Mahony and Forgiveness
COMES NOW the Defendant. The great thing about this blog is we all get our say, and the Mayor stays out of the way of it.
You know what, Red Spot? If you ever get your wish, and His Eminence Cardinal Mahony ever actually goes on trial and is sent to jail, we who practice the faith and who know the Cardinal are confident that he will continue his good work, even inside the concrete chateau.
It's not like he doesn't know his way around the cells---he has given Mass every Christmas for the past seventeen years inside the Big House.
Do you know your way around the jail so intimately?
~~~
The Catholic Church has been beleaguered, in many archdioceses to the point of bankruptcy, by opportunistic former ambulance chasers who have sniffed out perceived deep pockets of the Church of Rome and who keep rewriting the laws of the State to try to shake the Church down as best they can. Crimes of decades ago, committed by people who were never really priests at all, but who gamed the vulnerable Church to put themselves in a position to accomplish their base acts, are the crimes that media keep pushing to the fore these days, again and again and again, to satisfy their own anti-Catholic tendencies, and, in the case of the attorneys, their lust for money. And those anti-Catholics have no bigger nor more dependable friend in town than the Los Angeles Times.
We as Catholics expect as much to be promoted by the LATimes, a newspaper filled to the brim with editors who are anxious to split hairs about what the Cardinal has said in order to slime the Church of Rome as best they can. (This is, thank God, one of the primary reasons why the LATimes continues to hemorrhage readers at the rate of 3,000 a month, and is striking out in the circulation department in nearly every community except whitebread ones.)
I know my position is not a popular one with Times editors. My position is that of a deconstructed Catholic in a town that generally finds it expedient to denounce Catholics along with its own Catholic heritage. But shouldn't you who are so quick to cast stones at every incidental conversation that the clergy may have with the media should first make sure that you are without sin yourself, before expressing some kind of anti-Catholic schadenfreude that comes through your rantings all too clearly?
If you personally have issues with the Church, RedSpot, as so many in this City are led by media to have, I would love it if you would examine your own issues before recommending prison terms for someone. Especially when your posts are based on banal, heavily slanted news reports. You should process your issues thoroughly, and you should state loud and clear who you are to criticize the Church, and what your issues are. You should not simply state from a duckblind that the head of the Catholic Church---who typically on any given day shows far more compassion to people than any other notable civic leader---should go to jail because you think it would be cool for another Catholic in the world to get arrested for trying daily to bring some understanding and forgiveness to the world.
The Church has been here way longer than the District Attorney has. It answers to a different kind of justice than that conceived by the editors of the Los Angeles Times. Whether or not, as you say, "[t]he fact that the District Attorney's Office would even consider criminal charges against Cardinal Mahony is a "Bombshell" that will shake the local community" is not even an issue with most Catholics. The fact that ultimate justice is not resident to the DA's office at all is consolation enough for the Catholics that this City's media love to hate.
As a Catholic, I instinctively despise the kind of coverage that the Los Angeles Times gives to the Catholic faith in these matters. If it gave this kind of coverage to any other faith, that faith would likely be calling for heads to roll. But fortunately for the Times, and for all the City's Catholic bashers, our faith practices forgiveness, too---a quality many other people in our City seem unwilling to come to know.
Joseph Mailander
Parishoner
Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels
You know what, Red Spot? If you ever get your wish, and His Eminence Cardinal Mahony ever actually goes on trial and is sent to jail, we who practice the faith and who know the Cardinal are confident that he will continue his good work, even inside the concrete chateau.
It's not like he doesn't know his way around the cells---he has given Mass every Christmas for the past seventeen years inside the Big House.
Do you know your way around the jail so intimately?
~~~
The Catholic Church has been beleaguered, in many archdioceses to the point of bankruptcy, by opportunistic former ambulance chasers who have sniffed out perceived deep pockets of the Church of Rome and who keep rewriting the laws of the State to try to shake the Church down as best they can. Crimes of decades ago, committed by people who were never really priests at all, but who gamed the vulnerable Church to put themselves in a position to accomplish their base acts, are the crimes that media keep pushing to the fore these days, again and again and again, to satisfy their own anti-Catholic tendencies, and, in the case of the attorneys, their lust for money. And those anti-Catholics have no bigger nor more dependable friend in town than the Los Angeles Times.
We as Catholics expect as much to be promoted by the LATimes, a newspaper filled to the brim with editors who are anxious to split hairs about what the Cardinal has said in order to slime the Church of Rome as best they can. (This is, thank God, one of the primary reasons why the LATimes continues to hemorrhage readers at the rate of 3,000 a month, and is striking out in the circulation department in nearly every community except whitebread ones.)
