Orange County Register

From Steven Greenhut:

Check out the Diocese of Orange and its excuses for its latest sexual-abuse settlement. Most telling, attorney Peter Callahan referred in the first part of his interview with the Orange County Catholic to “a sexual relationship between a high school junior and a driver’s education teacher/assistant coach at Mater Dei High School.” That’s an interesting and telling way to refer to a case where a 34-year-old teacher is having sex with a 15-year-old student. That is rape, according to the law, even if consensual, and the victim alleges that the teacher had at one point forced himself on her. This is typical of how the Diocese, and its consigliere, handled and viewed these incidents — with a constant downplaying of what took place and a focus on protecting and excusing church leaders.

Callahan argues that the Diocese did everything it could to protect the victim, but that doesn’t wash. Read this account here.

We see also that the Diocese has learned nothing, despite its massive payouts to victims and despite revelations of cover-up and protection of predator-priests and lay employees for the Diocese. Here’s Callahan again:  “I want to stress the point that this is not a “Catholic clergy” problem. The recent settlement cases involved no members of the clergy. Nor is this a Catholic problem; it is a societal problem. … The Catholic Church is the one organization that has done the most to eliminate childhood sexual abuse within its ranks and educate the general public about this societal problem.”

This is almost unbelievable, a testament to the state of delusion that persists among the church hierarchy.

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