A friend emailed this link to me and advised “don’t read it unless you’re prepared to get very angry.”

Indeed.

He seemed almost temperamentally unable to see a problem and not do something. When a cathedral fire alarm stopped working, Mahony found a screwdriver and rewired it. When the clock was blinking the wrong time in an aide’s car, he quickly reset it.

Apparently that drive did not extend to cleaning out the child molesters in the Church.

Even after Fr. Tom Doyle’s excellent guide to dealing with the problem, and his lawyer’s advice to “Be sure that someone has reported the matter to the authorities,” Mahony still refused to deal with problem priests in any way other than shuffling them around (so more kids could get hurt).

There’s really so much there, including the great story of how the Times shamed the Church into tracking down a molester that it had helped get away.

“They lied as bad as any thug or ex-con I’ve ever come across on the street,” [Det.] Lyon recalled in an interview. “They were more interested in saving the reputation of the church than helping us find these young victims.”

Read the whole thing.