CARDINAL ROGER MAHONY: Why he was removed?

The above mentioned cardinal was the archbishop and cardinal of the Los Angeles Diocese in California. He served as Archbishop of Los Angeles from 1985 to 2011. Then he was also appointed as a cardinal and remained in that position until he was relieved of his duties as a bishop in the Los Angeles Diocese on January 31, 2013 by Archbishop Gomez who then took over the responsibilities of the Los Angeles Diocese. The archbishop also said Monsignor Thomas Curry, former vicar of the clergy who was Mahony's point man for dealing with priests accused of molestation, had stepped down from his post as head of the diocese's Santa Barbara region. No doubt he was told to do so or else. 

Monsignor Thomas Curry, cautioned the cardinal against therapy for one confessed sexual predator lest the therapist felt obliged to tell authorities and scandalize the archdiocese. The two discussed another priest, Msgr. Peter Garcia, who admitted specializing in the rape of Latino immigrant children and threatened at least one boy with deportation if he complained. Cardinal Mahony ordered that he stay out of California after his release from a New Mexico treatment center out of fear that the archdiocese might very well have some type of legal action filed in both the criminal and civil sectors. Monsignor Curry told the cardinal that there might be 20 young people able to identify the priest in first-degree felony cases.

When parents complained the Reverend Nicholas Aguilar Rivera molested in Los Angeles, church officials told the priest but the church officials waited two days to call police thereby allowing him to flee to Mexico. At least 26 children told the police they were abused by this priest during his 10 months in Los Angeles. The now-defrocked priest is believed to still be in Mexico and remains a fugitive.

The public denouncement of Mahony and Curry was highly unusual and it marked a shift from the days when members of the church hierarchy emerged largely unscathed for the roles they played in covering up clergy sex abuses of the children.  

Why was the cardinal removed from the office of archbishop (and Cardinal) of the Los Angeles diocese? He could have been permitted to carry on even though he was older than 75. To answer that question, we have to revisit the past.

Child molestation by priests has been an ongoing problem ever since the Roman Catholic was created. No one should be surprised at that revelation. However, I will deal only with that particular problem in the Los Angeles Diocese.

There were 17 parishes in that Diocese where there were five or more cases of child molestations by the priests in those parishes between 1950 and 2000. After Mahony was installed as archbishop in September 1985, there were 27 cases of alleged abuse that later came to light, and by 1992, there were eight more. Since 2001, there has been no more than one new case of alleged abuse reported per year, according to the records we have obtained.

The Cardinal, when he was Archbishop Mahony and his top adviser on child sex abuse cases, Monsignor Thomas Curry, worked with other Church officials in 1987 to send priests accused of child molestation out of the State of California to avoid prosecution. In another instance, archdiocese officials paid a secret salary to a priest exiled to the Philippines after he and six other clerics were accused of having sex with a teen and impregnating her.

Cardinal Mahony’s record on clergy sexual abuse of minors in the years before, during and after the 1980s has been widely criticized for withholding information on abusive priests from police and other civil authorities. He also engaged in tough, combative legal fights to prevent disclosure of confidential archdiocesan records in hundreds of victims’ lawsuits.

Why would he do that? There were a number of reasons but the main reason can be placed directly on the shoulders of Pope John XXIII and Pope Benedict XVI. The latter when he was Cardinal Ratzinger was the Prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. He sent a copy of a document to the bishops around the world in 2001 that stated that the Crimine Solictationies law (regarding strict secrecy in sex abuse cases) was still in effect. This document was enforced for 20 years by the then Cardinal Ratzinger before he became Pope Benedict XVII and even then as the pope, he did nothing to rescind it.    

The 69-page Latin document bearing the seal of Pope John XXIII had been previously sent to every bishop in the world in 1962. The instructions outlined a policy of ‘strictest secrecy’ in dealing with allegations of sexual abuse and the edict threatened those who spoke out about those crimes with excommunication.

