The Archdiocese of Los Angeles has released 12,000 pages of files on a shocking 124 priests alleged to have sexually abused minors.
The Washington Post: Cardinal Mahony is a prime example. Even after his archdiocese reached a $660 million civil settlement with more than 500 victims of abuse in 2007, he and the hierarchy did everything in their power to avoid individual accountability.
I’ll never forget my mom, explaining in her Hell’s Kitchen New York accent, why my older sister couldn’t go to Woodstock: “Oh no. That’s how the Nazis got started. First you corrupt the youth. The next thing you know, whaddaya you got? World War II. No way.”
And if I knew someone young and impressionable, that’s what I’d tell him about the Los Angeles Religious Education Conference. “Oh no, that’s how the Khmer Rouge got started, son… .”
Every year, LA-REC (pronounced “la WRECK”) is a massive hootenanny and cash-cow for the leftist elements that have hijacked the U.S. Catholic church. Don’t take it from me. Here’s the quote which the LA-REC’s organizers themselves chose for the home page of their website:
Could it be any clearer than that? “Come on down, it’s not excessively Catholic. In fact, faithful Catholics come to protest it every year!”“Some people go to Tibet, Bali, or India for spiritual rejuvenation or enlightenment. Others take to the deserts in the Americas or the mountains in the Andes. I head to Orange County, California. For nearly a decade, I have joined thousands of other Catholics for a weekend of workshops, liturgies (I love hearing my favorite gospel singer!), and camaraderie. I call it visiting the Catholic planet. Don’t let the name fool you; you don’t have to be a Catholic schoolteacher or catechist to take part or even a staunch Catholic. In fact, the LA Congress has conservative Catholic protesters every year taking issue with the multicultural liturgies and/or the messages of inclusiveness. I consider this one of the highlights of every year and I’ve made it a family tradition bringing along my mother and now my daughter.”– Julie C., San Leandro, CA
Thirsting for Politics
Now I would never avoid even a humble Polish dumpling shop based on a single Yelp review. (Though I might if it promised “food poisoning!” and the owners had put it on their home page.) Let’s dig a little deeper, shall we? What’s the theme of the conference? There are two, one for kids and one for adults.
The Youth theme is “Trust! God’s Gotchu.” Using a cutesy piece of illiteracy for an educational conference isn’t really … reassuring. And the chirpy little bilingual barber shop song that LA-REC apparently commissioned to pound home this theme sends shivers down my old spine. (Don’t listen with food in your mouth.)
Let’s move on to the Adult theme. No, no that’s not what I meant. Get your mind out of the gutter. Still, the theme is a doozy: “Thirsting for Justice” | “Sed de Justicia” | “Khát Khao Công Lý.”
There we go. Not only does the conference promise that its real theme will be politics. It does so in three languages, in a nod to multiculturalism. Not much real use, of course, since most of the site is in English, and none of it is in Vietnamese. But I give LA-REC some points for virtue-signaling. Not a full 10 out of 10, since the site lacks any phrases at all in Mayan or Aztec languages. Nor is there a single session in Turkish or Arabic. …
Cardinal Coverup Wants to Talk to the Teens
Which Church leaders did the LA-REC choose to address the “thirst for justice?” One of them seems fitting, since he ought to be fugitive from justice, Cardinal Roger Mahony. Remember him? He’s the prelate who oversaw the worst cover-up of sex abuse in the entire United States. As LifeSiteNews reported:
But now the diocese has invited MahonyMahony, archbishop of Los Angeles from 1985 to 2011 and a cardinal since 1991, was found to have deliberately hid his knowledge of priests in his archdiocese guilty of committing sex crimes with youth, transferring the offenders after they had had counseling, enabling them to repeat their crimes.The details, contained in some 12,000 pages that the LA archdiocese was court-ordered to release, led Mahony’s successor Archbishop Jose Gomez to term them as “brutal and painful,” and take the unprecedented step in 2013 of barring Mahony from administrative or public duties in the archdiocese.
as an authority on young people — and given him a microphone to appear as an honored speaker. At least the topic won’t be something like “Jacuzzis with the Pastor: A new form of spiritual direction.”
Still Using Immigrants as Human Shields
No, it will be the favorite politicized topic which Mahony has beaten like a tin drum for decades: boosting immigration, legal or illegal. Indeed, Mahony used his popularity among Latino voters (legal or illegal) in California to scare off prosecutors who would gleefully have sent him to prison for massive sex abuse coverups. The title of Mahony’s talk, in case you’re thinking of going and throwing peanuts, is “Connecting Junior High and High School Students with the Volatile Immigration Issues.”
