Cardinal Mahony of Los Angeles is a contemptible, lying weaseldick who for decades lied about and covered up for pedophile priests, deliberately and repeatedly slimed the victims, withheld documents in contempt of the law, and more. He is a scummy politician who wouldn’t know what the Word of God was if he tripped over it.
I lived in Los Angeles for years and watched his sleazy, nasty, vindictive cover-ups, made all the worse by his phony pretense of piety. The Catholic Church, way too late and way too leniently, has finally slapped him down.
Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez on Thursday announced dramatic actions in response to the priest abuse scandal, saying that Cardinal Roger Mahony would be stripped of public duties in the church and that Santa Barbara Bishop Thomas J. Curry has stepped down.
Gomez said in a statement that Mahony — who led the L.A. archdiocese from 1985 to 2011 — “will no longer have any administrative or public duties.
Columnist Steve Lopez at the LA Times gets it right (written last week, before this news hit.)
Mahony continues to suggest that not enough was known about pedophilia in the mid-1980s to guide him toward the protection of victims. And not until 2006, when he began meeting with victims, did he have a “fuller awareness” of the devastating effect the abuse and cover-up had on those victims.
That’s an insult to all the victims and to any sense of decency.
Children were raped. Priests were shuttled, covered for, reassigned, and they abused again.
And Mahoney kept lying about it and covering it up. He belongs in prison.