{"id":7743,"date":"2004-03-10T22:40:21","date_gmt":"2004-03-10T22:40:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/please_dont_punch_the_catechist_father.html"},"modified":"2004-03-10T22:40:21","modified_gmt":"2004-03-10T22:40:21","slug":"please_dont_punch_the_catechist_father","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/please_dont_punch_the_catechist_father.html","title":{"rendered":"Please don&#8217;t punch the catechist, Father"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mercurynews.com\/mld\/mercurynews\/news\/local\/states\/california\/the_valley\/8154672.htm\">Here&#8217;s why<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Compton Superior Court jury voted 9-3 Monday to award damages of $952,819 to Maria Vega, 57, for emotional distress, defamation and battery, said her attorney, Victor George.<\/p>\n<p>Vega said she was teaching catechism at St. Emydius Church in Lynwood when the Rev. Dennis O&#8217;Neil disagreed with the way she was teaching principles of the Catholic faith. George said the argument in November 1999 culminated with O&#8217;Neil punching Vega above the ear.<\/p>\n<p>The trial began in October but was halted 20 days into the proceedings when O&#8217;Neil died at age 60. A mistrial was declared and a new trial started Nov. 10.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s why The Compton Superior Court jury voted 9-3 Monday to award damages of $952,819 to Maria Vega, 57, for emotional distress, defamation and battery, said her attorney, Victor George. Vega said she was teaching catechism at St. Emydius Church in Lynwood when the Rev. Dennis O&#8217;Neil disagreed with the way she was teaching principles&hellip;<\/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-7743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Please don&#039;t punch the catechist, Father - 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\/03\/please_dont_punch_the_catechist_father.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Please don&#039;t punch the catechist, Father - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Here&#8217;s why The Compton Superior Court jury voted 9-3 Monday to award damages of $952,819 to Maria Vega, 57, for emotional distress, defamation and battery, said her attorney, Victor George. Vega said she was teaching catechism at St. Emydius Church in Lynwood when the Rev. Dennis O&#8217;Neil disagreed with the way she was teaching principles&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/please_dont_punch_the_catechist_father.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2004-03-10T22:40:21+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":"Please don't punch the catechist, Father - 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\/03\/please_dont_punch_the_catechist_father.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Please don't punch the catechist, Father - Via Media","og_description":"Here&#8217;s why The Compton Superior Court jury voted 9-3 Monday to award damages of $952,819 to Maria Vega, 57, for emotional distress, defamation and battery, said her attorney, Victor George. Vega said she was teaching catechism at St. Emydius Church in Lynwood when the Rev. Dennis O&#8217;Neil disagreed with the way she was teaching principles&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/please_dont_punch_the_catechist_father.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2004-03-10T22:40:21+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\/03\/please_dont_punch_the_catechist_father.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/please_dont_punch_the_catechist_father.html","name":"Please don't punch the catechist, Father - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2004-03-10T22:40:21+00:00","dateModified":"2004-03-10T22:40:21+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/please_dont_punch_the_catechist_father.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/please_dont_punch_the_catechist_father.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/please_dont_punch_the_catechist_father.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Please don&#8217;t punch the catechist, Father"}]},{"@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\/7743","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=7743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7743\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}