NEWS
2005 NEWS STORIES
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Contents © 2005
by Jim Holman.
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NEWS
February 2005
"WE WERE IN COURT-MANDATED settlements, and we did the best we could," said Orange's Bishop Tod Brown. "In the long run, we have done a service" for the Church. But despite the diocese's best, Orange will pay out $100 million to settle 87 sexual abuse claims against diocesan clergy in cases that extend back to the 1970s, according to the December 4 Los Angeles Times. This settlement far outstrips the Boston archdiocese settlement of $85 million to 552 victims. The amount of money per victim in the Orange settlement comes to $1.1 million, second only to a Tucson diocese settlement, which gave $1,363,636 to each victim ($16 million in all to eleven victims.) The average settlement thus far paid per victim throughout the United States stands at $386,861. The Orange settlement, which will be paid by insurance, cash reserves, loans on property, investments, and some layoffs, will not require the closure of any parish or school; "but it's going to be very, very painful," said Bishop Brown. Under the settlement, the diocese may not challenge the 2002 state law that removed the statute of limitations for civil suits concerning sexual molestation of minors. Two priests alleged to have molested some of the parties remain in ministry since an internal diocesan investigation determined that the accusations against them were not credible and, barring court cases, their guilt has not been legally established.
But if the settlement will be painful for the Orange diocese, by setting the standard for monetary payments, it is potentially more painful for other dioceses which have not yet reached settlements with alleged victims. In particular, the Los Angeles archdiocese has 544 cases to settle, some of which stretch back to the 1930s. Too, Bishop Brown's decision not to fight the release of priests' personnel files does not shore up the position taken by Cardinal Roger Mahony not to release his priests' files.
The Orange diocese may sell Marywood, its 17-acre headquarters in Orange, to help pay the settlements, just as Boston archdiocese sold the archbishop's mansion and surrounding property (which generated $99.4 million). Joelle Castieux, an alleged victim who was part of the settlement, said he thought the sale of Marywood would be an important symbolic gesture. "It will be a sign of a new age in the diocese and a new way of running the faith community in Orange County," said Castieux. But David Clohessy, executive director for Survivors Network for Those Abused by Priests, said the entire settlement is just an example of a good business decision. "It's always tempting to read a lot into a settlement, and I think that's dangerous," said Clohessy. "I think fundamentally they are just business decisions. They don't symbolize the scales falling from a bishop's eyes and suddenly him getting it or becoming compassionate."
THE ORANGE SETTLEMENT, said a December 5 Los Angeles Times article, brings Bishop Tod Brown out of the shadow of his friend and former classmate, Cardinal Roger Mahony. In contrasting the two, Jeffrey Anderson, a St. Paul, Minnesota attorney who represents victims, said, "we have two styles: One is a man of action, the other is a man of words." Brown reached a settlement and has been "transparent" with law enforcement, by releasing personnel files, while Mahony has resisted releasing files, and his lawyers still talk about working for the overturn in the courts of the California law that for year removed the statute of limitations on cases of sexual abuse of minors. While the cardinal in 2002 dismissed several priests without any public notice, Brown for his part set up public discussion sessions when he removed a priest accused of molesting a boy, delivered to police a letter written by Father John Lenihan (wherein the priest admitted to molesting two teenagers) as well as other documents requested by police, and issued press releases.
Still, since the eruption of the priest sexual abuse scandal, Brown has been criticized by two former members of his own sexual misconduct oversight and review board — one former member saying that the diocese did not live up to its zero-tolerance policy, the other calling the board "a public relations sham preoccupied with protecting the good names of priests." Victims have also criticized Brown's hiring of a public relations firm to deal with controversy over the scandal and his refusal to ditch plans for a $17 million cathedral in Santa Ana. (With the settlement, plans for the cathedral are back on track.)
