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  The Prelate and the Politician
Mahony's Role in Immigration Issue Stirs Controversy

By Tom Kisken tkisken@VenturaCountyStar.com
Ventura County Star [Los Angeles CA]
June 4, 2006

http://www.venturacountystar.com/vcs/state/article/0,1375,VCS_122_4749842,00.html

He is a hero. He is a politician dressed as a priest.

He is defined by a lifetime of helping the least among us. He is defined by the clergy abuse scandal.

Always complex, always wide, the divide in perceptions of the most powerful religious leader in Southern California grows as Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony throws the weight of his pulpit behind a revolution aimed at creating a path toward citizenship for the nation's more than 11 million illegal immigrants.

Cardinal Roger Mahony, 70, gives a blessing at Mass for Mexico's Mother's Day at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in downtown Los Angeles. "In the Catholic tradition, responsible citizenship is a virtue; participation in the political process is a moral obligation," Mahony says.
Photo by Jason Redmond/Star staff
Photo by Jason Redmond/Star staff


"He never gives his back to people who need help," said Amanda Figueroa, holding a white rose outside the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in downtown Los Angeles. The 45-year-old caregiver crossed Tijuana's border without documents 25 years ago, leaving her 1-year-old daughter behind. They were separated for nine years, reuniting only after the 1986 amnesty made Figueroa legal.

During a May Mass dedicated to Mexico's Mother's Day, she watched Mahony preach about the need for legislation that would allow children living without their parents in Mexico to cross the border legally.

"He understands," she said.

The leader of the nation's largest archdiocese, with more than 4 million Catholics in Ventura, Los Angeles and Santa Barbara counties, Mahony said from his pulpit on Ash Wednesday that his priests would defy a House bill that could prohibit churches from helping undocumented immigrants.

He marched with 400,000 people in a May 1 protest along Wilshire Boulevard. He endorsed aspects of a Senate compromise that allows undocumented people who have been in the country for five years to apply for residency after working six more years, learning English, and paying both a fine and back taxes.

"We must remember that the real issue is about 12 million people among us who have names, faces and families and hopes and dreams, but no legal status," he said in an E-mail, labeling proposals aimed solely at toughening enforcement as "an affront to human dignity."

His dive into the nation's hottest battleground has coaxed undocumented immigrants to join marches and public protests, adding bulk to a movement that captured the nation's attention because of its massive demonstrations.

"He brought people that normally would have remained in their homes because of the fear factor," said Javier Gomez, an immigration rights activist from Oxnard. "People who are good Catholics said, ¿This is what is being said by our bishop. We must join him in this cause.'"

But to some parishioners and critics outside the Catholic church, the focus on legal residency for people who clearly broke the law has crystallized an image of a calculating leader fixated on politics and an image dented by the ongoing fallout of a clergy abuse scandal.

"I think he's deflecting attention," retired telecommunications administrator Karl Mastersteck said after a Mother's Day breakfast at St. Julie Billiart Church in Newbury Park. "I think he's grandstanding. I think his business should be faith and morals, not politics."

A cardinal with a tool belt

At 70 years of age, Roger Michael Mahony is five years away from his mandatory retirement as archbishop of Los Angeles. He stands 6-foot-4 and preaches in a gentle, rhythmic voice, addressing a teaching in English and repeating it in fluent Spanish. Away from the job, he's a handyman who wears a tool belt and putters around fixing things at the cabin he owns with another priest in the Sierra Nevada.

Several requests for a one-on-one interview with Mahony were refused, with the cardinal declining to answer questions about his leadership, clergy abuse or any issue other than immigration legislation.

Many priests, friends and associates were forthcoming, but others would talk only off the record or not at all. Monsignor Terrance Fleming, who was once Mahony's chief of staff, limited his observation to six words:

"He is a very private man."

The cardinal is known for his bond with Latinos, many of whom consider him an honorary Mexican American, and for the landmark cathedral that cost nearly $200 million to build. Critics call it the Rog Mahal.

