NEWS
2006 NEWS STORIES
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ROAMIN' CATHOLIC
Contents © 2006
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
NEWS
January 2006
DEFEAT. The California supreme court on November 16 let stand an appeal's court ruling that the archdiocese of Los Angeles must turn over to prosecutors the personnel files of two priests accused of sexual molestation of minors. Three years ago, the Los Angeles county district attorney's office subpoenaed the files of two former priests, but, citing the First Amendment's guarantee of religious freedom, Cardinal Roger Mahony refused to hand over the files. In July, a three-judge panel of the second district court of appeal in Los Angeles ruled that the subpoenas did not violate constitutional guarantees and ordered the archdiocese to turn them over. The archdiocese and the lawyer for the two priests, Donald Steier, appealed to the state supreme court, which without comment let stand the lower court's ruling. The ruling has implications for similar cases and could allow access to personnel files of priests accused in the over 550 cases currently against the archdiocese.
"This is an important milestone in addressing the issue of clerical sexual abuse," said District Attorney Steve Cooley, according to a November 17 Associated Press story. "I look forward to immediate access to files we subpoenaed from the Los Angeles Archdiocese." But access might not come as soon as Cooley might wish, for Steier indicated that he might appeal the state supreme court's decision to the federal Supreme Court.
ATTORNEY DONALD STEIER admitted November 18 that his client, the ex-priest Michael Wempe, molested 13 boys over 20 years ago, Associated Press reported on November 19. Steier made the admission during a hearing in a criminal case against Wempe concerning an allegation that he abused a boy over a five-year period in the 1990s while the priest was chaplain at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Wempe denies the allegation. The cases to which Steier admitted belong to a group of allegations for which Wempe cannot be tried because they stand outside the statute of limitations for criminal prosecution. Steier and his fellow defense lawyer, Leonard Levine, admitted to these older cases in the hopes of limiting testimony to them in the current trial. For, according to Levine, jurors probably "will say to themselves, `We don't care. We are going to find him guilty for what he did 20 years ago.'"
THE PENITENTIAL PRIVILEGE for priests only goes so far, a judge ruled November 16. Monsignor Michael Lenihan last summer was deposed in cases involving three priests, including Michael Baker, whom Lenihan supervised when a deacon. Baker has admitted to abusing two brothers and has other sexual abuse accusations against him. Judge Haley Fromholz, who is supervising the settlement of the over 550 cases against the archdiocese, ruled that Lenihan must answer questions in a deposition, including whether he heard Baker's confession. "The penitential privilege protects 'a communication made in confidence,'" wrote Fromholz. "It does not prohibit the disclosure of the fact that the communication occurred."
"THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IS CHALLENGING" in federal court the constitutionality of a 2002 state law that removed the statute of limitations in civil cases dealing with clergy sexual abuse of minors, the Decem ber 2 Tidings, the newspaper of the Los Angeles archdiocese, reported. In passing the law, said the Tidings, the assembly did not address sexual exploitation as a "social problem that must be addressed throughout society," but "deliberately and unconstitutionally targeted the Catholic Church, not the social problem." The law, the newspaper continued, "was drafted by lawyers already pursuing the Church for monetary awards for clients and contingency fees for their efforts. During its enactment, the legislators heard only from those who alleged abuse by clergy. The discussion of the proposed bill focused exclusively on that abuse and the crisis of clergy sexual abuse being reported throughout America." Though the law, continued the Tidings, "appears to encompass all institutions where children may be at risk of being abused ... public schools, state supervised foster homes, juvenile detention facilities and other government entities were not impacted by the legislation because of the special statutes of limitations that apply to them as public entities."
In fact, said the Tidings, in passing the law, the legislature violated the federal constitution by taking it upon itself "to find the Catholic Church guilty without trial" and "singl[ing] it out for punishment. This is what the United States Constitution outlaws by forbidding a Bill of Attainder, an ancient tyranny rejected by our nation's Founding Fathers.... The legislature also disregarded the First Amendment protections the U.S. Constitution affords to religious institutions, and violated the Constitution's due process protections by retroactively reviving claims of abuse that had been barred for decades."
