The following comes from a Dec. 1 story which appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
A year after arriving in Los Angeles, the youngest archbishop in the U.S. Catholic Church had a schedule and an agenda befitting a presidential candidate.
Roger Mahony raced around the city in a chauffeured sedan, exhorting labor leaders to support immigrant rights and rallying hundreds against a proposed prison in Boyle Heights.
Where his predecessors had talked up praying the rosary, Mahony touted his positions on nuclear disarmament and Middle East peace, porn on cable TV and AIDS prevention. No issue seemed outside his purview: When an earthquake struck El Salvador, he cut a $100,000 check. When a 7-year-old went missing in South Pasadena, he wrote her Protestant parents a consoling letter.
Reporters took notes and the influential took heed. The mayor, the governor, business executives and millionaires recognized a rising star and sought his company.
Among the thousands of papers that crossed his desk in September 1986 was a handwritten letter.
“During priests’ retreat … you provided us with an invitation to talk to you about a shadow that some of us might have,” Father Michael Baker wrote. “I would like to take you up on that invitation.”
The note would come to define Mahony’s legacy more than any public stance he took or powerful friend he made.
In the child sex abuse scandal that has shaken the Catholic Church, Mahony is a singular figure.
He became the leader of America’s largest archdiocese at the very moment the church was being forced to confront clergy molestation. Because he was just 49 when he took office, he was in power for the entire arc of the abuse crisis. Long after peers had retired or died, Mahony was around to face the public’s wrath. Because of the unique way abuse lawsuits played out in California, his files on molesters became public while in most other corners of the church, they remain under lock and key.
The archdiocese’s confidential personnel files, released this year as part of a massive settlement of civil lawsuits, provide the most detailed accounting yet of how clergy abuse was handled in a U.S. diocese. Along with sworn testimony by Mahony and his advisors and interviews with church officials, victims’ families and others, the nearly 23,000 pages maintained by the archdiocese and various religious orders suggest a man who was troubled over abuse but more worried about scandal — and how it might derail the agenda he had for himself and his church….
On a winter evening in 2008, Mahony welcomed a group of parishioners from La Cañada Flintridge into a conference room at the cathedral.
He had settled the bulk of the abuse litigation for $720 million, far greater than any previous settlements in the U.S. Catholic Church and far more than the archdiocese could afford. Mahony was now forced to beg wealthy parishes for contributions.
St. Bede’s had more than $100,000 to spare. He showed the parishioners accountants’ reports, charts and timelines, two people who attended the meeting said in interviews. He told them how an East L.A. parish had held a tamale sale and brought him a check for a couple hundred dollars.
What about Michael Baker? a man interrupted.
A lot of us come from business backgrounds, a woman further down the table said, and you are a CEO who just paid out a three-quarter-billion-dollar settlement. We think you should resign.
Don’t you think I want to retire? Mahony said, his voice rising. I could be at my cabin in the Sierra. I’m staying because I’m the best person to fix this.
It’s about accountability, another woman said.
Mahony slammed his hand on the table, scattering his charts. You self-righteous… he began. Keep your money, he told them….
To read the entire story, click here.
Thank you for posting the link to the original LA Times story. As evident in released documents, Cardinal Mahoney and other top leaders in the Church lost sight of what is important: following Christ or protecting the Church. Cardinal Mahoney undoubtedly followed the advice of the experts and consultants in dealing with the pedophile priest scandal. Unfortunately, the recommended course of action failed to protect the people of the Church. The Catholic Church needs to seriously evaluate its selection and formation process for its priests and leaders. The damage done to the Church as the result of the scandal will require decades for healing and recovery.
As Bill Donohue, president of The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, reminds us, there was virtually no “priest pedophile scandal.” Rather, all the data point to a scandal dominated by some homosexual priests who abused young men who were sexually mature physically but not yet old enough to grant consent. This was not pedophilia, per se, and, as we know from the campaign to legalize same-sex “marriage,” words and their definitions do matter.
Father Coiro, you are missing the point!
The POINT is that priests and bishops circled the wagons to protect their own,whether it was a homosexual priest raping a teenage boy, a pedophile priest abusing a schoolgirl, or vulnerable people like the secretary at the the parish you just left (St. Francis of Assisi in North Beach of San Francisco) being forced into sex to not get fired.
We’ve all been reading about your former parish, which has made scandalous headlines even abroad, for the lurid sex that a young single mother was forced into in the very SHRINE of St. Francis.
Homosexuals are trying to push their agenda, but so are you priests who permitted such abuse to go on right under your nose during your reign as RECTOR of the Shrine!
Fr. Coiro,
It is sad to see that you are still trying to defend that which cannot really be defended.
