The same media outlets that report with outrage Cardinal Bernard
Law’s presence in Vatican City approach the equally disgraceful Los
Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony with hushed attention. Among other
staggering details of the abuse scandal under him is that Cardinal
Mahony housed a pedophile priest in his own rectory, a move Law
never even tried. Yet the mainstream media over the last few weeks
have been treating Mahony as an unimpeachable source, using him as
ecclesiastical cover for their now-rote liberal solutions to
problems in the Church that he helped create.
Recall that Mahony, dipping into the faithful’s pockets, hired
Sitrick and Company (a public relations firm Enron used) to help
him spin his complicity in the scandal. Not fooled, former Oklahoma
Governor Frank Keating, who investigated the scandal until Mahony
and other bishops blackballed him into resigning, likened Mahony’s
conduct to “La Cosa Nostra.”
The con job goes on. Indeed, Mahony looked downright excited at
the chance to reappear on the scene as a voice for “change.” Before
the Pope had even died, Mahony rushed over to Rome on a first-class
flight (it came out), so eager was he to wedge his finger into the
Conclave pie as quickly as possible. Once in Vatican City, he
immediately turned up on numerous talk shows to mourn a pope he
never paid the slightest attention to on doctrinal matters. (Pope
John Paul II would from time to time look over at Mahony and say
“Hollywood,” not exactly a compliment, though Mahony tells the
story as if it were.) At one televised mass last week I noticed
Mahony checking his watch: Where did he have to go? What, had
Hardball called?
What’s the difference between the fate of Cardinal Law and
Cardinal Mahony? The Boston Globe. Mahony has Los
Angeles Times religion reporter Larry Stammer in his pocket,
as was revealed in 2002 by a leaked e-mail from the Los Angeles
chancery in which Mahony promised a colleague that “Larry Stammer”
would whip up a positive story for them (“he stands ready to help
if we have a story we want to get out,” the e-mail said). Unlike
Law who had serious reporters on his heels, Mahony has long
benefited from the somnolent coverage of West Coast media liberals
willing to excuse his protection of pedophiles in gratitude for his
political and doctrinal liberalism.
On Monday TAS asked David Clohessy, executive director
of the Survivor Network of Those Abused by Priests, if he has
noticed the media’s coddling of Mahony. “You are right,” he said.
“The word that comes to mind for me about Mahony is
disingenuousness. He postures so shamelessly as a reformer.”
Clohessy’s explanation for the media’s abetting of Mahony’s snow
job: “He works harder at PR than most bishops. He’ll use any
opportunity to look better.” And, says Clohessy, he’s more
“liberal,” and the “press likes him for that reason.”
The Los Angeles Times, which is notorious for giving
the Catholic Church unsolicited advice, all of which amounts to
demanding that the Church ape the paper’s liberalism, has never
called on it to sack Mahony, though it normally whines about
unaccountable churchmen. Instead, the Times (with the
exception of columnist Steve Lopez, who has a liberal axe to grind
against the Church but is at least not blind to Mahony’s obvious
scams) is helping Mahony position himself as a post-Conclave
liberal reformer. Good old Larry Stammer was on the flight to Rome
with Mahony, serving the cardinal once again as a stenographer.
“Mahony said there would be those, including him, who would call
for changes in how the church is run,” reported Stammer. “For one
thing, he favors discussion about allowing married priests in the
Latin Rite of the church. For another, he believes that there will
be a major push for a less centralized church that allows bishops
more leeway in deciding local issues.”
The Los Angeles Times can at once criticize the Pope as
a centralizer, then complain he didn’t centralize enough during the
abuse scandal, then turn to a cardinal whose scandals were made
possible by that decentralization to call through him for an even
more “less centralized church.”
The media even as it huffs and puffs about Cardinal Law will
provide a platform over the next few months to a liberal Los
Angeles cardinal who populated his inner circle with pedophiles.
The media will ask him his opinion on this or that phony issue, but
it won’t ask him why he knowingly made a pedophile, Carl Sutphin,
the associate pastor of his new cathedral; why he housed Sutphin in
his old and new rectory; why he refused to turn in Michael Baker (a
pedophile so disgusted with himself he begged Mahony to call the
cops on him but Mahony refused) and even brought Baker into a
circle that vacationed at Mahony’s Yosemite cabin.
No, this isn’t the accountability the media have in mind. For
them the solution to problems created by liberal laxity in any
institution is even more liberal laxity, and they’ll need to keep
Mahony around to push it.
