LOS ANGELES (CA)
National Catholic Reporter
by Michael Sean Winters | Feb. 1, 2013
“I find these files to be brutal and painful reading,” wrote Archbishop Jose Gomez in a letter to the clergy and faithful of Los Angeles that was released last night. “The behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil. There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children. The priests involved had the duty to be their spiritual fathers and they failed.”
“If in hindsight we also discover that mistakes may have been made as regards prompt removal of priests and assistance to victims, I am deeply sorry,” wrote Cardinal Edward Egan in a letter to the clergy and faith of the Archdiocese of New York in the spring of 2002. You will note how far the pronoun “I” is from the word “mistakes” and how the use of the passive voice adds further distance from the horror.
Archbishop Gomez’s voice is the voice of moral authority. Cardinal Egan’s voice was the voice of moral complicity, the voice of the dodger. Gomez did more than speak. He informed Cardinal Roger Mahony that he was relieved of all administrative and public duties within the archdiocese and he removed auxiliary bishop Thomas Curry as episcopal vicar for Santa Barbara.
The news from Los Angeles is stunning. After years of prevarications, years of excuses, years of enormous expenditures on lawyers trying to cover-up the cover-up, Archbishop Gomez has broken the omerta that has surrounded the hierarchy since the sex abuse scandal broke. He has told a cardinal, a Prince of the Church, that he is relieved of all his administrative and public duties. He has told one of his auxiliary bishops to step down. They did not abuse any children personally, as was the case of Cardinal Groer in Vienna. Their removal from public duties within the Church is a consequence of their failure as administrators and leaders, a failure that has been sadly but conclusively documented for all the world to see. Finally, after so much sulfur clogging the nostrils of the Church, we have a whiff of accountability.
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