Life's Pleasures Quote by Roger Mahony

What makes Mahony's line land with such a dull thud is the way it converts other people's ruin into institutional opportunity. He gestures at "victims" and their addictions as if they were an unfortunate but useful data point, then pivots almost immediately to the church's "healing ministry" being "enhanced". The grammar does the moral work: victims are the passive subject of harm, while "the church" becomes the active beneficiary, gaining reach in "much broader strokes" - a phrase that sounds like a strategic plan, not pastoral care.

The intent reads like crisis management dressed up as optimism. By framing trauma as something that will improve the church's capacity to heal, he offers a reassuring narrative to Catholics anxious about scandal: yes, it's terrible, but look, it will strengthen our mission. It's a classic rhetorical salvage operation, the kind institutions use when they want the story to end in redemption without lingering on culpability.

Subtext: shift the spotlight from accountability to services rendered. "That's good, it's all positive" functions as a preemptive closing argument, insisting on the emotional conclusion before anyone can object that nothing about abuse, addiction, or cover-up is "all positive". Coming from a high-ranking cleric, in an era when bishops were publicly grappling with clerical abuse revelations, the remark risks sounding less like compassion than brand triage: the church not only survives the damage, it can grow from it. The problem isn't merely tone-deafness; it's the quiet suggestion that institutional renewal can be purchased with victims' suffering.