{"id":260,"date":"2009-02-06T09:13:38","date_gmt":"2009-02-06T09:13:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2009\/02\/do-they-really-want-to-go-ther.html"},"modified":"2009-02-06T09:13:38","modified_gmt":"2009-02-06T09:13:38","slug":"do-they-really-want-to-go-ther","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/02\/do-they-really-want-to-go-ther.html","title":{"rendered":"Do they really want to go there?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Los Angeles, the U.S. attorney, Thomas O’Brien, has opened a federal probe of Cardinal Roger Mahony<\/a><\/strong> that is based on some questionable legal reasoning. Even Mahony’s foes concede that.
\nBut now it seems the LA Archdiocese is engaging in some legal maneuvering of its own that is not likely to endear the hierarchy there to the public–or prosecutors. According to the Los Angeles CityBeat paper–in a story sharply if aptly titled “MAHONY TO IRAQ WAR VET: SCREW YOURSELF”<\/strong><\/a>–lawyers for the archdiocese are trying to deny an Iraq vet and fighter pilot the chance to pursue claims that he was abused by a priest as a boy at a local Catholic school.
\nThe Air Force pilot, known as “John TH Doe” in court papers, was flying combat missions overseas in 2002-2003 when California opened a one-year window lifting the statute of limitations that had prevented many adults from filing suit for abuse when they were children. Now he is back and filed suit under the provision of a 1940 law that suspends statutes of limitation where men and women in active military duty are concerned. “The period of a service member’s military service,” the law states, “may not be included in computing any period limited by law, regulation, or order for the bringing of any action or proceeding in court.” But the LA archdiocese is arguing that “John TH Doe” volunteered, was not drafted into service, and so has no case.
\nAs CityBeat writes:
\n<\/p>\n

The law was designed to allow members of the military to serve without having legal woes in their civilian lives cloud their ability to fight, and to protect their legal rights should they be unable to return home for a court date.
\nBut there’s a small loophole in the law, one the archdiocese is trying to exploit. It allows the court to use its discretion to ignore the law and throw out SCRA cases it deems meritless. And that’s exactly what lawyers for the Archdiocese are asking Judge Emilie H. Elias to do.
\n“Plaintiff in this case is not someone who was drafted or a guardsman or reservist called to active duty,” lawyers for the diocese argue in their court filings. “He is not entitled to have the SCRA ‘liberally constructed’ in his favor.”
\nIn other words, the archdiocese says, because John TH Doe volunteered to serve his country and fight in Iraq, instead of being drafted, the protections of the SCRA shouldn’t apply.
\n“Our client was abused as a child,” says Vince Finaldi, John TH Doe’s attorney, at the Newport Beach-based law firm Manly & Stewart. “He didn’t file earlier because he was serving this nation. If the court is going to exercise discretion, it should be in favor of those ravaged by priests in California and throughout the United States.”
\nCalls to Lee Potts, the Hennigan, Bennett & Dorman lawyer representing the archdiocese, went unanswered.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/strong>
\nBishops, like everyone else, hire lawyers to represent their interests as vigorously as possible. But still…
\n(HatTip: Catholic World News<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Los Angeles, the U.S. attorney, Thomas O’Brien, has opened a federal probe of Cardinal Roger Mahony that is based on some questionable legal reasoning. Even Mahony’s foes concede that. But now it seems the LA Archdiocese is engaging in some legal maneuvering of its own that is not likely to endear the hierarchy there…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,2,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bishops","category-catholic","category-church","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nDo they really want to go there? - Pontifications<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/02\/do-they-really-want-to-go-ther.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Do they really want to go there? - Pontifications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In Los Angeles, the U.S. attorney, Thomas O’Brien, has opened a federal probe of Cardinal Roger Mahony that is based on some questionable legal reasoning. 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}