It might be time for Californians to stop looking to improve the education system and instead appreciate the fact that they didn’t go to school in the same conditions as the former Cardinal Roger Mahony. In all of his elementary, secondary, undergraduate and even two years of graduate school, Mahony was never taught anything about sexual abuse of children. The punch line here is that while he was in graduate school, Mahony studied social work.
Now, it was one thing when Adam blamed Eve for “tricking him” into eating the apple in the Garden of Eden, but blaming an entire education system for the failure to resolve years of somewhere around 100 clerics abusing children under the umbrella of the Roman Catholic Church is laughable.
“Nothing in my own background or education equipped me to deal with this grave problem,” Mahony said in a letter to Los Angeles archbishop Jose Gomez, who succeeded Mahony in 2011. “In two years spent in graduate school earning a masters in social work, no textbook and no lecture ever referred to the sexual abuse of children.”
Mahony graduated in 1964 from the Catholic University of America, and I’ll bet the bishops who facilitate education at this university are thrilled with the reputation their former student is promoting for their institution. It wouldn’t be fair to say he “bore false witness against his neighbor,” (Exodus), but it is ironic that Mahony attended Catholic schools his entire life, then joined the church and eventually became a prominent cardinal in Los Angeles. In all these years of serving his faith he also apparently never learned to tell the truth.
Luckily, even though women can’t be priests, it was a woman who shut down the more than five years of haggling of what information the church should have to share regarding the sexual abuse incidences and the numerous clerics involved. By this, I mean that the church was required to make the files they held regarding these events public information when Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Emilie H. Elias said, “Let’s just get it done.”
Elias went to University of California, Berkeley and then University of Southern California. I think it’s safe to say these widely-renowned universities didn’t shy away from educating her about how to handle the sexual abuse of children. Despite her ruling, Gomez’s decision to relieve Mahony of any administrative duties, and the letter Gomez wrote to the entire Los Angeles Archdiocese apologizing for the church’s failure, Catholic priests will still forever be the butt of pedophilia jokes. Not to mention, a source of bitter hatred for the church itself.
Not to worry, though. The church has been raising funds diligently in order to pay off debts incurred by the lofty settlement agreed upon in 2007 as compensation for the victims of the abuse. I wonder if devout Catholics are concerned about whether their weekly dollar in the collection basket is going toward feeding the hungry or paying off a young boy who was scarred by a priest in the confessional.
Paige Pelonis is a sophomore journalism and international studies double major and a contributing writer for the Daily 49er.