Everyone and their mother is freaking out about all the revelations coming out of the sex-abuse scandal in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles after they released a bunch of once-secret personnel files on their pedo-priests. To that, we say “YAWN.” There is very little new in those documents not already revealed in years past by enterprising reporters, of which there were really two in LA: former Los Angeles Times scribe William Lobdell (that is, before he became one of the biggest tools in Orange County spinning for Jim Righeimer in Costa Mesa) and Ron Russell of the late, great New Times LA.
Nevertheless, the LA archdiocese should be commended for their act, if only for this point: they are doing what the Diocese of Orange never did, and will probably never do.
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For all of its self-backslapping about how transparent they were, the diocese under former Bishop Tod D. Brown NEVER released any priestly personnel files–they didn't find it important. I once asked Brownie during a press conference if he would ever make parishes provide those files the way he made them post his laughable Covenant with the Faithful, and His Eminence seethed. Brownie also kept around Monsignor John Urell, the crypt keeper to all the pederast secrets that all the bishops in Orange kept.
New Orange Bishop Kevin Vann can do like LA Archbishop José Gomez and rebuke his predecessor by publishing all of Orange's pedo-priest personnel files AND smack down Brownie and Urell (among others) with a divine pimp hand. How about it, Bishop? Show OC's Catholics and lost sheep like me that you mean business. Show us that you're serious about full transparency in this rotten diocese. Show the county how your predecessors conspired to cover up the rape of innocents. Strip all possible powers away from Brown. Ask Pope Benedict XVI to laicize Urell. Do it, and you have a new fan.
Don't do it? Business as usual, and the Diocese of Orange will just have to pop up again on our radar. The choice is yours!
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