The Tidings charged that "a group of lawyers decided to target the Catholic Church as a 'deep pocket' that could be sued successfully for sexual abuse of minors by clergy." But, the paper said, "the terrible circumstances and sinfulness of sexual abuse by clergy does not justify another wrong of allowing the violation of Constitutional rights and the rule of law."
THE SUMMARIES OF PERSONNEL FILES of priests accused of molesting minors released by the Los Angeles archdiocese to the public in October were criticized by advocates of the allegedly abused and others for being, well, too summary; but, said the November 18 Tidings, the archdiocese couldn 't do any better. The archdiocese's attorney, J. Michael Hennigan, told the Tidings that when the process of settling the abuse cases against the archdiocese began three years ago, "it quickly became apparent that there were certain archdiocesan documents which the plaintiffs' attorneys would want but which the archdiocese felt were confidential because they involve communications between a bishop and priest, psychological treatment and the like. This was obviously a complicated issue, and if the courts had to decide who was right, compensation for the victims could be delayed for years." To avoid delay, said Hennigan, the archdiocese offered to provide summaries of the files, called proffers, an accommodation to which plaintiffs' attorneys agreed. A judge reviewed the proffers to assure they were accurate and complete.
The archdiocese, according to Hennigan, wanted to release the proffers to the public, but "several individual priests objected to the release of any information from their personnel files. The Court heard their appeals, but then said that nothing prevented the archdiocese from releasing much of the information contained in the proffers. So we went ahead with the public release of information in the form of 'summaries.'"
As for the archdiocese's refusal to release personnel documents to prosecutors, according to Hennigan, "thousands of pages have already been turned over by the archdiocese. At issue are just 21 pages." Hennigan claimed that prosecutors really don't need the documents, for elsewhere prosecutors have been able to carry through prosecutions without personnel documents.
THE PERCENTAGE OF PRIEST-GRADUATES of St. John's Seminary accused of molestation of minors is greater than the nationwide average, the Los Angeles Times reported in mid-November. While, according to a survey by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, four percent of priests and deacons nationwide have been accused of molestation between 1950 and 2002, during the same period over ten percent of St. John's graduates have been accused -- 65 out of the 625 graduates. Most of these cases have not been the subject of court action. Over a third of the graduates of two of St. John's classes, 1966 and 1972, have been accused of molesting minors.
Former St. John's students interviewed by the Times claimed that fellow students were emotionally unstable and were sexually active, even having sex in seminary rooms and bathrooms. One former student, John Romo, said some students were alcoholics and that faculty did not speak about celibacy. Romo has sued the archdiocese on molestation claims. However, other priest graduates of St. John's told the Times that they did not notice any sexual activity when they attended the seminary.
NOT OUR FAULT. Officials of the Los Angeles archdiocese say that St. John's Seminary did not contribute to the ill behavior of some its students, said the November 18 Ventura County Star. And, besides, said the current rector, Father Helmut Hefner, St. John's has made great strides in its understanding of sexual abuse and in screening candidates. As evidence, Hefner said that of the 155 archdiocesan priests that have graduated from St. John's over the past 20 years, only two have been accused of sexual abuse. "That's 1.29 percent," said the rector. "Seminaries have made dramatic adjustments, obviously not completely foolproof, that have changed the situation radically for the better." The large percentage of allegedly abusive priests in the past can be ascribed, said Hefner, to the fact that "the seminary didn't have the machinery in the whole psychological area. No one did. We basically just didn't have the experience."
A PROTESTOR who handcuffed himself to Cardinal Roger Mahony's cathedra at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in June was sentenced in November, the November 23 Los Angeles Times reported. James Robertson, 58, who is suing the archdiocese because, he claims, it failed to protect him from molestation when he was a child, pleaded no contest to the charge of disturbing a religious service. He was sentenced to 30 days of trash pickup, ordered to stay at least 300 yards from the cardinal, the cathedral, and archdiocesan headquarters, and placed on three years' probation. Robertson faced up to one-and-half years in jail and $2,000 in fines.
