. According to your (pathetic excuse for) logic, when I hear “Republican”, I should think “racist tax cheat” ... right?
I’m not sure what more they think Abp Gomez should do. Unlike, e.g., disciplining Nancy Pelosi, this really is a situation where Rome holds most of the cards (and the responsibility to play them)
Does it bother you at all that part of the ongoing tithes that you give will support men like the one in this story who feed young boys to pedophiles? If you were in charge of policy in such a situation, what would you do?
You wrote:
“Does it bother you at all that part of the ongoing tithes that you give will support men like the one in this story who feed young boys to pedophiles?”
No money I have ever given has been used for anything of the kind. I know this for a fact. I attend a Latin Mass parish. We’re not really part of the diocesan structure as other parishes are. And, anyway, we have a very good diocese which has not had the problems other diocese have had at anywhere near the frequency other diocese have had them. My previous diocese also had almost no cases of abuse committed by diocesan priests for the decade I lived in that diocese. Pick a good parish and diocese and you don’t have problems.
“If you were in charge of policy in such a situation, what would you do?”
Follow the law - as good bishops and priests do.
Jesus said “The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field:
Mat 13:32 Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.” a mustard is not a tree but this one grew to be a tree. and Jesus interpreted the fowls being ministers of Satan in a previous parable of the sower. My suggestion is for people to know their bible. Since the printing press people do not have to rely on the church to learn what the bible says. This sexual abuse was known by the lay people too and they should not rely on the “hierarchy” when became apparent nothing was being done by the church (Roman Catholic). Other church ought not think they are exempt from this problem too. I’m sure the press will build this up to be much bigger than it is but the mistakes are done now.
No.
I think we can safely say that you have no "inside knowledge" that either my parish or Vladimir's is "feeding children to predators," right? Neither do we. So, that being the case, it would seem not to be the case that our tithes are going to support those predators.
you're missing the point. First, the percentage of bishops and cardinals who looked the other way is way over 5%. In my home diocese of Green Bay, Bishop Wycislo looked the other way many times and moved a monster like Father John Patrick Feeney from parish to parish, where he did the same thing over and over again. Feeney is now serving what amounts to a life sentence, thank God and the District Attorney. No thanks to the Catholic hierarchy.
Archbishop Weakland of Milwaukee is another scum-sucking bottom-feeding queer who allowed all all sorts of abuse to go on. That lowlife finally was forced out due to giving Diocese money to his rent-a-boy. Note well the role of the laity in all this - they only gave a damn when their money got messed with.
And way more than 5% of Catholic priests, at least in the States, are of a homosexual orientation - and this in the teeth of long established Church directives that homosexuals are not to be admitted to the seminary. Again, the hierarchy makes rules it has no intention of keeping. It is precisely the bishops and cardinals and the Popes who appointed them who are to blame for all of this.
I stand my my assertion that no decent person can be associated with scum like Law, Weakland, Mahoney, and on and on. I can't even appear to be associated with that sort of evil.
No amount of cowardice, foolishness, or any other vice on the part of bishops can ever make it right to slander good priests -- which is the vast majority of them -- as child molesters, sorry. So stop doing it.
Archbishop Weakland of Milwaukee is another scum-sucking bottom-feeding queer who allowed all all sorts of abuse to go on.
Indeed. But for most of his career, what we knew about him was that he was a fluffy liberal who wreckovated churches and taught mush. And good priests and orthodox faithful in Milwaukee did their best to stop his heterodox interferences with the faith.
And way more than 5% of Catholic priests, at least in the States, are of a homosexual orientation - and this in the teeth of long established Church directives that homosexuals are not to be admitted to the seminary. Again, the hierarchy makes rules it has no intention of keeping.
More like Rome makes rules that the American hierarchy had no intention of keeping (and says as much). It's not Rome's fault that they said in 1962 that homosexuals didn't belong in the priesthood, and the American bishops basically said back to them, "MYOB".
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