Mahony running out of places to hide, but not quite yet

Mahony is quickly running out of places to hide it seems:

LOS ANGELES -- A 2004 report by Roman Catholic Cardinal Roger Mahony failed to disclose that he let seven priests continue in ministry for as long as 13 years after they had been accused of inappropriate behavior with children, a newspaper reported Thursday.

Mahony acknowledged in the report that he left five priests in ministry after accusations they molested children, but the seven others were not mentioned, the Los Angeles Times said. [More]

This revelation comes out after Mahony can now no longer hide behind a false invoking of the priest-penitent privilege. And what did he do when that ploy failed? Caved in. Dom says it best:

"If Cardinal Roger Mahony hands those files over [and he did] he will be exposed as cynical and manipulative, because if he really thought those files should be protected under the seal he would go to jail before violating that seal. Canon law requires no less. But if he turns them over, and it looks like he will [he did], then we will see that Mahony simply used the seal of the confessional as a legal tactic to cover his butt."

There's another danger here, namely, Mahony's overextension of the priest-penitent privilege, when overturned, makes it harder for genuine cases of the privilegeto be honored by the civil authorities.

Case in point, this line from an editorial on the subject in the New York Times:

"Cardinal Mahony became a study in arrogance who only compounded the church's embarrassment. His lawyers concocted elaborate hypotheses that church leaders and priests — under the confidentiality of "the sanctification process" — somehow enjoyed shelter from their basic duty to cooperate with criminal law enforcement."

And it's not like Mahony is done running and hiding, as Dom points out today. Mahony will continue to hide behind his status in the Church to save his own keister, and whenever he does that, his guilt will have wider consequences than embarassing himself. Well, I hope he goes down, and I hope he doesn't bring much of the Church with him - he's already done enough of that.

(oh, and by the way, that perfect photo at the top I snagged from Jeff)