A Response From the Cardinal

The other day, I received an unhappy letter from a reader, Cardinal Roger Mahony.

Mahony, the archbishop of Los Angeles, didn’t like a column I wrote last month about Hope In Youth, an anti-gang program he proposed along with other Los Angeles religious leaders and community organizations. It’s a new but expensive approach, concentrating on parents as well as children. The cost would be $20 million a year, 80% of it from government.

Mayor Tom Bradley has balked at Hope In Youth’s request for $2.5 million in city funds. Deputy Mayor Mark Fabiani said Bradley’s main objection is that the program puts its emphasis on counseling and “doesn’t provide a single job for a single at-risk youngster or a single hour of job training.”

Bradley’s position put him at odds with the cardinal, a public argument that began before I arrived on the scene with my column. In writing about the controversy, I explored the differences between the mayor and Mahony, eliciting this response from the cardinal:

September 19, 1992

Dear Mr. Boyarsky:

I am writing as a result of your column in yesterday’s Times entitled “The Bishop and the Bureaucrat.”

I found your column both inaccurate and unhelpful, and I was embarrassed by it. The column certainly does not reflect the goals and objectives of the Hope In Youth program we are attempting to launch.

You chose to portray our Hope In Youth program in terms of some deep and extensive battle with Mayor Tom Bradley. That is simply not the case. Hope In Youth is about saving our young people from the violence, crime and dead-end streets of gang membership. It is about reaching children and youth before they choose gang membership as a way of life.

To make Hope In Youth work we obviously need the full collaboration of the federal, state, county and city governments. We have been working closely with this leadership at all levels for over a year now, but we also realize the special difficulties because of severe economic constraints that continue to plague our state and Southern California.

I was hoping that your column would focus on the real issues: the extensive and searing problems of youth gangs in our community, and the need for innovative approaches to deal with them. Instead, you wrote an unfortunate piece which helps no one.

Your column illustrates better than anything I have seen recently why so many people disdain the press: that insatiable thirst for conflict and controversy, rather than a focus upon genuine community needs and how the community can constructively approach those needs.

I do not see Mayor Tom Bradley as “the icy, remote bureaucrat.” I have great respect for him, his office and the many problems and issues he is attempting to meet in our city with ever-decreasing revenues.

The religious leaders involved with Hope In Youth have been able to engage Mayor Bradley in a positive and constructive effort to bring innovative programs to help solve the city’s youth gang problems. We are confident the mayor does want to work closely with us in this effort and that he is taking new and positive steps to demonstrate that resolve.

May I respectfully suggest that if you want to help Hope In Youth you focus on the massive problem and help us rally community-wide support for our efforts. The column yesterday took us backward two or three steps, not forward.

Sincerely yours,

Cardinal Roger Mahony

Archbishop of Los Angeles

I gave this letter some thought, coming as it did with a “cc:” at the end noting that copies had gone to the mayor and my bosses--the editor and publisher of The Times.

In the first place, Cardinal Mahony, you brought up “our dispute with the mayor” in our interview. As you spoke into my tape recorder, discussing Bradley, the vehemence of your criticism surprised me.

More important, you know better than I that government receives many fine proposals every year, often of equal merit. Their fate is decided by a process in which contesting forces battle for victory in private and public. The political maneuvering is what makes some meritorious programs winners and some losers.

One of the purposes of this column is to explain this mysterious process so readers will understand why some people win and some lose. Possibly, the explanation will help readers with a stake in the battle.

Cardinal Mahony, in this recession-ridden era of impoverished governments and hard-pressed taxpayers, public money doesn’t materialize through miracles. You get it by competing with others whose projects may be just as worthy as yours.

It’s a rough game, cardinal, but you’ve chosen to be a player.