Posted on 11/30/2013 6:10:45 PM PST by moonshinner_09
A year after arriving in Los Angeles, the youngest archbishop in the U.S. Catholic Church had a schedule and an agenda befitting a presidential candidate.
advertisement
Roger Mahony raced around the city in a chauffeured sedan, exhorting labor leaders to support immigrant rights and rallying hundreds against a proposed prison in Boyle Heights.
Where his predecessors had talked up praying the rosary, Mahony touted his positions on nuclear disarmament and Middle East peace, porn on cable TV and AIDS prevention. No issue seemed outside his purview: When an earthquake struck El Salvador, he cut a $100,000 check. When a 7-year-old went missing in South Pasadena, he wrote her Protestant parents a consoling letter.
Reporters took notes and the influential took heed. The mayor, the governor, business executives and millionaires recognized a rising star and sought his company.
Among the thousands of papers that crossed his desk in September 1986 was a handwritten letter.
"During priests' retreat ... you provided us with an invitation to talk to you about a shadow that some of us might have," Father Michael Baker wrote. "I would like to take you up on that invitation."The note would come to define Mahony's legacy more than any public stance he took or powerful friend he made.
In the child sex abuse scandal that has shaken the Catholic Church, Mahony is a singular figure.
Cardinal Roger Mahony prays in his residence in 1986. (Los Angeles Times)
He became the leader of America's largest archdiocese at the very moment the church was being forced to confront clergy molestation. Because he was just 49 when he took office, he was in power for the entire arc of the abuse crisis. Long after peers had retired or died, Mahony was around to face the public's wrath.
(Excerpt) Read more at graphics.latimes.com ...
Sounds like this character is a Berrigan reincarnated.
Another reason Christianity is losing the battle against Islam. He would serve his faith better by preaching another Crusade.
I wish we had another Urban II.
I would not take the sources here as reliable.
I lived in California during part of this character’s reign of liberalism.
He flew around LA in a private helicopter, and in public urged voters to elect democrats. He never met an amnesty proposal he didn’t like.
It has been an ongoing fighting to keep bad men from becoming and remaining priests. Looking at this long report, it strikes me that one word never enters into the discussion: homosexuality. Men who cannot control their sexuality, including men who are inveterate womanizers, end up looking for younger and younger sexual partners. Are we to believe that Baker, for instance, began with altar boys? That he never had older sexual partners, but ended up with young boys only because they were handier? Why not investigate of the seminaries that produced him and the other molesters? But, again. why ignore the fact that in almost every case. it was male-on-male sex?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.