I have written about Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles
and the issue of his covering up priestly sexual abuse for many years which
involved over 500 abused boys and resulted in $660 million in settlement costs
before but in today’s Free Press article REBUKED EX-LA CARDINAL FIRES BACK by
Gillian Flaccus of the Associated Press, we see something that has nearly never
been seen before; a public squabble within the Catholic Church.
Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez relieved Cardinal Mahony
of all his remaining duties in the LA diocese and released thousands of
documents which reveal the long standing priestly sex abuse cover-up by the
cardinal who is now retired.
Cardinal Mahony took to his blog to fire back at the
archbishop of LA and this is a huge and unprecedented move in the U.S. church;
dueling high church officials.
There is no question that Mahony covered up the priestly sex
abuse scandal as best he could but his defense for doing so is that he was “unequipped”
to deal with molester priests; now what the hell does that mean?
To me, it means that many priests, bishops and cardinals are
unequipped to deal with human realities because their education and training deprives
them of knowing and feeling what a normal human being knows and feels; they
live on a level totally disconnected from the real world.
Most religious leaders lead normal lives as husbands and
fathers but not Catholic priests; they are by their compelled form of
existence, freaks of nature and therefore unequipped to deal with normal human
society and its laws.
Studies commissioned by U.S. bishops have found over 4,000
priests that faced allegations of sexual abuse since the early 1950s which
involved over 10,000 children, mostly boys; now is that some sobering
statistics or what?
I suppose that I can understand Mahony’s very public
disagreement with the very public shaming he got from Gomez; no one likes being
the fall guy especially when Mahony did try to mend his ways and reform the
ways the church handles priestly sex abuse cases but really…he cannot undo the
damage he had done to all those innocent little boys…Jesus may forgive him but
no one else will; he needs to pay.
Mahony, who is 76, sees his life’s work and reputation going
up in smoke and if he really believes in the religion he professes; he has to
realize that he has committed grievous sins, not only in light of his religion
but against humanity.
As far as church politics are concerned, this very public
disagreement between two high church officials is very historic and interesting
to me since it may foreshadow some type of Catholic Church reformation…here we
go again…
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