Though Robertson's protest had been peaceful, archdiocesan officials ordered his arrest. "We owe it to the people who come to the cathedral and to the Mass," archdiocesan spokesman Tod Tamberg said in June. "Right away the concern is the safety of Cardinal Mahony and all the people in the cathedral. Does he have the potential to do something else?" But Steven Sanchez of Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests said at the time, "this is supposed to be a church of Christianity. Whatever happened to forgiveness? Whatever happened to turning the other cheek?"
ST. VIBIANA'S, Los Angeles' historic cathedral, reopened on November 12, but not as a church. It is now Vibiana Place, the Los Angeles Times reported, an arts center that is planned to complement downtown gentrification. Following the 1994 Northridge earthquake, the archdiocese closed the cathedral, citing seismic problems. Plans by Cardinal Mahony to demolish the historic church (built in 1876) were ultimately thwarted by the Los Angeles Conservancy, and in 1999 developer Tom Gilmore bought the cathedral for $4.5 million. Though, in 1996, the archdiocese claimed it would cost $20 million to retrofit St. Vibiana's, according to the Times, to date Gilmore has spent only $8 million to restore the old church.
COLLAPSE. A Bakersfield high school principal gave into student demands (buttressed by the ACLU) to allow the campus newspaper to publish stories about homosexual students, Associated Press reported. John Gibson, principal of East Bakersfield High School, last May blocked the stories set to run in the Kernal because, he said, they might incite violence against students featured in the articles. Students and the American Civil Liberties sued the school district, but a judge backed Gibson until a full review could be made of his and the school's concerns. But in October, for unspecified reasons, Gibson gave into student demands and allowed the articles to be published.
A FEDERAL JUDGE REFUSED TO DISMISS a case involving a Garden Grove girl who claims her high school principal violated her right to privacy by telling her parents she is a lesbian, the New York Times reported on December 2. Charlene Nguon, a senior at Santiago High School in Garden Grove, had been disciplined for hugging and kissing her girlfriend on the school campus. In 2005, the school's principal, Ben Wolf, informed Nguon's mother about her daughter's behavior and, thus, her lesbianism. The school finally required both Nguon and her girlfriend to attend separate schools, which caused, Nguon claims, her grades to suffer. After meeting with Nguon's lawyer last summer, however, the school allowed her re-enroll at Santiago.
The Garden Grove School District asked Judge James Selna of the Central District Court of California to dismiss the case. Nguon, said the motion to dismiss, could not claim a privacy right since she was "openly lesbian" and "constantly" hugging and kissing her girlfriend. "A reasonable person," said the motion, "could not expect that their actions on school grounds, in front of everyone else on the school grounds, would remain private." The motion also claims that Nguon was not disciplined for her sexual proclivities but for defiance of authority. The motion also wonders why Nguon "can be openly gay in public, but should be permitted to hide her homosexuality from her parents."
Selna, however, did not accept the district's reasoning. Instead, he ruled that Nguon had "sufficiently alleged a legally protected privacy interest in information about her sexual orientation."
A QUESTION OF PARENTAL RIGHTS. Pro-homosexual groups, of course, praised Selna's decision. Christine Sun, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, said, "this is the first court ruling we're aware of where a judge has recognized that a student has a right not to have her sexual orientation disclosed to her parents, even if she is out of the closet at school." The case, continued Sun, is "really important, because, while Charlene's parents have been very supportive, coming out is a very serious decision that should not be taken away from anyone, and disclosure can cause a lot of harm to students who live in an unsupportive home." But Carrie Gordon Earll with Focus on the Family countered, "this court ruling is so unrealistic that it borders on ridiculous. In a disciplinary action by the school, you can't expect them to lie to the parents and not give details of what happened. It seems ironic to raise privacy as an issue in a public display of affection. She'd already outed herself."
