For members of the community, who think that speaking about monster priests is an attack on the church, they should know about Roger Mahony.
Cardinal Roger Mahony became a bishop of Los Angeles, with its three million parishioners, at the beginning of the monster priest scandal. Before 1985 he had been bishop of the Stockton diocese where the faithful numbered just 135,000. Maybe he had never met a monster priest, but the monsters prevailed, and they increased greatly upon the diocese.
At 49 years of age, Mahony became the leader of America’s largest archdiocese at the moment that law enforcement and the Catholic community began to force the Church to confront clergy molestation. He served as Bishop for the entire arc of the abuse crisis.
“Long after peers had retired or died, Mahony faced the public’s wrath. Because of the unique way abuse lawsuits played out in California, his files on molesters became public while in most other corners of the church, they remain under lock and key.”
The archdiocese’s confidential personnel files, which were released as part of a massive settlement of civil lawsuits, provide the most detailed accounting yet of how … “ the Chruch handed clergy abuse”… in a U.S. diocese.
In 1985 the Church appointed Roger Mahony to lead Los Angeles’ 3 million Catholics. He changed “the way the archdiocese” operated. He stocked the chancery with computers and laser printers, and (he) hired women and minorities for key positions.”
Mahony wanted the Church to move nimbly to deal with the big issues of the day. He marched with Caesar Chavez. He debated about nuclear arms, teen pregnancy, and Soviet aggression.
“Latino concerns had been important to him since the days when he worked on his family’s chicken ranch in North Hollywood, side by side with Mexicans in the country illegally. Within months of taking office in L.A., he had rolled out his ‘Latino plan’ — a strategy for better serving the archdiocese’s two million Latino Catholics. He quickly became a prominent proponent of an immigration bill that would grant amnesty to millions.”
Mahony told the Los Angeles Times, “My theory is that if we make the wrong decision, we can always abandon it or change it, or fine-tune it. But taking forever to ever get to the decision, to me, that is one of the faults of the church over the centuries.”
However, another issue vied for his attention. Less than a month after becoming the Bishop of Los Angeles, Mahony received the first letter about a monster priest. “For decades, such allegations had made their way to the archdiocese’s headquarters. But for the most part, the men who wore the miter before Mahony did little in response. Letters from irate parents gathered dust in file cabinets. Priests were quietly transferred.
Bishop Mahony must have had a holy-moly-red-rider, cowabunga dude, more-than-gnarly moment when Father Michael Baker came to Mahony’s office in December 1986 and confessed that for close to a decade, he had molested two boys.
On this day of the Memorial of St. Andrew Dung-Lac, priest and martyr, and Companions, martyrs. I must wonder why Cardinal Roger Mahony, who tilted with every wind mill, could not deal properly with the monster priests.
graphics.latimes.com/mahony/