It is also consistent with what a large swath of humanity would do.

A 33 year old man shows up in my office and tells me Fr. So-and-So fondled him 19 years earlier. There is not much point in telling law enforcement. The case is non-justiciable due to the passage of time. Talking about psychopathy in that set of circumstances seems gratuitous.

Keith O’Brien apparently hit on seminarians. I could call him a psychopath, but pervert-not-in-complete-command of himself seems more appropriate.

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All this babble about psychopathy is a distraction from the main task: assessing the real personal shortcomings of the hierarchy at various points in time and asking how we recruit and form a priest corps not composed of what Fr. Mankowski calls ‘tames in clerical culture’ and what Fr. Kelly called ‘foxes’. It is doubtful psychopaths are your problem. Vapid men, appearance oriented men, men who cannot make decisions, manipulable men would be your problem.

Mohony should have recused himself from going to Rome, to participate in the picking of a new pope, in my opinion.

Now, I could posit that these men were ‘psychopaths’ or demonstrated ‘psychopathy’. However, I would tend to say they exhibit modern bureaucratic behavior and personal interest. I will wager they liked Jerry Sandusky; two of them were in the same line of work; and the collective discussion left none of them with a visceral sense he was truly responsible.

Now, very few accusations against priests were made in real time. In the Diocese of Syracuse, 25 years after the fact was about the median for the whole set (though that includes a large mass of accusations that came out of the woodwork in 2001-04). Almost none had a third-party witness. You do not have to be a psychopath to hedge your bets and throw up your hands when confronted with the information set the bishops actually had, though some behaved disgracefully even when they had good information (McCormick, Sheehan, Tschoeppe, Grahmann, Matthiesen, Curtis in Bridgeport, Egan in Bridgeport). You just have to be a human being.

I could be wrong, but the excerpts from Mahony’s blogs that I’ve seen, show someone who has failed to take responsibility for his actions, a lack of remorse, a lack of concern for the victims of the priest under his juristiction, and a manipulative type of personality. I’m not a psychologist, and these traits could perhaps be explained differently, but they seem consistent with psychopathy. Mahony seems to be concerned with himself, and not the victims.

For the protection of all, perhaps future priests, (and future leaders of all other religions) should be screened for psychopathic traits, and excluded if the latter seem present.

“All the Cardinal electors, convoked for the election of the new Pope by the Cardinal Dean, or by another Cardinal in his name, are required, in virtue of holy obedience, to obey the announcement of convocation and to proceed to the place designated for this purpose, unless they are hindered by sickness or by some other grave impediment, which however must be recognized as such by the College of Cardinals.”

I read this passage from the “rule book” of the papal conclave promulgated by John Paul II to mean that an individual cardinal does not have the right to determine for himself whether he should stay home or not, except for sickness. Scandal might constitute a “grave impediment,” but the document seems to require that the rest of the Cardinals agree.

I don’t see why a rule-breaking cardinal should be permitted to break the rule of obedience here either.

That’s a completely different issue from being a less-than-holy Cardinal abstaining from the conclave.

Cardinal Mahony is a Cardinal and has a right to vote. It does not matter whether he’s holy or not.