One of my favorite channels is KOCE-TV Channel 50's OC Channel, available only on digital antennas (and have you changed your analog TV yet to satisfy the NWO?). It airs nothing but Orange County-related material–not just reruns of KOCE's Real Orange and Inside OC with Rick Reiff, but also weird infomercials and Chapman University-produced programs. But my favorite shows are OC-related documentaries–some years old, others not as much. I'll write about them as I see fit, but one deserves immediate commentary: Matters of Faith.
I wrote about this documentary on the Diocese of Orange last year but never got around to watching it until a couple of weeks ago. Produced by Maria Hall-Brown and with a credit to Diocese of Orange spokeshole Ryan Lilygren (though Hall-Brown swears the Orange diocese had no editorial control and says she gave Lilygren a producer title due to him providing so much archival footage and access for interviews), it's pretty enough. I didn't expect it to dwell much on the sex-abuse scandal, although I was astounded Matters of Faith actually included an interview with an abuse victim, even if it was for a couple of seconds, and even if Hall-Brown gave more air time to some rambling Mater Dei High School worker.
The second time I watched it, I realized what is my main problem with Matters of Faith, the same problem I have now with almost every Orange County Catholic I meet. Talk to them about our pedo-priest problems, and out comes a company line seemingly written by Orange Bishop Tod D. Brown: so sad, we're human, in the past, move forward, blah, blah effin' blah. What they never want to touch on is the cover-up.
Yes: humans err, sometimes horribly so. We cannot stop this, and we should forgive. However, a conspiracy to cover up crimes isn't human; it's the work of Satan. And that is what the Diocese of Orange sex-abuse scandal's ultimate horror is about. What angers me and all good Catholics isn't so much the molestations that occurred as it is the crime of cover-up that was and is endemic in the Orange diocese. And what drives us insane is that the bastards who orchestrated said cover-ups–Brown, former Bishop Jaime Soto, new bishop Cirilo Flores, Monsignor John Urell, and so many others–not only remain in their positions of power, but that their flock is barely bothered by this fact.
Matters of Faith speaks nothing about the cover-up, just the sex-abuse, just like the company line. And although we like Hall-Brown, especially her Real Orange “Forgotten OC” segments with local historian Chris Epting, her Catholic documentary is as blind to reality as most of my fellow Catholics. And that's a damn shame.
Final note: want to know where OC's pedo-priest-apologists love to dine in their secular finest? Play our guessing game over at our food blog, Stick a Fork in It!
