After multimillion dollar payoffs, cover-ups, and errors in judgment that should not have been tolerated from a parish secretary, much less the Cardinal archbishop of the largest diocese in the United States, you would think that even Roger Mahony would have run out of ways to dig himself a deeper hole. But, talent will out, and Mahony has without a doubt crossed the line from destructive liberalism into functional atheism.
It was announced last week that the archdiocese had retained the expensive Los Angeles PR firm of Sitrick and Co., best known for doing damage control for the likes of troubled companies Dynegy and Global Crossing, actress Halle Berry and comedian Paula Poundstone. Allan Mayer, senior partner at Sitrick, said that “Our task is to figure out what the reality is, and what the public perception is, and then to do what we can to make sure that the public perception reflects the reality.”
Mahony could have saved the estimated $500,000 fee by simply talking to any informed member of the laity not afraid to speak his mind. If anything, the public perception is less negative than the reality! Most salt-of-the-earth mass going Catholics are quite unaware how the cancer of liberalism has ruined the local seminary (St. John’s), and are probably not current on the extent of the “outreach” to the gay and lesbian community, or the Byzantine lavender mafia that exists throughout the American Church. They may not have noticed that friends of Mahony get plum parish assignments, and MANY older priests, still able to serve, are put out to pasture.
Exactly how did our Cardinal determine that it is worth half a million dollars to publicize that our archdiocese NOW has a “zero tolerance” policy on sexual abuse, and that the archdiocese does a lot of charitable work? One might also ask to whom is this PR blitz being directed? Potential jurors? Non-Catholics? Catholics who have been donating less each week?
The only PR campaign worth that kind of money and more, would be one that started to deflect a bit of the blame back to the “victims” of all this sexual abuse. While I’m not defending the pervert priests for one moment, it seems prudent to question the actions of able-bodied teenage boys who would more or less cooperate with being molested, and then decide that it is worth big bucks years later. The vast majority of boys 12 or older would have fought off the homosexual moves. In fact, it would have required extreme physical force, probably involving two or more perps, to get most normal American boys to succumb.
That leaves you with the inescapable conclusion that most of the victims are mercenary, gay, or both. And therein lies the problem. After nearly two decades of bringing liberal poison, including excessive understanding of homosexuals into the archdiocese, how does Mahony pursue this PR agenda, which is really the only one worth pursuing?
The Church is IN the world, but not OF the world. If Our Founder were interested in good PR, he would not have enraged the Jewish establishment, or would have at least toadied up to the Roman rulers. The history, of course, is quite different, and it took nearly 300 years, and thousands of martyrs, before the Church became the official religion of Rome.
Instead of resigning and doing public penance, which is what Mahony should have done if he still were a practicing and believing Catholic, he has gone into the secular world about as much as he can, by hiring a PR firm to deal with his many blunders.
So blinded by egotism that he does not even realize that merely hiring a PR firm in this instance is bad PR, he continues to build on his sorry legacy. Had this abuse scandal not existed, his insistence on absurd liturgical “reforms” that have gone a long way in removing moments of contemplation and spirituality from the Mass–especially as practiced by his most admiring pastors–would have been damage enough.
Not many Angelenos will forget how he stood in front of the much shorter Pope John Paul II in the Popemobile, making it difficult for the thousands of onlookers to even see the Pontiff, during his visit in 1987. And, not many Angelenos will forget how he has done his level best to bring untold harm to this archdiocese, PR or no PR.