CALIFORNIA
San Bernardino Sun
Posted: 02/02/2013
The horror, the sordidness of the awful abuse of children by figures of spiritual authority is not much assuaged by current Archbishop Jose Gomez relieving Cardinal Mahony of “all public duties” after mounting evidence showed he shielded pedophile priests from law enforcement.
So Mahony won’t be overseeing the Sacrament of Confirmation at Our Lady of the Angels anytime soon. But he is not only still a priest who can perform Mass – he is still one of the 120 cardinals who form the leadership of a church with more than 1.1 billion adherents worldwide, in a line going back to St. Peter.
Given what we now know about Mahony’s active efforts to protect known and suspected sexual abusers in clerical collars, this removal of him from public life is not only not enough – it’s no punishment at all.
And this crime deserves punishment. That was made clear by the heartbreaking letters that were made public last week.
Go to any one of over 100 of them posted last week at la-archdiocese.org. The very first one in this alphabetical order was written by a anonymous parishioner molested as a child at a Colorado Roman Catholic Church summer camp by the Rev. Leonard Abercrombie, who later worked in Los Angeles.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.