Cardinal Roger Mahony retires on Sunday
- Cardinal Roger Mahony to continue advocacy for needy - Los Angeles Daily News
- Cardinal Roger Mahony’s Legacy - CBS 2 Los Angeles
- Cardinal Roger Mahony passes leadership of L.A. Archdiocese to Jose Gomez - Los Angeles Times
As Cardinal Roger Mahony steps down, what is his legacy?
Once a shining star of the Catholic Church in the U.S., Cardinal Roger Mahony had once been considered a long-shot possibility to succeed Pope John Paul II.
Yeah, right.
But in the decade that passed between when Mahony's name was mentioned and the death of the pope, a lot changed, reports The Times' Mitchell Landsberg.
More and more people have realized the Church's job is saving souls. Imagine that.
As Mahony prepares to retire in the coming week as head of the Los Angeles Archdiocese, Landsberg writes that he will leave a legacy that church historians will puzzle over for years.
His reputation suffered from his handling of the sexual-abuse scandal that shattered the lives and trusts of many Catholics and led to the largest civil settlement by any archdiocese, a staggering $660 million. Despite that, he remained a deeply respected and beloved figure to many, Landsberg reports. Mahony continued to be a fierce champion for social justice and Latino immigrants and was able to keep the archdiocese from financial collapse despite the massive settlement. - Los Angeles Times
As Cardinal Roger Mahony prepares to step down in a few days after 25 years of leading the nation's largest archdiocese, The Los Angeles Times delivers a fair and reasoned assessment of his impact on the church here and nationwide.
Roger Cardinal Mahony is the proper way to refer to the man. This speaks volumes about the National Catholic Reporter.
The Times' report focuses particularly on three areas of Mahony's legacy: his commitment to social justice; his campaign to build a controversial new cathedral; and his handling of the sex abuse scandal within his archdiocese.
1. There is no justice in encouraging poor people to abandon their homeland and become criminals.
2. The LA cathedral is an architectural horror show that is not conducive to prayer and worship. In fact, it actively discourages both.
3. He covered it up, then paid out hundreds of millions of dollars.
The paper gives Mahony high marks on the first two, and is actually uncharacteristically reasonable in its look at the cardinal's approach to the priest abuse scandal.
In part, the Times does not assign bad motives to Mahony, but says he may be a victim of bad luck -- rising through the ranks of church hierarchy just as sexual abuse was becoming more common, and achieving the height of his influence as this scandal broke open in a society no longer willing to keep quiet about such dark secrets.
Richard Riordan, former mayor of Los Angeles and confidant of the cardinal, sums up the dilemma: "He did as good job as you can do... but obviously people are going to remember him more for that, which is sad."
See, kiddies? If you are a leftist cleric who doesn't mention things like sin and Hell [except for those evil people who own businesses, of course], you get a pass for permitting homosexuals to disguise themselves as priests in order to procure little boys.
Still, the Times' assessment at least takes a broad view of this influential figure -- reporter Mitchell Landsberg even notes that the paper has often been criticized by some Catholics for being anti-Mahony. It's true that the paper has covered the sex scandal with a rare vigor, but it has also been on Mahony's side in social justice issues, especially immigrants' rights.
As the report notes, it is a complicated legacy that Mahony leaves -- but there is no doubt about his influence on American Catholicism, and on the politics and culture of Los Angeles.
2 comments:
This Man is an animal and the ISIS should take care of him, a devil who is still working the church for more money and losing of souls.
Please move on and get out of the church, you ruined many lives, now you have ruined yours and may the Lord ONLY have mercy on you, because we don't. Thank God you are retired, but still can do damage.
Your comments are un-Christian and less than polite, but not surprising.
Cardinal Mahony is not an animal. He is all too human. Sadly, such people see the Church as an instrument of power, not of love. Incorrect thinking like that always has dire consequences.
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