BOY, did I catch holy hell for last week’s column. I wrote about our perverse proclivity to reward bad behavior. It was mostly about David Letterman, but I made a reference to Cardinal Roger Mahony and his six years of stonewalling the investigation into the sexual abuse of children by pedophile priests, specifically Father Michael Baker. However, I spelled the cardinal’s name wrong. An error of this magnitude must be set right.

“It doesn’t matter what they say as long as they spell your name right,” goes the old showbiz clich . That must also be true in the religion biz, because I got an inbox-full from Tod Tamberg, director of media relations for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

“Perhaps you could nuzzle up to a copy editor next time you take a whack at Cardinal Mahony. Then maybe at least you’ll spell his name correctly,” wrote Tamberg from his official Archdiocese e-mail account.

Apparently, last week I inserted an “e” where it didn’t belong, spelling “Mahony” as “Mahoney.” Tamberg called my spelling error “bush league,” which makes me wonder what adjective describes his profession? “Apologist?” “Enabler?” “Un-indicted co-conspirator?”

But wrong is wrong, so allow me to clean up this mess: It was Cardinal Roger “no e” Mahony who spent more than half-a-billion dollars papering over the sexual abuse of children. Clearly Tamberg wants the cardinal to get full credit for this achievement. If my interloping “e” caused Mahony any discomfort,

I pray for his forgiveness.

And how about a tip of the cap to Tamberg? Say what you will, the guy has his boss’s back. Six years of spinning and smearing the victims and he still has time to check my spelling.

But “e” or “no e,” Mahony’s house of lies is crumbling. We now know Monsignor Richard Loomis, former vicar of clergy, part of Mahony’s inner circle, in a sworn deposition claims he sent the cardinal a memo warning of Baker’s continued sexual assaults against children and testified that Mahony barred him from calling the cops. These aren’t the words of a bush league newspaper pundit. Loomis is a priest, one of Mahony’s own. The stonewall has cracked.

For six years the cardinal has successfully avoided putting his hand on a Bible in open court. So what if Daniel Murphy High School had to close and be auctioned off along with hundreds of millions in other church property? The important thing was to preserve Mahony’s bully pulpit – accent on the “bully.”

Lawyered up, with P.R. firms and a code of silence the CIA would envy, Roger “no e” Mahony continues to lead the largest congregation of Catholics in America – long after Boston’s Cardinal Bernard Law fled the country in shame. But Mahony has no shame; he has Tod Tamberg, his own personal spellcheck.

Fortunately, none of this has anything to do with Catholicism itself. The Catholic faith is an agent for goodness and personal grace. I was an altar boy and a graduate of Catholic schools, kindergarten through college.

I’ve seen great works by thousands of good people in parishes from coast to coast. Sadly, Catholic bashers seize upon the Mahonys and Tambergs of the world and use their mendacity as an excuse to belittle a great faith. Catholicism is not suffering a crisis of faith, rather a crisis of fallible flesh-and-blood humans who hide behind canon law to escape the penalties of civil law.

In prison pedophiles are shunned, yet in L.A. politicians still queue up to have their photo taken with Mahony. I’ve often wondered who are those dopes who mugged for the camera with O.J. Simpson on the golf course? I also wonder how craven or cynical are politicians and parishioners who seek Mahony’s blessing rather than his resignation.

We claim to take crimes against children seriously. At best, we’re erratic. Roman Polanski may finally be dragged back to L.A. after 30 years in exile to face the same prosecutor Mahony has dodged for more than half a decade. Polanski has his defenders; the cardinal has Tod Tamberg, a man who is paid to defend the indefensible.

For my part, I have a dream: When the arrest warrant is finally served on the cardinal, his name will be spelled correctly.