Bertone Out

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Pope Francis is continuing to remake the Church in his image, replacing the divisive Tarcisio Bertone with more of a people person who reportedly shares his preference for frugality.

Pope Francis on Saturday appointed a senior Vatican diplomat as his new Secretary of State, ousting divisive cardinal Tarcisio Bertone as he looks to overhaul the Church's scandal-ridden administration.

His replacement for the "number two" position at the Vatican, Italian cleric Pietro Parolin, is currently the Catholic Church's envoy to Venezuela and has worked on improving ties with communist China.

"The Holy Father has accepted... the resignation of His Eminence Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone," the Vatican said in a widely-expected announcement, adding that the changeover would formally take place on October 15.

There have been rumblings about Bertone for a while. He's been badly tainted by the sheer volume of scandal that has consumed the Vatican.

One of the most damaging scandals to hit the Vatican under Bertone was "Vatileaks", when Benedict's butler stole documents alleging corruption from the pope's desk and leaked them to the media.

That coincided with tumult at the Vatican bank, which Italian magistrates are investigating on suspicion of money laundering.

The former president of the bank, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, was close to Bertone. The board of the bank, officially known as the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), ousted Gotti Tedeschi last year, saying he was incompetent. He says he was pushed out because he wanted the bank to be more transparent.

Fairly, or unfairly, Bertone has been widely blamed for the failings of Pope Benedict's reign. It doesn't help that he has a penchant for saying and doing really idiotic things. Let us reflect on some of Bertone's greatest hits as they've been recorded on this blog.

Letting prolific pedophiles like Wisconsin's Lawrence Murphy off the hook:

In 1996, Cardinal Ratzinger failed to respond to two letters about the case from Rembert G. Weakland, Milwaukee’s archbishop at the time. After eight months, the second in command at the doctrinal office, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, now the Vatican’s secretary of state, instructed the Wisconsin bishops to begin a secret canonical trial that could lead to Father Murphy’s dismissal.

But Cardinal Bertone halted the process after Father Murphy personally wrote to Cardinal Ratzinger protesting that he should not be put on trial because he had already repented and was in poor health and that the case was beyond the church’s own statute of limitations.

Blaming the Church's pedophilia problem on gay priests.

The Vatican's second-highest authority says the sex scandals haunting the Roman Catholic Church are linked to homosexuality and not celibacy among priests.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican's secretary of state, made the comments during a news conference Monday in Chile, where one of the church's highest-profile pedophile cases involves a priest having sex with young girls.

"Many psychologists and psychiatrists have demonstrated that there is no relation between celibacy and pedophilia. But many others have demonstrated, I have been told recently, that there is a relation between homosexuality and pedophilia. That is true," said Bertone. "That is the problem."

Blaming Dan Brown, the media, and, of course, the devil, for the Church's problems:

The Vatican's No. 2 official on Monday blamed the media – and the devil – for fueling the scandal over leaked Vatican documents.

Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone told an Italian Catholic weekly that journalists reporting on the leaks scandal are "pretending to be Dan Brown ... inventing stories and replaying legends." The reference to Brown is particularly acute; Brown wrote "The Da Vinci Code" and "Angels and Demons" the best-selling fictional accounts of power struggles and scandals inside the Catholic Church.

. . .

"The truth is that there's a will to create division that comes from the devil," he said. The interview is due on newsstands Thursday but was made available to journalists Monday.

As much I love unintentional humor, I wouldn't mind seeing the last of Cardinal Bertone.

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Cardinal Very Sorry for Everyone Else's Mistakes

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Cardinal George Pell is "fully apologetic" for sex abuse in the Australian Catholic Church, but he's not responsible for any of it. Testifying in the Victorian Government Inquiry, Pell came clean on many of the offenses committed by clergy and even members of the hierarchy. He was unusually plainspoken, but he put a lot of distance between himself and any of the offenses committed.

Pell admitted, for instance, that abusive priests were shuffled around from parish to parish and that it enabled them to prey on new victims.

He admitted moving paedophile priests around parishes allowed more children to become victims and in some cases the church's actions allowed abuse to happen.

Cardinal Pell said he did not personally cover up any offending.

He admitted that false documents were created and that it was all part of a cover-up to protect the reputation of the Church.

Fear of scandal prompted the cover-up of child sex abuse allegations within the Catholic Church, Australia's top-ranking Cardinal George Pell admitted Monday.

. . .

"The primary motivation would have been to respect the reputation of the church," he told the inquiry into the abuse of children by religious and non-government bodies.

"There was a fear of scandal."

He even suggested that priestly celibacy "might have been a factor in some cases."

This would probably be the most full-throated mea culpa delivered by a high ranking Church official yet, if it were delivered by someone who actually took some personal responsibility. But Pell appears to be fully insulated from scandal and also took care to insulate much of the hierarchy, who he is sure were as much in the dark as he was. That's how carefully hidden these crimes were, according to Pell. Why? Church officials don't engage in gossip.

''If we'd been gossips, which we weren't ... we would have realised earlier just how widespread this business was,'' Cardinal Pell said.

If only they weren't all so moral, countless children might have avoided being molested.

Questioned about his own apparent support for a prolific abuser, Cardinal Pell again demurred.

In May 1993, Cardinal Pell accompanied Ridsdale to court in Melbourne, where he pleaded guilty to 30 charges of indecent assault, involving nine boys aged between 12 and 16. It was the first of three court appearances where Ridsdale faced a string of sexual abuse charges, many of them committed in south-west Victoria.

After being heavily criticised for supporting the former priest instead of his victims, Cardinal Pell said at the time Ridsdale “had made terrible mistakes”.

Inquiry chairwoman Georgie Crozier asked Cardinal Pell why he referred to Ridsdale’s crimes as “mistakes”. Cardinal Pell said the comment was “just a suggestion on my lips”.

“This was 20 years ago. I knew there was a very significant number of offences, I didn’t know the details of those offences. I knew that Ridsdale was pleading guilty. His lawyer asked me to appear in court before him.”

He didn't know the extent, he was asked by the lawyer, and calling the molestation of children a "mistake" was just an offhand comment. It's kind of amazing how blameless a man in the thick of an abuse scandal can be.

Pell is part of an eight member panel, handpicked to advise Pope Francis on making the Vatican more transparent. If he delivers on his promise to provide the commission with all the relevant documents and files, it might go a way to demonstrating a less secretive Vatican.

He said he has received assurance from an official in the Vatican that all documents and files relating to child abuse in Australia would be made available to the Royal Commission.

What Pell remains less than forthcoming about is the Church's willingness to pay for its mistakes. He doesn't see the need for a cap of $75,000 to be lifted and says Australia won't see the million dollar payouts that have bankrupted American dioceses. He doesn't see it as a "moral obligation" and insists that it's not what a lot of victims are really interested in. Some of those victims might just disagree. A suggestion that Vatican property could be liquidated to compensate victims was dismissed.

The cost of the Rome property could have been enough to provide $75,000 - the cap the church places on compensation - to 400 victims, she said.

Cardinal Pell said the Rome property was a hostel and an investment.

"We don't need to sell our investments to pay our damages," he said.

