Cardinal Mahony bans Bishop Williamson from L.A. archdiocese
Catholic News Agency
06 Marzo 2009
Il cardinale di Los Angeles che non fa entrare Williamson in nessuna delle sue chiese, è strapieno di preti sotto inchiesta per sesso... che copre.
LOS ANGELES, January 29, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Federal investigators have launched a probe against Cardinal Roger Mahony and other officials of the L.A. Archdiocese to determine whether he was guilty of fraud by covering up clerical sex abuse, according to a Los Angeles Times report yesterday.
Unnamed sources told the Times that Cardinal Mahony is under investigation for his role in allowing the continued abuse of children and young men by known sex offenders among the clergy. Specifically, the inquiry is intended to determine whether Mahony and other church officials committed fraud by failing to deal properly with such clergy.
If charged, the cardinal could be tried for violating a federal statute that forbids "[scheming] to deprive another of the intangible right of honest services." It is as yet uncertain whether criminal charges are likely to be pursued, as the inquiry is still in its beginning stages. The probe, the Times was told, has been underway since at least late last year.
J. Michael Hennigan, a lawyer for the archdiocese, denied that Mahony was implicated in the investigation, saying that the requests for information concerned only "a number of individual priests," none of whom remain in ministry.
The diocese said it will cooperate fully in the investigation, claiming that "under Cardinal Mahony's leadership, the archdiocese has become a model" for tracking down and punishing abuse.
The Cardinal in a local radio appearance Thursday said he was "mystified and puzzled" by the investigation, and that he had not been told he was directly targeted.
The development begins the latest chapter in a dark history surrounding Mahony and the L.A. Archdiocese, which have been embroiled in scandal for several years surrounding the covering-up and relocating of clerical sex abusers, the majority of which were homosexual predators victimizing young men.
Through it all Mahony, the diocese's chief administrator - who has become notorious as a symbol of dissidence among leading Church officials for glibly supporting homosexuality and liberal political causes - managed to escape questioning on his role in the affair. Mahony received the ire of both Catholics and non-Catholics for refusing to cooperate fully in the investigations. Yet Mahony and those who might have implicated him were spared the witness box by hundreds of millions in settlement money the diocese has paid out since the outset in 2002.
July 2007 saw the last legal action concerning the scandal, when the diocese paid out a staggering $660 million settlement - the largest settlement on record and a quarter of the entire U.S. Catholic Church's financial costs - to over 500 alleged clergy abuse victims.
At the time, Mahony apologized for the "terrible sin and crime," saying such abuse should never happen again. But many Catholics and members of victims' groups remained outraged that Mahony, like other top church officials in the U.S. clergy abuse scandal, was not held to account.
"This ugly chapter in Catholic history cannot be closed until the Church rebukes those prelates who put their own interests ahead of the needs of the Catholic faithful and the Catholic faith," wrote Phil Lawler, editor of Catholic World News, following the 2007 settlement. "Cardinal Mahony is the most conspicuous example."
By Kathleen Gilbert
Source > Life Site News | Feb 29
Cardinal Mahony bans Bishop Williamson from L.A. archdiocese
Los Angeles, Calif., Mar 5, 2009 / 01:20 am (CNA).- Archbishop of Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony has banned Society of St. Pius X Bishop Richard Williamson from entering any Catholic church, school or facility of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles until he retracts his remarks minimizing Jewish suffering in the Holocaust.
The announcement came in a statement published online in the March 6 edition of The Tidings, the diocesan newspaper. The cardinal authored the statement jointly with Rabbi Gary Greenebaum, the U.S. Director of Interreligious Affairs of the American Jewish Committee, and Seth Brysk, Los Angeles Executive Director of the American Jewish Committee.
Bishop Williamson was one of four bishops leading the breakaway Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) whose excommunications were lifted by Pope Benedict XVI in January.
Footage from a television interview showed the bishop denying the existence of Nazi gas chambers and claiming only 200,000 to 300,000 Jews had died at the hands of the Nazis, causing an international uproar.
The statement in the Tidings said that Bishop Williamson’s “outrageous comments” alarmed Jews and Catholics alike.
“Jews wondered whether the lifting of Williamson's excommunication suggested that anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial would be seen as acceptable positions for those within the Catholic Church,” it stated. Both Jews and Catholics questioned why the Vatican apparently had not thoroughly investigated Williamson, an unrepentant Holocaust denier and open anti-Semite, prior to the lifting of his excommunication.”
Subsequent statements from the Vatican rebuked Bishop Williamson and other Holocaust deniers and Pope Benedict reiterated the Catholic Church’s “deep respect and esteem for the Jewish people,” the statement reported.
According to the statement, Catholics and Jews were reassured by the Vatican declaration that the SSPX must fully recognize the Second Vatican Council and the legitimacy of all Popes before it may rejoin the Catholic Church.
Noting that Bishop Williamson is required to distance himself from his positions on the Holocaust in an “absolutely unequivocal and public way,” the statement said his recent comments “fall far short of satisfying the letter or the spirit of the Vatican’s directives.”
“In the Los Angeles Archdiocese, Williamson is hereby banned from entering any Catholic church, school or other facility, until he and his group comply fully and unequivocally with the Vatican's directives regarding the Holocaust,” Cardinal Mahony wrote.
He also mentioned that he will visit Israel later this year and pay his respects to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust at the Yad Vashem Memorial in Jerusalem.
“Holocaust deniers like Williamson will find no sympathetic ear or place of refuge in the Catholic Church, of which he is not --- and may never become --- a member,” the statement continued, saying that the SSPX’s rejection of the Second Vatican Council also rejects Nostra Aetate, the document which explicitly rejected the charge of deicide against the Jews and affirmed “the kinship between the Catholic and Jewish faiths.”
Noting that Nostra Aetate had been composed after close work with the American Jewish Committee, the statement then quoted the document:
“The Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel's spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.”
Saying the past two months have been “difficult” for Jews and Catholics, the statement closed:
“We can take heart that Catholic-Jewish relations in Southern California remain strong… For our part, as Catholic and Jewish leaders in Los Angeles, we recognize that only by working together with renewed vigilance will we be able to keep anti-Semitism at bay and prevent its reassertion as a legitimate expression.”
Source > Catholic News Agency | March 05