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1999 NEWS STORIES
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Contents © 1999
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
OCTOBER 1999
SOCIAL WORKERS, AS WELL AS police officers need a search warrant in order to conduct a child abuse investigation, according to an opinion issued in late August by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The 14 page opinion went on to state that social workers could not conduct a strip search of children in their home unless the officials had secured a search warrant before entering a home when the parents did not consent to the entry.
This Ninth Circuit decision arose from a case that involved a home schooling family in Woodland, California. Shirley and Robert Calabretta filed suit after a social worker from the Yolo County Social Services and a policeman from the Woodland Police Department coerced entry into the family's home in 1994. The Yolo County Social Services child abuse hotline had received a call stating that a child was heard saying "no, no, no" in the backyard. The caller also said that she had heard a child say "No daddy, no daddy" late at night (the court's opinion refers to the caller as "she").
In spite of Mrs. Calabretta's protests, the social worker and the police officer who accompanied her coerced entry into the family's home. Once inside, the social worker insisted on strip searching the then three-year-old daughter. The Calabrettas were represented by Mike Farris, president of the Home School Legal Defense Association, which filed a civil rights lawsuit on the family's behalf and prevailed before Judge Lawrence Karlton of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California.
The police officer and social worker then appealed Judge Karlton's decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. On August 26, a three-member bench of the court issued its decision. The judges affirmed the lower court's decision in the Calabretta case. Writing for the panel, Judge Andrew Kleinfeld said that the facts in this case are noteworthy for the absence of an emergency. The social worker and her department delayed entry into the home for 14 days after the report because "they perceived no immediate danger of serious harm to the children." The court went on to say, "[a]ppellants also argue that the coerced entry into the home was primarily to protect the children, not investigate a crime pursuant to California regulations. It is not clear why this would excuse them from compliance with the Fourth Amendment."
Charles Mack, county counsel for Yolo County told the this reporter that requiring social workers to obtain a search warrant before conducting a child abuse investigation would be problematic. He said that the court's insistence on a search warrant made child-abuse investigations criminal investigations, subject to the Fourth Amendment. Until Calabretta, social workers that were conducting child-abuse investigations were "under a more relaxed standard of a civil proceeding." In a press release sent out by Yolo County, Meg Sheldon, the director of the Yolo County department of social services said that the Calabretta decision will "hamper her department's ability to protect children from harm." Sheldon did not return calls for more comment. She also did not reply to a faxed set of questions.
In a telephone interview, Scott Somerville, staff attorney for Home School Legal Defense replied to Sheldon's claim that the Calabretta decision was going to hinder her agency. He said that, instead, the Calabretta decision was a very important victory for families. "Law enforcement has the difficult job of punishing the guilty and protecting the innocent. The Calabretta decision will make social workers work harder to protect the innocent. That's a good."
At time of press, the Yolo County Board of Supervisors had not decided on whether or not to appeal the Ninth Circuit's decision.
SAYING "I UNDERSTAND YOUR CHAGRIN when people start talking about canceling debts," Roger Cardinal Mahony told a gathering of the Australian Institute of Company Directors that the Third World debt crisis, nevertheless, "calls on us to reaffirm our solidarity with the poor in developing countries," according to a August 26 Catholic World News report. Echoing Pope John Paul II, Cardinal Mahony told business leaders in Melbourne, Australia that they should contribute to help cancelling Third World debt.
"As we move closer to the year 2000," said Mahony, "more religious groups and organizations must join the campaign for debt reduction and cancellation. When so many lives hang in the balance, debt cannot be reduced simply to a question of finances." Monies freed from debt payment, said the cardinal, should be placed in a human development fund that would direct them towards housing, education, and healthcare spending. Plans must be drawn up by Third World countries, he said, detailing how they would invest social infrastructure funds from developed countries.
Debt relief for Third World countries figured prominently on the agenda of a two day meeting of the deputy finance members of the G7 nations. The August 30-31 meeting in Berlin discussed the September meeting of the chief ministers of their countries. According to Zenit news service and the Wall Street Journal, both the G7 countries and the International Monetary Fund committed themselves last June to relieve $27 billion in international debt.
SOME MAY CALL IT BLOOD MONEY, but for Cardinal Mahony Rupert Murdoch's $10 million contribution to the Los Angeles cathedral is a welcome infusion of life's blood to the $163.2 million project.