And Cardinal Mahony has come in for some praise. Kathleen McChesney, executive director of the U.S. bishops office for child and youth protection, said, had it not been for Mahony, the bishops would not last year have instituted a nationwide study of sexual abuse in the Church. "Cardinal Mahony stood on the floor of the conference and put his support behind the study," said McChesney. "That was very significant leadership action for the conference. Had he not done that, it would have taken much longer to get the study going, if at all."
THE GROCERY STRIKE that began in October of 2003 hurt both workers and management in the short run, but in the long run may be a loss for labor. According to the December 15 Los Angeles Times, the grocery chains — Albertsons, Inc., Safeway Inc.'s Vons and Pavilions, and Kroger Company's Ralphs — have had to cut prices to lure customers back after the almost five-month grocery strike, and their stocks have fallen. Under the new contract negotiated with the United Food and Commercial Workers union, while workers hired under the old contract will receive the same pay and insurance benefits, new workers have to come in with less pay and decreased benefits. Though, through worker attrition, the stores will eventually get what they wanted — a decreased payroll — Safeway, Inc. is wanting to accelerate the process, offering some senior workers an up-to $50 million buy-out program. If 1,000 workers accepted, each would get $50,000. The other companies have not said whether they would offer a similar program.
As for the workers, some told the Times that they have lost the team spirit they had before the strike. New hires, too, are dissatisfied that they earn less. While, under the old contract, a new cashier started at $9.78 an hour and after two years topped out at $17.90 an hour, under the new contract new cashiers start at $8.90 an hour and after six years make $15.10 an hour. Unlike under the old contract, new workers have to wait a year before their insurance benefits kick in.
Despite the short-term financial drag for the companies, David Dillon, chairman of the Cincinnati-based Kroger company, told the Times he thought the fight with the union was worth it, for it established future lower pay scales for workers. "The benefits are there, and they are significant and they will grow over time. That was the whole idea," said Dillon.
BUT THE SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA strike seems to have contributed to a labor victory in Northern California, said the December 21 Los Angeles Times. With the threat of another strike looming, the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 588 in Northern California reached a tentative contract agreement December 19 with Safeway, Inc., Alberstons, Inc., and Kroger Company's Ralphs chain that would not include the two-tier wage and benefits system that was characteristic of the Southern California contracts. The union made some concessions, such as an extension of the time in which new employees could reach top wage scales and a less generous benefits packages for new hires; but under the new contract, new employees could work up to receiving the same benefits that existing employees have. Under the proposed contract, workers would not have to contribute to their healthcare packages, but employers' contributions would be set at a fixed dollar amount that would not fluctuate with inflation. Union members were to vote by mail on the proposed contract.
Rick Icaza, the president of the union's Local 770 in Los Angeles, said the proposed contract is "a major concession on the part of the employers. If any good came out of our [Southern California] strike, it's that the employers are now going to be gun-shy."
THE 17-YEAR-OLD YOUTH who shot his girlfriend at an abortion clinic has been sentenced to two consecutive terms of life in prison, said a January 10 LifeNews.com story. On April 29, 2004 Jeffrey Cameron FitzHugh of Indio Hills shot 16-year-old "Sarah S." at Joseph Durante's Palm Desert abortion clinic after pleading with her not to abort their child. When she resisted his requests, he "snapped," went outside and returned with a gun. According to a witness, the youth shouted, "how can you deny it's my baby?" before shooting his girlfriend. Six hours later, FitzHenry was arrested in a house in Indio Hills. Sara S. is now paraplegic.