The last time I was involved with you at the Lost Angels chancery, you threatened to have me arrested, and I told you go ahead. That was when CRCOA, Inc. was picketing the chancery because your then boss was delivering a benedicion to the Party of Death’s convention!
and judging by the police arriving right after that, you must have carried your threat out. Too bad for you the police knew the law as did I.
May God have mercy on an amoral Amerika!
Viva Cristo Rey!
God bless, yours in Their Hearts,
Kenneth M. Fisher
So Fr. Coiro, you are stating that the $660 million dollars the Diocese of LA had to pay was for a fiction, rather than Cardinal Mahony moving Priests around so they could abuse children in other Parishes?
I think not.
When did Cardinal Mahony tell people in his Diocese to read and home/study the “Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition” in entirety?
3 Popes have asked us to do so. Yet he has and does ignore all 3 Popes. Or is this just more of Mahony’s “I’m the best person to fix this”.
His tombstone should read: “I did it my way.”
“As Bill Donohue, president of The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, reminds us, there was virtually no “priest pedophile scandal.”
Father Coiro, With all due respect for the holy priesthood, do you realize how extremely imprudent it is for you to publicly defend the indefensible? This is clericalism at it’s ugliest and lowest moment. Tom is right and even you are still circling the wagons. The saddest part is, you do not see it. Sadly, I am not surprised to read Kenneth Fisher’s account. Please do not use the good ol’ boy’s or girl’s club mentality when publicly justifying and rationalizing Cardinal Mahony’s behavior. It makes the faithful not trust you either and perhaps that does not bother you but it should.
Second of all, Bill Donahue has become part of the problem. I really do commend Bill Donahue for the good that he has done but it has become clear that certain men and women are part of the good ol’ boys and girl club that worry more about appeasing each other than considering how much they are offending God. Bill Donahue wrote a public letter supporting the decision of a Costa Mesa Catholic school to allow the enrollment of two children adopted by a homosexual couple. The published school yearbook had the names of the men listed next to the children as father and father instead of father and mother. Bishop Tod D. Brown also highly praised the school for this decision too.
Unfortunately, the “Sexual Abuse Crisis” really started long ago. Around the beginning of Cardinal Mahoney’s reign. The genesis was the misguided recruitment of homosexuals to the priesthood. Many of these ordinations were NOT of vocations. These young homosexuals were recruited with a promise of comfortable CAREERS.
Roger Mahoney is a disgusting human being. He should be in prison. Allegedly, Archbishop Gomez demoted him and Mahoney was not to perform any functions other than saying Mass. Now we hear that he is still performing confirmations in various parishes. He should have been laicized (defrocked) and sent out of town. Mahoney should not have attended the election of the new pope after Pope Benedict XVI retired. Apparently, Archbishop Gomez has sympathy for this moral leper. I wonder how many victims and their families lost their faith because of Mahoney’s protecting the molesting priests.
Sarah,
Sad to say all of that Gomez vs. Mahony stuff was just window dressing.
Did you know that Mahony is once again a celebrated speaker at the annual invasion of the heretics, the REC?
You can look it up and many other disgusting speakersi for yourself at: RECongress.org!
May God have mercy on an amoral Amerika!
Viva Cristo Rey!
God bless, yours in Their Hearts,
Kenneth M. Fisher, Founding Director
Concerned Roman Catholics of America, Inc.
This man needs to go far away as many others in high ranking positions need to. The gay men that abused these young boys (same sex attraction) will have there day and this Cardinal wants to again sweep the truth under the rug, “WOLVES”.
Exactly. This man has done so much damage and now he has been exposed for the conceited, delusional and dangerous figure he is. May The Lord have mercy on him.
Roger Mahony belongs locked in his cabin in the Sierras on a ration of bread
and water for the rest of his eternal life The good Lord can judge him.
Thank you , Amy for leaving the judgment to the good Lord. It seems to me that Cardinal Mahoney did the best he knew how at the time. He thought pedophiles could be rehabilitated and learned too late they could not. He wanted to avoid scandal but it became worse. So I say leave the judgment to God and pray for him, as he said in the article he is certainly being humiliated.
The floor of Hell is paved with the skulls of bishops……I hope he is ready
It appears that much of his problems today come from his desire to document and fix the problems. Cardinals who did not keep records don’t have the same problems, even if their “fixes” were no less repugnant than his.
The original article is worth reading, and does show that he reduced the numbers of offenders significantly.
What about the children?
Is anyone in the church concerned about the souls of God’s little boys and girls?
I recall Christ saying something about a millstone around the neck and being cast in the ocean if one of His children are harmed or led astray….
What about God’s children?
I personally know one man and his brother who had their Faith and that of their families permanently scarred by these pedophile priest (Fr. Coiro, what is your definition of pedophile?).
May God have mercy on an amoral Amerika!
Viva Cristo Rey!
