I have never had any sympathy for the former Archbishop of Los Angeles, Cardinal Roger Mahony, who all but flaunted his ueber-liberal interpretation of the Magisterium. Now he shows up as the major protagonist (or villain) in newly released personnel files which the diocese of Los Angeles was compelled to produce to a court in connection with the investigation of sex abuses bv priests.
The story that emerges of how he and his auxiliaries dealt with the problem is very instructive. It illustrates how the conventional mentality among Church hierarchy of keeping any embarrassing information under wraps was so ingrained as to be second nature, even if people like Mahony were apparently uneasy with what they 'had to do'. The information revealed is most embarrassing, indeed, for Mahony and his associates, and inevitably, for the Church. This is all guaranteed to revive the perverted-priests-and-permissive bishops narrative in the MSM...
Files show how Mons. Mahony kept
a protective lid over abusive priests
in the LA archdiocese for almost two decades
By GILLIAN FLACCUS
LOS ANGELES, January 21 (AP) — Retired Cardinal Roger Mahony and other top Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles officials maneuvered behind the scenes to shield molester priests, provide damage control for the Church and keep parishioners in the dark, according to Church personnel files.
The confidential records filed in a lawsuit against the archdiocese disclose how the Church handled abuse allegations for decades and also reveal dissent from a top Mahony aide who criticized his superiors for covering up allegations of abuse rather than protecting children.
Notes inked by Mahony demonstrate he was disturbed about abuse and sent problem priests for treatment, but there also were lengthy delays or oversights in some cases. Mahony received psychological reports on some priests that mentioned the possibility of many other victims, for example,
but there is no indication that he or other church leaders investigated further.
"This is all intolerable and unacceptable to me," Mahony wrote in 1991 on a file of the Rev. Lynn Caffoe, a priest suspected of locking boys in his room, videotaping their crotches and running up a $100 phone sex bill while with a boy. Caffoe was sent for therapy and removed from ministry, but Mahony didn't move to defrock him until 2004, a decade after the archdiocese lost track of him.
[One would expect the reporter to have sought out an explanation of this 10-year delay!]
"He is a fugitive from justice," Mahony wrote to the Vatican's Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who is now Pope Benedict XVI. "A check of the Social Security index discloses no report of his demise, so presumably he is alive somewhere."
Caffoe died in 2009, six years after a newspaper reporter found him working at a homeless mission two blocks from a Salinas elementary school.
Mahony was out of town but issued a statement Monday apologizing for his mistakes and saying he had been "naive" about the lasting impacts of abuse. He has since met with 90 abuse victims privately and keeps an index card with each victim's name in his private chapel, where he prays for them daily, he said. The card also includes the name of the molesting priest "lest I forget that real priests created this appalling harm."
"It remains my daily and fervent prayer that God's grace will flood the heart and soul of each victim, and that their life journey continues forward with ever greater healing," Mahony wrote. "I am sorry."
The apology stands in contrast to letters Mahony was writing to accused priests more than two decades ago.
In 1987, he wrote to the Rev. Michael Wempe — who would ultimately admit to abusing 13 boys — while the priest was undergoing in-patient therapy at a New Mexico treatment center.
"Each of you there at Jemez Springs is very much in my prayers and I call you to mind each day during my celebration of the Eucharist," Mahony wrote to the priest, adding that he supported him in the experience.
The Church's sex abuse policy was evolving and Mahony inherited some of the worst cases from his predecessor when he took over in 1985, J. Michael Hennigan, an archdiocese attorney, said in a separate series of emails. Priests were sent out of state for psychological treatment because they revealed more when their therapists were not required to report child abuse to law enforcement, as they were in California, he said.
At the time, clergy were not mandated sex abuse reporters and the Church let the victims' families decide whether to contact police, he added.
In at least one case, a priest victimized the children of illegal immigrants and threatened to have them deported if they told, the files show.
The files are attached to a motion seeking punitive damages in a case involving a Mexican priest sent to Los Angeles in 1987 after he was brutally beaten in his parish south of Mexico City.
When parents complained the Rev. Nicholas Aguilar Rivera molested in LA, church officials told the priest but waited two days to call police — allowing him to flee to Mexico, court papers allege. At least 26 children told police they were abused during his 10 months in Los Angeles. The now-defrocked priest is believed to be in Mexico and remains a fugitive.
The personnel files of 13 other clerics were attached to the motion to show a cover-up pattern, said attorney Anthony De Marco, who represents the 35-year-old plaintiff. In one instance, a memo to Mahony discusses sending a cleric to a therapist who also is an attorney so any incriminating evidence is protected from authorities by lawyer-client privilege. In another instance, archdiocese officials paid a secret salary to a priest exiled to the Philippines after he and six other clerics were accused of having sex with a teen and impregnating her.
The exhibits offer a glimpse at some 30,000 pages to be made public as part of a record-setting $660 million settlement. The archdiocese agreed to give the files to more than 500 victims of priest abuse in 2007, but a lawyer for about 30 of the priests fought to keep records sealed. A judge recently ordered the Church to release them without blacking out the names of Church higher-ups after The Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times intervened.