I know my position is not a popular one with Times editors. My position is that of a deconstructed Catholic in a town that generally finds it expedient to denounce Catholics along with its own Catholic heritage. But shouldn't you who are so quick to cast stones at every incidental conversation that the clergy may have with the media should first make sure that you are without sin yourself, before expressing some kind of anti-Catholic schadenfreude that comes through your rantings all too clearly?
If you personally have issues with the Church, RedSpot, as so many in this City are led by media to have, I would love it if you would examine your own issues before recommending prison terms for someone. Especially when your posts are based on banal, heavily slanted news reports. You should process your issues thoroughly, and you should state loud and clear who you are to criticize the Church, and what your issues are. You should not simply state from a duckblind that the head of the Catholic Church---who typically on any given day shows far more compassion to people than any other notable civic leader---should go to jail because you think it would be cool for another Catholic in the world to get arrested for trying daily to bring some understanding and forgiveness to the world.
The Church has been here way longer than the District Attorney has. It answers to a different kind of justice than that conceived by the editors of the Los Angeles Times. Whether or not, as you say, "[t]he fact that the District Attorney's Office would even consider criminal charges against Cardinal Mahony is a "Bombshell" that will shake the local community" is not even an issue with most Catholics. The fact that ultimate justice is not resident to the DA's office at all is consolation enough for the Catholics that this City's media love to hate.
As a Catholic, I instinctively despise the kind of coverage that the Los Angeles Times gives to the Catholic faith in these matters. If it gave this kind of coverage to any other faith, that faith would likely be calling for heads to roll. But fortunately for the Times, and for all the City's Catholic bashers, our faith practices forgiveness, too---a quality many other people in our City seem unwilling to come to know.
Joseph Mailander
Parishoner
Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels
Posted by Joseph F. Mailander @ 3/20/2007 03:57:00 PM
8 Comments:
joseph, it's individual behavior- aborrent, and individuals - not the church that's on trial. in these child molest cases. I don't know the answer, but, it's bad all around. My wife's a teacher and since the coverage of people in trusted positions - no teacher can even give a hug to a child. It's a crazy world. but G_d knows that.
did the times give theblessing to the d.a. to go forward with a get mahony prosecution.
or,
was it a matter of lack of political support $ savvy?
or
did the c not kiss the da's ah,,ring?
Well said, Joseph. The LA Times hates the Catholic Church. If Lopez pulled his shit with a rabbi, there'd be hell to pay.
joseph, it's individual behavior- aborrent, and individuals - not the church that's on trial.
So how come those individuals aren't being sued, instead of the Church, which has already been bankrupted in three Archdioceses around the country?
Sorry, but you're flat-out wrong. Former ambulance chasers turned "clergy abuse specialists" are out to shake down not the offending priests, but the whole Church in many archdioceses.
Good Evening Joseph,
The first post on my Thread today, stated that I should look out for "LIGHTING". Little did I know that you would be the "BOLT OF REBUTTAL". I am not going to engage in a "BLOGGINWAR" of words with you over the leader of your church. I will state that all I want to see is justice for the victims of abuse. At the same time I agree with you that the "FRIGGIN TRIAL LAWYERS" are taking this "PURSUIT OF JUSTICE" to a level, that abuses Catholics like yourself. I did not state that Cardinal Mahony should go to jail. Yet one must be objective to the facts in this case. The one thing that I will take exception to is being a willing ally of the "LA ANTONIA TIMES", in bashing the church. I agree with you that the "OLD GREY HAG ON SPRING STREET" has a agenda against "CONSREVATIVE" institutions. one of those being the Catholic Church. My main issue with the Cardinal is his stance on Immigration. I do not have any "ISSUES" besides that. And I do not know the "INSIDES" of our jails. Joseph, I have even thought about becoming Catholic. I share the same belief on "LIFE". In closing, this tragic episode has hurt the "SOUL" of the church. Healing and forgivness are going to be the tools that enable this. Feel free to e-mail me at redspotincd14@yahoo.com to continue the dialog.
Sincerely,
Red Spot in CD 14
Thank God I am a protestant. I'd shit if I were Catholic, Jewish or Muslim - or even Assembly of God.
Well said Joseph. The ultimate Judgement for all will come!... Dante's Inferno should be required reading for all. Especially the Sick Men who were never Priest in the first place and the shake down Lawyers whose "phalacteries” are the largest. Truth is that Pedophilia or more precisely Ephebophilia, a sexual attraction to pubescent or post-pubescent males is sickness that affects the Human Condition. Philip Jenkins, a non-Catholic scholar, and author of the book Pedophiles and Priests, work reflects results from the most comprehensive study to date. Pedophilia or the sexual abuse of a prepubescent child) among priests is extremely rare, affecting only 0.3% of the entire population of clergy. This figure was based on a study which found that only one out of 2,252 priests considered over a thirty-year period(in Chicago) was afflicted with pedophilia. In the recent Boston scandal, only four of the more than eighty priests labeled by the media as "pedophiles" are actually guilty of molesting young children.