POLITICAL LAS POSADAS. The Latin American tradition of Las Posadas, in which actors portray Joseph and Maria in search of a room in Bethlehem, have taken on a political and social character in some area churches, said the December 23 Los Angeles Times. Before Christmas at St. Anne's church in Santa Monica, about a hundred people gathered to participate in a Las Posadas in which a police officer tustled with a young Latino man who was cast as "an innocent person of color;" the police officer assumed (wrongly) that because the "innocent person" was dressed in gang clothes, he was a gang member. Father Michael Kennedy of Dolores Mission in Boyle Heights held a posada during a Mass at Central Juvenile Hall, in which a wealthy character was admitted to an inn while a poor couple was left outside. "God wasn't in the comfortable inn," Father Kennedy told the detained youths; "he was in the cave, in the dark place, like you're in now." One Morena Hernandez, dressed as the Blessed Virgin, held a posada outside the Hyatt West Hollywood Hotel to publicize the hotel workers' contract negotiations with management. Hernandez said Mary "was an immigrant to Bethlehem who fought for a decent place to stay. I'm asking for a decent contract." (But Fred Muir, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Hotel Employers Council, countered Hernandez's assertion; for hotel employees, he said, "there is room for them at the inn;" Hyatt allows employees 12 complimentary hotel nights a year.) Other posadas addressed wage issues at Wal Mart stores, access to healthcare for workers, attempts of former bracero workers to regain lost pay, and the plight of undocumented immigrants.
STATE ATTORNEY GENERAL Bill Lockyer seemed to back away from a statement made in early December that schools are not required to tell parents when their children leave campus for "confidential medical services," such as abortion, AIDS treatment, or psychological analysis. According to a December 2 LifeNews.com report, Lockyer was addressing a state statute that says schools may release students for "confidential medical services" without parental consent; this may, according to Lockyer, means must. Said Lockyer, schools must "notify both students and their parents that students are allowed to be excused from school for confidential medical appointments without parental consent."
Under pressure, though, from grassroots, pro-family efforts, Lockyer seems to have altered his position somewhat. According to a December 14 WorldNetDaily.com report, Lockyer on a radio program said the state law he so confidently interpreted is "ambiguous." And while he still thinks children as young as 12 can leave school for "confidential medical services" without parental consent or notification, school districts which decide to require parental notification will not be sued.
THE OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE to govern the disbursement of the $6 billion for Proposition 71 embryonic stem cell research, approved by California voters in November, chose its leaders December 17, according to a December 21 LifeNews.com report. Robert Klein, who wrote Proposition 71, will be chairman of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, while Edward Penhoet, co-founder of the biotechnology company Chiron Corporation, will be vice-chairman. Each will serve a six-year term.
The approval of Klein and Penhoet has elicited criticism. Berkeley attorney Charles Halpern complained that the public meeting in which they were elected by oversight committee members was conducted without timely presentation of information about each of the candidates, which, said Halpern, violates state law. "We got no information about any of the candidates until (Friday) morning," said Halpern. Halpern also complained that Klein is not a scientist. A taxpayers group has charged that several members of the oversight committee have ties to pharmaceutical companies and the biotechnology industry. Said Jerry Flanagan of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights: "the public health value of stem cell research could be significantly compromised by the web of conflicts between committee members and the companies that stand to profit from research grants. The concern is that research grants will be given on the basis of personal relationship and financial interest and not in the best interest of California patients." The California Nurses Association has made the same complaint.
IN THE WAKE of the November 2004 election in which voters approved $3 billion in bonds for embryonic stem cell research came the news that the state's budget shortfall has worsened. According to the December 16 Los Angeles Times, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's various attempts to close the state's budget shortfall have not paid off. Indian casinos are not bringing in the expected amount of money to government coffers, the diversion of a share of money from punitive damages from civil lawsuits to the state is not paying off, the governor's plan to borrow $800 million for pension funds for state workers is halted in court, and the state's prisons are over budget. The projected deficit has grown to $8 billion, according to unnamed administration officials — $1.3 billion more than projected in November by the non-partisan legislative analyst's office. Cuts will probably need to be made, mostly from programs for health and human services.