They echo similar releases from other dioceses nationwide that have shown how Church leaders for decades shuffled problem priests from parish to parish, covered up reports of abuse and didn't contact law enforcement.
Top Church officials in Missouri and Pennsylvania were criminally convicted last year for their roles in covering up abuse, more than a decade after the clergy sex abuse scandal began to unfold in Boston.
[Note the deliberate failure to provide perspective here. The Philadelphia bishop was convicted in connection with a priest under his supervision who had pleaded guilty and was convicted for abusing an altar boy. The convicted priest recently recanted and said he only made the admission in order to get a lighter sentence. The bishop in Missouri was convicted for failing to report to police that one of his priests was a child-porn addict who indulged himself by amassing videos and photos on his PC; he was not accused of molesting any child. There are degrees of guilt, especially if you are just an 'accessory' to the commission of abuse rather than the perpetrator of the abuse.]
Mahony, who retired in 2011 after 26 years at the helm of the 4.3-million person archdiocese, has been particularly hounded by the case of the Rev. Michael Baker, who was sentenced to prison in 2007 for molestation — two decades after the priest confessed his abuse to Mahony.
Mahony noted the "extremely grave and serious situation" when he sent Baker for psychological treatment after the priest told him in 1986 that he had molested two brothers over seven years.
Baker returned to ministry the next year with a doctor's recommendation that he be defrocked immediately if he spent any time with minors. Despite several documented instances of being alone with boys, the priest wasn't removed from ministry until 2000. Around the same time, the Church learned he was conducting baptisms without permission.
Church officials discussed announcing Baker's abuse in churches where he had worked, but Mahony rejected the idea.
"We could open up another firestorm — and it takes us years to recover from those," Mahony wrote in an Oct. 6, 2000, memo. "Is there no alternative to public announcements at all the Masses in 15 parishes??? Wow — that really scares the daylights out of me!!"
The aide, Msgr. Richard Loomis, noted his dismay over the matter when he retired in 2001 as vicar for clergy, the top Church official who handled priestly discipline. In a memo to his successor, Loomis said Baker's attorney disclosed the priest had at least 10 other victims.
"We've stepped back 20 years and are being driven by the need to cover-up and to keep the presbyteriate & public happily ignorant rather than the need to protect children," Loomis wrote.
"The only other option is to sit and wait until another victim comes forward. Then someone else will end up owning the archdiocese of Los Angeles. The liability issues involved aside, I think that course of complete (in)action would be immoral and unethical."
[One must consider, however, that Loomis was saying this in 2001, when the scandal was already rearing its ugly head in Boston, so he had the benefit of hindsight in a way! Would he have said these things two years earlier? The whole Church was in a learning curve that effectively started in 2001-2002, about how to deal with abusive priests and their seeming proliferation. BTW, what no one seems to notice is that the Irish bishops were a few years ahead of everyone in seeking to deal with the problem as early as 1997 when they first drew up internal guidelines which already considered mandatory reporting of priestly abuses by the bishops to the police - although it turns out that some of them decided they would do as they pleased, such as the infamous Mons. Magee, who had been private secretary to three Popes! Watch out, Georg Gaenswein - you have a notorious predecessor.]
Mahony preferred targeted warnings at schools and youth groups rather than a warning read at Masses, Hennigan said. Parish announcements were made two years later.
Baker, who was paroled in 2011, is alleged to have molested 20 children in his 26-year career. He could not be reached for comment.
The files also show Mahony corresponded with abusive priests while they underwent treatment out of state and worked to keep them out of California to avoid criminal and civil trouble.
One case involved the Msgr. Peter Garcia, a molester whom Mahony's predecessor sent for treatment in New Mexico. Mahony kept Garcia there after a lawyer warned in 1986 that the archdiocese could face "severe civil liability" if he returned and reoffended. Garcia had admitted raping an 11-year-old boy and later told a psychologist he molested 15 to 17 young boys.
"If Monsignor 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," Mahony wrote to the director of Garcia's New Mexico treatment program.
Mahony then sent Garcia to another treatment center, but Garcia returned to LA in 1988 after being removed from ministry. He then contacted a victim's mother and asked to spend time with her younger son, according to a letter in the file.
Mahony moved to defrock him in 1989, and Garcia died a decade later.
Think what a new blow this is for the Holy Father, not that it will necessarily be news to him, except in the time-, place- and person-specific details (he knew more than enough to decry the filth in the Church openly at the 2005 Via Crucis0. But the kind of detail we have sampled from the LA records is exactly the kind of detail that AP, the New York Times and Der Spiegel - in the frenzy of their 2010 witch hunt - were desperate to obtain about Joseph Ratzinger's service as Archbishop of Munich.
Now that there is legal precedent in the US for the release of Church records to the public, who knows what this will lead to? It's like having putrid boils or leprous sores erupting on the face of the Church, the holy Church of Christ whose members are sinners are ever in need of purification and healing.