The said document instructed the victims to take an oath of secrecy at the time they made their complaints to Church officials. The document ordered the bishops to pursue the cases of allegations of child molestations by priests in a most secretive manner. Pope John stated that the original document was to be diligently stored in the secret archives of the Curia (Vatican]) as being strictly confidential. Further, it was not to be published nor added to with any commentaries. This is what happens when a pope has total and absolute power.

There were no investigations into the complaints since the accusers weren't asked a single question or asked for a written statement as to how they were sexually molested by their priests.

A 1985 letter sent to an archbishop in California signed by Pope Benedict XVI when he was Archbishop Ratzinger in the Vatican cited concerns about the effect that it could have on “the good of the universal church” by removing a really bad priest in which there were many complaints filed against the priest for child molestation. The diocese wanted the priest (Stephen Kiesle) to be defrocked. It wasn't until four years later that the priest was finally defrocked. 

Now we have some idea as to why Cardinal Mahony did nothing to stop the child molestations of the priests in his Diocese other than transfer them to another parish (where some of them continued to sexually molest the children in those parishes) or he sent them to a catholic-run treatment centre which may have or may not have successfully cured the priests sent there. Cardinal Mahony received psychological reports on some priests that mentioned the possibility of many other victims, but there is no indication that he or other church leaders investigated the complaints further.

No member of the Roman Catholic hierarchy fought longer and more energetically than Cardinal Roger Mahony to conceal the decades-long scandal involving the rape and intimidation of children by rogue priests. For years, the cardinal withheld seamy church records from parents, victims and the public, brandishing endless litigation and thoughtless claims of confidentiality.

The law in California and practically everywhere else requires that all persons in authority must inform the authorities of any instances of child abuse in their jurisdiction. The Catholic Church ignored that state law and instead made one up of their own that simply was in the best interests of the Church and not of the victims.  This is a church that professes kindness and forgiveness to its parishioners and at the same time, makes a mockery of justice for its victims.

Cardinal Mahony wasn’t legally bound by Cardinal Ratzinger's edict to disobey civil law especially when the civil law is quite clear—people in authority over children must report any form of abuse of a child to the civil authorities which would include child welfare authorities and the local police. He preferred instead to protect the Church from the stigma that would raise its ugly head if the public learned that priests in his diocese were sexually molesting children in their parishes. That makes him no better than those rogue priests.

On July 16, 2007, Mahony and the Roman Catholic Church in Los Angeles apologized for abuses by priests after 508 victims reached a record-breaking settlement worth $660 million, with an average of $1.3 million for each plaintiff. The agreement settled all outstanding civil lawsuits against the Archdiocese claimed by hundreds of victims who say they were sexually abused by Roman Catholic priests could exceed $1.5 billion in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, far more than any other diocese has paid so far.

How would the diocese pay this enormous sum of money? I doubt that its parishioners would be willing to bail out the Church and certainly the government isn’t going to step into that pot of slime.

In 1991, the cardinal wrote a statement with respect to the file on Reverend Lynn Caffoe, a priest suspected of locking boys in his room, videotaping their crotches and running up a $100 phone sex bill while with a boy.  “This is all intolerable and unacceptable to me” Mahony described the abuses as a “terrible sin and a crime”, after a series of civil trials into sex abuse claims since the 1940s were to begin. I noticed that he didn’t admit that the cover-up was also a terrible sin and a crime.  

Under the cardinal’s leadership in 2007, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles quietly appropriated $115 million from its 11 cemeteries maintenance fund and used it to cover the $660-million abuse settlement with molestation victims. The church did not inform relatives of the deceased that it had taken the money, which amounted to 88% of the fund. The money was used from the fund in order to enable the archdiocese to protect the assets of its parishes, schools and essential ministries. California law prohibits private cemeteries from touching the principal of their perpetual care funds and bars them from using the interest on those funds for anything other than maintenance. Those laws, however, do not apply to cemeteries run by religious organizations. So what the diocese has done is create more victims—families of the deceased buried in the cemeteries. 

