UNITED STATES
Boston Globe
By Joan Vennochi
Globe Columnist
February 17, 2013
THE CATHOLIC Church can’t get to a bright, new future until it finally breaks with the ugliness of the past.
One way to make such a break would be to keep Cardinal Roger Mahony from participating in the next election to determine a new pope.
If past is prologue, as Shakespeare wrote, keeping Mahony away from the upcoming conclave seems unlikely. Church leaders, from the pope down, never understood the depth of outrage over the long-running clergy sexual abuse scandal. Apology, not accountability, was supposed to quiet the rebellious.
But the scenario involving Mahony — the retired archbishop of Los Angeles — has its own distinction. Two weeks ago, Mahony was relieved of all public duties by current Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez. What The New York Times called “an extraordinary moment in Catholic Church history” occurred after long-sought documents revealed that Mahony actively worked to protect priests who were abusing children from police, rather than protect victims from their abusers.
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