God bless, yours in Their Hearts,
Kenneth M. Fisher, Founding Director
Concerned Roman Catholics of America, Inc.
When I was a little kid my folks took me to Lake Itasca up in Minnesota. There you can walk across a stream where large rocks have been placed as stepping stones as it is so small and not deep. That stream is the beginning of the mighty Mississippi River. Pollute that little stream and have patience and that poison will eventually pollute the entire Mississippi!
As I read the article in the Los Angeles Times, specifically the attachments, I was struck cold by correspondence bewteen then Monsignor George Niederauer (Rector of St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo) and an unnamed Chancellery funcionary. In it they are discussing the sexual activities of seminarians both in the seminary, and at parishes where they had been assigned. (One former seminarian was known by them to have AIDS.) I hope that as more light is shined on the byzantine politics of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles under Cardinal Mahony, that some of the opprobrium it generates is also directed towards George Niederauer and his tenure as Rector at St. John’s in Camarillo. St. John’s which trains seminarians for dozens of dioceses across multiple states.
I know that the LA Times and other news organizations deliberately bring out deeply disturbing stories like this one at Christmas season. But reading the LA Times story makes one weep.
Steve,
No matter what the season, the more this rot is brought out to the light of God’s day, the better off the Real Church will be.
Sad to say, Gomez has done little to clean up that rot!
May God have mercy on an amoral Amerika!
Viva Cristo Rey!
God bless, yours in Their Hearts,
Kenneth M. Fisher, Founding Director
Concerned Roman Catholics of America, Inc.
Roger Mahoney should not have transferred Priests around to various parishes to abuse other children.
Roger Mahoney of LA, and heretical Bishop Gumbleton of Detroit who supports gay sex should not be able to use their titles of Cardinal and Bishop respectively. They are merely retirees.
Both of them have huge egos, and they need to be reminded that PRIDE is a Capital Sin.
The world and the Catholic Church are better off without them.
Anyone including Roger Mahony who aids and abets others in the sexual abuse of children should be in jail. The only reason he is not, is because of CA statute of limitations.
Roger Mahony stole money from the dead to help pay fines for his aiding and abeting of the sexual abuse of children, – Money specifically under Contract with the LA Diocese for the perpetual maintence of Catholic cemetaries.
Mahony’s fines were over $660 MILLION dollars that all Catholics in his LA Diocese were forced to pay because the Diocese money and assets are paid by donations of the people.)
Why didn’t Mahony use any of his own money and assets?
There were no personal consquences to Mahony for his bad behavior.
Roger Mahony also aids and abets ILLEGAL aliens in breaking the law.
Roger Mahony is not the best person for anything.
Oscar is particularly right—about transferring, indeed, hiding abusers. During my tenure in Arizona, as the abuse crisis spilled over everywhere, a deposition of the now-deceased Bishop Manuel D. Moreno (1982-2003) revealed that upon being contacted for a “favor” by his former Card-Archbishop, Roger Mahony, Bp. Moreno agreed to take a very serious abuser-priest and place him in Tucson diocese—where the inevitable happened. This series of abuses led to the bankruptcy of Tucson diocese in 2004—and JP2 personally sent Cardinal Arinze to request the resignation of the now-broken Bp. Moreno, who later died of prostate cancer. There have been no happy outcomes of this whole history of the ruining of children and the corresponding demonic auto-destruction of the Church.
The Holy See didn’t do enough, nor did it act fast enough. Sorry Church but failing to act or acting at stone-age speed is simply unacceptable.
The same goes for Mahony. In addition, Mahony didn’t do the right thing and resign years ago.
“The Holy See didn’t do enough, nor did it act fast enough. Sorry Church but failing to act or acting at stone-age speed is simply unacceptable.”
RB, I see that you are once again using on of your selective choice Holy See cards. Well, RB your selective Holy See playing cards are unacceptable too. This has been a favorite technique or tactic of the “I am in full communion crowd as they systematically undermine the Fullnness of the Truth.” RB, This is the very same Holy See that you claim to have approved the glass tower of confusion in Orange County. Brian S.’s “Emerald City” comment truly describes the glam fantasy that is still fleecing millions of dollars in order to honor the same ego that your are now criticizing Cardinal Mahony for having. You cannot have it both ways RB because a rotten tree cannot produce both good and rotten fruit. When you want to undermine you pull out the Holy See obedience card. If the corruption from spiritual neglect becomes too obvious then all of the sudden the Holy See acted at stone-age speed.
As I posted on another thread, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and Pope Francis both admitted that there was evil and corruption within the Curia. Once again, an evil and corruption so pervasive (Vatileaks) that a Pope left his reign.
Cardinal Mahony allowed molesters both spiritual and physical to ruin the lives of his own sheep. All under the auspices of being in full communion.