He's gained a reputation for stepping in the middle of labor disputes involving grocery store workers, bus drivers and others. He started a gay and lesbian ministry in the archdiocese and has said the idea of married priests is worthy of debate — positions that motivate critics to label him a liberal and supporters to tag him as progressive.

The leader of the Los Angeles archdiocese for 21 years, he has spent much of the past four years dealing with the child molestation allegations brought against more than 240 priests in the area, the vast majority involving incidents before Mahony became cardinal. He built parish programs to protect children and families but received the most attention for the archdiocese's fight against court orders to release full priest personnel records. In April, U.S. Supreme Court justices said they would not consider the church's bid for an appeal regarding records for two priests, which means that the archdiocese must hand over the files to a California grand jury.

Molestation victims contend that the cardinal protected molesting priests. They call him a master at spin control whose stance on immigration is about pushing attention away from clergy abuse.

"In everything that Mahony does, he is very deliberate. Every step he takes is very measured," said Manny Vega, an Oxnard police detective who says he was molested as a boy and is suing the archdiocese. "He's playing to people who are constituents here in Southern California. He's trying to re-win those hearts back. I honestly think Roger Mahony is in this for himself."

But Mahony's connection to immigrants marks his life. He and his twin brother, Louis, learned Spanish from the Mexican workers at their father's chicken processing plant at Chandler Boulevard and Vineland Avenue in North Hollywood.

"I was there one day when we had this raid by the Border Patrol," he said in an April interview with CNN. "And these guys come flying in the doors with guns out. I had no idea what was happening, and (it) terrified all of us something awful. And I just never got that feeling or that image or that day out of my mind ever."

Friends say he has always been inspired by Bible teachings to treat strangers no differently than citizens.

"He does have a care for the underdog," said Monsignor William Leser, a Westlake Village priest who has known Mahony since high school. "Oftentimes, there has been a constant attack on anyone who sticks by the alien or the stranger because they're unknown to the local man."

As a priest candidate at St. John's Seminary in Camarillo nearly 50 years ago, he and others would hold prayer services at migrant worker camps. They'd sing Spanish songs. Because Mahony couldn't sing in tune, he'd strum a guitar.

He became a priest in Fresno and mediated negotiations between protesting farmworkers and grape growers, developing a relationship with César Chávez that lasted a lifetime. In the 1970s, he chaired a state Agricultural Labor Relations Board that worked to resolve disputes between workers and farmers so fiery the then-bishop received at least one death threat.

In Los Angeles, Mahony campaigned against Proposition 187, which blocked undocumented immigrants from social services. It was approved by voters but then rejected by the courts.

He scolded lawmakers for changing their minds on legislation that would have allowed undocumented people to get driver's licenses.

"He sees the people among us are very real," said Monsignor Peter Nugent, a lifelong friend from Chatsworth. "They have faces. They have to be ministered to. They are Catholics. They live among us. Those are our borders."

Religion versus politics

At least 2.5 million illegal immigrants live in California, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. There's no way to know how many of them are Catholic, but as many as 40 percent of parishioners in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles are Latino.

That population explains Mahony's leadership role in the immigration debate, contends John Crossley, former director of the USC School of Religion.

"He's archbishop of the largest Latino population anywhere in the world outside of Latin America," Crossley said. "He's got a tremendous stake in keeping the immigrants happy and in being their pastor."

The cardinal isn't alone.

Other leaders of the Catholic church and other faiths have spoken out against proposals for tougher immigration laws. But Mahony was the one who said his priests would defy the House bill. He used a religious holiday, Ash Wednesday, to take his stance.

More than two months later, he's just as involved in the debate and part of a movement that includes Spanish-language disc jockeys, Hispanic educators and union leaders all saying the same thing: Get involved.