"GANG HEADQUARTERS" is what Los Angeles police called an apartment complex in South Los Angeles, and they were able to convince a court to shut it down, said the December 15 Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles city officials argued in court that from the 24-room, dilapidated structure, members of the 69 East Coast Crips have been dealing drugs and terrorizing the neighborhood for 20 years. Since 2002, seven adults and two children have been shot in the neighborhood, according to police. On December 2, Judge Susan Bryant-Deason issued a preliminary injunction, ordering the property vacated by February 7 and then boarded up and fenced for 90 days. Subsequent use of the property said the judge could only be commercial. According to the Times, some in the city attorney's office opined that the apartment site could serve for a Starbucks.
The city said only a few residents of the apartment complex would probably be eligible for relocation assistance; others could be excluded because they lived in apartments used by the gang for criminal activities. Residents worry about being turned out on the street without assistance. One resident admitted there was gang activity in the building, but said she and her neighbors were not criminals. "I'm a single mother with four kids," she said. "How can they just put all our families out on the street?" Another resident wondered where else he could find an apartment for $600 a month.
Civil liberties advocates questioned the city's rationale for giving relocation assistance to only some residents. "That's appalling," an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union said. "If residents in that apartment complex are not being charged with criminal activity, there is no basis for distinguishing relocation expenses for some residents and not others."
MIXED RESULTS FOR CHARTER SCHOOLS. A federal study, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, gave a less than encouraging report of the progress made by charter schools, said a December 16 Los Angeles Times story. The study, released December 15, showed that fourth graders in charter schools performed as well as their counterparts in traditional public schools in reading, while trailing them in mathematics. While federal officials warned that the study data was "very limited," both supporters and opponents of charter schools used it to bolster their agendas. Federal deputy secretary of education Eugene Hickok said it was "good news" that "in many ways, charter school students are holding their own with public school students everywhere" — and this, advocates say, despite the fact that charter schools have a disproportionate number of underperforming, inner city students and fewer experienced teachers. But critics point out that if special education students were removed from the study (eight percent of whom are in charter schools, 11 percent in regular public schools), charter school students actually did worse in reading than traditional public school students. Charter schools have a larger percentage of black and urban students as traditional public schools, though both have the same percentage of low-income students.
But another recent study conducted by Harvard University, which focused on third, fourth, and fifth grade students in charter schools in California, found that they were 8.5 percent more likely to be proficient in reading than their peers in traditional public schools and five percent more likely to be proficient in mathematics. The study also concluded that charter schools improve over time — while the federal study found that the longer a charter had been operating the more test scores declined in relation to traditional public schools.
TWO DAYS AFTER President George W. Bush signed into law a bill that calls for the spending of tax dollars to preserve the California missions, a church-state separationist group filed suit to stop it. The California Missions Preservation Act authorizes the secretary of the interior to give up to $10 million over five years to the Riverside-based California Missions Foundation to repair the 21 Spanish missions. But the Washington-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed suit December 2 in U.S. district court in the District of Columbia, seeking a ruling that the preservation act violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment and is thus unconstitutional. Americans United point out that 19 of the 21 missions remain centers of Catholic worship, and that by funding their restoration, the federal government is funding religion. Americans United filed suit on behalf of four Californians, taxpayers — a Unitarian, a Jew, a freethinker, and a Buddhist.
Proponents of the funding — including the bill's sponsors Senator Barbara Boxer and Representative Sam Farr (D-Carmel) — point out the federal government has long given money for historically significant houses of worship, including Boston's Old North Church, Rhode Island's Touro Synagogue, and Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where Martin Luther King, Jr. preached. Senator Boxer said, "this law is on very solid legal footing because the funds are going to a private foundation and not to any church. There are strong precedents for this kind of funding." Besides the federal monies, the California Missions Foundation has started a campaign to raise $50 million. It also hopes to benefit from state Proposition 40 historic preservation money.
