LOS ANGELES (CA)
Waiting for Godot to Leave
Kevin O’Brien
The Los Angeles Times has published a long article on Cardinal Mahony and the Sex Scandal.
This series is based on nearly 23,000 pages of internal documents from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and various religious orders that were made public this year in compliance with court orders. In addition, Times reporters reviewed thousands of pages of depositions and court filings and interviewed dozens of people, including church officials, victims’ families and law enforcement officials. Cardinal Roger Mahony declined to be interviewed or respond to questions sent to his attorney.
… so the authors assure us.
One of the interviews the Times conducted was with Detective Gary Lyon, who speaks about Mahony and his cohorts …
“They lied as bad as any thug or ex-con I’ve ever come across on the street,” Lyon recalled in an interview. “They were more interested in saving the reputation of the church than helping us find these young victims.”
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But my point here is not that the bishops are sometimes scoundrels who have abandoned the faith and who enable the sexual abuse of innocent children and lie about it, my point rather is the character of Cardinal Mahony that emerges from the Times article, which is itself a condensed version of a 23,000 page portrait.
Here’s what we learn about the man.
He’s a narcissist.
Grandiose, self-righteous, smug, filled with an elevated sense of his importance, petty, petulant, pissy, not to be trusted, vain, conceited, and consumed with a sense of entitlement and indignation. He allows the faith to falter in Southern California, builds a despicably ugly cathedral that costs hundreds of millions of dollars, attacks Mother Angelica and EWTN for being orthodox and daring to criticize him, and – God have mercy on his prideful soul – he lies when the case calls for it.
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