After news broke last week that a federal grand jury is investigating Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, some legal experts questioned the U.S. attorney's strategy. The move was unlikely to result in a prosecution, they said, and was a little like throwing a Hail Mary pass at the end of a football game.
Maybe so, but as most sports fans -- and even the cardinal -- would acknowledge, sometimes Hail Marys work.
On one level, it doesn't matter if the federal prosecutor's grand jury probe leads to a filing. Because only 2% of the 4,392 U.S. priests and deacons accused of molestation from 1950 through 2002 served time in prison, victims of clergy sexual abuse are used to the criminal justice system failing them. It's enough for many victims that someone in authority is trying to hold a prominent Catholic leader responsible for his role in enabling pedophile priests.
In eight years as a religion reporter, I interviewed many victims of clergy abuse. And there is an almost universal sense among them that Mahony has never owned up to his role in the sex scandal. Instead, the cardinal has promoted himself -- with the help of a high-priced public relations firm -- as a leading reformer on the way the church handles clergy sexual abuse.
Just last week, for example, the Los Angeles Archdiocese put out a statement applauding Mahony's role as an agent of change: "Under Cardinal Roger Mahony, the Archdiocese has put in place comprehensive child protection and abuse reporting procedures, and we say again: There is no priest currently in ministry in the Archdiocese who has been found to have abused a minor."
It isn't just victims who feel Mahony and other bishops haven't taken enough responsibility. In 2003, former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating -- a committed Catholic who chaired a U.S. bishops' National Review Board inquiry -- compared Mahony and his fellow bishops to La Costa Nostra for the way they obstructed meaningful investigation into the sex scandal. In the board's later report, Mahony was singled out for criticism for having refused to turn over documents in a previous grand jury probe.
In the seven years since the scandal first broke, Mahony and his brother bishops have relied on news fatigue, parishioner apathy and propaganda to escape personal responsibility for their starring roles in putting children in the paths of known predators.