Mahony used his popularity among Latino voters (legal or illegal) in California to scare off prosecutors who would gleefully have sent him to prison for massive sex abuse coverups.
In the wake of the exposure that Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C., has been lying for more than a decade about what he knew of ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s sex abuse of teenagers and seminarians, I must say that it disappoints me to see Mahony honored at LA-REC as a speaker.
It would be much more honest and forthright of the Los Angeles Archdiocese to feature Archbishop McCarrick himself. I would really like to hear what he has to say about the state of our Church and how it got there. Who knew about his Harvey Weinstein-style sexual predations upon seminarians, and when they knew it.
And you must admit, the question and answer period would be (as the young folks say) “lit.”Francis Also Rehabilitated Roger Mahony Suspended for Abuse Cover-Up
Pro-Abortion, Pro-LGBT Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa received sacrilegiously Holy Communion at Mass, celebrated by Archbishop José H. Gomez
A homosexual-friendly Archdiocese
As the new Millennium dawned, the Los Angeles Archdiocese was known as one of the most homosexual-friendly in the United States. As early as 1991, Jim Johnson, caregiver to AIDS patients, openly stated that Roger Mahony was “surrounded by homosexual priests” and alluded to several “gay bishops” (4).
In 1993, the Cardinal helped to fund and produce the video A Journey for Understanding Gays and Lesbians in the Church. The video affirmed that there was nothing wrong with any “gay” or lesbian person whatsoever, that “being gay was a blessing and a gift,” and had “something prophetic toward remodeling the Church” (5) In 1996, the L.A. Archdiocese celebrated a Mass for its “lesbian and gay Catholics” during “Gay and Lesbian Pride Week” in West Hollywood, and sponsored a booth at its “Pride Festival.” In 1997, Cardinal Mahony himself said the Mass and delivered the homily for The National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries at its annual convention in Long Beach.(6)
Mahony also founded a diocesan office of “ministry to lesbian and gay Catholics” as early as 1986. He headed it up with an openly homosexual priest, Fr. Peter Liuzzi, who had nothing but praise for the Cardinal for never “rebuking those gays and lesbians who are not celibate.” The Archdiocese also sought out an openly pro-homosexual Jesuit psychologist for its priests, Fr. Curtis Bryant (7).
The same open tolerance for homosexuality prevailed at St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo, where seminarians spend the first four of their seven years of priestly training. A Newsweek article (May 20, 2002) reported 30-70 percent of the seminarians at St. John’s were “gay and bisexual.” Seminarians forced to leave for being “too rigid” have described across-the-board tolerance of homosexuality and no teaching on the Church’s proscription of it (8).
In an April 27, 2002 interview on Fox News (10), Mahony boasted about the warm and wonderful relationship of the Archdiocese with its “very large gay, lesbian community.” He also affirmed that homosexuals should be allowed to be ordained priests, that a homosexual or heterosexual inclination was irrelevant so long as the person was able to commit himself to a lifelong life of celibacy (11).
Mahony shields himself behind the progressivist lie that there is “no relationship whatsoever” between homosexuality and pedophilia. However, even a progressivist expert on the topic, Fr. Donald Cozzens, clearly affirms the opposite. Id est, that regarding the clergy, the two vices are profoundly linked since 90 percent of the priest abusers target teenager boys (12). If the abused teen is under 16, the priest is termed a pedophile, if he is older, the priest is called a homosexual. It is the same vice divided by a thin line of age difference in the victims.
So while the Cardinal drones “zero tolerance” to the press like a broken record, his unconditional support of homosexuality and his personal acceptance of homosexual priests seems to indicate a strong complacency toward the sexual abuse of teenagers over 16, to say the least.
Cover-ups everywhere
It would fill a book to detail the many cases of cover-up of the L.A. Cardinal regarding pedophile priests. Even so, the work would be incomplete, because it is certain that much remains that is unknown. I will simply set forth several cases for the reader to see the pattern that emerges.
Most notably Cardinal Mahony is accused of assigning Fr. Michael Baker to various parishes for a decade after the priest admitted to the Cardinal in 1986 that he had abused some boys. Baker continued to molest boys until 1999. Then, when two brothers who claimed to be molested by Baker threatened to sue the Archdiocese in 2000, Mahony paid them $1.3 million to keep the case quiet (13). Only in 2002 did Mahony report Baker - along with about ten others - to law enforcement. This was the same Prelate, I remind you, who in 1988 firmly stated that he would “never deal with a problem of sexual abuse on the part of priest or deacon by simply moving him to another ministerial assignment.” He made this public statement at the very same time that he was dealing with Baker’s abuses, transferring him to other parishes…
Another volatile case where Mahony admitted his error much too late to protect the innocent is that of Fr. Michael Wempe. Even though Mahony knew Wempe was accused of pedophilia, in 1988 he reassigned Wempe to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center as chaplain without informing officials there of the serious accusations against the priest. Only in March 2002 did Mahony ask Wempe to retire from the active clergy. Obviously, Mahony was aware of the accusations. Later, in September 2003, Fr. Wempe was arrested on suspicion of sexually abusing another child in his chaplain’s office at the hospital from 1990 to 1995 (14). One more innocent child, therefore, was sacrificed because of Mahony’s complicity.
