May God have mercy on the children of Orange County…
There have been ties between the local Catholic Church and the City of Santa Ana for years. Council Members have arranged for land giveaways to the Church to benefit Catholic schools their kids go to. City Manager Dave Ream arranged a land grab for Mater Dei and widened Bristol for them and I am told they hired his wife.
Now it appears that the Church is also in cahoots with Santa Ana Unified. Check out what Gustavo Arellano dug up over at the OC Weekly’s Navel Gazing blog:
About two months ago, the Catholic Diocese of Orange put out a help-wanted ad for a new position: Associate Superintendent for Finance & Advancement. The job, a description stated, entails the applicant “to offer oversight, support and professional consultation to parishes/schools, high schools, Office of Faith Formation, and to other diocesan organizations on school marketing and full enrollment concepts, financial planning for schools, formal long-range planning, and fiscal management.”
True to form, sources say Orange Bishop Tod D. Brown has hired a pedophile protector to the position, but the surprising part is that His Excellency went outside his rotten grove to nab the hire: Tracy Brennan*. Yes: the same Tracy Brennan who was principal at Saddleback High School in Santa Ana last year when one Alonso Manuel Gonzalez was arrested (and later convicted) for molesting a disabled child yet never got around to alerting parents about the pervert and commanded staff to shut up about the incident. Who ignored previous warnings about said pervert. Who did virtually the exact same thing at her previous job for the Anaheim Union High School District.
Click here to read the rest of Gustavo’s post.
How very disgusting! Once again the Catholic Church has dipped to a new low. This is yet another story you won’t read about over at the Red County blog, which features an editor in Matt “Jerbal” Cunningham who outed the names of Catholic molestation victims while he was defending a Monsignor who facilitated molestations.
Wow! Will it ever stop? Art, have you read Bill Lobdell’s book “Losing My Religion”? Bill was editor of OC’s Daily Pilot, and then religion columnist for the LA times a few years ago, a born-again evanelistic Catholic, who lost it all reporting on stuff just like this above. Check his book: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/books/review/Oppenheimer-t.html?_r=1
A really great summer read.
A stupid hire, but this is another excuse for Art to vent his anti-Catholic bigotry.
Children who are molested usually experiance life long emotional and mental problems. To bring attention to someone who probally should not have been hired to a position is completely fair.
Last I knew Art had nothing against the Catholic Church or any other.
I do know that we both feel that when it comes to children everything possible needs to be done to protect them from molesters.
#2,
Jim got it right. I am a graduate of Don Bosco Tech and my mom and most of her family grew up Catholic.
I have no problem with the Catholic religion but I do have a problem with an organized effort to prevent the arrest of child molesters. That is what happened. It was wrong then and it is wrong now.
There is by the way no Biblical reason for priests to not marry. The church did not want them to inherit or pass on property. This practice has resulted in many unsavory types ending up in the priesthood.
The church should allow priests to marry and it should allow openly gay priests. The church should also allow its members to use birth control.
The Catholic church is and has been behind the times – and many, many victims are paying for that even now.
Jim:
Certainly it’s fair to post about this. Like I said, hiring her is stupid. But Art just has to go overboard into anti-Catholic territory with “Once again the Catholic Church has dipped to new lows” comments, as if the Church is limited to the Diocese of Orange.
And I like how Art says he has “no problem” with the Catholic religion” and then goes on to advocate wholesale changes in millennium-old Church doctrine and practice. Art should know what he’s talking about before he opens his mouth.
Dr. Brennan is in so far over her head in this position that it’s not even funny. When organizations do extensive background checks on their hires, how is it that this piece of slime gets hired over and over and over?
The peoploe responsible for hiring her should be fired. This is another disaster waiting to happen, And again, when she gets the boot, she will sue. That’s her M/O.
#5,
Don’t take my word for it. How about some data?
* US clerics accused of abuse from 1950-2002: 4,392. About 4% of the 109,694 serving during those 52 years.
* Individuals making accusations: 10,667.
* Victims’ ages: 5.8% under 7; 16% ages 8-10; 50.9% ages 11-14; 27.3% ages 15-17.
* Victims’ gender: 81% male, 19% female
* Duration of abuse: Among victims, 38.4% said all incidents occurred within one year; 21.8% said one to two years; 28%, two to four years; 11.8% longer.
* Victims per priest: 55.7% with one victim; 26.9% with two or three; 13.9% with four to nine; 3.5% with 10 or more (these 149 priests caused 27% of allegations).
* Abuse locations: 40.9% at priest’s residence; 16.3% in church; 42.8% elsewhere.
* Known cost to dioceses and religious orders: $572,507,094 (does not include the $85 million Boston settlement and other expenses after research was concluded). (Hartford Courant, 2/27/04)
Source: http://www.priestsofdarkness.com/stats.html
So letting priests have sex, letting gay guys be priests and letting Catholics use condoms will eliminate clergy sex abuse?
That makes a whole lot of sense.
Believing in a faith is one thing, but maintaining allegiance to a corrupt, exploitive institution that uses faith in order to access potential victims and protect the institution’s perpetrators time and time again is by action a condoning of that institution’s behavior. Keep the faith, jail the perpetrators and disband the institution.
then I guess the U.S. and every other institution that has done things like this should be disbanded ey ‘been around a while’?
Everyone always criticizes the Catholic Church in general, there are people who abuse power, but it is not the Church’s fault. The Church is Holy, c’mon it’s Christ’s bride, but the people in it are not holy, and some people are extremely ignorant and liberal and it leads to scandals in the Church. Art, priests are not meant to be married, they are in persona Christi, and Christ did not marry anyone but His Church He founded. Imagine a priest does not show up to celebrate Mass because his child was sick or his wife was giving birth? If you don’t agree with Mother Church, deal with God. Don’t be a cafeteria Catholic. We have enough of those already.
…God Bless…