USA Today
June 13, 2010
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/Religion/post/2010/06/cardinal-roger-mahony-catholic-sex-abuse-crisis-forgiveness/1
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| Cardinal Roger Mahony, Archbishop of Los Angeles, shown here at an immigration reform rally in May, said in a deposition in a sex abuse lawsuit, that he didn't call police when a priest told him in 1986 he had abused two boys because the boys were 'not from the parish. |
Now, he's sorry. Add one more apology -- this from Cardinal Roger Mahony, soon-to-retire as Archbishop of Los Angeles -- to the mounting stack of apologies from Pope Benedict XVI on down for failure to protect children and teens from known sexual abusers in the priesthood.
Mahony's comments today came in response to the release of a deposition he gave this February as part of a lawsuit brought by some of the 23 victims of defrocked priest, Michael Baker. Baker is now in prison serving a 10-year-sentence for molesting two children. (The lawsuit recently settled for $2.2 million.)
In the deposition Mahony says Baker told him the boys were "not from the parish," and had returned to Mexico.
According to the Associated Press report on the deposition released today,
Mahony said he did not call police, didn't ask his staff to search for the boys and didn't alert parishioners to the abuse because no victims came forward. Mahony said he believed Baker would not re-offend because he had confessed on his own and seemed sincere about seeking treatment.
"The challenge is trying to look at 1986 through the lenses of 2010, because we have developed over the years all kinds of policies and procedures where we're very much aware of it -- of what needs to be done, how it's done, how quickly it's done," Mahony said in the deposition.
"It is impossible to talk about 1986 without understanding all that has gone on since and look back. I just can't do that," he said.
Evidently a cardinal -- a title given to so-called princes of the church, the men who can elect a pope and serve as his closest advisers in governance of the worldwide church -- in 1986 couldn't reach the moral conclusion that people who molest children can't be priests.
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| Joelle Casteix, the Southwest Regional Director of Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) protests clergy sex abuse outside Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral on Wednesday, April 28, 2010, in Los Angeles. Cateix is holding a photo of herself at age 15, when her sexual abuse incidents began in 1986. |
He had company. Remember, only one bishop, Cardinal Bernard Law, archbishop of Boston, has resigned and no U.S. bishop has been "fired" for their failures to protect youth from known abusers.
Law landed a comfy post in Rome a year later and helped elect the current pope. Perhaps that's where Mahony will move after he retires at age 75 in February. Or perhaps a wave of fresh anger will prompt the pope to let Mahony's new coadjutor, former Archbishop of San Antonio Jose Gomez, take over sooner.
By now, two in three of those who served as bishops in 2002 have retired or died. My sense is that some people are still so angry with bishops they'd exhume the dead ones just to smack them. But Mahony would like us to look forward, not back. He said in a statement released Tuesday,
I believed too readily in Baker's contrition, and in our ability to treat and monitor him effectively. The past has informed the present, however, and I have made sure that our sexual abuse prevention policies and procedures will keep our children and young people safe from predators like Michael Baker.
So here is a prince of the church forgiving himself and hinting we should join him.
Do you forgive Mahony? Or do you think that only God and the abusers' victims can forgive the bishops and cardinals who failed their flock? Should he resign now?
NOTE: Be civil. All views, respectfully presented, are welcome. Kindly watch your tone.
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