A new breed of 'ambulance chasers'?
posted by Quintero at 5:54 AM
Oct 18, 2005
About Me
- Name: Quintero
- Location: East L.A., California, United States
Fair Use Notice: This web site may contain copyrighted material the use of which may not always have been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of political, human, religious, and social issues. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
Previous Posts
- Alleged victim demands Mahony's resignation
- Europe's sympathy for the devil
- If only she had killed "it" just a little bit soon...
- True believer
- Stand up, girl.
- Jane Roe speaks to East L.A. audience
- L.A. Masses
- John Paul II Day
- L.A. (scandal) Times
- Life on the streets in L.A.
10 Comments:
"The first thing we do," said the character in Shakespeare's Henry VI, is "kill all the lawyers."
I have no special affection for lawyers but it is partially because of lawyers that 1) The sex scandal within the Church was exposed after decades of cover-ups 2) The hierarchy is finally acting to prevent sex crimes from happening in the future. One of their reasons includes financial damages that have resulted from lawyers' lawsuits.
Does anyone honestly believe that if there were no newspaper stories, lawsuits or investigations by states attorneys that the Catholic Bishops (or the Vatican) would have acted to correct this scandal on their own?
Reading that ad makes me sick of the type of society we live in.
Sock - also there was probably a certain amount of "lawyer mentality" going on during the coverups, i.e., fear of expensive lawsuits.
Mike
Mike,
Today, the fear of lawsuits is (IMO) the motivating factor for reformation. Unfortunately, lavender bishops are still around and as long as they have power, I don’t see a full cleaning out of all Catholic seminaries which is where renewal must begin.
As you’ve said, the lawyer mentality was going on over the past several decades with lower level clerics and sometimes bishops making monetary offers to parents of victims in order to obtain silence and their promise not to go to the civil authorities. These kinds of “hush money” payouts have already been made public in Boston and in LA I believe.
This kind of abuse is secondary only to the sexual abuse itself. Parents were told that if they did go to the authorities, that would be a betrayal of their Catholic faith and, as good Catholics, they should not air the Church’s dirty laundry in public.
I don't think any amount of litigation is going to make the hierarchy as it is currently comprised bring about the needed reform. They all have to hurry up and get old and die before there will be any semblance of a new springtime.
The root cause of the corruption in the priesthood and in the pews (contraception, formication, adultery, pornography) is a lack of fidelity to the doctrine of Christ, especially the moral teachings. This, in essence, was what Pope John Paul II told the American Cardinals when they had their audience with him in 2002. They politely nodded and then carried on as usual.
Mahony is a perfect example! Look at the heterodox speakers who year after year headline his annual R.E. Congress in Anaheim. And now, the Cardinal is moving forward with a plan which will kill parishes, kill vocations, and harm the faith of many, namely, his plan to have lay people (read: kooky, women religious) serve as "pastors" of parishes.
I don't mean to sound dire, but only realistic.
Sock,
I appreciate what lawsuits have/will do to hasten the process of cleaning things up, but they are a blunt tool not well-suited to creating a long-term fix. Your point that fear of lawsuits is the motivating factor for reformation is evidence that whatever reformation we get will not be lasting or valuable. Think of what we say in an Act of Contrition: we specifically say that we are sorry NOT because we fear eternal damnation, but because we desire to what is good and right and pleasing to God.
The notion that much good comes out of lawsuits is, I think, tied to the abdication of personal responsibility.
Mike
Mike,
The persons who I referred to in the above posts will not (IMO) be convinced with soft words or phony treatment centers. They ought to be punished and punished severly and they need to fear (I’m speaking of a worldly fear) harsh sanctions. Not only do the criminals need to be punished, but those who harbored those criminals as well. Unfortunately, for whatever reasons, the hierarchy within the Catholic Church did not police their own. It is because of their negligence that I applaud lawyers for doing what bishops refused to do. I even thank God for them. Even though their motivation was clearly financial, lawyers got the job done.
Speaking of fear in a theological sense is totally different.
Fear of the Lord is not the fear of a son but of a slave. Yet, for most of us, servile fear is a necessary step toward filial fear. We are brought to filial fear by reflecting on the severity of His judgments, His rigorous punishments and our sins. This fear can (but not always does) lead to a fear that springs from love. That is the fear of the Lord spoken of in Ecclesiasticus:
“The fear of the Lord shall delight the heart, and shall give joy, and gladness, and length of days. With him that feareth the Lord, it shall go well in the latter end and in the day of his death he shall be blessed.
Ecclus. 1:12-13 (D/R)
"The fear of the Lord driveth out sin.”
Eccllus 1: 27 (D/R)
In the Act of Contrition we first express sorrow because “I dread the loss of heaven, and the pains of hell.“ It is after expressing our fears, that we then speak out of love and say “most of all because they (our sins) offend Thee, my God, Who art all good and deserving all my love.”
O my God,
I am heartily sorry for
having offended Thee,
and I detest all my sins,
because I dread the loss of heaven,
and the pains of hell;
but most of all because
they offend Thee, my God,
Who are all good and
deserving of all my love.
I firmly resolve,
with the help of Thy grace,
to confess my sins,
to do penance,
and to amend my life.
Amen
Sorry, L.A. You have been putting up with Mahoney and his Hollywood cronies for years, contributed unquestioningly to his Raj Mahal complete with dancing nuns with incense bowls straight out of a Busby Berkely musical, etc. Your cities and culture have a nationwide reputation of being cesspools, and your Cardinal's program is to "acculture" to it. You let groups like Call to Action and the like to call your shots, and you promote pro-abort Hispanic Catholics to represent our new citizens from south of the border. And you have the gall to talk about a "new breed of ambulance chasers." Well well, what a fine upstanding bunch of refined sensibilities you are. Purge your temple and maybe the rest of the country will take you seriously. Until then, grow up and fess up. Quit blaming Rome, the American bishop's conference, Vatican 2, or whatever. Quit contiributing any $$$ to the big show and it will stop fast -- in other words stop blogging and do something.
Sincerely, Jack "The Ace" Wildenmut
Dear Jack "The Ace" Wild-nut-mut:
I'm glad you got all that off your chest.
I have no problem whatsoever with this. The bishops brought this upon themselves.
Thank you, lawyers, for exposing this disgusting mess! The same abuse scandal has happened in many other countries (I know what I'm talking about), but American Lawyers succeeded where other failed.
Post a Comment
<< Home