Seven years ago, on the heels of the publication of my biography of Los Angeles Times publisher Otis Chandler, Father Francis Weber, a monsignor I’d come to know through a Catholic friend, urged me to adopt Cardinal Roger Mahony as my next subject. After some preliminary digging, I decided to give it a go, chiefly on the strength of the office rather than the man. The L.A. Archdiocese has not only the largest Catholic constituency in the U.S.; it is also one of the most potent political influences in Southern California, and had been largely under covered by my former employer, the nearly expired but once formidable Times.
Monsignor Weber was the Archdiocese’s de facto historian, so I correctly guessed that by using his name in my letter to Mahony, I would get a quick response. What I did not guess was that a Prince of the Church could be rude, snide and something of a gaping rectum. I take the blame insofar as failing to spell check his name – I used “Mahoney” throughout my letter and was immediately dressed down by his eminence for my error. From there, it got worse. I was told in no uncertain terms that I was something of a dolt for even asking so grand a man as Mahony if he would cooperate with a biographer. And this was not a one or two sentence blow off; the vicar of St. Vebiana went on for several paragraphs, extolling his own virtues while pissing on mine.
I never undertook that book, but after sitting through Angels and Demons this weekend, I’m kind of sorry that I didn’t. The movie itself is a little too long and ultimately a little too empty. It’s one of those Bruckheimer-esque whizz bangers that keep you on the edge of your seat clear up until the credits roll, at which point you start to rethink all of those incredible cliffhanger scenes and begin to repeat over and over to yourself: “Hey wait a second…that didn’t make any sense.”
But getting back to Mahony: the movie got me thinking about how that simple snub of a letter he tossed off so many years ago was glaring evidence of the sin of pride, which all good Catholics know is No. 1 on the hit parade of the seven Cardinals. I never met Mahony face-to-face and if he knew me, it was only by reputation. So how was it that he could so blithely pass judgment on me, based on my misspelling his name? The answer, I think, lies at the bottom of most, if not all, of his church’s highest crimes and lowliest misdemeanors. Whatever else Ron Howard and Tom Hanks tried to convey in their cardinal red shoot-‘em up, the snotty, presumptive arrogance that is personified by the Pope and his mignons came across most clearly. To be sure, not all the members of the Vatican all-boys club are self-important dicks, but there are enough of them to keep Dan Brown in plots for another generation or two.
And Mahony tops the list. Since my dressing down, I have watched his stellar career sour and his 30-year orchestration of the pedophile priest pandemic bring his once-wealthy archdiocese down to the level of Lehman Brothers bingo. What boggles the mind is, unmasked and humbled by his complicity in the archdiocese’s long, shameful cover-up of buggering and blowjobs, Roger remains as unrepentant as any of the sociopaths he harbored all those years. He is as certain an unindicted criminal as Henry Kissinger of Dick Cheney, and just as forthcoming with apologies.
I’m now sorry that I didn’t answer Mahony’s letter the way that I answered the equally stiff replies that I received from Lew Wasserman or Randy Kraft: by going ahead and writing their life stories anyway. When asked at cocktail parties what I write, my standard quip is “Hollywood and homicide, because they’re both felonies.” Perhaps I ought to add the Catholic Church to that list, and reopen my dossier on my old pal Roger.
by Dennis McDougal
