It was recently revealed that Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, Archbishop of Los Angeles, actively worked to protect priests who raped and molested children. He has been gracious enough, though to ask God to forgive people for being so angry with for doing this. Isn't that just wonderful of him?
Cardinal Roger M. Mahony
Photo: Kevork Djansezian/Getty
He doesn't say that he asked God to forgive him for his crimes. He doesn't say that he asked the victims and protesters to forgive him for his crimes. He certainly hasn't approached the legal authorities to ask for forgiveness or to seek some way to make reparations.
No, he simply asks God to forgive those who don't like it that he kept the police from finding out about how many of his priests have been raping and abusing children over the decades. Because anger over such matters is bad and needs to be forgiven, right?
In the past several days, I have experienced many examples of being humiliated. In recent days, I have been confronted in various places by very unhappy people. I could understand the depth of their anger and outrage--at me, at the Church, at about injustices that swirl around us.
Thanks to God's special grace, I simply stood there, asking God to bless and forgive them.
When people talk about leaders of the Catholic Church being out of touch, I suspect that this is what they have in mind. It's certainly a fantastic example of someone truly not "getting it" -- not comprehending that they have done truly evil things and that others are fully justified in being upset with them.
Some of this is surely ego because egotistical people can't imagine that they have done anything wrong or that others could be justified in being upset with them. It's not all ego, though. Some of it just a twisted sickness.
The man is a hissing cobra. If he were any kind of human being, he would be asking for forgiveness.
Don’t you just wish, sometimes, that there really was a hell ?
Oh come on he is after all a Cardinal. that’s just a smidgin off being infallible. No matter what wrong I do it is right.
This is the same Roger Mahoney who chastised Hollywood for making movies like Basic Instinct, and called for a revival of the Production Code. Just another case of “Do as I say, not as I do.”
Arrogant bastard! That’s all I can say. He gets away with it because ordinary people can’t turf him out of office. You get that sort of attitude from people who are unaccountable. To them the Church is basically an old boys network.
Mohony is dangerous because in spite of all his twisted and delusional thinking, people will still suck up everything he says just because he says it.
There seems to be an attitude in the Mental Health community that anger is some kind of pathological state. As such is can never be justified but it can be forgiven. It may be the cardinal simply aligning himself conveniently aligning himself with this mindset. I would like to be pissed off but then I would need therapy and forgiveness.
At least the cardinal is helping by giving reasonable Catholics a good reason to leave the church.
Wow! What a neat outfit. I especially like the red sash; it adds such a dash of panache to the other colors of his robe. It gives him an appearance of authority when he puts it on his naked body. Too bad Jesus never had clothes like this to make him appear more “Godlike.” In any case, so many crimes have been committed over the last 2000 years under the color of authority, that one wonders what exactly the church does in fact represent.
There are organizations such as the Jesuits, and Franciscans that do seem to represent the humble life of Christ more so than the Vatican. With all the gold brought in during the conquest of the New World under “Gospel, Glory, & Gold,” as well as the Inquisition, Crusades, colonization, and child sexual abuse, the power of this organized religion is very well known. Now with the latest scandal about the Vatican Bank (one would wonder why a religion based upon the life of Jesus would have a bank), is it any wonder that a religion created by Constantine at the 1st Ecumenical Counsel can still justify its existence 2000 years later. Power, domination, and control, seems to be the prime motivating factor when Constantine acted as editor-and-chief of the New Testament, and used it to help hold his crumbling empire together. 2000 years later, it still seems to be their main reason for existance.