Cardinal Roger Mahonyof the Los Angeles diocese is truly a God’s servant. And that he sticks to the Holy Bible’s commandment:"When someone throw a stone at you, retaliate by throwing him some bread, instead." Which is an extremely difficult thing to do under the present circumstances.
Now, Mahony’s action by not reporting the crime to the police, after an irate man who seemed displeased at the sexual abuses allegedly made by some priests against minor children, was in accordance to acceptable reason and thinking. But the secret got out of the tinder box when Mahony divulged it to his colleagues during a meeting that he was beaten up by somebody else as he walked to drop some mails into a mail box near his place.
He could have kept it to himself, if his purpose was to forgive the man who inflicted bodily harm to him, instead of leaking it to some priests who in turn leaked Mahony’s secret to the police. But the harm was done and the good cardinal didn’t want to press criminal charges against his attacker. So the police obeyed the cardinal’s wishes, after conducting an initial investigation just the same to find out what happened. In our midst, seldom an individual as influential as the cardinal would ever wanted to keep it to himself. Perhaps, what he wanted was for some people to realize and atone for their sins, rather than be vindictive to one another. If a person has the leeway of forgiving someone who sinned against him, it is almost tantamount to what Jesus Christ did on the cross to redeem our sins.
Similarly, the good cardinal became a shock absorber of some people’s ire after some priests belonging to his diocese were reported to have committed sexual abuses against innocent children many years ago. Hopefully, the attacker should have the chance to reflect unto himself that inflicting bodily harm to the cardinal would solve the problem, even as the cardinal had already worked out for the release of some $600 million as payment to the victims of said sexual abuses.