Chairman of News Corp. -- a conglomerate of newspapers, the Fox television network, 20th Century Fox film studio, along with satellite networks in Europe and Asia -- Murdoch has never been thought a bastion of Catholic morality; in fact, his networks have been criticized for raw sex and violence. Nevertheless, of late, Murdoch, whom the Los Angeles Times called a "nominal Presbyterian," has been lionized by Cardinal Mahony. In January 1998, Murdoch and his Catholic wife, Anna, were made, respectively, a papal knight and dame according to the Pontifical Order of St. Gregory the Great. This award was bestowed by Pope John Paul II upon Cardinal Mahony's recommendation. In June 1999, however, Murdoch and his wife dissolved their marriage of 31 years, and later that month, Murdoch, 68, married his third wife, Wendy Deng, 31. At a Thursday, September 2, 1999 press conference, according to the Times, Cardinal Mahony, announcing Murdoch's gift to the cathedral (the single largest, to date), said that he "kind of pushed" the Murdoch family to go public about their contribution. "This is something that the city and the community needs to be proud of," said Mahony, "stepping forward, as well as modeling to others in industry and the corporate world a responsibility to make wonderful things happen."
According to the Times, Murdoch, sporting a hard hat, on September 2 praised Mahony's project: "as the only place of worship in central Los Angeles," he said, "the cathedral will serve the people of Southern California as a whole. Although it is being built to assist the Catholic Church, it will clearly serve as a center for many ecumenical interfaith and cultural endeavors." Mahony agreed. "The cathedral conference center," he said, "will be an extraordinary place of meeting and unity in our community. From the poorest of the poor to the most wealthy, the least influential to the most powerful, everybody is always welcome and feels at home at a cathedral."
At the same press conference, according to the Times, Mahony revealed that, though the cost of cathedral construction will not exceed the $163 million cap set by the archdiocese, he has established a separate $4.6 million Our Lady of the Angels Fund to endow the cathedral and to provide for cathedral adornment.
Interestingly, according to the Times, the only television media invited to cover the press conference were Fox television and Channel 11.
IN THE WAKE OF THE VATICAN'S CRACKDOWN on the homosexual outreach of Father Robert Nugent and Sister Jeannine Gramick, Los Angeles auxiliary bishop Gambino Zavala has resigned from the board of the Oakland based National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries. In addition to Zavala's departure from the organization, Father Peter Liuzzi, also resigned from the group. Liuzzi, head of the Los Angeles Archdiocese's Gay and Lesbian Outreach was a founding member of the group.
In a August 31 Los Angeles Times story, Bishop Zavala said that "he resigned ... because of the press of other obligations, including his chairmanship of Encuentro 2000." Bishop Zavala vaguely alluded to knowing about the controversial group's dissent on Church teaching on homosexuality, adding that he had only attended "one meeting."
Similarly, Father Liuzzi said that he had decided to resign because of the controversy surrounding the National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries. Liuzzi admitted that the Vatican's disciplinary action against Father Nugent and Sister Gramick played a role in his decision. In an August 30 statement, Father Liuzzi said that the association's inability to define and maintain a "centrist" position made it "vulnerable to the far right [and] angering the left," Critics say that the fact that the National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries now includes gay rights activities shows how far from the "center" the group is.
Liuzzi himself conceded the group's internal problems. "Maintaining a credible position now became a formidable task" he said. "I don't have enmity with any of those groups. But when you are confronted with hurting people, trying to be centrist, it's hard to do that."
In response to Father Liuzzi's statement, one priest who is active in Courage (an orthodox ministry to homosexuals) and ministers to people with same sex attraction said: "The key shift is Bishop Zavala's resignation from this organization as its episcopal advisor. This marks a shift from episcopal approval. It will be interesting to see how Cardinal George [archbishop of Chicago] now addresses this group. Personally, with Father Liuzzi's emphasis on equality and same treatment for persons with same sex-attraction, comparing the Church's treatment [of homosexuals] with contracepting couples and other unchaste behavior; and with his two articles on the Los Angeles archdiocesan website which are theologically confused, it does not appear that he is the initiator of this resignation, but that the archdiocese wishes to separate itself from this group."
Both Father Liuzzi and Bishop Zavala were speakers at the 1997 meeting of the National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries conference which was held in Long Beach. Roger Cardinal Mahony was the principal celebrant at the conference's Mass. At that Mass, Cardinal Mahony distributed communion to conference attendees who were sporting tee shirts identifying them as members of Dignity, a homosexual rights group which has taken issue with the Church's teachings on the necessity of celibacy on the part of homosexuals.