Too little, too late.

I´m glad he didn´t try to keep molester Oliver O´Grady away from the authorities in northern California, but in other cases after that, it seems he did little more than obstruct justice.

This is an update of an article by LAT Staff posted last night.

Why now? These sealed records were not sealed from the Vatican. They were only sealed from the public. Guess Pope Benedict thought it was A-OK as long as people did not know and held out for that result. Shame.

Good - but I refuse to even consider for one moment that anyone cares about sexual abuse of children when cases like the arrest of George Harasz and Doug With are ignored. These guys were given boys by the Government that they sexually abused yet they are about to get let free on a please deal.

Dittos, #1.

I´d love to see Mahoney live in a Carthusian monastery on bread and water for the rest of his life.

It´s about time.

This has been going on for years and years and maybe they all need an operation or two and they will leave kids alone. Shameful to gloss over this by anyone.

Several years ago the Los Angeles Times did a detailed investigative report on each of 30+ of these priests. Long, it ran in the print paper over a period of four days.

At that time Mahony, on behalf of the archdiocese, had hired a prominent PR firm whose specialty was damage control.

His mendacity and cynicism, his arrogance, have finally caught up with him.

Amen #6.

I´d bet you a nickle that Pope Benedict gave his "permission" to have Mahoney relieved of his public duties. Mahoney is s slug. Good riddance. It will take a long time for the church in the USA to recover and get rid of the likes of him. Arrogant cleric!

Dittos, #7. Long overdue.

An example of how one priest was mishandled. He is now serving ten years in prison.

But between the time Mahony and Curry were aware of him and plotted to cover his misdeeds and the time he came to justice, he went on to abuse a number of other children.

Here is a memo from Curry to Mahony about the problem of Baker and what to do with him. Mahony, in a handwritten note at the bottom, with exclamation mark, agrees wholeheartedly with Curry´s suggested "solution":

http://documents.latimes.com/father-michael-baker/

Re #13, that memo is dated June 22, 1987. Over 25 years ago.

It is indeed a horror what happened to children by individuals that are suppose to behave beyond any possiblity of suspicion and ill. Be all that as it may, Card. Mahoney may have a certain pomposity to him but given the 70´s and 80´s and early 90´s the prevailing thoughts were to just move these weirdo priests around and hope for the best. Of course that didn´t work and could never work. Thank God things have changed in terms of dealing with pervert priests and with justice that has to be meted out.
But let me say one thing about the ignorant comments by many on this site and particulary to #3. Benedict was NOT the Pope during the time of all of this and when Mahoney was shuffling perverts and pedophiles around. And further, idiotic comments about operations or two needed to fix things is about as appropriate and rational as what some Catholic bishops did with pedophile priests during those 70´s and 80´s. And finally, I do believe that there is value and meaning to the requirement of celibacy, and the celibacy requirement should not change because of a small, small percentage of bad, evil men.

#3, there are over 400,000 Catholic priests world-wide, and the number of religious brothers and religious sisters, is about twice that. No, these million-plus personnel files are not in Rome. They are in the hands of bishops --- and/or, in the hands of the religious superiors of orders such as Benedictines, Franciscans, etc. Its´ the bishops that have the effective (or ineffective) supervisory role here, not the Pope.

The Church has no detectives, no PI´s, no surveillance network, no civil/criminal law enforcement. All the Pope would know is what the bishop tells him, or what´s reported in the press.

Funny how people who don´t think the pope is infallible, nevertheles think he is omniscient.

Information from the archives can be instructive. From the Los Angeles Times, April 16, 2002:

Pope John Paul II on Monday summoned all eight U.S. cardinals to Rome next week for an unprecedented closed-door meeting on the burgeoning sexual-abuse scandal in the United States.

Experts were stunned by the announcement because the pope has never called cardinals on such short notice to confer on a single controversy. Only days ago, the Vatican strongly indicated that the pope intended to leave the crisis in the hands of American bishops.

Some U.S. Vatican watchers said they hoped the news meant John Paul is finally realizing the gravity of the scandal. Four weeks ago, the pope declared that guilty priests had succumbed to "the most grievous forms" of evil, but offered no suggestions on practical ways to address the problem. (Snip)

Just Saturday, Bishop Wilton D. Gregory, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, emerged from meetings in Rome to say the pope "at this point" was relying on American bishops, who have total authority of individual dioceses, to handle the crisis. Gregory said the pope expressed "fraternal solidarity" with U.S. bishops and had been "deeply touched" by the suffering and scandal. But there was no hint of a meeting.

"Obviously, someone over there has decided that maybe they check into this a little bit further," said Father Richard P. McBrien, a Catholic commentator and theology professor at the University of Notre Dame, who has been critical of how the scandal has been handled by the Vatican and U.S. bishops.

http://articles.latimes.com/2002/apr/16/news/mn-38122