He was asked by Ms Coote where the morality was in paying victims of clerical sex abuse a "mere $75,000" when he had the opportunity to stay at a $30 million residence in Rome and the Catholic Church in Australia has millions of dollars in assets.

Cardinal Pell's tetchiness about substantial restitution to people whose innocence has been stolen and who, in many cases, have suffered ruinous emotional damage is telling. But even more disturbing is the reminder of just how finite the Church's resources are. Selling off the Vatican property would barely make a dent. Just how the Church can actually make this right is an open question.

Victims and victim advocates who heard Cardinal Pell's testimony were less than impressed.

Cardinal Pell's explanations did little to comfort child sex abuse victim and former deputy Mayor of Campbelltown John Hennessey.

Calling on Cardinal Pell to stand down until the inquiry was over, the Ingleburn man said he was sexually abused on three separate occasions and raped once by the same priest during his time at a WA orphanage in 1960s.

"There was not a tear in his eyes while he was talking about the abused children and people who committed suicide,'' he said of Cardinal Pell.

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The Buck Stops Where?

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Archbishop John J. Myers of Newark, NJ, has penned a letter about yet another resignation tied to the Fugee scandal, previously discussed here and here. Sadly, it's still not his own.

The seriousness of the situation with Father Fugee required a thoughtful and effective response. Appointing a new vicar general will be just one step in a comprehensive plan to review and, where necessary, strengthen our internal protocols and ensure we are doing everything we can to safeguard the children of our community.

So, effective immediately, the vicar general, Monsignor John E. Doran, has resigned his post and will no longer hold a leadership position with the archdiocese. As a result of operational failures, both Monsignor Doran and I felt that the archdiocese would be best served by his stepping down as vicar general. This action clears the way for making more effective changes in our monitoring function. I am transferring that function to the Office of the Judicial Vicar of the Archdiocese.

What follows is a lot of we're not perfect and we want to do better. Our "very strict protocols" just weren't followed... in this case... for some reason. All of which ignores one very important point. It's not just that Fugee violated the memorandum of understanding that barred him from contact with minors. Under the rules of the Dallas Charter, he shouldn't have been in active ministry at all. But it was Myers and his spokesman Jim Goodness who repeatedly misrepresented the facts of the case.

In a Feb. 7 letter to his diocesan priests, made public by the Star-Ledger in April,  Myers defended the archdiocese’s implementation of the charter, after local media reported in February that Fugee had been appointed co-director of the Office of Continuing Education and Ongoing Formation of Priests.

“These claims are baseless,” the archbishop said in reference to the criticism that the appointment indicated a lax application of the Dallas Charter.

. . .

In the May 26 letter to parishioners, Myers refrains from commenting on Fugee himself beyond referring to the “seriousness of the situation with Father Fugee.” He offered a stronger defense of the priest three months earlier in the letter to his priests, describing Fugee’s case status as both “acquittal and dismissal of charges.”

That description was not accurate, a spokeswoman for the Bergen County Prosecutor’s office told NCR in early May.

“He [Fugee] wasn’t acquitted. ... The decision had been appealed, and it was reversed,” Maureen Parenta said. “They called for a retrial, so rather than going through another trial, our office had proposed the memo of understanding and that’s how this was resolved.”

That's a lot of apologia and rewriting of history for one little archbishop. I'm really starting to think some of these bishops are allergic to taking responsibility for anything. You'd think that giant mitre would rest a little heavier on the head.

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Frogmarching Father Fugee

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Father Michael Fugee, previously discussed here, has been arrested. The priest, who confessed to molesting an adolescent boy on multiple occasions, has been operating in violation of legal agreement not to participate in any kind of youth ministry.

Jim Goodness, Newark director of communications, said the prosecutor’s office had been in contact with the archdiocese and cooperating with the investigation, which re-opened in late April after news reports revealed Fugee had been seen ministering to children on youth retreats and trips and had heard their confessions.

. . .

Though the archdiocese has stated in press releases Fugee was under continual supervision in his assignment, Goodness would not discuss how he was supervised or who was responsible for overseeing it. Instead, he referred to it as a personnel matter and part of ongoing conversations with the prosecutor’s office.

Not only was the Newark archdiocese not ensuring Fugee's compliance with the memorandum, there have been several instances in which they've denied his guilt and insisted that he was exonerated, which he was not.

Goodness defended their recommendation that Fugee could return to ministry under the conditions outlined by the memorandum, saying that they “looked at the matter completely,” including a review of court documents as well as its own interviews and other confidential information. He also referred multiple times to an apparent in-trial recantation by Fugee of his earlier confession, and suggested that “in a retrial, it is very likely that that original statement would not have been upheld.”

Like other statements they've made, they appear to be giving lip service to this legally binding agreement, and then ignoring it based on their own interpretation of the legal case against Fugee. Their internal review process lacks transparency and their public statements are contradictory. They can think what they like about Fugee's chances had the case gone back to court, but they can't just ignore the agreement that settled the matter. The end result is what matters and the end result is that Fugee violated the agreement, dragged other dioceses, apparently unknowingly, into that violation which forced several resignations in addition to his own.

The Archdiocese of Newark, though, has not only ignored the law, they may also have run afoul of Dallas Charter, which has even stricter rules regarding sex offenders than the NJ courts could impose on the Church.

“The charter says any priest, any cleric who has admitted or been convicted or found to have committed the offense … should have been removed from active ministry as soon as the charter was effective,” said Michael Merz, a federal judge in southern Ohio and chair of the national board from 2007-2009.

So the question still, for me, is who will hold the bishops accountable? Fugee should not have been working as a priest in any capacity, with or without access to children. And yet, the archdiocese put him in a high post overseeing education.

One group that wants to see Archbishop Myers called to account is a new group of Catholic Whistleblowers. This group of 12 Church insiders -- priests and nuns -- have taken it upon themselves to press for enforcement from within. Three are canon lawyers who have worked abuse cases and four are sex abuse survivors.

Several of the whistle-blowers have been vocal about that priest, the Rev. Michael Fugee. Along with some New Jersey politicians, they have called for the resignation of the archbishop of Newark, John J. Myers. They fault Archbishop Myers not only for failing to restrict Father Fugee, but also for appointing him to help direct the education of priests in the archdiocese. 

They also question the optimistic findings of the audits mandated by the Dallas Charter, like this one. Such audits, they say, rely on self-reporting and don't adequately represent ongoing problems in dioceses across America.

The Catholic Church in the United States put in place a zero-tolerance policy and a host of prevention programs after the abuse scandal peaked in 2002. Each year the bishops commission an audit of abuse cases, and this year’s survey, released May 9, found the fewest allegations and victims since the audits began in 2004.

. . .

The Newark case, as well as the release of personnel records on priests by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and convictions of church officials in Philadelphia and Kansas City, convinced the whistle-blowers’ group that they have work to do despite the optimistic picture in the bishops’ audits. They do not consider the bishops’ audits credible because they are based on self-reporting.

One hopes that someone can get bishops like Archbishop Myers to take this problem more seriously. Until then, we'll have to be satisfied with the fresh prosecution of Father Fugee.

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Who Will Hold the Bishops Accountable?

