Roger Cardinal Mahoney? Covering up stuff like a cat in a cat box? Nah! Glad he´s finally retired. Nasty little man. Good riddance.

Put them in jail and leave them there to rot. Shame, shame, shame

Here´s the problem:

* The RC Church teaches that when a person is ordained, their soul is indelibly marked. It is very rare to defrock a priest and "remove" this mark.
* Only priests (including higher-ups like bishops, etc.) have the power to confect the Eucharist and change the bread and wine into Christ´s body and blood.
It is essential to Catholics´ salvation to partake of the Eucharist. "Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves." (John 6:53)
* To defrock a priest or remove him from church service and services, even a very bad priest, is to deprive a part of the flock of the essential means by which they can receive Christ, for the sins of the priest have no detrimental effect on the efficacy of the sacraments.
* Thus it is considered better for the eternal salvation of the members of the Church to keep employing a priest than to remove or defrock him, especially with the shortage of priests.

This warped doctrine of the priesthood and the Eucharist explains a lot about the Church´s reluctance or inability to address this problem, among others.

And to think that this whole time I thought the problem was homosexual pedophiles infiltrating the church.

1.5% of the population - 20-40% of molestations. When is this going to stop?

The catholic church has lost all moral authority due to this abuse and the coverup engineered by church higher ups. Rather than turning over the abusers to law enforcement they moved them from parish to parish allowing their "brothers" to abuse and violate more and more children. This has happened all over the world not just in the US. This church needs to be held reasonable for their deeds and not allowed to continue to sweep this and other abuses under the vatican rug!

Boy the anti-Catholics are on a roll now!! That said, I think Mahoney should retire to a Carthusian monastery and repent in sackcloth and ashes for the rest of his life. On a diet of bread and water.

He was a HUGE liberal.

#6:

One only has to read The Catechism of the Catholic Church to become anti-Catholic.

Reply #4 has it right. This is a great opportunity to bash the Catholic Church but we should all be kind to the homosexuals who also bash the church for teaching that their practices are unnatural. The church is in trouble for not for being hostile but too friendly to homosexuals.

The pedophiles in the church were merely ahead of their time. The left not only supports this practice it promotes it. How many dead Americans to instill the leftist ideology did Alinsky suggest?

#7, I read the Catechism of the Catholic Church. I am even more Catholic.

Mahoney illustrated the cult-like nature of the Church by lying smoothly and repeatedly to parents, Authorities and other Church members to allow his priests to continue to sexually abuse children. Ratzinger showed the same arrogant mindset when he was in charge of the Dead Sea scrolls translation; stuff that didn´t support Catholic dogma simply disappeared.

It is not bashing to tell the truth about something. The Catholic church has covered their dirty dealings up for a very long time. It is just that with the internet, sins are now more easily exposed. And #7 is spot on. Rewriting the 10 commandments would do it for me.

We live in Los Angeles County. No one here is bashing Catholics. It is some of the hierarchy of the church who are responsible. Read the article. Of just the intro if you are a one-grapher. The parishioners were kept in the dark. At least until major stories like the one in the Los Angeles Times began to appear.

As for these being homosexual pedophiles, there were a fair number of priests among the 30some in Los Angeles who were accused of molesting young girls. Pedophilia is not limited to those who molest boys. Read up on it.