"Why did you go to the police...?"

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Jun 14, 2003

Cardinal Mahony has released a statement explaining his dissatisfaction with the methodology of the National Review Board's study. All the initiative for openness and accuracy is his -- indeed, he has insisted the study is seriously underfunded. The Board, alas, has failed to respond to his repeated pleas for professionalism and scrupulous attention to state laws governing privacy. Worse, the data may turn out to be faulty.

Sufficient information and facts have not yet emerged in many pending cases to determine with certainty how many possible priest offenders are involved, nor how many victims there might be. The process of clarifying the veracity of all allegations is in the hands of both the criminal and civil judicial system, and until all of these matters are fully resolved, it is impossible to give accurate data.

The study, you see, asks the bishop how many child molesters he has on the payroll. The bishop replies, "How can I know until the courts decide who's guilty? With the appeal processes, etc., It could take years to know with certainty." Governor Keating, ungenerously, find this evasive. As a former FBI agent, the kind of questions he asks and his purpose for asking them is not that of an academic preparing a monograph on the sociology of religion. (There is no truth to the rumor that he woke up yesterday with a severed horse's head on his bed.)