As the new Millennium dawned, the Los Angeles Archdiocese was known as one of the most homosexual-friendly in the United States. As early as 1991, Jim Johnson, caregiver to AIDS patients, openly stated that Roger Mahony was “surrounded by homosexual priests” and alluded to several “gay bishops” (4).
In 1993, the Cardinal helped to fund and produce the video A Journey for Understanding Gays and Lesbians in the Church. The video affirmed that there was nothing wrong with any “gay” or lesbian person whatsoever, that “being gay was a blessing and a gift,” and had “something prophetic toward remodeling the Church” (5) In 1996, the L.A. Archdiocese celebrated a Mass for its “lesbian and gay Catholics” during “Gay and Lesbian Pride Week” in West Hollywood, and sponsored a booth at its “Pride Festival.” In 1997, Cardinal Mahony himself said the Mass and delivered the homily for The National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries at its annual convention in Long Beach.(6)
Mahony also founded a diocesan office of “ministry to lesbian and gay Catholics” as early as 1986. He headed it up with an openly homosexual priest, Fr. Peter Liuzzi, who had nothing but praise for the Cardinal for never “rebuking those gays and lesbians who are not celibate.” The Archdiocese also sought out an openly pro-homosexual Jesuit psychologist for its priests, Fr. Curtis Bryant (7).
The same open tolerance for homosexuality prevailed at St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo, where seminarians spend the first four of their seven years of priestly training. A Newsweek article (May 20, 2002) reported 30-70 percent of the seminarians at St. John’s were “gay and bisexual.” Seminarians forced to leave for being “too rigid” have described across-the-board tolerance of homosexuality and no teaching on the Church’s proscription of it (8).
Mahony shields himself behind the progressivist lie that there is “no relationship whatsoever” between homosexuality and pedophilia. However, even a progressivist expert on the topic, Fr. Donald Cozzens, clearly affirms the opposite. Id est, that regarding the clergy, the two vices are profoundly linked since 90 percent of the priest abusers target teenager boys (12). If the abused teen is under 16, the priest is termed a pedophile, if he is older, the priest is called a homosexual. It is the same vice divided by a thin line of age difference in the victims.
So while the Cardinal drones “zero tolerance” to the press like a broken record, his unconditional support of homosexuality and his personal acceptance of homosexual priests seems to indicate a strong complacency toward the sexual abuse of teenagers over 16, to say the least.
Cover-ups everywhere
It would fill a book to detail the many cases of cover-up of the L.A. Cardinal regarding pedophile priests. Even so, the work would be incomplete, because it is certain that much remains that is unknown. I will simply set forth several cases for the reader to see the pattern that emerges.
Most notably Cardinal Mahony is accused of assigning Fr. Michael Baker to various parishes for a decade after the priest admitted to the Cardinal in 1986 that he had abused some boys. Baker continued to molest boys until 1999. Then, when two brothers who claimed to be molested by Baker threatened to sue the Archdiocese in 2000, Mahony paid them $1.3 million to keep the case quiet (13). Only in 2002 did Mahony report Baker - along with about ten others - to law enforcement. This was the same Prelate, I remind you, who in 1988 firmly stated that he would “never deal with a problem of sexual abuse on the part of priest or deacon by simply moving him to another ministerial assignment.” He made this public statement at the very same time that he was dealing with Baker’s abuses, transferring him to other parishes…
Another volatile case where Mahony admitted his error much too late to protect the innocent is that of Fr. Michael Wempe. Even though Mahony knew Wempe was accused of pedophilia, in 1988 he reassigned Wempe to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center as chaplain without informing officials there of the serious accusations against the priest. Only in March 2002 did Mahony ask Wempe to retire from the active clergy. Obviously, Mahony was aware of the accusations. Later, in September 2003, Fr. Wempe was arrested on suspicion of sexually abusing another child in his chaplain’s office at the hospital from 1990 to 1995 (14). One more innocent child, therefore, was sacrificed because of Mahony’s complicity.
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