Public Shaming of L.A. Cardinal Signals Vatican Change of Heart on Pedophile Priests

By Araminta Wordsworth
National Post
February 5, 2013

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/02/05/public-shaming-of-l-a-cardinal-signals-vatican-change-of-heart-on-pedophile-priests/

Abused and abuser: Esther Millar, 54, holds up photos of Michael Nocita and her younger self

Full Comment’s Araminta Wordsworth brings you a daily round-up of quality punditry from across the globe. Today:  After more than a decade of bad press over its handling of child-molesting clerics, there are signs the Roman Catholic Church has learned its lesson.

The diocese of Los Angeles obeyed a court order Thursday, publishing the personnel files of 124 pedophile priests, 12,000 pages of records stretching back decades.

The files made abundantly clear, Cardinal Roger Mahony, the former archbishop, was a major part of the pedophile problem. He quietly moved culprits to other parishes, failed to inform police and seemed more worried about matters of liturgy than the victims.

The other shoe was quick to drop. Friday Archbishop José Gomez banned Mahony and his sidekick, auxiliary bishop, Thomas Curry from acting in any public capacity for the diocese. (As a cardinal Mahony can still help elect the next pope if this event occurs before his 80th birthday.)

The move served notice — finally — that no one is above censure. It was unlike the kid glove treatment given Cardinal Bernard Law, rewarded with a plum job in Rome after a similar scandal in Boston.

In a letter that elicited nothing but contempt, Mahony attempted to slough off responsibility. “Nothing,” he wrote, had prepared him to cope with such problems.

At Catholic Culture, Philip Lawler spoke for many of the faithful when he called Archbishop Gomez’s  move “electrifying,” “exhilarating” and “above all encouraging.”

For more than a decade, since the explosion of the sex-abuse crisis, American Catholic bishops have been issuing apologies, promising changes, instituting procedures—but never directly acknowledging the damage done to their credibility by their own negligence and malfeasance … The archbishop’s decisive statement is encouraging in itself, but there is another reason to see it as a sign of more good things to come. It is difficult to imagine that Archbishop Gomez could have taken such a dramatic step without first consulting with Rome. So we can safely infer that Pope Benedict — who has taken a tough line on sexual abuse since the beginning of his pontificate — supported the action. We might even hope to see other bishops making similar announcements.

If the release of the documents was done solely out of legal necessity, then it is difficult to see how matters will fundamentally change. To be sure, we might see further removals of bishops, but that would be largely symbolic and cosmetic. If, however, there is a new willingness on the part of the church to be fully open not just about its inner workings but about its faults-then it would definitely mark the beginning of a new and different era in American Catholicism. Transparency is not just important for preventing further abuse, or for addressing matters of liability and legal responsibility. It’s also an important spiritual act that acknowledges our own humanness and our own accountability to one another.

Nothing? Not common sense? Not the master’s degree in social work?
Not the earlier experience of the molestation scandal in Stockton, [Calif.] where Mahony was assigned before his move to Los Angeles? Do you need special training to know that the rape, abuse and psychological torture of children has to be stopped immediately? Or that your first responsibility when you hear about a child being molested isn’t to protect the church’s reputation, but to get help for the victims and make sure the priest is brought to justice?

The archdiocese of Los Angeles learned in the late 1970s that one of its priests had sexually assaulted a 16-year-old boy so violently that he was left bleeding and “in a state of shock.” The priest said he was too drunk to remember what happened and officials took no further action. But two decades later, word reached Cardinal Roger M. Mahony that the same priest was molesting again and improperly performing the sacrament of confession on his victim. The archdiocese sprang to action: It dispatched investigators, interviewed a raft of witnesses and discussed the harshest of all church penalties — not for the abuse but for the violation of church law.

Whereas Mahony was loathe to publicly censure predator priests, he was totally determined when it came to publicly sanctioning an American nun who was the hero of pro-life and pro-family Catholic everywhere – Eternal World Television Network founder Mother Angelica. [In his biography of Mother Angelica] EWTN host Raymond Arroyo [writes] Mahoney went ballistic after Mother criticized him on the liturgy. According to the account in the book, various high-ranking prelates testified to Mahony’s seething anger with Mother Angelica over her criticism of him.  He visited all the offices of the Vatican that could censure her to make his case.