By George Neumayr on 9.3.02 @ 12:02AM
Or call it Mahony's monster, which yesterday held its grand opening.
Missing from the endless line of church officials at Cardinal
Roger Mahony's cathedral grand opening on Monday was one of its
first associate pastors, Fr. Carl Sutphin. An accused molester,
Sutphin held the title of associate pastor at the new "Cathedral of
Our Lady of the Angels" until Mahony cut him loose in the wake of
the Boston church scandals.
Mahony knew of Sutphin's checkered clerical career for at least
a decade. That troubled Mahony so much he gave him lodging at the
new cathedral's apartments and appointed him associate pastor of
the church. (Before that, Sutphin resided at the cardinal's
previous apartments.)
Sitrick and Co., the cardinal's public relations firm which has
counted Enron as one of his clients, wasn't yet on the scene. So
Mahony can surely be forgiven that novel ecclesiastical
appointment.
Last Friday, Mahony's troubles seemed far behind him as he
practiced his homily for the grand opening with the aid of a
TelePrompTer, reports the Los Angeles Times. Sitrick and
Co. apparently thinks of everything.
It is too bad Sitrick and Co. can't also offer Mahony tutelage
in the Catholic faith. Were Mahony's predecessors alive to see the
grand opening of the cathedral, they would have wondered what new
Protestant sect had arrived in La-La land.
The cathedral looks like a superdome for syncretism. Partially
seen from Highway 101, the cathedral presents no obvious evidence
of Catholicism. Drivers will assume it is a modern art museum, or
perhaps an assembly hall for amorphous religious gatherings.
San Francisco has an equally confusing cathedral. It looks like
a modern appliance. But at least people find it accessible. Not so
with Mahony's new cathedral. "It is hard to get to," says Architect
Frank Gehry.
But Mahony hopes to correct this little problem by asking
taxpayers to build a new highway ramp. That should cost around $25
million.
The cathedral does, however, offer validation at its paid
parking garage for mass goers. For others, parking will cost $2.50
for the first 25 minutes.
Mahony has to pay off his $200-million architectural experiment
somehow. It turns out the archdiocese is in financial trouble. A
hiring freeze is in place, and some church employees now worry
about lay-offs. Mahony largely chalks up the archdiocese's woes to
an anemic stock market. But his curious expenditures and doling out
of hush money and cash settlements to sex abuse victims explain it
as well.
Ever resourceful, Mahony has been generating cash by selling off
crypts and burial sites at the new cathedral to the Richard
Riordans and Rupert Murdochs of Los Angeles.
Why was this cathedral even necessary? ask many Catholics on
both the right and the left. Mahony gave as one of his main reasons
that the old cathedral wasn't safe. It had to go, he said, and
assigned a wrecking crew to tear it town. But secular
preservationists stopped him.
Mahony's real reason for establishing a new cathedral is that he
is practicing a new religion. Whatever it is, it is not
Catholicism. Eli Broad, a non-Catholic developer and Democratic
Party godfather who helped finance the cathedral , calls it
"architecture for the ages." Many Catholics, when they look up at
the tapestries on the walls depicting people in sneakers and
birkenstocks, will wonder if it can last even a generation as a
Catholic building.
Not far from the fakery of Hollywood, appropriately enough, the
cathedral represents faux Catholicism -- the very phony Catholicism
that made it possible for the cardinal of the largest archdiocese
in the country to make a molester one of its first associate
pastors.
topics:
Religion, Catholicism, Hollywood