Pedophilia is a particular type of compulsive sexual disorder in which an adult (man or woman) abuses prepubescent children. The vast majority of the clerical sex-abuse scandals now coming to light do not involve pedophilia. Rather, they involve ephebophilia or homosexual attraction to adolescent boys. While the total number of sexual abusers in the priesthood is much higher than those guilty of pedophilia, it still amounts to less than 2 percent or comparable to the rate among married men (Jenkins, Pedophiles and Priests).
Abominable, disheartening and tragic for the Victims of Priestly Mortal Sin committed against children and adolescents but as bad as it is Abortion by the Secularists is Murder. God will judge which is worse. Pray for the Souls lost because of the Priests sins and for the Souls of the Aborted Nascent Life who never saw the light of day. May they all see the Light of God's Love in the next Life.......
Well said Joseph see www.powdertracks.blogspot.com for the particulars and the book Pedophile and Priests.
Dominus Vobiscum
FXY
Good morning ladies and gentlemen (removes hat and kneels down to pray. Whispers to Joseph Mailander):
Psst. It's me. The bard. Only this week I am Captain Jack Sparrow. I'm also an Irishman who went to catechism with my twin brother (the grinderman) in Belfast. But that's another story for another day, savvy?
With respect to those archdioceses that are at the point of bankruptcy...did you ever stop to consider that one of the reasons is that monies raised on-site by parishioners DOES NOT STAY ON SITE, but instead is distributed throughout the system to other churches, missions and archdioceses? Several years ago, Catholic schools (and the churches associated with them) were given a choice: either stay with the archdiocese (who supplies text books, teachers, facilities insurance, etc.) and pass over all funds raised on-site to the archdiocese OR find yourself a sponsor (i.e., Cathedral High School is sponsored by the Christian Brothers who are the same Christian Brothers who make brandy, savvy?). The point I make is this. Parishes either starve financially because they have to give their monies OR because they have no sponsor. No ambulance chasers my good man. Only a short, bald man in a brown robe with his hand out to take in the monies, savvy?
And then there is the matter of practicing what one preaches, which is probably the most galling to me as a Catholic. The Church teaches that we should live justly and obey all laws, regardless of our station in life. If there is a wrong we are expected to take the first step to right it for it is in reconciliation that we are brought back together with Jesus and our relationship flourishes.
However, if you will, my frame of reference is that of an Irish Catholic so bear with me. You Yanks take a different view of this. If I were to break the commandment that says "Thou shalt not bear false witness", I would not only do damage to my relationship with Christ, but I would run the risk of sending my soul to hell upon my death. I would be encouraged to confess my sin and do a penance that would reconcile me with Jesus AND those against whom I have sinned.
The Cardinal must be held to this same standard regardless of his good works of which there are many. And too, the Cardinal is human just like the rest of us. If the Cardinal were a bard like me, and I were the Cardinal and the Cardinal came to me to confess his sins which include, but are not limited to, bearing false witness, I would of course counsel the Cardinal to reconcile himself with Christ by openly admitting that he did wrong. I would also wager that if he did, the ambulance chasers would go chase some other institution like the Mormons, savvy?
I would sum up my point with this example. As you know, there are 5 souls in this fair City who have seen all 7 of pirates together at the same time. One is a nice Russian woman who wears a pirate coin around her neck. There is also another who is known to Mr. Spot as a gracious lady. This same lady teaches catechism at a chruch less than 10 miles from here. She tells her class on a regular basis "How do you want to be when God catches up with you? Do you want to be found lacking? Do you want to be found with Justice's blind fold in one hand and her scales in the other? Or would you rather be found to be on an equal footing with your fellow man for we are all sinners."
As a Catholic, I would want God to find the Cardinal in the same way he would find me, and that is with the knowledge that His mercy is the same to all as long as we all are equal under His laws and the laws of whatever sovereign nation we happen to be in at the time.
But this is where we disagree. The Cardinal does not care to be equal under those laws. And for that I am truly sorry. And when God catches up with him, it will be in the form of an ambulance chaser and if I were you, my good man, I would take care not to be standing in the street at that moment lest you be caught up with as well, savvy? And if penance means seeing the inside of a prison cell, perhaps then that is the proper penance to do. I once had a penance of having to go down to Hospital to hold the hand of Protestant burn victims who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when a bomb went off. My sin was to argue with my father about how he was wrong (anti-violence) and I was right (pro-stupidity), and when I confessed the sin of not honoring my father and mother, that was my penance. Bear in mind that I was a foolish lad of eleven who knew everything there was to know about everythig, savvy?
Peace be with you my good man. And I'll drop a few tuppence into the poorbox on my way out to cover both of us.
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