A STATE APPEALS COURT ruled December 2 that doctors at an Oceanside clinic were within their rights in refusing to inseminate artificially a lesbian woman, the December 3 Los Angeles Times reported. A lower court had ruled that Drs. Christine Brody and Douglas Fenton of the North Coast Women's Care Medical Group in Vista could not cite religion to justify their refusal to treat Guadalupe Benitez, 33, after she had received 11 months of preliminary treatment from them. The doctors, however, said they refused to treat Benitez, not because she is lesbian, but because she is unmarried. The appeals court in a 3-0 decision said that because state law does not ban discrimination based on marital status, the doctors were within their rights. Lambda Legal Defense, a homosexual rights group that represented Benitez, said it would appeal the decision to the state supreme court.
"IT'S TIME TO STOP RUNNING away from the moral values issue and seize it and go on the offensive," said Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. "Let's start by claiming our moral values -- liberty and personal freedom for all." Foreman was speaking to homosexual rights activists gathered at the Task Force's national conference in Oakland in early November. Such activists are gearing up to fight two ballot initiatives to ban homosexual marriage which might appear on the 2006 state ballot. (One initiative, backed by Randy Thomasson of the Campaign for California Families, would also ban state-sanctioned domestic partnerships for homosexuals.) The Task Force, however, will not fight alone in its campaign to foist its peculiar "moral values" on Californians. According to the November 12 Los Angeles Times, "behind the scenes, a coalition that includes the NAACP, the United Farm Workers, more than 250 clergy, and dozens of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender organizations has already begun door-to-door campaigning and street corner canvassing to take the gay and lesbian equal rights message to neighbors, churches, PTA meetings and backyard barbecues across California."
But it won't be an easy, or inexpen sive, fight. Freeman himself estimated that it would require $15 million to fight the measures -- "well beyond anything the gay and lesbian community has ever raised," said the Times.
THERE IS A "LOW RISK" of infection in using the abortion drug, RU-486, despite the deaths of five women who have used it, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine said. According to the study, government researchers investigating the deaths of four California women -- Holly Patterson in Northern California and three other women in Southern California -- concluded "that serious infection can occur after medically induced abortion, much as it can occur after childbirth, spontaneous abortion, and surgical abortion. However, available data suggest that the risk of such infection is low." In an editorial published with the study, Harvard Medical School obstetrician Michael Greene said the risk of death through infection from a medical abortion is one per 100,000, far lower, he said, than the death rate from carrying a child to term. He urged against a governmental ban of RU-486. "As tragic as the deaths of these young, healthy women are," wrote Greene, "regulators should keep this rare complication in perspective and not overreact to scant data by prematurely foreclosing the only approved medical option for pregnancy termination."
But Dr. Donna Harrison, chair of the Mifeprex subcommittee of the American Society of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, has disputed the report. She told the December 1 Los Angeles Times, "when you have five deaths, and they're all the same organism, that's like lightning striking the same place five times. There's a huge number of women who have almost died."
RU-486, also called Mifeprex, blocks a hormone necessary for a pregnancy, already begun, to continue. A woman receives the drug up to 49 days after pregnancy has begun and then takes misoprostol several days later to induce contractions. The four California women underwent this procedure at four different clinics, using medications from different manufacturing lots. In 2001, a Canadian women died after taking the drugs.
THE INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE in November explained its decision to challenge the tax-exempt status of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, said the November 21 Ventura County Star. On October 31, 2004, during the presidential campaign, the Rev. George Regas related to congregants at All Saints an imaginary debate between Jesus, George W. Bush, and John Kerry. While telling his flock that anyone might in good conscience vote for either candidate, Regas said of the Iraq war: "President Bush has led us into war with Iraq as a response to terrorism. Yet I believe Jesus would say to Bush and Kerry: 'War is itself the most extreme form of terrorism. President Bush, you have not made dramatically clear what have been the human consequences of the war in Iraq.'" According to Regas, Jesus would say to both Kerry and Bush, "the sin at the heart of this war against Iraq is your belief that an American life is of more value than an Iraqi life. That an American child is more precious than an Iraqi baby. God loathes war." On account of such statements, the IRS is investigating the church.
