LETTERS
2002 LETTERS
December
November
October
September
July/August
June
May
April
March
February
January
ARTICLES
NEWS
ROAMIN' CATHOLIC
Contents © 2002
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
LETTERS
OCTOBER 2002
STOP COVERING UP FOR PEDOPHILE PRIESTS
Your biased article concerning Father G. Neville Rucker to the Catholic laity is a lie [see "'Zero Tolerance'" For The Old," July/Agust News]. You folks need to reread the L.A. Times article from May 18, 2002 by Richard Winton. The then nine-year-old girl that filed the lawsuit in 1993 was not the girl that made up stories. She was the girl from the El Segundo police report that was seen being molested by Father Rucker. The then nine-year-old girl that had also been molested by Rucker was not one of the four girls mentioned in the police report. She was molested by him years earlier in El Segundo. Criminal charges were not filed in 1967 because Bishop Manning convinced the devout Catholic mother of the molested girl that he would like the church to handle it and that he would do it properly. (That from the El Segundo police report.) The next article you need to read is an article written by Richard Winton from the Los Angeles Times on June 21, 2002. This article is about Rucker molesting three sisters at an Inglewood Catholic church starting in 1970. So there are other allegations, and before it is said and done, there will be many more of Rucker's victims coming forward -- and they are as I write this to you. Rucker is now under criminal investigation and will soon be arrested and put on trial for his crimes against children.
What's really horrible is the cover-up for Rucker. Why? Manning and Mahony have a lot to answer for. The thing that got all this started again was the e-mails that KFI radio got a hold of. If you want to know who he is, then read those e-mails. Rucker is referred to as Father R. The last item you need to understand is that the woman from the 1993 lawsuit was molested many times by Rucker along with many other girls before and after her. So start believing the victims of these horrible crimes instead of the pedophile priests.
S.
received via e-mail
Editor's reply: As we indicated, we derived the information for the news item from the San Francisco Chronicle, not the Los Angeles Times. It is true that our news item did not agree with the Times articles in regards to which girl who was said to be prone to lying, but we have been unable to verify whether that was on account of the Chronicle story or from a mistake of our own. The article in question is no longer to be found on the Chronicle website.
TRIBAL MASS IN THE AGE OF THE JETSONS
I watched with horror the consecration of the Taj Mahony. The translation (as only the Spanish language TV stations carried it) was poor and the liturgics made me sick to my stomach. The broadcast was already in progress, as they say, when I turned on the tube. (Do they still use tubes?) I could not tell who it was hitting the doors on the cathedral with a large item that looked like the clapper on a gong from the start of an old RKO motion picture (rather than the cardinal using his crozier), nor do I know why they would have ribbons on it. But play the Asian gong he did, with big swings as if he were trying to see how high up on the door he could hit. Commercial breaks spared me from the "Liturgy of the Catechumens" and I next caught the end of the homily and the singing of the Credo, a new tune sung by a cantor and cantress, leaving both the congregation and the clergy out of the loop, as newly commissioned music is like to do.
Next the relics, proceeded by two Cost Plus hurricane lamps, came in, a preface-like prayer was chanted, but I did not see if or where the relics were placed in the church, let alone in the altar; it could have been during the next commercial. Little Asian nuns dancing around barefoot with what looked like a cross between a tribal tiki torch and something George Jetson would use as a beacon for AAA, served as thurifers and thuribles. A huge pot (in the same tribal style) was placed on the marble mensa with a forest fire of incense, and posts with candles a yard or so from each corner of the altar (in the same tribal style) were thrust into the brick floor like lances or spears. The huge flagons of holy oil (and not a clear pure virgin olive oil, but rather a muddy, tainted oil) were smeared onto the mensa, later to be soaked up by the single bed-sheet and ethnic sarapes, kinte cloths and silks strewn on the mensa. (Note I refrain from the term altar, as it has the look of a dining room table in an upscale Bel Air home.) The glass bowls held by, I am sure, huge donors to the cave, and visiting clergy placing palm print-sized crosses around five feet tall on the walls, made the ceremony of anointing into a virtual finger painting exercise.
The procession with the gifts was not to my taste, but it was solemn; and even given the protesters outside, who would have rather seen some of the $200 million spent on the homeless and hungry, I had very little trouble with the baskets of ethnic foods brought up by representatives of the varied communities here in Los Angeles. Guess my liberal tendencies are showing through. One old venerable chalice was placed next to George Jetson's wine glass fabricated to match the tribal accessories, along with real whole wheat hosts (not bread that looks like real bread, as Cardinal Mahony called for in his "Gathering Faithfully Together" a few years back.) After the Eucharistic prayer, at communion time, a tray full of metal plates and more Jetson wine glasses were brought out and placed on the mensa. I was shocked that the Lord Cardinal Archbishop did genuflect once after each of the consecrations of the elements.
