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Cardinal Mahony is the Patron Saint of Pedophile Priest

And anybody who thinks Mahony is a sincere advocate for civil disobedience should talk to protesting pro-lifers: Squeamish about getting too close to them, Mahony won't even let them collect signatures for ballot propositions on his parishes' property. Notice, too, that he now speaks of compassion as more important than law — but when common sense and basic compassion dictated that he cooperate with the authorities in protecting children from pedophile priests, he didn't, arguing that his understanding of the law didn't technically require cooperation.

Michael Baker, an ex-priest caught molesting children, has testified about Mahony's hypocritical brand of I'm-above-the-law clericalism, recounting that after he offered to turn himself in to the police, Mahony's chancery lawyer said, "Should we call the police now?" And Mahony's response was, according to Baker, "No, no, no." Mahony then assigned Baker — over the subsequent 14 years — to several parishes near schools and children.

Jurors sitting on a case involving a pedophile priest in Stockton (a priest whose ministry partially overlapped with Mahony's tenure as bishop of Stockton) concluded that Mahony didn't even respect the rules of the courtroom. In their deliberations on the size of the settlement to the victims in the case, the jurors disregarded Mahony's testimony, sizing him up as a witness who lacked credibility. One juror told the press that he "found Mahony to be utterly unbelievable."

Standing against the law, in other words, comes easily to Mahony — not because he grasps a higher law, but because his self-indulgent liberalism is essentially lawless. His left-wing clericalism means that he can ignore justly enacted positive laws with the same casualness with which he ignores inconvenient parts of canon law.

I had to laugh when I heard last week that he in effect called on Los Angeles Catholics to "fast" and "pray" that amnesty be extended to illegal immigrants. This is a cardinal who normally considers such practices ultramontane burdens — a cardinal who waives Holy Days of Obligation when they fall too close to Sunday, because he doesn't want the faithful to suffer the agony of going to church twice within three days. Yet to advance his chic liberalism he will harness the power of old-time piety and invoke weighty Catholic language he usually dismisses as too sectarian. The Church, he proudly harrumphs against a phantom threat, "is not in a position of negotiating the spiritual and the corporal works of mercy" — a phrase I've never heard him utter before.

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/neumayr200604120719.asp