{"id":4918,"date":"2005-07-24T00:00:14","date_gmt":"2005-07-24T00:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/a-fathers-responsibility.html"},"modified":"2005-07-24T00:00:14","modified_gmt":"2005-07-24T00:00:14","slug":"a-fathers-responsibility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/a-fathers-responsibility.html","title":{"rendered":"A Father’s Responsibility"},"content":{"rendered":"

Priests, children and child support<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Single and unemployed, Stephanie Collopy asked a Portland judge this month to order her son’s father to increase her child support and to add their chronically ill boy to his health insurance plan.<\/p>\n

Sitting on the witness stand in a white button-down shirt, gray slacks and blue blazer with a small gold cross on the lapel, Arturo Uribe — the 12-year-old boy’s father — had an unusual defense: He is a Roman Catholic priest.<\/p>\n

Uribe, who was a seminarian when he fathered the boy during a consensual affair with Collopy, had taken a vow of poverty and therefore had no money to support his son, he told the court. Now pastor of the 4,000-family St. Mary of the Assumption Roman Catholic Church in Whittier, Calif., Uribe had never seen the boy, who was born in 1993.<\/p>\n

And as for health insurance, the Whittier, Calif., pastor said his plan — tailored for priests, nuns and brothers — didn’t provide for children.<\/p>\n

Uribe’s legal argument worked.<\/p>\n

Multnomah County Judge Keith Meisenheimer ruled that Uribe only had to continue his $323-a-month contribution, paid by his religious order, the Redemptorists. And while the jurist instructed Uribe, 47, to formally ask his health plan carrier if an exception could be made for his son, the priest wasn’t ordered to provide insurance<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

1. There is no excuse for the Redemptorists to be able to avoid providing health insurance for this boy. What a crime.<\/p>\n

2. Why this guy was ordained – the affair happened and the child was born right before he was ordained, and they knew about it – is beyond me, totally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Priests, children and child support Single and unemployed, Stephanie Collopy asked a Portland judge this month to order her son’s father to increase her child support and to add their chronically ill boy to his health insurance plan. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. 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