A VISITATION OF U.S. SEMINARIES, which the Holy See discussed with the American bishops in 2002 as a response to the priest molestation crisis, will probably commence in fall of 2005, said a December 13 Catholic News Service story. During the visitation, any faculty member or student will be free to speak with visitors about the state of seminaries. "I personally think (the visitation) is going to be very helpful. I believe the seminaries today are not the seminaries they were 30 years ago. And I think that we have advanced tremendously in terms of teaching methodology, in terms of formation programs, in terms of our spiritual direction," said Bishop John Nienstadt of New Ulm, Minnesota, who chairs the U.S. bishops' committee on priestly formation. The visitors will consider the question of homosexual seminarians, which the Holy See will address in a soon-to-be-released document.
OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE has become hip, said the December 12 Los Angeles Times. Her image can now be found on blankets (made in China), violins, cowboy boots, salsa bottles, hairspray cans, pre-paid calling cards, and $250 belt buckles sold in Sherman Oaks' Belle Gray boutique. The image of La Guadalupana has become big business; Marshal Cohen, chief analyst for the NDP Group of New York, said products with her image generate an estimated $1 billion in sales a year in the United States. Our Lady's image has become "like Mickey Mouse," said a manager at Tesoros Trading Company in Austin, Texas. "It's become very popular. People just like it. They give it their own meaning." One pleased purchaser of a Guadalupana belt buckle said she was "not wearing it to make a statement for or against the Catholic Church. It's not to be disrespectful. I'm just wearing it because I think it's very cool. Religious symbols have become hip."
But some don't think this trend is "cool." Father Paul Sustayta at the Holy Spirit Church in Los Angeles said, "there are Catholics who buy these items in faith. Others, who are not Catholic, are just selling these images because they are the latest thing. They are using that image to make a buck." Father Jose Luis Morras-Etayo of Our Lady of Guadalupe Sanctuary in Los Angeles said, "the symbol should come with Catholic values. When it doesn't, we are being taken advantage of." But Jacqueline Orsini Dunnington, who recently wrote the book, Celebrating Guadalupe, explained that Our Lady of Guadalupe "has stepped off the altar, outside the confines of the church. She is a transcultural goddess."
THE SECULAR MEDIA in early January took keen interest in a rather parochial issue — the enrollment of students in the kindergarten of a Catholic school. There was nothing unique about the two boys in question — it was their "parents" — two homosexual men — who drew the attention. St. John the Baptist school in Costa Mesa enrolled children adopted by two homosexual men, and this brought on the parish and its pastor, Norbertine Father Martin Benzoni (of St. Michael's Abbey in Silverado), the wrath of at least 18 parents, said the January 2 Los Angeles Times. The parents in December signed a letter demanding that St. John the Baptist, an elementary and middle school with 550 students, require parents of prospective students to sign a "parental moral covenant" to live by Catholic doctrine before their children are admitted into the school. The pledge, of course, would force the expulsion of the two boys, since their "parents" could not honestly sign it.
The disgruntled parents claim that admitting the children of homosexual parents to the school signals a departure from the strict teaching of the Catholic faith. They equate admission of the boys to "exposing young people to erroneous ideas about sexuality and marriage that would deprive them of their necessary defenses and contribute to the spread of the phenomenon" — in the words of Pope John Paul II (cited in the Times article). But, according to the Times, a policy issued by Father Martin states that a family's background "does not constitute an absolute obstacle to enrollment in the school."
A statement issued by Father Martin clarifies his position. Though, says the statement, "we do not approve of homosexual unions nor of the law that permits adoptions," other considerations are in order. First, "the children have been baptized Catholic and the adults who are responsible for them have an obligation to raise them in the Catholic Faith;" second, "they live within the boundaries of St. John the Baptist parish and, as Pastor, I have a duty to minister to them, even a greater duty given their situation;" and third, "for faith formation, we have both a Catholic school and Religious Education program. These children may access either."
The statement concludes: "as Pastor I am working on this situation as prudently as I know how. Using traditional principles of Catholic pastoral practice, my aim is to maintain the integrity of our moral teaching and sacraments, while at the time express genuine concern for the salvation of all those involved."