Cardinal Mahony, Child Abuse, and Moral Heroism

Lots of chatter today about events in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. The new archbishop, Jose Gomez, has censured his predecessor for covering up child abuse by priests under his authority and banned him from carrying out any public duties. The predecessor, Cardinal Roger Mahony, has fired back with a letter posted on his blog, in which he notes that Gomez was in the church during the time these abuses occurred, and he never spoke out against them, either. I find Mahony's letter very interesting, as I will explain.

Here is Mahony's answer to the charges against him:

In this letter I wish to outline briefly how the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and I responded to the evolving scandal of clergy sexual misconduct, especially involving minors.

Nothing in my own background or education equipped me to deal with this grave problem. In two years [1962—1964] spent in graduate school earning a Master’s Degree in Social Work, no textbook and no lecture ever referred to the sexual abuse of children. . . .

During these intervening years a small number of cases did arise. I sought advice from several other Bishops across the country, including Cardinal John O’Connor of New York, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago, and then Bishop Adam Maida of Green Bay. I consulted with our Episcopal Conference frequently. All the advice was to remove priests from active ministry if there was reasonable suspicion that abuse had occurred, and then refer them to one of the several residential treatment centers across the country for evaluation and recommendation.

This procedure was standard across the country for all Arch/Dioceses, for School Districts, for other Churches, and for all Youth Organizations that dealt with minors. We were never told that, in fact, following these procedures was not effective, and that perpetrators were incapable of being treated in such a way that they could safely pursue priestly ministry.

The important thing here is that Mahony's error -- crime, really -- was doing exactly what everyone else in the church was doing, and had done since time out of mind. When confronted with a problem that obviously took him by surprise, Mahony consulted with other bishops and tried to find out what the church normally did in such cases. In an institution like the church, what else was he going to do? He would, I submit, have been a bad bishop if his first response to a problem was not to ask what the church had done before. That is how the church has lasted 2000 years. And what he was told was, first, that such allegations were not necessarily true, but had to be carefully investigated; and second, that if they seemed to be true, the correct response was to remove the priest from contact with children, refer him for counseling, and keep the matter quiet.

As a nation was have now decided that this was the wrong response. But did we agree on that in the 1960s, when Mahony was trained? I do not believe that we did. I believe, on the contrary, that over the past 50 years we have undergone a dramatic change in how we respond to child sexual abuse, both morally and legally. We have also lost confidence in counseling as a remedy for predatory behavior; in 1970, though, a great many people thought it was an entirely appropriate response, more likely to change the offender than a prison term.

I believe it is fair to say that the Catholic church lagged behind the national change in attitudes toward sexual abuse. They continued to cover it up and move predatory priests around for years after the rest of us had decided that such things should be exposed and prosecuted. But, well, the church is a conservative institution, and has a very long tradition of trying to protect its priests from secular justice and judge them according to its own rules. (See, for example, the case of Archbishop Becket and Henry II.)

As Archbishop Gomez's actions show, the church is slowly changing. It has changed because lawsuits by abuse victims have forced it to change. By coming forward and forcing the painful past out into the open, they have done something very important and perhaps reduced the chance that others will undergo the same horror.

I am put off, though, by condemnations of Cardinal Mahony, and I think he is right to point out Gomez's hypocrisy. We would like to think that in such circumstances we would respond differently -- we would see that the status quo is wrong, and that changes need to be made, and that more concern needs to be paid to victims and less to preventing scandal. Probably, though, that is not true. Morality is not some internal compass that you carry around with you regardless of where you are and who you are with. We all take our moral cues from those around us. Only a few brave souls ever dissent from the moral consensus of their own peers, and when they do it is just as likely to be from selfish motives as from a sense of justice.

When a whole institution turns criminal, it becomes almost a waste of breath to accuse individual members of crime. Or, rather, it is important only insofar as it helps to change the institution. This is why I would like to see somebody in the CIA prosecuted for torture -- not because I want to punish agents who were only doing what the President and Vice President wanted, but because I think it would help keep the same crimes from happening again. If shaming Cardinal Mahony helps to insure that future bishops act differently, then I suppose I am for it. But I hate the attitude that says these bishops were uniquely wicked and criminal men, somehow far worse than the rest of us. Moral heroes are few and far between and likely you are not one. If we want to make the world better our goal has to be, not hoping for heroes, but restructuring institutions and their incentives in ways that will help future people do the right thing.