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

It turns out that the disgraced Cardinal Roger Mahony, who actively conspired to protect abusive priests from prosecution and then spent untold millions in an attempt to conceal that fact, also tried to scuttle the John Jay report.

Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony, in a strongly worded letter to then-Bishop Wilton Gregory, at the time president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, complained at length about the forms that John Jay researchers produced. He described them as "designed by people who apparently have no understanding of the Roman Catholic Church, ecclesiastical culture, hierarchical structure, or the language of the Roman Catholic Church."

The previously unpublished letters that circulated among Mahony, Gregory, former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating, Justice Anne Burke and others provide a behind-the-scenes view of some of the tensions in the air the year after the U.S. bishops formulated their Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People during their June 2002 meeting in Dallas. Public outrage had forced the bishops to take a dramatic step to deal with the scandal of sexual abuse of children by priests and the cover-up of the abuse by scores of bishops across the United States.

The underlying reason, rather unsurprisingly, turns out to be concern that the data collected might be subject to legal discovery.

Mahony also expressed fear that the information being collected by John Jay researchers, though it went through an elaborate system to disguise the dioceses and keep accused perpetrators and victims anonymous, would be both leaked and subject to legal discovery.

Mahony gathered the unanimous support of the bishops in the California Catholic Conference, but was ultimately smacked down by Bishop Wilton Gregory of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Mahony's concerns were unwarranted. The John Jay study was a whitewash that blamed '60s counterculture for somehow causing priests to molest children. Far from being "designed to create a further media 'feeding frenzy,'" as Mahony feared, it repeatedly rebutted unspecified media reports for calling the priests pedophiles. It did so by misrepresenting sources and torturing statistics. The study was roundly criticized for taking the bishops' money and data and presenting a study that was "garbage in, garbage out," which was really one of the kinder things you could say about scholarship so terrible.

It's entirely possible that Bishop Gregory and the bishops he represented wanted to obtain an impartial review, yet somehow, they ended up with what was transparently advocacy research. And Bishop Mahony is not the only cleric to balk at research that looked like it might be a little too independent. A criminologist was fired by the German bishops who'd retained him so they could look for a new "partner" -- one who didn't have so many notions about reaching conclusions not sanctioned by the Church.

So just who will hold Church officials to account? Cardinal Mahony, after being relieved of his duties in the Los Angeles Diocese, hopped a plane to Rome to help elect a new pope. Many Catholics were outraged but the Vatican showed little concern over the impropriety.

Even the criminal justice system is showing, at best, mixed results. The landmark prosecution of Msgr. William Lynn in Philadelphia appears to be falling apart. Key witness, Billy Doe, has proved to be unreliable and apparently gave contradictory testimony. The priest convicted of molesting him may have given a false confession. The conviction is very vulnerable to appeal. This is despite the fact that it is inarguable that the diocese had a lenghty, documented record of protecting abusers. But the clearly prosecutable crime for which one of the key actors was convicted may never have occurred.

Two Philadelphia cardinals in succession, John Krol (head of the archdiocese from 1961 to 1988) and Anthony Bevilacqua (1988-2003), for decades knowingly protected priests who had sexually abused children, sometimes savagely, hiding their actions from civil authorities and from the Catholic community they were supposed to serve.

We are certain of those assertions because a grand jury in Philadelphia managed to subpoena thousands of pages of documentation and to accumulate hundreds of hours of testimony before issuing, in 2005, a stunning report detailing years of sexual abuse of children by priests and cover-up of the abuse by cardinal archbishops.

. . .

The Philadelphia archdiocese was one of the worst examples of high clericalism in the United States and of what the clerical/hierarchical culture could breed in its single-minded determination to hide the crimes of sex abuse and protect itself. In the end, it did neither.

Like many others, we felt that a bit of justice had been done when a jury reached a guilty verdict in the case of Lynn and the court sentenced him to jail. Certainly, the other overseers of the cover-up -- the cardinals and other officials -- escaped prosecution, but Lynn stood as an example to others that determined prosecutors could find ways to reach into the hierarchical ranks and force accountability even as church authorities refused to do so.

Meanwhile, in New Jersey, a smoldering fire exploded last week when it was discovered that a known child molester has been assisting with youth events. The Archdiocese of Newark had already raised the ire of lay Catholics and victim's groups when it appointed Rev. Michael Fugee as co-director of the Office of Continuing Education and Ongoing Formation of Priests.

Fugee was convicted in 2003 for two separate incidents of groping a 14 year old boy. The conviction was overturned on appeal due to improper instructions that allowed jurors to consider his confession of homosexual feelings. Prosecutors and Fugee reached a deal at that time to avoid retrial with a binding agreement that would keep him away from anyone under the age of 18. Many felt that a known child abuser did not belong in a high profile position, let alone one that put him in charge of education. But further reporting turned up greater offenses that have led to massive fall-out and multiple resignations over the past week.

[Fugee] has attended weekend youth retreats in Marlboro and on the shores of Lake Hopatcong in Mount Arlington, parishioners say. Fugee also has traveled with members of the St. Mary’s youth group on an annual pilgrimage to Canada. At all three locations, he has heard confessions from minors behind closed doors.

What’s more, he has done so with the approval of New Jersey’s highest-ranking Catholic official, Newark Archbishop John J. Myers.

In response to the furor, Fugee resigned from active ministry and given up his post at the Office of Continuing Education. Further resignations were submitted by Pastor Thomas Triggs and two lay ministers, Amy and Mike Lenehan, have also resigned from St. Mary's in Colts Neck, NJ, Diocese of Trenton. All three claim they were in the dark as to the restrictions Fugee was supposed to operating under. The Lenehans were personal friends of Fugee.

It seems likely that Fugee was misleading people about the scope of his legal history and the binding agreement that was supposed to keep him away from underage youth. And it looks like the Bergen County prosecutor will be investigating the violation. But what about the Church officials that should have been monitoring Fugee? They're taking no responsibility. And they can't get their story straight.

“The person who caused all this upset is Archbishop Myers, and he’s still in office,” Bambrick said. “It seems like the archbishop needs to take responsibility for his own actions, as everyone else has in this crisis.”

Myers has declined to directly comment on the issue. His spokesman, James Goodness, initially defended Fugee’s interactions with children, saying they did not violate the memorandum of understanding Fugee signed with prosecutors because the priest was always under the supervision of other clergymen or lay ministers.

Goodness later took a different stance, acknowledging that Fugee violated the court-sanctioned agreement and saying the priest had acted without the knowledge of the archdiocese. Fugee concurred with those statements in his letter seeking leave, stating it was “my fault alone.”

They have also, more than once, insisted that Fugee was acquitted, which is patently false. He was convicted. It was overturned on a technicality and without prejudice. Prosecutors reached this deal to avoid the costs of a new trial. Yet Myers's spokesperson further insists that the Church hierarchy is in agreement that Fugee was cleared and there was no sexual abuse.

Goodness reiterated the acquittal stance in an April 29 email response to Fr. Jim Connell of the Milwaukee archdiocese, a canon lawyer and abuse victims’ advocate. A day after reading The Star-Ledger report, Connell wrote to Archbishop Gerhard Müller, prefect for the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, seeking clarity in the matter.

