Posted on 11/09/2007 7:22:10 AM PST by Alex Murphy
I wonder if the author of the story is familiar with the ruling out of Oregon on the issue. PDF here: http://www.orb.uscourts.gov/orb/newopinions.nsf/FA199870938D0673882570E700725E8C/$file/123005_2%20opinion.pdf?openelement
If the parish wanted to convert to another denomination, think the diocese would take this position?
Apparently, the Catholic Church must always be held to a different legal standard than everyone else and plaintiffs' lawyers should always decide how much the Church pays. Never mind that the sex abuse was committed by small number of priests. Let's make lay Catholics, who had nothing to do with the scandal, pay by closing down their parishes and schools and selling these to pay the claims of the victims.
The author of this article is 100% right. The judge's behavior in this case was hardly impartial or fair. This whole situation proves that anti-Catholic bigotry is alive and well in this country.
I think the judge is a Catholic. From the article: According to newspaper reports, she said that she had planned to do so without comment until she received a mailing from her former parish asking her to help the diocese pay for the settlement.
Did she react the way she did, because she's an anti-Catholic bigot or because she felt her church was embracing an unacceptable immorality? It wasn't that the church was asking the laity for funds to pay off those victimized by some of their employees, but that they were giving the laity a different picture of their finances than the information she'd seen as an officer of the court.
They can always leave the parish, or even convert. If lay Catholics and higher-ups willfully continue to associate themselves with lawbreakers, they should willfully pay up.
Easier to shoot the messenger.
What an asinine response. So you are saying that lay people who had no idea that a few priests were abusing children and who had no responsibility for the actions of those men should be punished because they didn’t leave the Church after the scandal broke.
If one doesn’t live in this diocese and has not beem aware of all the aspects of this case from the very beginning, it’s not so advisable to make assumptions about it.
BTW, the author has a very accurate grasp of the highly biased and editorialized style of “reporting” all of this by the so-called “journalists” of the San Diego Union Tribune.
I agree
No parish is going to “convert to another denomination”.
Individuals may—and sometimes do—but whole parishes do not.
The Church was not “embracing an unacceptable immorality”.
You'd sing a different tune if it were a Presbyterian or Baptist congregation being sued over things its pastor did behind closed doors.
The parishioners are the victims. Victimizing them again is not an action that Christian should support.
Ping
If someone gives one set of facts one place & a different set of facts elsewhere, do you think that is moral?
It may never happen again, but it has happened.
If the congregation continued to defend the pastor, his superiors, and their actions after the dirty deeds came to light, I'd be singing the exact same tune. What gives you reason to think I'd be different if it were a Protestant congregation?
It was a generic statement, meant to be applicable to a number a scenarios. Were you expecting me to name names or something?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.