{"id":7466,"date":"2004-04-19T08:14:32","date_gmt":"2004-04-19T08:14:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/04\/what_a_mess.html"},"modified":"2004-04-19T08:14:32","modified_gmt":"2004-04-19T08:14:32","slug":"what_a_mess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/04\/what_a_mess.html","title":{"rendered":"What. A. Mess."},"content":{"rendered":"

An Oyster Bay parish is dissatisfied with its pastor, assigned after a former pastor was removed for abuse accusations. <\/a> The present pastor was a diocesan official implictated, some say, in reassignment of abusing priests, and they don’t like some of the other decisions he’s made. But the former pastor still hangs around. <\/p>\n

After months of private and sometimes confrontational discussions with Msgr. John Alesandro over his leadership of St. Dominic parish in Oyster Bay, a group of influential members is organizing an extraordinary public forum to question what the former top church administrator knew about the priest sex abuse scandal in the Diocese of Rockville Centre and to review some of his controversial decisions as pastor.<\/p>\n

The dramatic development, a sign of how the scandal has emboldened Catholics nationwide to seek a greater role in their local church, stems mainly from lingering concerns parishioners have about the still not fully explained departure of the former pastor two years ago and about why Alesandro has been unable to move the parish beyond the problems that have enveloped the North Shore enclave…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An Oyster Bay parish is dissatisfied with its pastor, assigned after a former pastor was removed for abuse accusations. The present pastor was a diocesan official implictated, some say, in reassignment of abusing priests, and they don’t like some of the other decisions he’s made. But the former pastor still hangs around. After months of…<\/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-7466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat. A. Mess. - 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\/04\/what_a_mess.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What. A. Mess. - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"An Oyster Bay parish is dissatisfied with its pastor, assigned after a former pastor was removed for abuse accusations. The present pastor was a diocesan official implictated, some say, in reassignment of abusing priests, and they don’t like some of the other decisions he’s made. But the former pastor still hangs around. After months of…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/04\/what_a_mess.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2004-04-19T08:14:32+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"What. A. Mess. - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/04\/what_a_mess.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"What. A. Mess. - Via Media","og_description":"An Oyster Bay parish is dissatisfied with its pastor, assigned after a former pastor was removed for abuse accusations. The present pastor was a diocesan official implictated, some say, in reassignment of abusing priests, and they don’t like some of the other decisions he’s made. But the former pastor still hangs around. After months of…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/04\/what_a_mess.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2004-04-19T08:14:32+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/04\/what_a_mess.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/04\/what_a_mess.html","name":"What. A. Mess. - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2004-04-19T08:14:32+00:00","dateModified":"2004-04-19T08:14:32+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/04\/what_a_mess.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/04\/what_a_mess.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/04\/what_a_mess.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"What. A. Mess."}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. 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\/7466","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=7466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7466\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}