The email, also sent to Myers, Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki, the U.S. bishops’ conference, and several media outlets, posed three questions: Did the memorandum and Fugee’s confession warrant enough evidence for the congregation to review the case? Did Myers report the case to them, as well as all pertinent documents, including the memorandum and Fugee’s 2001 deposition that included his confession to the abuse? And, if not, will Myers face a church penal process?

Responding on behalf of Myers, Goodness said the archbishop, after an investigation by the Archdiocesan Review Board, sent all information to the congregation, including all court documents and interviews and other materials gathered by the review board.

“The Congregation subsequently, after a complete review of the materials, concurred that there was no sexual abuse and that Fr. Fugee could return to ministry,” Goodness said in his reply to Connell.

It calls into question the effectiveness of the criminal justice system in curtailing clerical offenders, if Church officials are just going to dismiss legal findings and agreements designed to prevent sex offenders from re-offending.

For decades bishops actively protected sex offenders from prosecution and the Vatican apparently supported that stance. We've made great strides, at least in this country, in requiring bishops to comply with reporting laws. But if bishops, archbishops, cardinals, and other officials, face no serious consequences for these abject failures of leadership, can we really trust the process? It looks none to promising. If Myers is penalized, maybe I'll feel differently, but I'm not holding my breath.

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The Beautiful Church is Empty

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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Religion is on the decline, and "nones" are on the rise. People with no religious affiliation, here in the United States is now at 20 percent -- double what it was two decades ago.

Even as the election of a new Pope in Rome dominated the day's news, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and Duke University reported that Americans are increasingly "parting ways" with religion.

In 2012, one in five people surveyed claimed no religious preference -- that's double the number who said that as recently as 1990. And religious affiliation in the United States is at its lowest point since researchers began tracking it in the 1930s.

Not religious is not the same as atheist, however. Atheists are currently at 3 percent, according to the survey data. People are abandoning organized religion, not spiritual belief. As discussed, the number of those who define as spiritual but not religious is on the rise.

People are separating from religious institutions for a range of reasons, from their misalignment with changing social values, to hypocrisy about their own.

Jerome Baggett, a professor at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, said changes on three levels -- individual, institutional, and societal -- have contributed to declining American membership in organized religion.

. . .

Religious institutions themselves have lost their legitimacy in the eyes of many Americans due to sexual and financial scandals, or political overreaching "by the so-called Christian right," said Baggett. "Americans have a wariness to institutions in general, but a particular wariness to religious institutions," he said.

In other words, there are people who probably would be religious but have become disaffected. I know a lot of those.

I know, for example, a lot people who loved the Catholic Church but have lost patience with its intolerance for homosexuality, birth control, premarital sex, and other matters of personal morality -- even as it thoroughly bungles the problem of sexual abusive priests in its employ. It's a deeper irony than many people can stand to see in their religious leaders.

So I found this commentary from Bill Donohue's Catholic League particularly risible. Faced with polling that showed more than half of Catholics, 54 percent, now support gay marriage, Donohue pulled a Dick Morris and  attempted to unskew the poll. As per Donohue, Quinnipiac's mistake was in counting Catholics who don't go to church every Sunday.

This takes on added significance when we consider that 4 in 10 of the Catholics sampled do not practice their religion (28 percent go to church “a few times a year” and 11 percent say they “never” attend). That these nominal Catholics are precisely the biggest fans of gay marriage is a sure bet, though the poll fails to disclose the results.

The Quinnipiac Polling Institute has some explaining to do.

The weak impression of Ricky Ricardo aside, Donohue is articulating something very important about the Catholic mindset, which increasingly has more to do with purity tests from the hierarchy and a less to do -- okay, nothing to do -- with responding to the people who make up the Church. Who knows how many of these "nominal Catholics" could be brought back into the fold, if they felt like the Church wasn't totally out of step with the modern world.

As per Donohue, under journalistic scrutiny, Quinnipiac fessed up. If you only count those real Catholics, the numbers are about reversed.

After our news release was distributed, reporters from CNSNews.com contacted Quinnipiac. What they admitted totally alters the outcome: 55 percent of Catholics who are regular church-goers are opposed to gay marriage, and only 38 percent favor it. This is important because Quinnipiac’s Peter A. Brown was cited all over for claiming that “Catholic voters are leading American voters toward support for same-sex marriage.” Nonsense.

What I find kind of funny about all that is that 38 percent is still a pretty healthy chunk of the regular church-goers Donohue thinks of as legitimate. Anyone paying attention to the overall trend might be very concerned about the growing disconnect between the Church and even its most ardent followers. But people like Donohue, and it would appear the Catholic hierarchy, seem to be digging their heels in. As a simple matter of organizational theory, this seems short-sighted.

In the 1950s, a lot of companies had the same organizational structure as the Catholic church. You reported up the hierarchy, and you did what the leaders told you to do. And then, in 1961, a surprising study discovered that innovative companies were just the opposite:

They are adapted to unstable conditions....Interaction runs laterally as much as vertically. Communication between people of different ranks tends to resemble lateral consultation, rather than vertical command.

. . .

Maybe the Catholic church doesn't need to be innovative. After all, if you're following the word of God, if you have knowledge of the absolute truth, then perhaps you'd never need to change. And that's often the sort of statement that comes out of Rome. After all, the church is growing (although the new members come from developing countries), so the leadership can argue that it's been successful by sticking to an organizational structure that was invented a few thousand years ago, in the age of monarchy and serfdom--three or four major economic and societal transformations ago.

It's hard to miss that even in its election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio to the papacy -- a departure for the Church in many ways -- they're still hewing strongly to the very regressive policies that are disenfranchising so many Catholics. Pope Francis may be a breath of fresh air when it comes to respect for the poor, but when it comes to gay people, he's a fire-breathing hater. Frankly, it seems sort of incongruous to me. In so many ways, he seems like such a sweet man. Then he says things like this:

In 2010, as Argentina debated a marriage equality bill, Bergoglio called on Catholics to oppose the move, calling it the devil's handiwork.

“Let's not be naïve, we're not talking about a simple political battle; it is a destructive pretension against the plan of God,” Bergoglio wrote in a letter calling on followers to join a protest rally in Buenos Aires.

“We are not talking about a mere bill, but rather a move by the Father of Lies which aims to confuse and deceive the children of God.”

Bergoglio went on to say that gay adoption is discriminatory to children: “At stake are the lives of many children who'll be discriminated against in being deprived of the human growth that God wanted to be given through a father and a mother.”

Agrentina went on to ratify gay marriage, which underscores just how out of step the Church is on this issue. President President Cristina Fernandez de Kircher called his statements a "throwback to the Inquisition."

Pope Francis is also stridently opposed to birth control and abortion rights. I doubt that anyone could have been elected pope who wasn't completely regressive on these issues of sexual morality. That seems to be the litmus test of. And the farther behind that puts them with new generations, the more rigid and unyielding the Church becomes. This, according to Joan Chittister of the National Catholic Reporter has made Catholics weary.

The problem is that weariness is far worse than anger. Far more stultifying than mere indifference. Weariness comes from a soul whose hope has been disappointed one time too many. To be weary is not a condition of the body -- that's tiredness. No, weariness is a condition of the heart that has lost the energy to care anymore.