The communion was a big confusing labyrinth of people milling around. I heard mention of lay Eucharistic ministers on the television, although I did not see any. As there were over five hundred clergy there, I don't see the need for the extraordinary ministers, as they are supposedly extra-ordinary and to be used when sufficient clergy are not to be had. Deacons wandered around like wine stewards looking for wineglasses that needed to be freshened up.
Here ended the broadcast, as there was a Spanish program that had real sponsors, and viewers who could not wait to see it. The priest commentator/translators having been thanked, it was time for Cine Mexicano.
Sometimes, in a moment of weakness, I wonder if the New Liturgy is all that bad. I confess I did consider offering it once, in order to get a "gig" as an indult priest at a far-flung diocese. When I see what has become normative, it strengthens my resolve to continue celebrating the traditional rites and maintain the traditional Faith. Well, at least they did not spend two hours having everyone in the congregation come and reverence (kiss) the newly oiled mensa like Weakland did at his new Taj a few months back, or I would not have had the joy of seeing what I did get to see of the fiasco.
An anonymous priest,
received via e-mail
WHICH WAY TO THE MASSAGE PARLOR?
I enjoyed your article, "They Walk With the Devil, Catholic Hospital Refers for Abortions," in the September 2002 Mission.
An additional, absurd argument against the hospital's practice of referring patients to abortion clinics occured to me. What if a man came in and told the good sister he wanted to pay someone for sexual services? Would she tell him that, as a Catholic hospital, they did not provide such services, but hand him a flyer for an L.A. massage parlor?
Oliver McMahon
received via e-mail
MAHONY'S AN ELITIST
I am very grateful for your website; it is a voice in the wilderness! I have been enraged by what I read in Goodbye, Good Men by Michael Rose, of Mahony's part in St. John's Seminary in Camarillo, of the feminist nun vocations director, of the homosexuality in the seminary, and, now, of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels (Mahony's monument). I e-mailed the archdiocese long ago about the representation, presumably, of Our Blessed Virgin Mary above the doors, who has been downgraded to be "everywoman." I asked that the cardinal to change this statue to something more recognizable as our Blessed Mother. She is not "everywoman," nor is she a composite of Native American, Latina, Asian, African, or Caucasian women. She is, and always will be, a Jewish girl selected by God to be the Mother of Jesus Christ. Why were we Catholics not permitted to see drawings of artists' renderings to be considered? Why was this "everywoman" foisted upon us, with bare arms, and in what looks like an Academy Awards gown? Do you think our Blessed Mother looked like this? Did Our Lady of Fatima look like this when she appeared to the three children?
Unfortunately for Catholics in Los Angeles, Cardinal Mahony is an elitist: "my way or the highway." He could not possibly change anything because he would not want his elitist friends in the art world to think he doesn't understand "art." After viewing the interior of the cathedral on "Life and Times," Channel 28, wherein it was revealed that the models for the tapestries were a "secret," it was apparent why. Richard Riordan as one of the "saints" was readily recognizable; so, it would seem, that at least some of the models were the multi-million dollar donors. Why did it not occur to Mahony to have these models be some of the holy priests of the archdiocese who have dedicated their lives to God?
It is apparent that Mahony has shunted pedophile priests around to cover up their crimes, paid off victims of these crimes, kept it confidential, and worse yet, paid a public relations firm hundreds of thousands of dollars (no doubt parishioners' donations) to do damage control for his reputation. How dare he! And worse yet, he has tainted our good, moral, holy, dedicated priests who have sacrificed their entire lives to God, so that many of them feel that they should remove their priestly collars in public to avoid looks like, "is he or isn't he?"
Mahony's reputation is in ruins. As one placard said at the dedication of the Cathedral, "Lie, Deny, Get By." In the Los Angeles Times Mahony was listed as one of the ten worst bishops in the U.S. It is now time for him to resign, enter a monastery, and spend the rest of his life on his knees in reparation for the irreparable damage he has done our Catholic Church!
Diane Newton,
Northridge
CORRECTION
Just a small correction to the article, "Cardinal Mahony and the Wizard of Spin," [September 2002 Mission.] KFI's hosts are named John and Ken, not Bob and Ken.
Keep up the good work!
Ann Grivich,
received via e-mail
Editor's reply: For the record, the insertion of the names "Bob and Ken" was my doing, not Charles Coulombe's. Many years ago (about 20, I believe) my father in his commute used to listen to KFI hosts Bob and Ken, and it's those names that have stuck in my mind. I always confuse them with the more recent, venerable duo.