That the message is reaching legal and illegal immigrants is evidenced by one of Mahony's opponents, Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. On Ash Wednesday, he trudged to the courtyard outside of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels — just for access to the crowd of reporters covering the cardinal's homily.

"Anytime the leader of the largest archdiocese weighs in on something, it carries weight," Mehlman said. "It gives the imprimatur of moral authority."

But the ongoing immigration war isn't about faith and morality, Mehlman said; rather, it revolves around enforcing the law and penalizing lawbreakers. It isn't difficult to find people at Ventura County parishes who agree with him and complain bitterly that their cardinal is using religion as a tool.

Not all will use their names like the husband and wife at a daily Mass in Ventura who say the cardinal is using politics to promote himself. Or the Camarillo resident who blasted the cardinal's immigration stance after a Sunday service, then pleaded the next day for his name not to be used because his wife was worried about a backlash.

Rosita Maria Arreola Bond of Newbury Park isn't sure that amnesty is worthy of pulpit sermons. Her grandfather came from Mexico legally in the early 1900s. Bond sent $100 to the Minutemen because she doesn't like the idea of people breaking the law to become residents.

"Whatever happened to the Catholic church staying out of politics?" she asked.

Other parishioners describe Mahony like a member of the family.

"He baptized me," said Steve Torres, a 42-year-old water treatment superintendent from Camarillo, noting that his own take on immigration is influenced by the cardinal's leadership. "He's like an example of what we should be."

Cloud of clergy abuse

Mahony said in his E-mail that speaking out on issues like immigration revolves around faith and morality, not politics.

"Our nation is enriched, not threatened, when religious groups join public debate," he said. "A Catholic moral framework is often not politically correct. It does not fit ideologies of right or left. ¿ In the Catholic tradition, responsible citizenship is a virtue; participation in the political process is a moral obligation."

Friends say the cardinal can seem guarded because he has to be as a leader whose every word and action is scrutinized. Others say the problem is in trying to use one issue as a way to understand a man defined by his complexity.

But many look at the cardinal and see only clergy abuse.

Vega is one of several former altar boys at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Oxnard who say they were molested by the Rev. Fidencio Silva in the 1970s and '80s, before Mahony became archbishop. He met the cardinal three years ago during a personal protest vigil in which he camped out in front of the cathedral on Palm Sunday and stayed there until Easter.

Vega slept on the sidewalk and, every morning after Mass, the cardinal would stop to see how he was doing. He even gave the protester a rosary from Pope John Paul II. Vega later returned the gift.

He sees Mahony as a measured man who saw the rosary as a way of gaining forgiveness, just as he sees the immigration policy as a proving ground that the church is about social justice.

"If Roger Mahony had said ¿Here's the files,'" Vega said, referring to the priest personnel records, "and then said, ¿I support immigration,' I think he would have more credibility."

Vega suggested that the cardinal sees immigration as a way to win back support. His own lawyer, Ray Boucher, disagrees.

"I think opinions of Mahony are so strongly felt by so many people that they're going to filter this through whatever prism they have," said Boucher, one of the negotiators in settlement talks between molestation victims and the archdiocese. "What he failed to do on the clergy setting, he can't erase with the immigrant issue, and I don't think he's trying to. He disconnects the two of them."

The church-state divide grabs Rep. Elton Gallegly, a Simi Valley Republican who has long fought for tougher laws on illegal immigration. When the cardinal suggests that his priests might defy the law and advocates legality for aliens who have broken the law, he crosses that divide, Gallegy said.

"I have great respect for the Catholic church and most of the people who are leaders in the church," he said, then focusing on Mahony's stance on immigration: "My opinion is that it goes beyond what is appropriate."

Other observers argue that Mahony's faith is exactly why he has to be part of the debate.

"Faith has to talk to the reality of the culture," said Tom Roberts, editor of the National Catholic Reporter. "If what we do in church on Sunday stays inside those walls and doesn't extend to anything else, what's the point of it?"

 
 

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