In an article
last week in TAP, I described Los Angeles Times religion reporter
Larry Stammer as a lapdog to Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony. If
anyone doubts this description, they should read Mahony’s
recently-leaked e-mail correspondence. Mahony writes in one e-mail
that Stammer “stands ready to help if we have a story we want to
get out.”
Mahony expressed his joy that last week’s interview with the Los
Angeles Times — which the cardinal initiated with a call to
Stammer - “did not turn out as negative as I feared.”
He added, “They were able to get in some positive things for a
change. As always, they got a few factual things wrong or
inaccurate. But now I am freed from the accusation that I am hiding
from the press and unwilling to discuss these issues publicly.”
“Larry Stammer said that a lot of good has been done with the
press and media by doing the interview,” Mahony continued. “Larry
is going to do a story on our Seminaries soon — that will be
helpful.”
So is the Los Angeles Times going to take Stammer off the Mahony
beat now that his coziness with the cardinal is exposed? Don’t hold
your breath. Stammer is a liberal with all the right biases, so his
beat looks secure.
But if the Los Angeles Times worried about its objectivity and
credibility, it would replace Stammer with a hard-nosed reporter
who didn’t stand “ready to help if we have a story we want to get
out.” That Mahony says Larry Stammer “will be helpful” with an
upcoming “story on our Seminaries” is outrageous, given that those
very seminaries pumped molesters into the church.
Has it occurred to any of the editors at the Los Angeles Times
to do a full-blown investigative piece on the recent history of St.
John’s seminary, the Mahony-run factory of libertine Catholicism in
Camarillo? Does it pique any of the editors’ interest at the Times
that the seminary was named as a site of sex abuse in a recent
lawsuit (or that some of its more famous graduates, such as Patrick
Ziemann, an auxiliary bishop under Mahony and later a bishop in
Santa Rosa, got caught out in sex scandals)?
The recent abuse charge against Mahony may actually help the
cardinal gut the scandal out. If the Fresno woman’s charge is false
(at present it is irresponsibly sketchy), Mahony will receive many
pity points from friends in the press. These will come in handy on
other matters where his guilt is clear, such as keeping molesters
on the archdiocesan payroll when they should have been behind
bars.
Expect Mahony’s “martyrdom” to be used as a form of absolution
over his scandalous administration. (A brief glimpse of this script
appeared in Larry Stammer’s Sunday
article: “If Mahony is eventually cleared, the church would be
able to claim some vindication at a time when it faces what many
believe is its greatest crisis in modern times.”)
But one crackpot allegation should not derail discussion of the
many real ones. There is no credible evidence that Mahony is an
abuser. But there is plenty of evidence that he protected abusers,
only cutting them loose after he saw the press and police closing
in.
Mahony’s e-mail
to his nun-attorney is a gem of Watergate-style dissembling:
“As the drum beats continue from every side for us to release
the ‘names,’ I must still point to what I consider our greatest
tactical mistake of the past few weeks.
“If I recall, of the 8 priests involved, 5 had already been
reported to local law enforcement agencies. That leaves 3.
“Recall also that I pressed for you to meet with Det.
Barraclough and ‘consult’ him about the other 3 so that we could
state without hesitation that all priests no longer in service had
been reported to various law enforcement agencies.
“You resisted quite strongly that suggestion.
“I hope you have changed your mind by now! By doing it back
then, we would not appear to be crumbling under public pressure. It
was a huge mistake on our part.”
Notice what constitutes a “mistake” here for the cardinal: It is
not that the archdiocese failed to report these molesters at the
time the molestation occurred, but that it failed to report them
before the local press woke up to the scandal.
Winning the PR “battle” and not getting “hauled into a Grand
Jury proceeding” are his chief concerns in the e-mails. The
Clintonian cardinal just wants to make sure the sepulcher is white
— never mind the corpses rotting within it.
Los Angeles Catholics, meanwhile, wonder what it would take to
get the Vatican’s attention. Exactly how much scandal and confusion
would Cardinal Mahony need to generate before the Vatican asked for
his resignation?
Were Mahony the head of a business, he would have had to resign
a long time ago. But somehow the standards of accountability are
lower for the heads of a divine institution in the business of
saving souls.
