The first term of comparison is the tension between Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles and his predecessor, Cardinal Roger Mahony. On Jan. 31, Gomez announced that Mahony would "no longer have any administrative or public duties" because of failures to protect children from abuse, documented in files released by the archdiocese. That triggered an open letter to Gomez from Mahony acknowledging mistakes, but insisting he went on to make Los Angeles "second to none" in keeping children safe.

Mahony remains a priest and bishop in good standing, and he really hasn't had any administrative role since stepping down in March 2011. The practical effect of the action thus is limited, but symbolically it amounts to what Jesuit Fr. Tom Reese has called a "public shaming."

So far, the Vatican hasn't said much other than it's paying attention and clarifying that the action applies only to Los Angeles.

Behind door No. 2 lies the highly public spat in 2010 between Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna, Austria, and Italian Cardinal Angelo Sodano, a former Secretary of State and still the dean of the College of Cardinals.

For those whose memories may have dimmed, a series of clerical abuse scandals exploded across Europe in early 2010, which among other things cast a critical spotlight on Benedict XVI's personal record. Sodano created a media sensation in April 2010 by calling that criticism "petty gossip" during the Vatican's Easter Mass.

In a session with Austrian journalists not long afterward, Schönborn not only said Sodano had "deeply wronged" abuse victims, but he also charged that Sodano had blocked an investigation of Schönborn's disgraced predecessor, Cardinal Hans Hermann Gröer, who had been accused of molesting seminarians and monks and who resigned in 1995. Schönborn reportedly said that then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, wanted to take action, but he lost an internal Vatican argument to Sodano. Continue reading

Sources

• John L Allen Jr in National Catholic Reporter
• Image: Daily News Los Angeles

John L Allen Jr is NCR senior correspondent.

'I FIND these files [about priests who sexually abused children] to be brutal and painful reading. The behaviour described in these files is terribly sad and evil. There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children. The priests involved had the duty to be their spiritual fathers and they failed."

These are the words, last Thursday, not of a victim nor an advocate, a lawyer, policeman or judge. They are the words of Los Angeles Catholic Archbishop Jose Gomez. Of themselves, they are perhaps franker than the usual church apology, but what made them really remarkable is what came next.

"My predecessor, retired Cardinal Roger Mahony, has expressed his sorrow for his failure to fully protect young people entrusted to his care. Effective immediately, I have informed Cardinal Mahony that he will no longer have any administrative or public duties." In a striking and unprecedented humiliation of the cardinal, Archbishop Gomez also had Mahony's former right-hand man in handling abuse allegations, Thomas Curry, resign as regional bishop of Santa Barbara.

For the first time, one bishop held another - a cardinal, indeed - accountable over abuse and acted against him. On the same day that Gomez dropped his LA bombshell, I outlined in The Age some of the reasons people have felt cynical about church promises of transparency and co-operation with the two Australian inquiries into how the churches dealt with clergy child sex abuse.

Like many, I believe real progress requires cultural change in the church, which means a measure of recognition in the Curia (church officialdom) of its own flaws, a probably insoluble catch-22. As noted Vatican watcher John Allen has said, real power in the Vatican is exercised by at most a couple of dozen elderly men, largely secluded, who are unmoved by the demands of the 24-hour news cycle.

So Gomez' brave, moral and apparently unilateral action was astounding. Perhaps he too got tired of Vatican vacillating. Continue reading

Sources

• Barney Zwartz in The Sydney Morning Herald
• Image: The Huffington Post

Barney Zwartz is Religion Editor of The Sydney Morning Herald