MONDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2011
Volume 10 Issue 92
Santa Monica Daily Press TOO MANY BOTTLES SEE PAGE 6
We have you covered
THE AVOID THE FLU ISSUE
Cardinal Mahony leaves behind tainted legacy GILLIAN FLACCUS RACHEL ZOLL Associated Press
LOS ANGELES
When Cardinal Roger Mahony was ordained nearly a half-century ago, the Roman Catholic church was in the throes of a modernization and renewal — and the lanky young priest who grew up near his family’s poultry processing plant was seen as a leading liberal light for the times. As a seminarian and young cleric, the Spanish-speaking Hollywood native celebrated Mass with Mexican fieldworkers, worked with Cesar Chavez to fight for better farmworker conditions and was appointed auxiliary bishop of Fresno, the heart of California’s bread basket, at the tender age of 38. Mahony retired Sunday and hopes to cement that legacy by dedicating himself fulltime to the fight for immigration reform. For many, though, the cardinal’s career will instead be defined — and irreparably tainted — by a devastating clergy abuse scandal that unfolded on his watch, first as bishop of Stockton and then as head of nation’s largest archdiocese. The scandal, which resulted in a $660 million settlement with more than 500 plaintiffs, proved to be the biggest erosion of Mahony’s authority in a church that had already shifted around him with a revived emphasis on orthodoxy and tradition. In his final years in Los Angeles, Mahony has been dogged by hundreds of lawsuits, criminal investigations into clergy abuse in the archdiocese and a bitter legal fight over sealed church files on some of the church’s worst abusive priests. Even in his final days as archbishop, newly uncovered allegations against an aging priest refocused attention on Mahony’s role and forced the resignation of the archdiocese’s vicar for clergy. Still, Mahony managed to hang on, unlike Cardinal Bernard Law, who resigned as Boston archbishop over his failure to stop predatory priests. “In a very paradoxical way, you contrast him with Cardinal Law, and I wonder if there aren’t people in the Vatican who admired Mahony since he hung tough,” said James Hitchcock, a St. Louis University historian who studies American Catholicism. SEE MAHONY PAGE 7
Brandon Wise brandonw@smdp.com
THIS WON’T HURT: RN Rubina Andonian administers a flu shot to intern Colleen Thompson at the UCLA Employee Health Center last week.
Severe flu hits later in season Other illnesses masquerade as flu, local doctors are reporting BY ASHLEY ARCHIBALD Daily Press Staff Writer
SM-UCLA As the last game of league play approached, Santa Monica High School’s boys’ basketball team found itself missing one of its starting players, point guard Jeremiah Shevlin. The senior was out for nine days, laid low by a vicious illness that kept him out of the last two games of his high school career. “It was definitely not your common cold,” said Samohi’s head coach James Hecht. It’s likely that the basketball player had this year’s strain of influenza, which doctors say is hitting harder and later than in previous years. Usually, the height of flu season comes at
the end of December and early January, when people start mingling again at school or work and spread the disease, said Dr. Peter Galier, former chief of staff at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center. “It usually creeps in right after the holidays, when people re-expose each other,” he said. “We didn’t see much of anything this year until the last couple of weeks.” Then, the floodgates opened. By the end of January, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health reported 804 positive tests for the flu since October 2010. In the same time period, 10 people have died from the illness, according to the county’s publication, InfluenzaWatch. Anecdotally, the symptoms seem more
severe, Galier said. “More people have had longer duration, and more of the muscle aches and pains,” he said. This year’s flu is marked by more severe nose issues, as well as the typical chills, fever, muscle aches and breathing difficulties. Some people who come in reporting the flu actually have one of two other kinds of infections that have popped up this season, including a gastrointestinal illness and a respiratory illness. The number of upper respiratory ailments, also known as RSV, seems to have increased over last year, said Dr. Wally Ghurabi, medical director of the Nethercutt SEE FLU PAGE 9
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