Los Angeles punishment

Citing an alleged misrepresentation by Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, a judge ruled Wednesday that four people can seek punitive damages against the Los Angeles Archdiocese for failing to protect them from a priest they accused of sexual abuse.

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Punitive damages are awarded on top of compensatory damages, to punish or make an example of a wrongdoer for actions motivated by fraud or malice.

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If true, and it appears to be true, then Mahony lied. I hope it isn't true.

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But if it is true, and more money yet will have to be paid to these now grown up snickering boys, please let the first property the Archdiocese sells be this ugly pink cathedral.

It seems impossible, but even the flying saucer parking lot lamps in the photo manage to add to its repulsiveness.

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I listened to an audio recording of a Lutheran lady pastor giving the homily at a local progressive Catholic parish during a once per year 'swap pastors' day. It wasn't a bad talk. In it, she remarked how surprised she was at the school children's comments during a sharing session, who asked why don't modern churches look like churches?

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Right on kids! Architecture is absolutely a true expression of the people who spend the enormous sums on the buildings. The late hippie generation committees have performed not cool.

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As churches morph back to temples instead of meeting places, these cubic block designs will look as quaint as the old motels along Route 66. No, not quite quaint, but rather distorted; as the people who loved them back in the scandal days.

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The ruling from Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Haley J. Fromholz came in the case of Father Lynn Caffoe, 61, who is accused of molesting children in the period from 1975 to 1991, when he was withdrawn from the ministry and sent for psychological treatment. The trial over his alleged abuse is set for August.

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In making his decision, Fromholz cited Mahony's alleged misrepresentation of a videotape that was discovered in Caffoe's bedroom in 1992.

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Mahony wrote to then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now the pope, that Caffoe had videotaped "partially naked" boys in a state of sexual arousal. The tape was "objective verification that criminal behavior did occur," Mahony wrote, according to papers filed in the Caffoe litigation in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

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Six months later, Mahony told parishioners, in a written report which he described as the "fullest possible disclosure" about the sex abuse scandal, that the videotape depicted "improper behavior" with high school boys. But Mahony then said that the boys were "fully clothed" and that there was no sexual activity.