People are weary of hearing more about the laws of the church than the love of Jesus.

People are weary of seeing whole classes of people -- women, gays and even other faith communities again -- rejected, labeled, seen as "deficient," crossed off the list of the acceptable.

They are weary of asking questions that get no answers, no attention whatsoever, except derision.

They suffer from the lassitude that sets in waiting for apologies that do not come.

There's an ennui that sets in when people get nothing but old answers to new questions.

So, yeah... I know a lot of lapsed Catholics.

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Dethroning the Hierophant

Article first published as Dethroning the Hierophant on Blogcritics.

A few years ago, I observed that the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church was hitting a critical point, as a glut of news reports was beginning to directly implicate the Vatican. I suggested then that what was happening in the Catholic Church was an indicator of the dismantling of hierarchical systems more broadly and that in the Motherpeace Tarot, such patriarchal, spiritual authority is represented by the Hierophant.

At its root, the word "hierophant" means bringer to light of sacred things. In the traditional Tarot, the Hierophant represents a priest or Pope, the paternal religious authority.... Representing a hierarchical view of religion, the Hierophant stands on a pedestal, raised up from the earth, above the common person. In the Motherpeace image, he has taken over the robes and skirt of the High Priestess, along with her breasts which symbolize her sacred power, but he has forsaken her "Sophia" or wisdom.... The authority of the Hierophant is based, in large part, on repression of women and the natural instincts that women symbolize.

The The Motherpeace Tarot Playbook explains how to read the card when it comes up in a spread.

The Hierophant represents spiritual authority. He represents ritual and ceremonial magic which manifests as organized religion in this culture. Or he represents the psychic control exercised by mostly male, authority figures in our culture, such as psychiatrists, gurus, doctors and courtroom judges. Since he is also the internalized parent or superego authority, he represents conventional morality.

The text goes on to explain how to read this card when it presents as reversed, or ill-dignified.

The reversal shows a full-scale rebellion. You can no longer tolerate external roles and conventional morality; you have begun to call on your deeper conscience for advice You are able to stop kneeling to the priest or the doctor or the father, choosing instead to take your own advice, heed your own counsel.

I believe that this is the fight that is now full-on. After several years of observing and cataloging the scandals and failures of leadership in the Catholic Church, as well as the public break-down of other patriarchal, spiritual groups -- James Ray International, Warren Jeffs's FLDS, and even the strange, little splinter group of Amish in Bergholz, Ohio -- I see followers in even some very unexpected religious contexts beginning to take their power back. More recently there have been upheavals in organizations as diverse as Scientology and a prominent Zen Buddhist organization.

What I have found particularly moving in these cases is the courage of women who are standing up to religious abusers, often with little to no support, and sometimes, at great personal risk. It is after all, women and children who suffer the most in oppressive, patriarchal systems. It is axiomatic in these institutions, large and small, that women and teen girls are sexually exploited. Only in the Catholic Church -- with it's ostensibly celibate priesthood and apparently overflowing gay closet -- did such abuse of women take a back seat to the abuse of children.

On February 11, Pope Benedict XVI shocked the world when he announced his resignation. For all the apologia about this being a reasoned decision by a reasonable man, nothing changes the fact that it stands centuries old tradition on its head. Benedict's seismic action takes place at one of the most tenuous times in the Church's history -- a period pointed to by prophecy that it takes far more seriously than it publicly admits. I think it would be hard to overstate the importance of this turn of events and that it speaks to a greater realignment of world power. The patriarchal authority represented by the iconic, hierophantic position of the pope, God's representative on earth from the time of St. Peter, has been so eroded that it is now a job you can quit.

We'll probably never know everything that factored into Benedict's decision, but it is arguable that he really is just exhausted -- that he is too old and sick to weather the hard rain that has begun to fall on the Church. Over the past eight years, he has presided over a Church in steep decline -- one that has lost the moral authority to hold the respect of even one of the most Catholic countries in the world: Ireland.

In an interconnected world of instant media, a Church that has spent decades and billions of dollars concealing crimes and protecting pedophiles at the expense of children has found itself unable to quell the outrage. Such deference to authority has reached its expiration date. And in that respect, the Catholic Church finds itself in good company, as religions big and small face a new level of scrutiny and an inability to stifle the dissent.

LRH aka., L. Ron Hubbard
Father of the Church of Scientology

The Church of Scientology, for instance, had a good run. They managed for some time to effectively silence their critics and intimidate the press. In the popular imagination, Scientology has long been something of a joke. The bizarre antics of celebrities like Tom Cruise, John Travolta, and Kirstie Allie, have made it seem glamorous and funny at the same time. Sure, they're kooky, but no one's getting hurt -- except perhaps financially. But there is a very dark side to Scientology -- a grotesque underbelly that only avid Scientology watchers have been aware of for years. Locals in the Clearwater, Florida area tell tales of an obvious cult in their midst, with slave-like conditions and rumors of disappearances. With the burgeoning of the internet, sites like Operation Clambake began to collect documentation of secret beliefs and evidence of abuse and mind control. But many former Scientologists have been too afraid to tell their stories. Threats of litigation, cutting people off from family, surveillance, character assassination, and other intimidation tactics kept the majority of Scientology's critics quiet.

Over the past few years things have begun to open up and Scientology's ruthless message discipline seems to be breaking down. Former members are becoming more emboldened and the Tampa Bay Times started a landmark series on their neighbor across the bay. And now, suddenly, it's open season on the Church of Scientology. They are facing a multipronged media attack. Books by prominent authors have drawn major press coverage and a thinly veiled biopic of L. Ron Hubbard drew the ire of Scientologists.

The open disgruntlement of followers, disenchanted after having turned over huge sums for a dubious real estate scheme, has people seriously questioning whether this is the beginning of the end for an organization claiming a massive expansion. Some of the major funders of Ideal Org building purchases and renovations have become angry enough over a venture that has only seemed to enrich the central organization that they are suing.

A new book, Going Clear, by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Lawrence Wright has been making the rounds and making waves, but one of the most damning critiques is coming from Church of Scientology leader David Miscavige's own niece. In Beyond Belief, Jenna Miscavige Hill tells her story of what could fairly be described as a childhood of slave labor and teen years spent under cruel oppression.

Scientology seems like an equal opportunity abuser but, as is so typical, women and children are subject to extraordinary control and exploitation -- particularly in their religious order Sea Org. Women sacrifice their reproductive freedom. Marriage within the order is accepted as long as couples agree not to have children. Women who get pregnant are coerced into aborting or put into filthy rehabilitation centers where they are forced into hard, physical labor, and other conditions that are decidedly unsafe for pregnant women.

Children of Sea Org parents, like third-generation Scientologist Miscavige Hill, are also a cheap labor force. She spent her early childhood on "the Ranch," receiving a minimal Scientology-only education and putting in a six day week of hard, physical labor. These small children do mainly construction and landscaping, wielding dangerous equipment and hauling rocks and dirt. She rarely saw her parents and all her phone conversations with them were supervised. At age 7 she signed one of Sea Org's thousand year contracts and took on even more adult responsibilities.

