{"id":7013,"date":"2004-07-16T08:22:41","date_gmt":"2004-07-16T08:22:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/07\/portland.html"},"modified":"2004-07-16T08:22:41","modified_gmt":"2004-07-16T08:22:41","slug":"portland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/07\/portland.html","title":{"rendered":"Portland"},"content":{"rendered":"

The British view<\/a><\/p>\n

Even if nothing so apocalyptic comes about, Portland archdiocese is going to have to get used to operating with non-Catholic supervision. That has been, in fact, one of the recurrent themes of the American Church\u2019s crisis. Bishops have been forced to relinquish their authority and autonomy bit by bit \u2013 first to the National Review Board, which was set up at the 2002 Dallas bishops\u2019 meeting to supervise the implementation of new sex-abuse guidelines; then by agreements with district attorneys to avoid criminal prosecution; and now to the bankruptcy courts over the management of their financial affairs.<\/p>\n

But Portland\u2019s decision has also exposed the failings of mass tort law. Kevin Mannix, a Catholic lawyer and politician who in 1991 wrote an Oregon state law which made it much easier for adults to sue for sexual abuse endured as children, is horrified by what has happened. \u201cShould the Church sell a third of its property in the state\u201d, he wonders, \u201cto pay two people for abuse that occurred 20 years ago by a priest who is now dead?\u201d <\/p>\n

It seems absurd. And yet, if the claims are correct, for 30 years the archdiocese of Portland committed its minors into the care of Maurice Grammond, knowing, surely, that he would to do to them what he had done so often before. One of those minors, James Devereaux, remains, not unnaturally, a bitter enemy. <\/p>\n

The question is, can tort law be applied in such a way as to satisfy his craving for justice while at the same time ensuring that dioceses such as Portland remain in business? It is not a conundrum likely to find an exit soon. And in the meantime, there is still the comic opera policeman\u2019s question \u2013 \u201c\u2019oo, exactly, is in charge around \u2019ere?\u201d \u2013 to be answered. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The British view Even if nothing so apocalyptic comes about, Portland archdiocese is going to have to get used to operating with non-Catholic supervision. That has been, in fact, one of the recurrent themes of the American Church\u2019s crisis. Bishops have been forced to relinquish their authority and autonomy bit by bit \u2013 first to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nPortland - Via Media<\/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\/viamedia\/2004\/07\/portland.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Portland - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The British view Even if nothing so apocalyptic comes about, Portland archdiocese is going to have to get used to operating with non-Catholic supervision. 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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. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7013\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}