Pope Francis, Cardinal Mahony, President Obama & US Elections

By Jerry Slevin
Christian Catholicism
March 15, 2014

http://christiancatholicism.com/pope-francis-cardinal-mahony-president-obama-us-elections/

There are many needed reform actions Pope Francis has failed even to initiate after one year. The worst failure has been his avoiding making cardinals and bishops accountable for aiding predatory priests who hurt defenseless children. Kissing dozens of babies and washing prisoners’ feet make great photo ops, but fail to protect one defenseless child or comfort one abuse survivor.

President Obama will meet for the first time in less than two weeks on March 27 with Pope Francis. Obama can be expected to address this failure directly in private. Obama also needs to try to focus Francis  on Russia’s President Putin. Francis recently, and perhaps naively, enhanced Putin’s prestige by welcoming him to the Vatican in a well publicized photo op. With Russia’s virtual invasion of Ukraine, Francis’ approach to Putin warrants a close review, as Germany’s concerned Chancellor Merkel would likely as well encourage Francis to undertake. She even may already have done so privately.

Please see my related recent Advice to President Obama on Pope Francis’ strategy here

http://christiancatholicism.com/advice-for-president-obama-about-pope-francis-current-strategy/

While it may be debatable who has been the worst of the Catholic Church’s predator protecting hierarchs, Los Angeles’ Cardinal Mahony arguably tops the list. Almost a billion dollars of LA Catholics’ contributions have been needlessly expended so far on settling claims related to abusive priests that Mahony should, and in many cases probably could, have curtailed. He also seemingly wasted almost another 200 million dollars on an unnecessary new LA cathedral, the so called “Raj Mahal”, apparently mainly to satisfy his “edifice complex”.

On the day the UN Committee recently blasted the Vatican on its decades of child abuse prevention failures, Pope Francis said Mass with Mahony and then met privately with him. They discussed US Latino politically related issues, but not the priest child abuse scandal, per Mahony’s own personal website. Then again, who is the Pope to judge?

When the LA abuse scandal uproar was being widely reported a year ago as damning documents were then revealed about Mahony’s extensive complicity, LA’s Archbishop Gomez went through a well publicized “distancing” of the LA Archdiocese from any further active ministry for Mahony. So what’s the “good Cardinal” up to now?

LA’s Archdiocese, with Gomez as host, is sponsoring a Religious Education Congress this weekend billed as the largest gathering of US Catholics. One of the speakers, amazingly, on evangelizing young Catholics is Cardinal Mahony. The description of his scheduled talk, and his CV from the Congress’ website, are set forth below. The Congress’ overall program is described here  http://www.recongress.org/

Some Cardinals, like Mahony, Law, Rigali, Brady, O’Brien, et al., no matter what they do or fail to do, seem to have nine lives like cats. Also like cats, some of them seem to have little shame.

It may be worth noting that Cardinal Mahony will be sharing this Religious Education Congress venue with the head of Pope Francis’ influential new Council of Cardinals.  Cardinal Rodriguez-Maradiaga is scheduled to give an address in Spanish, further indicating the Vatican’s high priority for the current outreach to US Latinos. Cardinal Rodriguez speaks fluent English.

It is unclear why Rodriquez, rather than a Vatican education official, is addressing the Congress, especially since Rodriguez and his Council have been dropping the ball on setting up an abuse commission for almost a year. The Council prematurely announced a commission to head off, it appears, some of the anticipated fallout from the recent UN Committee’s criticism. With the fallout diminishing, apparently the commission is on the back burner again.

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Excerpt from the Religious Education Congress description:
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Religious Education Congress
Saturday, March 15, 2014

4-17 “Post-sacrament” Evangelization

“As we emphasize the New Evangelization, one avenue we need to explore I call “post-sacrament” evangelization. We are quite skilled at pre-sacrament catechesis, but what happens the day after? After a wonderful confirmation liturgy, what do we have for these young people the next day? After First Communion, what contact do we maintain with those children and families? After marriage, what do we have for the newly married couples? We have terrific RCIA teams; but what concrete steps do we take to make the newly baptized become active members of our faith communities?”

Cardinal Roger Mahony

“Cardinal Roger Mahony, Archbishop Emeritus of Los Angeles, was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Fresno, Calif. In 1975 he was named Auxiliary Bishop of Fresno, and in 1980 he was named Bishop of Stockton, Calif. From 1985-2011, Bishop Mahony served as the fourth archbishop of Los Angeles, and was elevated to Cardinal in 1991. Today, Cardinal Mahony continues to work for comprehensive immigration reform. In 2012, he cele­brated his golden jubilee (50 years) as priest.”
End of Excerpt
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Interestingly, Mahony is described currently as continuing ” … to work for comprehensive immigration reform”. Mahony for many years had been the most influential US hierarch among the US Latino Catholic community.