Her parents left first and the then 16 year old Miscavige Hill's connection to these SPs (suppressive persons) made her suspect. She was subject to even more restrictive control. Later, she chose to leave as well, risking her marriage to Dallas Hill, who was threatened with separation from his own very committed Scientologist family. They are now both out of Scientology and have done many things that they could not have done had they remained -- like read anti-Scientology literature and procreate. They have two children, Winnie and Archie.

Miscavage Hill also created exscientologykids.com with Kendra Wiseman and Astra Woodcraft. Woodcraft was also a Sea Org member, married at 15 to a man five years her senior, she spent a harrowing youth of emotional abuse, sexual harassment, and molestation -- something the Church of Scientology covers up so effectively the Catholic Church could only be envious.

At 19 Woodcraft resolved to exit Scientology. She did this by deliberately violating the rules. She got pregnant and refused to abort. Her choice has cut her off from her husband, the father of her child, and her own mother, but left her with a real life and a beautiful daughter. In this interview, she, along with her father and sister, provide a damning portrait of life deep inside the Church of Scientology. She goes into graphic detail on her lack of education, excessive and bizarre responsibilities, and emotional torment. No one could listen to this story and come to the conclusion that the Church of Scientology is anything but a dangerous, mind-control cult.

Warren Jeffs ~ Incarcerated Leader & Prophet of FLDS

Also in disarray is the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or FLDS. Leader Warren Jeffs is serving out a life sentence in a Texas prison for sexually abusing underage girls -- some of his many "celestial wives." While he maintains a stranglehold on the church community, he is simultaneously destroying it. Excommunications, draconian restrictions like a no sex edict, and ignoring legal moves against his many properties, appear to have resulted in a dwindling footprint. It's hard to say how many are excommunicated, how many may have deserted, and how many are being deliberately relocated to secret locations.

What is certain is that state and local authorities around Jeffs's most developed communities are using a variety of legal maneuvers to effectively put him out of business. Texas, which successfully prosecuted him for sexual abuse, is now moving to seize the sprawling Yearning for Zion ranch on the grounds that it was used as a base for illegal operations. Arizona is pressing forward with attempts to reign in what it insists is a crooked Marshal's Office in the border towns of Colorado City, AZ and Hilldale, UT. Despite one failed legislative attempt to dissolve the force, the State is pressing forward.

In January Arizona's AG Tom Horne introduced Ruby Jessop to the press. This courageous woman has fought long and hard to regain her freedom and her children. Forced into marriage at 14, and relocated numerous times to hide her from her outspoken, apostate sister Flora Jessop, she at long last escaped and won temporary custody of her six children.

Ruby, it is claimed, was forced not only to marry her own step-brother, but to have sex with other men, as well. Flora, who had also been forced into marriage as a child, spoke for Ruby.

Twelve years ago, I got a call from my sister who has 14 years old [stet] and had been placed in an arranged marriage. She had managed to get away and I gave her a promise that I would do everything I could to keep her safe. Then, before I could get to her and get her help, she disappeared and was taken back into the group.

. . .

Ruby is one of thousands that have been trapped and abused and held under the regime of Warren Jeffs and she is just so happy to be out and her children are excited and able to go to a school for the first time. To watch them play with toys and learn to become children has just been amazing.

It is women like Flora and Ruby Jessop, in open rebellion against the sex slavery of Jeffs's FLDS, who are tearing through the fabric of his empire.

In one of the most repressive lifestyles extant in the United States (and Canada), women and girls who've known no other life are finding their voices and telling their horrible stories of rape, abuse, and virtual imprisonment. In 2007 Elissa Wall, who was forced by Jeffs to marry her first cousin when she was 14, testified in a Utah court. Jeffs was convicted as an accomplice to rape. That conviction was later overturned on a technicality. But Wall went on to write a book about her experiences within FLDS. It bears mentioning that she and Jenna Miscavige Hill had the same co-author, Lisa Pulitzer.

While Jeffs was awaiting that trial in Utah, he reportedly contacted William E. Jessop, confessed to incest and pedophilia, and attempted to hand him the reigns of FLDS. He reneged but Jessop has gone on to start his own church -- one which allows for polygamy, or "celestial marriage," but prohibits the institutionalized sex abuse of adolescent girls. So Jeffs has also created a competitor who, at least appears to be rejecting the flesh trade which has long defined the sect.

Jeffs was convicted in Texas due in no small part to the testimony of people he'd molested as children. One was his niece, Jerusha Jeffs, who told the court that he'd molested her when she was just 7 years old. No longer in FLDS, she now counsels others who are trying to break from the sect.

Others who had been molested by Jeffs testified in Texas, including his nephew Brent, who told the court about being raped by Jeffs when he was only 5. There is no overstating the courage it takes to stand up to your abuser like that... and put a stop to him.

Samuel Mullet ~ Incarcerated Bishop of the Bergholz Amish

Bishop Samuel Mullet had his comeuppance in a federal court. He will likely serve most if not all of the remainder of his life in prison. He was convicted for masterminding a series of hate crimes against other Amish. Members of his breakaway sect in Bergholz, Ohio, waged a reign of terror against their Amish critics, attacking them with hair clippers. Cutting the beards of Amish men and the hair of Amish women is an assault on their understanding of the Bible and goes to the core of their Amish identity.

There was plenty of evidence of Mullet's complicity in the attacks, even though he sat safely in his home as they were happening. The hair of the victims and other trophies were presented to him by the attackers. Photos of the attacks were recovered from his property. There were even very damning jailhouse recordings. But federal prosecutors proved their case largely by establishing the degree of mental and emotional control Mullet had over the members of his community.

Jurors learned of draconian punishments for vague infractions. Men were subjected to beatings and forced to sleep in a chicken coop. Women were coerced into sexual relationships with Mullet, a form of "counseling" to "cleanse them of the devil."

His own daughter-in-law testified to Mullet's insistence that she live in his house while her husband was in a mental ward recovering from a nervous breakdown. Mullet blamed her for his son's mental state and insisted that if he could just teach her to have sex properly, she'd be a better wife. When she balked, he informed her that "the other ladies" did as they were told. When she refused to continue with this twisted arrangement, he called her a whore.

Lovina Miller, the wife of Mullet's nephew Eli, may have become pregnant while she was receiving her "sexual counseling." She was found in Mullet's bedroom when the FBI was raiding the property.

Both judge and jury seemed satisfied that the multiple abuses and indignities Mullet heaped upon his followers only served to bend them to his will and bind them to his purposes. One hopes that while he serves his sentence, his remaining followers will awaken from the spell of this most unlikely charismatic leader.

James Arthur Ray ~ Incarcerated... For Now

It is somewhat ironic that another charismatic leader -- who was convicted for causing the deaths of Kirby Brown, James Shore, and Liz Neuman -- is serving a much shorter sentence than Bishop Mullet did for ordering haircuts. In fact he will probably be getting out presently. The law is a rather clumsy instrument. Still, after sitting through a four month trial -- thanks to the wonders of our electronic age -- I was gratified that he was convicted and sentenced, if inadequately.