According to a letter signed by IRS official R.C. Johnson, the service's "concerns" about All Saints "are based on a Nov. 1, 2004, newspaper article in the Los Angeles Times," which "states that the sermon ... delivered a scaring indictment of the Bush administration's policies in Iraq, criticism of the drive to develop more nuclear weapons, and described tax cuts as inimical to the values of Jesus." But, said the IRS, the investigation of All Saints is not politically motivated. The IRS is also investigating whether a speech made by the Rev. Jerry Falwell at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 2004 constituted an election year endorsement of President Bush.
A FEDERAL LAWSUIT filed in U.S. district court in Los Angeles alleges that workers on a Bridgestone Firestone rubber tree plantation in Harbel, Liberia are caught in a "gulag of misery," Associated Press reported on November 17. The suit, on behalf of 12 adults and 23 children, was filed in Los Angeles because, the lawsuit claims, the plaintiffs feared retribution from the Liberian court system. The Washington, D.C.-based International Labor Rights Fund, which filed the suit on behalf of the workers, alleges that workers on the plantation work 12-14 hours a day for a daily wage of $3.19 (before deductions.) According to the lawsuit, workers must tap at least 1,125 trees a day, and if the quotas are not met, the company docks their pay by half. To assure that they meet the quotas, workers have their minor children work with them.
Bridgestone Firestone, a Japanese company with headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee, said the lawsuit's allegations were "completely without merit." According to the company, workers at Firestone Liberia are well paid and are represented by a union. The company says it employs no one under 18.
A RIGHT TO SUNDAY WORSHIP. When a Seal Beach woman, Isabel Mendoza, who had undergone a Christian conversion this past summer, asked her employer to change her work schedule to allow her to attend church on Sunday, she was refused, according to a November 22 Pacific Justice Institute press release. An attorney from the Pacific Justice Institute sent a letter to the employer on behalf of Mendoza, explaining that the law requires employers to make reasonable accommodations for employees so they can attend to religious duties. The employer relented and changed Mendoza's schedule.
Said Kevin Snider, Pacific Justice Institute's chief counsel, "the current state of the law is that, unless there is proof of an undue hardship, under both state and federal law an employer must take measures to see if an employee can be accommodated in these situations."
IN RESPONSE TO REPORTS that county hospitals, sheriffs, and suburban police departments dump discharged patients who are homeless on skid row in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles County board of supervisors ordered health services, public social services, the county mental and sheriff's departments to develop protocols to make sure that discharged patients can access support services, the November 30 Los Angeles Times reported. Police and the county sheriff' s department have denied that they dump homeless people on skid row, while various hospitals have admitted to transporting discharged patients to service providers on the row. Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who joined three other supervisors in approving the order, called transporting homeless to skid row "unacceptable and inappropriate. Action," he said, "needs to be taken to establish collaboration between the public-private sector and county agencies in addressing this critical need." Antonovich called on private hospitals, which are unaffected by the order, to address the issue of dumping.
Antonovich said officials need to find a way to ensure that skid row residents are getting the health services they need -- which would mean, he said, possibly changing state law, which makes it difficult to commit mentally ill people not immediately in danger.
A LAWSUIT THAT ALLEGES that grocery chains violated U.S. anti-trust laws during the almost five-month Southern California grocery strike that ended in February 2004 may go forward, the U.S. ninth district court of appeals ruled November 30. During the strike, Safeway Inc. (the owner of Vons and Pavilions), Kroger Co. (which owns Ralphs), and Albertsons Inc. shared $150 million to help one another fight the strike and lockout. In May, U.S. district court judge George King said the suit, brought by state attorney general Bill Lockyer, could go forward. The chains sought to have the suit dismissed, but the district court on November 30 ruled otherwise. The courts have not ruled whether the chains actually violated anti-trust laws.