Francis’ US Nuncio and US bishops apparently are working hard with their tax avoiding billionaire backers to elect in seven months a conservative US Senate majority, and thereby to try to preserve a conservative US Supreme Court majority. Given that, Mahony’s influence with US Latino Catholic voters likely must still matter to the Vatican.

The hierarchy’s and their political partners’ election campaign strategy appears to be to put the blame for the immigration reform impasse on Obama and Democrats in Congress. Before the election happens in early November, I expect Pope Francis will weigh in on the election campaign to back his US Nuncio and bishops, especially with a papal appeal to traditional US Latino Catholic voters to get out and vote, likely for conservative Republicans.

Mahony’s presumed continuing influence with US Latino Catholic voters, coupled with his fund raising record, likely mean he need not fear too much being called to account by Pope Francis for his appalling failure to curtail priest child abuse, Francis’ nice rhetoric notwithstanding.

Recent polling indicates a significant rise in US Latino Catholic contributions to Catholic efforts since Francis’ election. Francis’ high ratings among Latinos and others, however, cannot be sustained indefinitely if he continues to stonewall on dealing effectively with the hierarchical likes of Mahony, Myers, Finn, Rigali, Dolan, Law, Brady, O’Brien, et al., given the extensive reporting of these hierarchs’ serious shortcomings.
Even from a US Latino political perspective, Cardinal Mahony appears now to be a net liability for the hierarchy’s political push. Many of the children sexually abused by those predatory priests, whom Mahony protected, were Latinos, some of whom incredibly were even threatened by abusive priests with deportation, along with their families, if they dared to report to anyone their being sexual abused by the priests.

I assume Democrats are also familiar with Mahony’s appalling child protection record. Both US political parties can play politics with that record. We will likely see that soon.

If Mahony’s billion dollar abuse blunders have failed to get Pope Francis’ attention by now, they likely never will. This is especially true in light of Francis’ recent interview where he praised the hierarchy’s current approach to priest child abuse and suggested the Catholic hierarchy were being unfairly singled out.

The recent reports of Francis’ less than stellar record in Argentina with respect to curtailing priest child abuse and comforting abuse survivors further suggest that cardinals and bishops have little to fear from Francis for having aided abusive priests or for continuing to oppress abuse survivors. If cardinals and bishops are ever to be held accountable in this life, it will apparently only occur as a result of the legal process of democratic governments, as is beginning to happen nationally in Australia with its Royal Commission and may happen soon on a Federal level in the USA under President Obama.

At least Pope Francis has reacted indirectly to the building legislative pressures from the Australian Royal Commission, indicating clearly that outside governmental pressure succeeds best at getting long overdue Vatican action. Francis  has pulled Cardinal Pell back to Rome to oversee finances, rather than overseeing, badly, pastoral approaches to protecting children and comforting survivors, which Pell apparently failed at spectacularly.

While Pell seems ill equipped to oversee a complex financial enterprise, he hopefully will follow the advice of his new “all male” 15 member financial oversight committee. He can then try to use his reported “toughness” to get the Vatican’s corrupt administrators to clean up their act.

Of course, since Vatican financial officials will, in effect, still only really answer for Vatican finances to a majority of unaccountable clerics, this is not really a satisfactory permanent solution, as any competent financial manager and independent auditor well knows. But it may get the international financial regulators off the Vatican’s case for awhile, which appears to be Francis’ main objective and a key reason the cardinals elected him.

At present, a comprehensive and independent audit of the Vatican’s overall finances reportedly has not yet even been scheduled. Also, some of the members of the oversight committee are carryovers from earlier failed oversight efforts. Apparently, this is acceptable to Pope Francis and other Vatican powers-that-be, who seem more concerned about avoiding empowering women financial experts than selecting the best talent, regardless of gender.

Perhaps, Francis’ de facto “Grand Inquisitor”, Cardinal Mueller, has determined that since Jesus’ likely financial adviser, Matthew, a tax collector, was male, the members of the financial oversight committee must be males. On the other hand, Francis’ seemingly preferred German Cardinal theologian, Kasper, has just indicated, in his well respected view, that women are eligible for all Vatican positions that do not have priestly ordination as a prerequisite. He even noted it is “absurd” to exclude them.