In a trial, and ensuing coverage, that I cataloged pretty thoroughly, we learned a great deal about the degree of psychological control Mr. Ray exerted on people who paid him an awful lot of money:

• How he played at being God with the power over life and death
• How he denied them food and water for thirty-six hours in the desert
• How he repeatedly degraded them by controlling their bodily functions and elimination
• How he broke them down through sleep deprivation
• How he leveraged their emotional vulnerabilities
• How he compelled them to drudge up their sexual histories and traumas
• How he sexually and emotionally exploited groupies
• How he intimidated them into cutting off all their hair
• How he made them walk the edge of a cliff blindfolded
• How he publicly shamed them if they tried to leave a dangerously superheated environment
• How he sat calmly in the shade and shrugged as people were dying

Joshu Sasaki ~ Founder of the Mount Baldy Zen Center

In the very different world of Zen Buddhism, another prolific molester has also, at long last been brought to heel. For decades, the inappropriateness of the legendary Joshu Sasaki was an open secret. Women who complained about being groped and sexually coerced were ignored, even shunned.

It took several men in positions of authority to break the silence and force the community to take the problem seriously. They took a lot of abuse, themselves, for doing so. The story broke wide when Adam Tebbe, editor of the online magazine Sweeping Zen, published a piece by Joshu Martin. Martin was taught and ordained by Sasaki and has gone on to run the Victoria Zen Center in Vancouver. Many used his competitor status to dismiss his accusations. But his piece was followed by a painfully detailed article by Giko David Rubin, who had spent years in Sasaki's service as a priest and personal translator.

An independent council of Zen teachers then collected stories and statements from the survivors of Sasaki's abuse. There was a snowballing of media attention, including a feature in the New York Times. A Sasaki Archive was set up to compile the articles and statements and provide a record of the scandal.

At the ripe old age of 105, Sasaki is unlikely to face any real consequences for his years of abuse, other than the damage to his reputation and legacy. In the years that stopping him would have really mattered and protected unaware women from victimization, radio silence was strictly enforced.

As with the pedophilia scandal in the Catholic Church, the way the organization enabled the abuser in their midst for decades is as horrifying as the abuse itself. The monks who served Sasaki, when confronted by women who'd been violated and degraded, shrugged it off or told them they should just go ahead and show him their breasts... because, eh, why not?

Even those, within his organization, who tried to get him to stop met stiff resistance from the monks and lies and evasions from Sasaki -- something Giko David Rubin learned through painful experience.

Even now, some of the apologia for Sasaki's behavior is stunning. It forms what Michael Sigman terms a "counter-narrative." It really just continues a long kept inner tradition in Rinzai-ji of accepting a certain duality in their leader. Monk Bob Mammoser told the New York Times:

“What’s important and is overlooked is that, besides this aspect, Roshi was a commanding and inspiring figure using Buddhist practice to help thousands find more peace, clarity and happiness in their own lives. It seems to be the kind of thing that, you get the person as a whole, good and bad, just like you marry somebody and you get their strengths and wonderful qualities as well as their weaknesses.”

Sure. If you're gonna make an omelet, ya gotta break a few ova.

It's interesting that Mammoser chooses marriage as a metaphor because this is exactly the kind of thing that  happens in some families of sexual abusers. In many cases, spouses and other family members know the abuse is happening and look the other way because they rely on the abuser's income... or because they are more besotted with the abuser than with their children.

This dependency was something Sasaki exploited whenever he faced serious confrontation from some of his monks. He would simply threaten to take his leadership and his teaching away from them and they would fall in line.

Sazaki was protected by an army of followers who aggressively stifled any hint of uprising. Sandy Stewart, whose wife Susanna was one of many women he knew to have been abused, was actually lured back into Rinzai-ji with promises that the abuse had stopped. When he learned that it had not, he wrote a letter to the board. The result was a deluge of hate mail. Said Stewart, "People … thought I was stupid and crazy. They said, 'Have you no respect?' and said I should be lashed and beaten."

Others tried to protect Sasaki from himself, even going so far as to try to arrange a marriage for him, in the vain hope that he could restrict his attention to a single pair of breasts. The attempt was unsuccessful.

Even the masthead on the Sasaki Archive appears to be apologia for his behavior -- either that or some very strange attempt at irony. The two quotes enshrined there are one generally laudatory one and a statement which appears to be from one of the very small minority of women who welcomed Sasaki's advances. In addition to being not at all representative of the overall content, the quote is virtually unsourced. It's excerpted from a comment by an unnamed woman which was claimed by a Sasaki apologist to have appeared on Eshu Martin's Facebook page. Out of all the pained statements from women who were brave enough to give testimony to Sasaki's abuse, this is the quote that appears at the top of the website cataloging the scandal: "I 'suffered Roshi's abuse' – and it was the closest I ever got to god."

Needless to say, the bulk of the material on the archive and in the council report does not present Sasaki in such glowing terms. Their voices are better summed up by the poem of Chizuko Karen Joy Tasaka, who did not live to see her teacher forced finally to face the music. What follows is an excerpt:

my friend—she was inji sex with roshi she tried to say no  you demanded, demanded, demanded  demon demand the force of a tornado sex with roshi for whose best interest? I told you I don’t like it. I asked you why you do this? You said, “nonattachment, nonattachment, you nonattachment I told you as shoji, “women very angry, very upset” I asked you why you do this. You said: “Be good daughter to roshi, and good wife to G.  [her husband]. Roshi, that is incest So many women trying to shake the shame from their voices of Sex with roshi We came to you with the trust of a student You were our teacher You betrayed us You violated our bodies You rape our souls

Sasaki is a classic Hierophant, as defined in Motherpeace. He presented himself as a gateway to enlightenment. The same could be said of any of these spiritual leaders and many more like them. To their students and followers, they are intermediaries between themselves and the ineffable world of spirit. Whether the goal is heaven, nirvana, or simply a more purposeful life, human beings have, throughout recorded history, felt incapable of achieving those goals on their own. We've relied on gurus, priests, and other teachers, not as wayshowers, but as the way. They held the secrets. They kept them close to the vest. And to attain them, people accepted again and again a devil's bargain.

This is the dark side of patriarchy. Human beings are commodities to exploit financially, sexually, and spiritually. Women and children are less than people -- second class citizens reduced to their bodies. They are devoured in these systems.

Invariably, enough people know about outrageous abuses that the abusers could be stopped... but they aren't. Human beings are sacrificed to maintain a power structure that people believe will set them free. All the while, they are becoming more enmeshed, more ensnared, in the world of illusion -- willingly pulling the wool over their own eyes. But the veil is slipping.

"The kingdom of God is within you." ~ Luke 17:21

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI

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Cardinal Mahony Goes to Rome

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Cardinal Mahony doesn't understand what all the fuss is about. And neither does the Vatican.

Cardinal Roger Mahony expressed "amazement" at calls that he withdraw from the upcoming papal conclave because of his record on clergy sex abuse and said the Vatican, acting through its ambassador to the United States, had instructed him to take part in the election of the next pope.

. . .

"Without my even having to inquire, the nuncio in Washington phoned me a week or so ago and said, 'I have had word from the highest folks in the Vatican: You are to come to Rome and you are to participate in the conclave,' " the cardinal said.

