Legal Commentary

The invaluable Prof. Friedman's Religion Clause blog has this post, about this Los Angeles Times story concerning a wire-fraud investigation of Cardinal Roger Mahoney.  This seems (putting aside the religious-liberty issues) an ambitious effort.  I've not been following the matter in recent years, but I would not have thought that the honest-services theory reached this far.  (I'd welcome comments from those who have been keeping up with the statute's development and application.)

As a religious-freedom matter, though -- and, to be clear, to say this is not to suggest that Cardinal Mahony has exercised well the power, and responded well to the trust, that his Church (and, members of that Church believe, God) placed in him -- this prosecution is troubling.  On the one hand, it seems quite unremarkable to say that allegations of the kind that are swirling around Mahony suggest, on any meaning of the word, a betrayal of Catholics in his Diocese.  On the other, it also seems that identifying (and then vindicating, through a criminal prosecution) the "honest services" that a Catholic bishop owes to the Catholics in his Diocese would involve the kind of inquiry that we -- for "Freedom of the Church" and "hands-off religious doctrine" reasons -- do not want, and should not permit, the civil authorities to undertake.