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As someone who grew up under Mahony's leadership and lives in this archdiocese, I would like to provide some further perspective. Many consider him an uber liberal, but in my experience, he is a moderate (left-leaning at most, like Mons. Schönborn) -- extremely pastoral (advocating for unborn, the poor and the marginalized, the immigrant, to name a few) and collaborative (especially in governance) -- perhaps allowing some liberal tendencies, as a blanket "NO!" policy might hinder faith formation. That said, a few things must be noted.
First, taken from a Reuters article, "J. Michael Hennigan, an attorney for the archdiocese...told the Los Angeles Times that in the late 1980s the Church's policy was to let the families of the victims decide whether or not to contact the police." Some families opted not to notify police.
Second, Mons. Loomis' testimony should be taken with a grain of salt, because shortly after he made those statements, he was removed from his position as an abuse victim came forward claiming him responsible for sex abuse.
Third, the Cdl. and the archdiocese fought against releasing the files because "no priest would ever want to talk to his bishop again". Some of the files are now available via the Los Angeles Times website.
Also, here's Cardinal Mahony's Statement in FULL:
STATEMENT FROM CARDINAL ROGER M. MAHONY
REGARDING SEXUAL ABUSE OF MINORS BY CLERGY
Cardinal Roger M. Mahony
Archbishop Emeritus of Los Angeles
January 21, 2013
With the upcoming release of priests’ personnel files in the Archdiocese’s long struggle with the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy, my thoughts and prayers turn toward the victims of this sinful abuse.
Various steps toward safeguarding all children in the Church began here in 1987 and progressed year by year as we learned more about those who abused and the ineffectiveness of so-called “treatments” at the time. Nonetheless, even as we began to confront the problem, I remained naïve myself about the full and lasting impact these horrible acts would have on the lives of those who were abused by men who were supposed to be their spiritual guides. That fuller awareness came for me when I began visiting personally with victims. During 2006, 2007 and 2008, I held personal visits with some 90 such victims.
Those visits were heart-wrenching experiences for me as I listened to the victims describe how they had their childhood and innocence stolen from them by clergy and by the Church. At times we cried together, we prayed together, we spent quiet moments in remembrance of their dreadful experience; at times the victims vented their pent up anger and frustration against me and the Church.
Toward the end of our visits I would offer the victims my personal apology—and took full responsibility—for my own failure to protect fully the children and youth entrusted into my care. I apologized for all of us in the Church for the years when ignorance, bad decisions and moral failings resulted in the unintended consequences of more being done to protect the Church—and even the clergy perpetrators—than was done to protect our children.
I have a 3 x 5 card for every victim I met with on the altar of my small chapel. I pray for them every single day. As I thumb through those cards I often pause as I am reminded of each personal story and the anguish that accompanies that life story.
The cards contain the name of each victim since each one is precious in God’s eyes and deserving of my own prayer and sacrifices for them. But I also list in parenthesis the name of the clergy perpetrator lest I forget that real priests created this appalling harm in the lives of innocent young people.
It remains my daily and fervent prayer that God’s grace will flood the heart and soul of each victim, and that their life-journey continues forward with ever greater healing.
I am sorry.
(Taken from his blog.)
Thank you for presenting Cardinal Mahony's side.
Speaking as a very 'conservative' Catholic, I have never questioned his good intentions for the poor and disadvantaged (I automatically assume the best of intentions in everyone engaged in 'doing good', including bleeding heart liberals). And of course, he and other bishops so situated should be commended for trying to make amends now for past improper conduct.
But I do question his pastoral choices, which, as in his two decades of handling the sex abuse problem, did include - as most US Catholic bishops tend to do - protecting disadvantaged people like illegal aliens (OK, undocumented foreigners), as well as offending priests, by helping them to circumvent the law (canon as well as civilian). Genuine charity does not excuse breaking the law knowingly, no matter how ingenious the circumventions are, as Cardinal Mahoney's were! [And BTW, I did question Loomis's late-blooming objections as opportunistic - given that the Boston stories had already become headlines - even not knowing he was subsequently involved in a sex abuse allegaticn.]
Forgive me for being censorious, but obviously, the cardinal would not be in this embarrassing mess now if he had kept a balanced sense of justice, and if it had not taken him more than 20 years [starting only in 2006, by his own account, when the Boston scandals had been common knowledge since 2001?] to realize that, in effect, he never thought about the victims of his offending priests. And does he not bear any sense of responsibility for how his actions of commission and omission (including procrastination lasting decades) with regard to priest offenders have now cost his Archdiocese at least $660 million?
He is obviously contrite now, and it would be un-Christian to question contrition. God continue to help him and other bishops like him who erred so egregiously in dealing with priestly perversion, so they can get on with their Christian life and make amends to those they most hurt. God is all-merciful, but I don't think derelict bishops and lecherous priests can ever really make amends for the enormous damage that they have inflicted on the Church. It is the Pope mostly who must bear the brunt for their errors, but just think of all those they may have 'driven away' or helped drive away from the Church because of the wrong 'pastoral' choices they made when it mattered, not ex post facto!
TERESA
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 22/01/2013 15:50]