Mahony has been mystified since his successor Archbishop Jose Gomez benched him a month ago. He doesn't think anything in the recently released files is so damning.

Mahony said he was "amazed" at the controversy over the Los Angeles files, claiming that the salient information about sex abuse in them could be found in a 22-page report available on the archdiocese's website since 2004.

"There are some new things in the files that came out, but as far as I know I don't find anything in there disqualifying," he said.

One wonders, then, why Cardinal Mahony moved heaven and earth and retained an army of lawyers to keep those files from being released.

The settlement process was long, tedious and so byzantine that no one could possibly describe it with any accuracy. All the while, the lawyers retained by the cardinal were doing their utmost to prolong anything resembling a just solution. When the bishops' cheerleaders throughout the country accuse the victims' lawyers of being greedy, they should take another look at the dozens of attorneys who made up Mahony's brigade, all of whom were high-priced and none of whom worked pro bono for even an hour. Whenever the cardinal appeared for a deposition or meeting involving the cases, at least six and often 10 lawyers accompanied him. Who paid the legal fees? The "people of God" of the Los Angeles archdiocese. Who else? [emphasis mine]

. . .

As part of the 2007 settlement, the archdiocese agreed to disclose the files of the perpetrators. The ink was not dry on the settlement before the cardinal launched what would become a seemingly endless series of legal objections and procedural delays that at one point went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

. . .

Shortly thereafter it was discovered that the archdiocese had released only around 12,000 pages and that many of those had the names of church officials blacked out, contrary to the judge's order. The public response was swift. The cardinal's lead counsel, Michael Hennigan, said he had no idea why the documents were missing, and promised more would be forth coming. More spin and roadblock right up to the wire!

Mahony and his many, expensive lawyers spent ten years putting 508 sex abuse survivors through a Kafkaesque nightmare that dragged on for years even after they had settled with them for $660 million in 2007 -- all to prevent what was in those files from ever seeing the light of day. But now that their stomach-turning contents are available for scrutiny, he suddenly thinks it's all just much ado.

Despite his past apologies to the victims of sex abuse that he enabled, he wonders why anyone would have expected anything different?

"People say, 'well, why didn't you call the police?' In those days no one reported these things to the police, usually at the request of families," he said. "What I did in those years was consistent with what everybody did, in the Boy Scouts, in public schools, private schools, across the country."

It was not, however, consistent with the law -- a fact of which he was well aware having conspired with his associate Bishop Thomas Curry to move priests out of state to prevent their prosecution. They deliberately kept abusive priests out of the state, in part, so that their victims and their families wouldn't recognize them and report them. One wonders what common practice he was complying with when they war-gamed ideas to avoid sending pedophiles to therapists who might comply with reporting laws, even going so far as to discuss finding a therapist who was also a lawyer so that they could attach privilege. Mahony knows full well the lengths to which he went to protect abusive priests are graphically described in those files that he now says don't contain anything "disqualifying."

One wonders why Cardinal Mahony would invoke the Boy Scouts, of all organizations, which is currently under court order to turn over their own super secret "perversion files." I guess breaking the law is cool if other "morally straight," hypocritical, homophobic institutions do it.

From the moment Mahony lost the long-fought battle to protect his paper trail from scrutiny, we have heard nothing from him but self-justification and self-pity. As he tells it now, he's a martyr. Why, he's just like Jesus.

Given all of the storms that have surrounded me and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles recently, God's grace finally helped me to understand:  I am not being called to serve Jesus in humility.  Rather, I am being called to something deeper--to be humiliated, disgraced, and rebuffed by many.

. . .

In the past several days, I have experienced many examples of being humiliated.  In recent days, I have been confronted in various places by very unhappy people.  I could understand the depth of their anger and outrage--at me, at the Church, at about injustices that swirl around us.

Thanks to God's special grace, I simply stood there, asking God to bless and forgive them.

"Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do."

His phrasing is telling. He was not unjust. Injustices just "swirl around us."

Note to Cardinal Mahony: People are not angry with you because life is unfair. They are angry with you because you actively and consciously conspired to protect sexually abusive priests from prosecution and they went on to destroy countless lives.

But Cardinal Mahony is constantly amazed at the idea that he should have to face any sort of consequence for that. He was reprimanded by Archbishop Gomez and he wrote a public rebuttal. Thousands of people signed petitions asking him to bow out of the conclave. He remained defiant.

Even in the Vatican, there are rumblings about his participation. Not everyone seems so comfortable.

A senior Vatican official called Cardinal Roger Mahony's participation in the selection of the next pope "troubling," but said there was no formal procedure to stop the retired Los Angeles archbishop from attending the conclave next month.

The remarks by Cardinal Velasio De Paolis added to a growing murmur about the propriety of Mahony's decision to attend the conclave.

. . .

But Bishop Gianfranco Girotti, who worked at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, said Tuesday that “if his presence creates difficulties or embarrassment, then I think it could be opportune to renounce.”

Still, he said, “the decision is up to him and his conscience.”

Not exactly a ringing endorsement. But, in fairness, the Vatican can't act too superior. As Cardinal Mahony learned the hard way, when he did try to the right thing, he got little cooperation from Vatican officials. That is yet another revelation in the trove of documents finally unsealed last month.

In 1993, faced with a horribly prolific abuser, he pleaded with the Vatican to have him quickly defrocked.

In less than eight years, Father Kevin Barmasse had, as one church official put it in newly released files, "left a wake of devastation that is hard to comprehend." Mahony yanked Barmasse out of his parish and wanted to make sure he couldn't return. But Barmasse appealed to the one body that could overrule Mahony: the Vatican.

"The case has been there for many, many months," Mahony wrote to one Vatican office tasked with handling priest misconduct. "The lengthy delay has created serious problems for my own credibility as a Diocesan Bishop."

. . .

Although local leaders had the authority to take troubled clerics out of parishes, only the pope could remove them from the priesthood entirely. And when Mahony turned to the Vatican, the papers show, he ran into a bureaucracy steeped in ritual, mired in delays and reluctant to come to terms with the burgeoning problem.

. . .

Mahony dealt with multiple offices on abuse cases, including the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican office that defends church teaching and punishes those who commit delicta graviora — grave offenses. Joseph Ratzinger led the office for more than two decades before becoming Pope Benedict XVI in 2005.

Note that the pressing concern is his "own credibility." I don't know. Maybe that was just an attempt at strategy in an institution far more concerned with appearances than the reality of children's lives torn apart by abuse. But I have to wonder if he became so proactive in this instance because the abuser was known well enough to affect his "credibility," while other cases were more easily buried. Many of the priests he moved out of the state should have been defrocked. In another early '90s case, he removed Rev. Lynn Caffoe from ministry but didn't even attempt to have him defrocked until 2004, after losing track of him for years.

But as the documents they tried to hide for so long clearly show, there's plenty of blame to go around. And Cardinal Mahony is not alone in being stymied by the Vatican's impenetrable bureaucracy, glacial progress, and mixed messaging, when it came to just what bishops should do with abusive priests.

So Cardinal Mahony will go into the conclave to select the next pope. He goes in under a cloud. But in a way that bodes ill for the selection process of the next pope, he'll be in very good company.

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