How long would a CEO of a corporation in that area of California remain as the head of the corporation if his firm, under his leadership lost that much money? A week? A day? Cardinal Mahony remained as the CEO of the Roman Catholic Church in his diocese for years. Why didn’t the chairman of the board (Pope Benedict XVII) fire him? He couldn’t because his CEO was following his instructions to the letter.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Emilie Elias ordered the diocese to turn over thousands of pages from the confidential files of priests accused of child molestation without blacking out the names of top church officials who were responsible for handling priests accused of abuse.

The archdiocese, the nation's largest, had originally planned to black out the names of members of the church hierarchy who were responsible for the priests who had molested the children in their parishes but because of the publicity, decided to provide a cover sheet for each of the priests’ files, by listing the names of top officials who handled each case. Now the public and especially loyal Catholics will know what really happened behind the closed doors of the Catholic Church and who was responsible for the cover-up of each case.

Cardinal Roger Mahony currently remains as a member of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications. He is also the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See and Congregation for Eastern Churches.

Cardinal Mahony has the gall to say that in March of this year, he will attend the conclave in the Sistine Chapel to elect a new pope. Can you imagine the huge exodus of the faithful from the Roman Catholic Church if the cardinals elect this rogue cardinal to be their next pope?  

 CORRECTION

It has been brought to my attention by Suzanne F. that I erred when I said that the order regarding the abuses against the children by the priests was to be kept secret and that it was was canon law. Also she said that the edict by Cardinal Ratzinger, (now the retiring pope) that the bishops were ordered not to report the complaints to the police. My reader is right in both matters. It was not canon law. I have changed the wording of ‘canon law’ to ‘edict’. Further, the document issued by Cardinal Ratzinger recommended that rather than reporting sexual abuse to the relevant legal authorities, the bishops should encourage the victim, witnesses and perpetrator not to talk about it. The document didn’t order the bishops not to report the offending priests to the authorities.

I appreciate my readers bringing to my attention any errors in my articles they find so that I may correct them. Thank you Suzanne.

The rule of canon law envisions that those vested with authority to apply Church law employ the law to correct injustices that plainly violate the normative principles of natural and divine law. Obviously, a directive from Cardinal Ratzinger (now retired Pope Benedict XVI) ordering bishops to make sure that the abuses against the children were kept secret was not canon law but an edict issued by him instead. The pope when he was Cardinal Ratzinger was wrong to order the bishops to keep the abuses secret since the canon law intends that injustice must be addressed and that means that if a priest sexually abuses a child, there is no reason why the authorities should not be told of the abuses.  That edict may very well have encouraged the victims and their families to not go to the authorities.

The Catholic Church’s canon law on sexual abuse of minors by priests now stipulates that the statute of limitations on accusations of sexual abuse has been extended, from 10 years after the alleged victim’s 18th birthday to 20 years. For several years, Vatican officials have been routinely granting exceptions to the 10-year statute of limitations. Exceptions to the 20-year limit will be possible, too, but the Vatican rejected a suggestion to do away with the statute of limitations altogether. The use of child pornography now falls under the category of clerical sexual abuse of minors, and offenders can be dismissed from the priesthood. This norm applies to the acquisition, possession, or distribution by a cleric of pornographic images of minors under the age of 14, for purposes of sexual gratification, by whatever means or using whatever technology. Sexual abuse of mentally disabled adults will be considered equivalent to abuse of minors.

In the most serious and clear cases of sexual abuse of minors by priests, the doctrinal congregation may proceed directly to remove a priest without going through an ecclesiastical trial. In these instances, the final decision for dismissal from the clerical role in the Church is made by the pope. The doctrinal congregation can dispense with using the formal judicial process in church law in favor of the “extrajudicial process.” In effect, this allows a bishop to remove an accused priest from his ministry without going through a formal trial. This should have been done by the Church but for many years, it was not done.