Rod Dreher on former LA Archbishop Roger Cardinal Mahoney's lame defense of his actions in the sex abuse scandal:
Shorter Roger Mahony:
1) Nobody told me how to deal with this;
2) I listened to the experts, who misled me;
3) other bishops did it too;
4) I established Procedures! And Offices! What more do you people want from me?
You could richly fertilize your garden with this stuff. You want to know about abuse under Roger the Dodger’s reign in L.A.? Start here, and here you can find more. Mahony is one of the worst of the worst — and he got away with it. With particular reference to the recent file release, nothing — absolutely nothing — in Mahony’s self-serving blog post addresses, much less justifies, what we now know: that he and Msgr Curry knowingly and deliberately helped child-raping priests evade law enforcement.
This is not a matter of being clueless about how to deal with molester priests. This is not a matter of following bad advice from psychiatrists and other bishops. This is not a matter of bureaucratic procedures failing. This is a matter of Cardinal Mahony knowing that his priests committed sex crimes against children, and his helping them escape the police.
The newly released documentary evidence is horrifying and damning. But I believe in innocent until proven guilty. So I very much want Cardinal Mahoney to have to face both state and church justice. If he is thereupon found guilty of the offenses charged, as I firmly believe he will be, the Church should laicize (defrock) him and the state should send him to jail. He is a stain on our faith and has brought just opprobrium on Christ's Church.
