BishopAccountability.org
	Clergy Wounds Still Not Healed By Tom Hennessy Press-Telegram July 16, 2007 http://www.presstelegram.com/news/ci_6391848 California — Now and then, I think of Theodore Llanos. A Catholic priest who had been assigned to several area churches, he once faced 38 felony criminal counts for sexually abusing children under his spiritual care. The charges were dropped in 1996 because the statute of limitations had run out. A year later, Llanos took his life. In 2004, nearly three decades after being victimized by Llanos, Michael Patrick Falls, formerly of Covina, compared the Los Angles archdiocese to the Mafia. "The Catholic church is participating in organized crime, and it is not gambling, and it's not the numbers game. It's the molestation of children, and it is the protection of priests who molest them." Now and then, I, think, too of Mary Grant, molested by a priest when she was 13 and home ill. Her mother was at work. For the next three years, the priest molested her over and over until, at age 16, she ran away from home. He found her and continued to molest her until she was 18. Today, Grant is Western regional director for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP. In an interview two years ago, she told me Cardinal Roger Mahony should be convicted for allegedly protecting abusive priests under his charge. "It is very hard for us to understand the fact that Cardinal Bernard Law (former archdiocesan leader in Boston) and Cardinal Mahony have never been criminally indicted. It's hard to us to comprehend why prosecutors can't obtain every file they need. When someone has been covering up crimes for decades, as Mahony has done, it's just incomprehensible that there can't be any (prosecutorial) intervention." Now and then, I think, too, of Mahony. Not having suffered as Mary Grant did, I'm perhaps a tad more forgiving. I no longer wish, as I once did, for him to go to prison. I just wish for him to go away. Just in time? On Sunday, the archdiocese issued yet another in what one journalist has called its "stream of mea culpas," apologizing for shielding priest predators by withholding information and/or transferring them from parish to parish, and, in the process, paving the way for them to sin again. This time, however the mea culpa by Cardinal Mahony himself, was accompanied by a settlement of $660 million for more than 500 victims who have said they were abused by priests within the archdiocese. To pay the settlement, Mahony says, $250 million will come from the archdiocese, $227 million from insurers, $60 million from religious orders whose priests and brothers are among the accused, and $123 million from other sources. The archdiocese, he said further, will sell some properties, liquidate some investments and borrow some money. Bad as things are, and as much criticism as Mahony is getting, it could have been worse, The settlement was announced just a day before the church would have had to go to court and possibly risk an even higher settlement. A partial solution? How all this will impact on Mahony, if at all, remains to be seen. Over the past several years, since the accusations surfaced, he has withstood criticism from many archdiocesan members. The Vatican has been amazingly tolerant, unless it has called the Cardinal to task privately. There is no assurance that the deep rift caused by the abuse cases has been healed. Some victims say no amount of money could compensate them for what they have suffered. I side with them, although there are critics who accused the victims, fellow Catholics, of using the settlement to milk the church for financial gain. Some Catholics are going so far as to say that the scandal might not have been as widespread as it was if priests were allowed to marry. The may have a point. Tom Hennessy's viewpoint appears Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. He can be reached at (562) 499-1270 or by e-mail at Scribe17@mac.com .
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