Bishops shuffling around clergy abusers? 'One of the greatest myths '

THE TIDINGS reports ...

"The belief that bishops moved child abusers from parish to parish, allowing them to abuse over and over, may well be one of the greatest myths created by the press coverage of the sexual abuse scandal in the Church."

This is a pathetically feeble attempt on the part of the handlers of the very troubled and rapidly disintegrating Archdiocese of Los Angeles to de-mythologize clergy sexual abuse in general and to extricate, in particular, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony from any complicity with these horrid scandals.

I have only four words to say in response to this absurd and baseless claim:

FATHER MICHAEL STEPHEN BAKER.

In a 2002 letter to his priests, Cardinal Mahony wrote:

"As your archbishop, I assume full responsibility for allowing Baker to remain in any type of ministry during the 1990s. I offer my sincere, personal apologies for my failure to take firm and decisive action much earlier."

According to this CBS News report, Mahony admitted "... he knew about Baker's problems, but for the next 14 years assigned him to different parishes where he had access to children."

No doubt the de-mythologizer who penned the propaganda piece cited above would be in full accord with the Biblical de-mythologizers who assert that Our Lord Jesus Christ never really said the following words anyway:

"It is impossible that scandals should not come: but woe to him through whom they come. It were better for him, that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should scandalize one of these little ones." (Luke 17)