BREASTS NOT BOMBS, a group of bare-breasted female protesters, sought to sue California Highway Patrol commissioner Mike Brown because he warned them that their planned protest in front of the state capitol in early November could get them charged with indecent exposure and disorderly conduct -- and, those convicted might have to register as sex offenders. Though Breasts Not Bombs has staged their pectoral protests with impunity against the Iraq war in the Bay Area and even Washington, D.C., the target in Sacramento was Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's special election ballot propositions and the non-Schwarnegger initiative, Proposition 73. As such, their action was to be a political protest, group member Sherry Glaser, 45, argued, and so is protected free speech.
The group sought from U.S. district court judge Garland Burrell, Jr., a temporary restraining order against arrests of Breasts Not Bombs members. Their attorney, Matthew Kumin, suggested that the protest area "be surrounded by a bolt of cloth, so that those who want to watch the protest can do so easily, and those who merely walk by would not see the nude protest." But since the group's tactic "consists in the main of linking political protest with toplessness by its female members," said Kumin in his motion to Judge Burrell, "absent that element, the organization's effectiveness, its philosophy and its strategies are completely compromised." On November 7 Burrell refused to block arrests. That afternoon, Sherry Glaser and Renee Love, 40, were arrested for protesting topless.
In a declaration, Sherry Glaser said, among other things, that her "organization certainly uses irony -- what many believe is shameful and immoral to this group is wholesome, decent and beautiful." Ironically, those who have seen pictures of Breasts Not Bombs protests might certainly disagree as to their decency. And as to their beauty -- well, as it has been said, that is in the eye of the beholder.
DURING THE MONDAY PRO TEST, state Senator Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) joined Glaser and Love, the November 8 Los Angeles Times reported. Though it does not appear that Romero bared her breasts (at least she wasn't arrested), she stood in solidarity with the protesters to voice her anger that, if convicted of lewd acts, the women could be placed on a sex-offender registry. Romero also announced she would introduce legislation to decriminalize the public baring of breasts. "While it is legal for men to go shirtless in public in California," said Romero, "women risk being classified as sex offenders for baring the same body parts."
DIVINE DNA? The Ventura County Star made a foray into the realm of theology in a November 19 article, "Scientific advances raise questions about Jesus: Modern biological revelations about DNA challenge the concept of a virgin birth." Basically, the Star article asked, if the Y chromosome which makes one a male is received from the father, how did Jesus get it since He had only a mother? Though the average lay Christian might not know it, "there's a big split over the Y chromosome issue" (presumably in regards to Christ ) -- at least, so said Boston University theology professor Wesley Wildman. Wildman said a non-virgin Mary -- non-virgin even at the time she conceived Jesus -- was no problem for him; in fact, for the professor, "the bottom line" is that "the virgin birth is a mistaken belief. I also think that this need have no impact whatsoever on Mary's and Jesus' moral and spiritual importance."
Others interviewed by the Star disagreed. David Wilcox, who teaches biology at a Christian college, Eastern University, affirmed that "Jesus had DNA and a Y chromosome -- and the source for half of that DNA (and the Y chromosome) would presumably be pure and simple miracle." A theology professor, the Rev. Ronald Cole-Turner, told the Star that the virgin birth is not a biological anomaly but resulted from God's intervention. "It's not God's sperm ... but God created something like a sperm and caused it to fertilize Mary's egg," he said.
All on its own, the Star article arrived at this speculation, that "for Jesus, a miraculous manufacture of genetic material would imply there's a sequence of genetic code designed by God himself -- God's own approved DNA." And, attune to inter-faith and ecumenical resonances, the article observed that such a conclusion "would have big implications for those who believe in the premise of the Da Vinci Code -- that Jesus had children and his lineage continues to the present day."
But Wildman's more mundane speculation would have its own interesting implications, noted the Star. For one thing, the article concluded, "a non-virgin birth ... would seem to raise the spiritual capital of sex."